Ok, to be a bit more serious here, I feel I should explain the translation on page 25. What I've translated as "You are absolved." was originally「お疲れ様でした」(Otsukaresamadeshita). I spent an ungodly amount of time agonizing over this choice. As any good weeb knows, this
can mean "good work", said to a colleague at the end of the day. It can also, frustratingly, mean a huge amount of related but not entirely equivalent things (only second in vagueness to the dreaded yoroshiku onegaishimasu).
At first glance, you might say we can just directly translate it as "good work", but to me this is not encapsulating the entire nuance of the line. Let's look at what Miya is actually saying. It's at once an acknowledgement of Sora carrying the guilt of blaming himself for his brother's passing, but also an assurance that he need suffer no longer (the past tense でした is used implying the topic at hand is finished). What it isn't, however, is an expression of appreciation from Miya, or saying anything about Sora's efforts personally benefiting Miya, which is how the phrase is
usually used.
So what does "good work" mean? Sora is not
doing work or
putting in effort per se. You could say "good job bearing that burden" or "good job handling that guilt", but this seems to imply that all of that suffering was for some purpose or fruitful in some way. This is not the right nuance, in my opinion. Sora's self inflicted guilty conscience does not benefit anyone, and translating this line with any sort of positive affirmation is, in my opinion, wrong. Furthermore, none of these options fulfil the second half of the meaning, an acknowledgment that Sora's ordeal is at an end.
So considering all of this, I went with "You are absolved." which doesn't
look like it's related to the original text in any way, but it conveys the two meanings in my interpretation: an acknowledgement of Sora's ordeal, and also an assurance that the ordeal is over. The tradeoff being I don't think this is at all realistic for a high school student to say in that situation, which is a factor I do consider when translating dialogue. I've racked my brain to try to provide a concise line that conveys all the nuance of what I believe the original conveys, and there are of course flaws with my final decision. I hope you can see how much thought is put into the translation, and why MTL/AI/translators who don't speak either language fluently are not good for anyone's enjoyment of the medium.
TL;DR I made it up
