Akuyaku Reijou Tensei Ojisan - Vol. 8 Ch. 50 - Family

[randalthor20001]

Anna is such a good girl, writing her parents regularly. I appreciate that the parents aren't dumb. The apple didn't fall far from the tree. They are clever to try and capitalize on Anna's relationship with Lady Grace, to get their son an apprenticeship. I like that the author is hinting at a possible future subplot, or maybe even a spinoff series, with the son's future. But I didn't like him spoiling that the son never becomes a baker. Let him bake, dammit!

It was adorable the way Josette's story made everyone cry. Lady Grace, Kenzo inside, Kenzo's wife and daughter. Cascading tears. I agree with the translator note at the end. The author is doing a bang up job of fleshing out even minor character's backstory. It gives the story so much depth and makes the world more believable and feel alive. Such a rare trait nowadays.

"It's been three days since Dad's accident. Though, eight months have passed in game." What a massive relief. It's been mentioned before that time passes quicker in game. But I had no idea it was this big of a difference. This is really good. It's unhealthy for anyone to spend months or years in a bed and never move. I've been worried that when, and if, Kenzo ever gets his body back, he would have to deal with the atrophy and muscle loss from an extended coma.

I love Kenzo's wife and daughter. They're not just helpless and passive viewers to Kenzo's decisions. They actively research, plan, and adapt strategies to help him. And more than that, they're still a family. I'm still rooting for an ending where the wife and daughter bring Kenzo's body to the game world, instead of Kenzo going back to Japan. Kenzo somehow transfers his soul back to his body, so Grace gets hers back. Then the royal family hires Kenzo to work for them, since he's the greatest public servant to ever live. The daughter attends the royal academy and learns magic. The whole family gets to live in a cool fantasy world. No one gets separated. I've never seen it done in any isekai before. If the author doesn't do it when he ends the series, I'll have to write my own original isekai and make it happen.

 

[randalthor20001]

That boy is obviously going to be real Grace's husband once he's all grown up. And probably the leader of her Knights.

No, yuri shall conquer the world. I'm hoping that Kenzo gets his body back, and reunites with his wife and daughter. And that real Grace and Anna fall in love.

Leader of the Knights sounds plausible. I'm hoping that he bakes in his spare time as a hobby though. I'd be sad if he gave up on his love of baking entirely.

 

[nisashi13]

3 days / 8 months is quite a surprising time dilation.

Maybe to the player, the game will skipped through some stuff since there are clearly some time they sync together, like when she help created the summon or when her dad able to open the window to the real world.
but thing like sleep time, bathroom, shower room, travel time and other trivial stuff will automatically skip out of the screen.

 

[randalthor20001]

This was such a wholesome chapter, villainess are so peak.

So only 3 days passed in our world but 8 months have passed in the game? That is good news, dad will not be too far off when he wakes up eventually.

Kenzo is basically getting extra bonus months of lifespan. And not old age months; but prime young person months of living. It sucks that he's away from his family, but there are plenty of positive to his situation.

 

[randalthor20001]

Hm. Don't really get the brother foreshadowing ...
... but I assume something important is going to happen in the game now that they aren't watching.


Time for the real yuri arc.

I suspect the author is either setting up a future subplot. Or a potential spinoff series, centered around the younger brother.

It's always time for yuri.

 

[AthalosJ]

That boy is obviously going to be real Grace's husband once he's all grown up. And probably the leader of her Knights.

That doesn't seem right since the MC seems to be unknowingly pushing Grace towards the Queen route so there is no way Ciel would be the real Grace's future husband

 

[BusWindow]

Unintentionally ominous

 

[Pyoro]

I suspect the author is either setting up a future subplot. Or a potential spinoff series, centered around the younger brother.

I spinoff this close to the main series feels a bit unlikely to me. There'd be too much overlap and not enough space to develop its own thing.
A subplot ...
... yeah. Glancing at it again I'm not sure why I didn't connect the dots; obviously he's going to go on his apprenticeship, something happens, he ends up with Grace and the rest. And while he's there; well. Quite incidentally, Josette is in the same chapter. And roughly the same age. And she's supposed to grow up into a "proper adult" at some point, which presumably means marriage in this setting. And further incidentally a romantic entanglement would be a reason as to why one might give up on their future dreams.

So okay, story mapped out ^^#
Of course if you asked me there's definitely a lack of a shota maid in that household but alas that's perhaps too advanced for this manga.

But as BusWindow says; the foreshadowing reads weirdly ominous so it seems all a bit strange to me.

 

[Amariithynar]

You a liar if you say you held back tears instead of crying. God damn this chapter was just full of tears, happy ones and sad ones both.

 

[Hikineet]

Thanks for the chapter.

 

[ismaelh]

Ciel is sky in french and terre means ground I think so it sounds appropiate for the boys of the doll family.

Unlike other people I appreciate the accent attempt, I think localizing humble/formal speech or accents is the true way to translate. That said I also respect translators that wont do it and just translate the text, its a hard task and it demands creativity after all.

 

[MoogleJaws]

I'm not crying, you're crying! I love when works portray people missing their families in such a realistic and simple way. It does so much to communicate who the characters are in so few panels.

 

[SatchelBagman]

Gonna put what discussion suggests may be an outside theory here and guess that Ciel is gonna get shipped with Josette, which I'm not sure which way I feel about while I'm failing to remember her age.

 

[vedrit]

I'm guessing that the blonde haired catgirl maid, Mathilde, is speaking in some kind of rural regional dialect of Japan. I've seen anime dubs where they try and approximate this with a thick Southern accent. I hate it. It's incredibly out of place and distracting. I don't hate the accent for Mathilde as much, but I definitely hate it and it is distracting. If I have to choose between ease of understanding the words, along with missing out on the uneducated rural yokel accent, or instead having harder to understand dialogue, distracting and out of place accent, but partially similar to the spirit of the original Japanese accent: I will choose not having any accent and ease of understanding every time. Please reconsider using accents that aren't easily translated into English. Some stuff like ending every sentence with the word "meow", is easily translated into English. But other things, are better off being lost.

Mathilde has spent many years as Lady Grace's personal maid. None of Lady Grace's other staff has Mathilde's accent. When you spend years around people with a different accent, and have no one to talk to with your own accent, the result is you slowly lose your accent, and adopt the accent you are surrounded by. This isn't a conscious decision. It's something that automatically happens with time. At best, Mathilde would have a mild accent remaining. She wouldn't have this incredibly thick and obnoxious accent. The accent is also very inappropriate for the personal maid of high royalty. Maids of royalty display certain manners and etiquette at all time. In their dress, manners, and also speech. Someone in the staff would be trying to correct her accent a long time ago.

Other than that, thank you for the translation. Besides the well intentioned (but I disagree with) accent choice, you do very good work on the translation, fonts, typesetting, cleaning up, etc. High quality.

Gonna hard disagree with you there. Opting to remove any semblance of an accent, which existed in the original, is editing the creators work. Changing the character.
If you want to argue that the choice of accent is bad, that's fine. But don't remove it altogether.

 

[randalthor20001]

Gonna hard disagree with you there. Opting to remove any semblance of an accent, which existed in the original, is editing the creators work. Changing the character.
If you want to argue that the choice of accent is bad, that's fine. But don't remove it altogether.

How would you replicate an Osaka or Kansai accent in English? A Southern accent is totally out place for whichever regional Japanese accent the translator is trying to approximate. That is editing the creator's work. A Southern accent brings with it all of the flavor and culture of the Southern United States of America. Totally distracting and takes me out of the story.

If you really think an accent is necessary because the author used an accent, then how about a British accent from the Renaissance period? It wouldn't match whichever regional Japanese accent the character has (which is probably impossible to replicate in English), but it would match the setting of the European style fantasy world they are in.

 

[Wizardrone]

thanks for chapter!

 

[satsu02]

Only if Anna fails to guide lady Grace down on the yuri path...

I mean no one stopping her to get both 🤷‍♂️

 

[arcosapphire]

I'm guessing that the blonde haired catgirl maid, Mathilde, is speaking in some kind of rural regional dialect of Japan. I've seen anime dubs where they try and approximate this with a thick Southern accent. I hate it. It's incredibly out of place and distracting.

It's a difficult localization issue. In general I agree with you, because the sociolinguistic connotations of, say, a southern US accent may include all kinds of things that do not map very well to what the author is intending to convey in Japanese. This can create a misleading feel. For instance, Kansai-ben is often mapped to a southern US dialect. But it's the dialect spoken in Japan's second most populous urban area. The "rural" nature implied by the American dialect is completely at odds with the Japanese reality. I actually feel like a Boston accent would be the best mapping (a connection to an urbanized, historically-important area that nevertheless stands out compared to the American prestige dialect), but it's almost never used. And of course, the Boston accent as it is now interpreted includes classist layers that don't necessarily map well. So it's never going to be a good solution--but there's still something of a duty to show that the character speaks differently from others in some way, which means committing to something that's going to have some incorrect implications.

I think generally it's good to pick something less sociolinguistically charged than a southern US accent, yet can still be conveyed through text. I think the best candidate there is probably something like a Minnesota dialect. People don't really have a strong positive or negative feel about it, but it can still stand out. It has a few differences in phrasing, so it's possible to convey in text without being too overwhelming to the reader.

Speaking of ease of reading, if the southern dialect is chosen regardless, I think it helps to restrict how it is conveyed. A speaker of that dialect, for instance, does not think they are saying "ah'm"; internally they are saying "I'm". The phonology differs and the surface form results in different vowel placement than for instance someone with a mid-Atlantic dialect would have. And so to such a speaker, when interpreting the phonetic surface form through their own phonology, the southern version might indeed sound like "ah'm"--but it's purely a matter of perspective. And there's no reason to assume the perspective of the reader. So I believe altering vowels and conveying elision through the writing system are bad and myopic approaches, which only make it difficult to read. A speaker of southern US dialect, when writing, does not write "I'm" as "ah'm" nor something like "goin' t' th' store". The underlying form is the same as speakers of other dialects.

What can be safely altered, in my view, are vocabulary choices, sentence structure differences, and idiomatic phrases. If someone insists on conveying a non-prestige Japanese dialect in the form of a southern US dialect, I think it can be safely limited to being expressed through those methods, and should not cause friction to readers (of any dialect).

My background: Bachelor's in Linguistics

 

[TesutoLTSF]

I'm guessing that the blonde haired catgirl maid, Mathilde, is speaking in some kind of rural regional dialect of Japan. I've seen anime dubs where they try and approximate this with a thick Southern accent. I hate it. It's incredibly out of place and distracting. I don't hate the accent for Mathilde as much, but I definitely hate it and it is distracting...

It's a difficult localization issue. In general I agree with you, because the sociolinguistic connotations of, say, a southern US accent may include all kinds of things that do not map very well to what the author is intending to convey in Japanese. This can create a misleading feel. For instance, Kansai-ben is often mapped to a southern US dialect. But it's the dialect spoken in Japan's second most populous urban area. The "rural" nature implied by the American dialect is completely at odds with the Japanese reality...

Heya,

First of all, thank you for the feedback! The discussion so far has been quite enlightening, albeit a bit controversial. Since I have some time right now, I’d like to share my two cents and explain why I made the decision I did.

The primary reason is actually quite simple: the subtitles I used when watching the anime portrayed Mathilde (though they spelled her name “Matilda”) with a U.S. Southern dialect, so I chose to follow that for the sake of consistency.

The second reason is that Mathilde speaks in the Tōhoku dialect (東北方言), which is spoken in the Tōhoku region in northeastern Honshū. The Tōhoku dialect can differ so significantly from standard Japanese that it is sometimes subtitled for nationwide audiences, and it is often portrayed as a stereotypical rural dialect in Japanese popular culture. [1] In that sense, I think comparing it to a rural Southern U.S. dialect is not entirely unreasonable.

That said, what randalthor mentioned also makes sense. While Mathilde does not have many spoken lines, most of her vocabulary appears to be standard Japanese, with only some accent features and possibly a few dialect-specific particles or affixes. As mentioned above, authentic Tōhoku dialect can be difficult for speakers of standard Japanese to understand. However, we do not know whether the author deliberately moderated the dialect for accessibility, or whether it reflects the author’s own linguistic limitations.

Given the setting, I agree that a rural British dialect, or perhaps even a Welsh or Scottish-derived accent, might be more fitting. However, that presents a technical challenge for me, as I am not very familiar with the various dialects of British English. As a non-native English speaker, I already struggle to reliably distinguish Received Pronunciation from General American English. There is also the concern that British English may not be well received by manga readers. A friend of mine once tried using British English in a translation, and the reception was quite negative.

So overall, I do not think my approach to this chapter was necessarily wrong. However, for the sake of readability, I may tone down the heavy accent rendering and instead add just a subtle flavor to her dialogue moving forward. I hope this compromise is acceptable, and I would love to hear what you all think.


[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tōhoku_dialect

 

[arcosapphire]

So overall, I do not think my approach to this chapter was necessarily wrong. However, for the sake of readability, I may tone down the heavy accent rendering and instead add just a subtle flavor to her dialogue moving forward. I hope this compromise is acceptable, and I would love to hear what you all think.

That's pretty much my viewpoint: being able to tell she's speaking differently without making it difficult to actually read. Granted based on the limited amount of dialogue, there may not be many opportunities to work something in.

It's interesting, psychologically, that we can interpret our personal dialect as standing in for anything (e.g., I know the source is Japanese and therefore there's no incongruency with Japanese stuff showing up in the dialogue even though it's presented in English), and yet we interpret other dialects as being something less congruent. I recall one manga I read was translated by native British English speakers, so they used various BE spellings and colloquialisms, which I'm sure felt totally reasonable to them. But it was difficult for me not to think it indicated the characters were actually speaking that way, rather than it just being a translation of Japanese. Sort of a decrease in cultural transparency.

I felt a similar issue when watching Chernobyl, in which everyone should have been speaking in Russian, but it was made entirely in English. Which would have been ignorable to me normally, but it was a British show, so it was British English, and so created a strong sense of why are they speaking English? Of course, as a Mid-Atlantic American, I'm privileged for most English media being in my native dialect (or close), which enhances that effect. Maybe it's not as big of an issue for people who are used to English translations being presented in a dialect that isn't their own anyhow.