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How is it awful?
Alternative version, it was fixed already, I won't remove the other version.
Gal Can't Be Kind to Otaku!? - Vol. 7 Ch. 47
- Thread starter MangaDex
- Start date
Alternative version, it was fixed already, I won't remove the other version.
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Well, the oshi - push thing was kinda lost, unless they know why Otaku-kun thought she said push... and its not like it needed a v2, but they kept annoying me in the comments, to which I just decided to upload the oshi version so they are happy.
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I still don't know how I feel about amane being chill with things. It felt like there was narrative tension being built up around the three, and then it all deflated like balloon. I guess it could come back if it turns out Otaku-kun likes amane. Rather than indecision between the two, it's a standard love triangle.
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I think it's meant to be like a referendum on the whole issue of translating words and terms. This way there's a version that uses "oshi" to make the turbo-weebs happy and a version that translates it to an English approximation ("fave") for the people that don't know what oshi means.
I can't imagine them constantly doing both going forwards, so I'll be this is an opportunity to have both versions up, see what the reaction is and then pick the one that seems to be preferred.
Personally, I think "fave" is fine. Does it fully capture the nuance of the word? No. But translating languages is not a 1:1 job. There's always going to be awkwardness and fit issues. So I think it's more valuable to prioritize the understanding of the audience reading the language on the assumption that most people are not going to have extensive weeb vocabularies and know what a ton of Japanese words are meant to be. If it's not quite right it's OK as long as the general intent is served. And if it isn't that's what end notes are for. Honorifics and proper nouns are about the only thing that I think has significant value in remaining Japanese in a translation because the former is just too layered to unpack into English equivalents that mostly don't exist and the latter are actual names (though there are occasional exceptions where I think translating stuff like organization or group names is fine even though the group name is a proper noun. It's kind of contextual.)
I guess instead of "fave" you could use "stan". It's got kind of a loaded meaning in English, but that's always going to be a problem no matter what. Oshi has loaded meaning that isn't necessarily conveyed by "fave" either so you're kind of damned no matter what you do.
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I don't think amane being chill lasts. Her issue since the beginning of the story is that she is terrible about being honest with herself and others about her own thoughts and feelings. Sooner or later she's going to have to realize that she likes him too and that's when stuff comes to a head.
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eh so there’s no real difference using oshi or fave. So just translate it however you want and however is easiest for you. You could even use them interchangeably I think and most people would still get the meaning. Although that would likely piss off a small number of very annoying people online
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Bullied into uploading a weeb-speak version 
As for my stance on whether to use the Japanese term or an English adjacent term (not that anyone asked) - it depends. For oshi, I think keeping it as oshi is the best. It doesn’t have a great English equivalent. ‘Fave’ is OK. ‘Fan’ is probably better. ‘Stan’ is probably the most accurate word to use, but it has negative connotations, so… meh. Same with gyaru. I see it translated as ‘gal’ (such as in the title of this very series), but that’s not really accurate, right? The word is based off ‘gal,’ sure, but the words don’t mean the same thing. This is highlighted by the term for male gyaru, gyaru-o. How would this be back-translated into English? Male gal? No thanks! Besides, these terms add a little bit of Japanese favor. It’s like keeping ‘onii-chan’ instead of using ‘big bro’ or ‘-san’ instead of ‘Mr./Ms./Mrs.’
As for my stance on whether to use the Japanese term or an English adjacent term (not that anyone asked) - it depends. For oshi, I think keeping it as oshi is the best. It doesn’t have a great English equivalent. ‘Fave’ is OK. ‘Fan’ is probably better. ‘Stan’ is probably the most accurate word to use, but it has negative connotations, so… meh. Same with gyaru. I see it translated as ‘gal’ (such as in the title of this very series), but that’s not really accurate, right? The word is based off ‘gal,’ sure, but the words don’t mean the same thing. This is highlighted by the term for male gyaru, gyaru-o. How would this be back-translated into English? Male gal? No thanks! Besides, these terms add a little bit of Japanese favor. It’s like keeping ‘onii-chan’ instead of using ‘big bro’ or ‘-san’ instead of ‘Mr./Ms./Mrs.’
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Personally, I prefer the V2 version. There are some words in Japanese that don't have the same meaning after translation (like Itadakimasu). I know that some prefer still to translate them but for me the whole sentence loses its real feeling/meaning.
As one who pushing into "oshi" version at least allow me to apologize for problems we causing, no matter how hypocritical it can be. Now i see why you struggle with page 14 it really was pain in the ass to deal if it was like this.
On page 13 name of chapter #191 is missing. In both versions.
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Thanks, and fixed!
This reminds me of a bygone Era where troll TLs translated Itadakimasu as "rub a dub dub thanks for the grub".
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Anyway, I'm sorry for delivering such an awful translation...
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I do prefer "oshi" to "fave", but that's more just that I hate "fave". It sounds so cringe. Why not use "stan" or something else? Like stan would be much closer to the slang usage the word is going for and is an actual word people use to describe superfans (though the context would have to be changed slightly to describe Ijichi as a Seo stan instead of Seo as her oshi). Or just keep "fave". It's just one word. Hardly matters that much if some people do or do not like it.
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Dear translator-san, relax, people love to argue over minutia. Don't take it personally, it's fine to take a stance and you can't, and shouldn't try, to please everyone, so focus on yourself.
That said, please change Otaku-kun to Nerdboy.
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I explained why it was awful and you dismissed it out of hand with an "Okay dude" in the other thread.
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Thanks for the change, it wasn't that big of a "problem" but is nice to see a scan group that cares about the readers preferences with this type of cases, like with honorifics and all that, as a vtuber fan, for my "Fave" did not carry the same weight as "Oshi" so I'm happy
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Reading the comments there's a lot of nice back and forth on this and some very not nice minimizing back and forth. I'll say what I really hate about the internet is everyone thinking they're an expert on something and have discovered the singular correct answer, so they feel the need to diminish the issue to insults and mud slinging. However, the reality is that actual experts who specialize in the field have been studying and debating and deriving non answers but general guidelines (even with stuff like language) for centuries now.
Language is an INCREDIBLY complex matter. It is something that exists not just in verbal and written speech, but so many nonverbal nodes and even modifiers for verbal like tone and inflection. For example, satire is a b*tch to translate to any audience that has a language or culture that doesn't really use satire. I mean you can't really translate something like it at all. It's interesting going to another country and realizing that your fluency and mastery of the words themselves is like maybe half of the process of actually communicating who you are (not like a background but just your personality and character) in an entirely different culture. Communication goes beyond language and language itself is complicated in that it influences culture and is also influenced by culture.
There are a lot of great examples of Japanese words that are difficult to translate while maintaining their meaning. But I'll complicate the matter more. You can perfectly translate all of them either with a dictionary translation or something that closely matches the original meaning. Like the example of "いただきます" is given. It really isn't that difficult to translate. You can "let's give grace" and more western audiences will understand that and it's in English so there's that. That's be more of a localization though. You could keep it dictionary and just say "we humbly recieve this food." That sounds nice and. Is neutral enough to not be a localization. Plus it gets the general meaning across to a western audience. But what about the original cultural meaning? What about the very different nonverbal body movements that come about from saying a single word instead of a sentence (really multiple sentences if you're giving grace properly). Even the lack of movement for a certain length of time is communication and it matters.
There is a reason why transliteration exists and people make fun of it, but there's a reason why English has so many borrowed words from other languages that are unchanged. Sometimes meaning is best conveyed by keeping a word unadulterated. Moving out for a bit, this is seen a lot in American slang already. Most slang is taken from minority groups in the States. A lot of it is African American vernacular that's a year or so old. Yet, when it makes this leap into the zeitgeist, often it's cultural meaning and origins are completely lost. This continues on when a word hits the global stage. Speaking as a Black American words can't describe the frustration in going abroad, feeling invisible or alien because of how marginalized Black cultures in countries. Like America are (both leading to many Black Americans not going abroad and media that the US creates not being reflective of how diverse the country is), and yet hearing words originally coined within African American vernacular that has lost their cultural meaning entirely. Not because the word themselves have been changed, but because how they are used and in what context has been changed. And it goes on and on. I could discuss (not even debate) language for eons based on literally a single university course and some personal experience. Imagine people who are actually in the field.
Specifically looking at this instance, slang is DIFFICULT to translate. Really, really difficult. They are practically all "in the moment" meanings that only actually exist on a cultural level. Some stick. Most have a shorter half life than... something with a really short half life (idk, I'm not a scientist). People have a hard time defining them within the language that exist (more and more don't even exist in a single language like with the rise of Spanglish in the US). You're immediately out of official dictionary translation territory. In fact the actual experts in translation are the ones in the age group who needs their own language's slang explained to them. Language is incredibly rapid in its evolution and yet also slow with those rapid developments so short lived. The best you can do is try and match meaning with some equalivalent slang word or try to create a new slang word by replicating how the slang word was formed in the other language. Japanese slang is particularly interesting because I'm going to be blunt and say that Japan is really behind on matters of global cultural diversity and how language is related to it and how deriving meaning from language and communication is something in of itself. English education in Japan isn't great. How they approach it leads to so SO much loss of meaning on both ends (as in the way Japan has normalized official translations of their own language has harmed cultural exchange for us in the west; it also very obviously harms cultural exchange from west to Japan and communication itself). That in of itself is something that says a lot of cultural and the reality of Japan (it is still a very closed off country that is still trying to navigate how to change that; calling any group a monolith comes with a great big asterisk, but Japan is a lot more homogenous than many other developed countries). It further becomes something we have to navigate as people that consume content from Japan. (I'll also say it's interesting as the country itself has a language that developed trying to balance taking Kanji from Chinese, developing hiragana as a common tongue to encourage the importance of language and written art among lower classes, and added katakana on top of that to create phonetic transliterations of borrowed and new words (like Pikachu is in Katakana)). It sounds stupid, but you'd be shocked at how much the distinction between Anime and Cartoon has on how people form thoughts and what those thoughts are regarding a certain media. I'd really encourage people to go to Japan, if they can and just talk with all the people who desperately want to speak English with you. You'll find so many roadblocks because how we tackle translation itself changes how we think about things from other cultures. I'd say Anime is seen as more of a distinct medium or style in the states as compared to cartoons. In Japan it's all just Anime. Semantics matter. They matter so so much. They arguably matter more than the words themselves. And translations garble them six ways to Sunday.
This is all to say it does "matter" (I'll retract that a little in a bit, but don't worry about that). It's not some weeb nonsense and there's nothing that grinds my gears more than people saying that. Language is complicated. I'll throw my thoughts out there and remind people that transliteration exists and is a perfectly acceptable form of enabling communication while trying to maintain original meaning. Romaji isn't Japanese (well not technically). Heck, scholars debate on the proper romanization of many Japanese words. It's a phonetic transliteration. Going back to いただきます there is a difference in using the hiragana or romaji. There's also a difference in saying 頂きます (though that's way out of my wheelhouse). Kanji itself has distinct Chinese and Japanese readings and have meanings that change based on context and usage that isn't really conveyed in a complete hiragana writing and definitely isn't in romaji.
There's no perfect answer and to the translators, yeah it realistically doesn't matter. You aren't going to please everyone in the world and honestly one route isn't even easier than the other (especially as you're dealing with two different slangs which already warp grammar rules a bit in their respective languages). Again, I like transliteration in moments like this. You can even subject a transliterated word to the grammar conventions of the language you're using it in (like there's no such thing as capitalization and possessives are handled very differently in Japanese, but that doesn't stop us for writing "Pikachu's trainer..."). But ya'll can also ignore me. Really you'll not find a way to please everyone (and upholding doing two versions isn't worth the effort). At the end of the day none of us are those scholars who specialized in this subject and have dedicated their lives to discussing these issues. The group that's translating this is doing a free service (with optional donations to support) to make media more widely available. That's fantastic no matter what. My only issue with all the comments trying to dismiss the wider issue and complex nature of language.
Language is an INCREDIBLY complex matter. It is something that exists not just in verbal and written speech, but so many nonverbal nodes and even modifiers for verbal like tone and inflection. For example, satire is a b*tch to translate to any audience that has a language or culture that doesn't really use satire. I mean you can't really translate something like it at all. It's interesting going to another country and realizing that your fluency and mastery of the words themselves is like maybe half of the process of actually communicating who you are (not like a background but just your personality and character) in an entirely different culture. Communication goes beyond language and language itself is complicated in that it influences culture and is also influenced by culture.
There are a lot of great examples of Japanese words that are difficult to translate while maintaining their meaning. But I'll complicate the matter more. You can perfectly translate all of them either with a dictionary translation or something that closely matches the original meaning. Like the example of "いただきます" is given. It really isn't that difficult to translate. You can "let's give grace" and more western audiences will understand that and it's in English so there's that. That's be more of a localization though. You could keep it dictionary and just say "we humbly recieve this food." That sounds nice and. Is neutral enough to not be a localization. Plus it gets the general meaning across to a western audience. But what about the original cultural meaning? What about the very different nonverbal body movements that come about from saying a single word instead of a sentence (really multiple sentences if you're giving grace properly). Even the lack of movement for a certain length of time is communication and it matters.
There is a reason why transliteration exists and people make fun of it, but there's a reason why English has so many borrowed words from other languages that are unchanged. Sometimes meaning is best conveyed by keeping a word unadulterated. Moving out for a bit, this is seen a lot in American slang already. Most slang is taken from minority groups in the States. A lot of it is African American vernacular that's a year or so old. Yet, when it makes this leap into the zeitgeist, often it's cultural meaning and origins are completely lost. This continues on when a word hits the global stage. Speaking as a Black American words can't describe the frustration in going abroad, feeling invisible or alien because of how marginalized Black cultures in countries. Like America are (both leading to many Black Americans not going abroad and media that the US creates not being reflective of how diverse the country is), and yet hearing words originally coined within African American vernacular that has lost their cultural meaning entirely. Not because the word themselves have been changed, but because how they are used and in what context has been changed. And it goes on and on. I could discuss (not even debate) language for eons based on literally a single university course and some personal experience. Imagine people who are actually in the field.
Specifically looking at this instance, slang is DIFFICULT to translate. Really, really difficult. They are practically all "in the moment" meanings that only actually exist on a cultural level. Some stick. Most have a shorter half life than... something with a really short half life (idk, I'm not a scientist). People have a hard time defining them within the language that exist (more and more don't even exist in a single language like with the rise of Spanglish in the US). You're immediately out of official dictionary translation territory. In fact the actual experts in translation are the ones in the age group who needs their own language's slang explained to them. Language is incredibly rapid in its evolution and yet also slow with those rapid developments so short lived. The best you can do is try and match meaning with some equalivalent slang word or try to create a new slang word by replicating how the slang word was formed in the other language. Japanese slang is particularly interesting because I'm going to be blunt and say that Japan is really behind on matters of global cultural diversity and how language is related to it and how deriving meaning from language and communication is something in of itself. English education in Japan isn't great. How they approach it leads to so SO much loss of meaning on both ends (as in the way Japan has normalized official translations of their own language has harmed cultural exchange for us in the west; it also very obviously harms cultural exchange from west to Japan and communication itself). That in of itself is something that says a lot of cultural and the reality of Japan (it is still a very closed off country that is still trying to navigate how to change that; calling any group a monolith comes with a great big asterisk, but Japan is a lot more homogenous than many other developed countries). It further becomes something we have to navigate as people that consume content from Japan. (I'll also say it's interesting as the country itself has a language that developed trying to balance taking Kanji from Chinese, developing hiragana as a common tongue to encourage the importance of language and written art among lower classes, and added katakana on top of that to create phonetic transliterations of borrowed and new words (like Pikachu is in Katakana)). It sounds stupid, but you'd be shocked at how much the distinction between Anime and Cartoon has on how people form thoughts and what those thoughts are regarding a certain media. I'd really encourage people to go to Japan, if they can and just talk with all the people who desperately want to speak English with you. You'll find so many roadblocks because how we tackle translation itself changes how we think about things from other cultures. I'd say Anime is seen as more of a distinct medium or style in the states as compared to cartoons. In Japan it's all just Anime. Semantics matter. They matter so so much. They arguably matter more than the words themselves. And translations garble them six ways to Sunday.
This is all to say it does "matter" (I'll retract that a little in a bit, but don't worry about that). It's not some weeb nonsense and there's nothing that grinds my gears more than people saying that. Language is complicated. I'll throw my thoughts out there and remind people that transliteration exists and is a perfectly acceptable form of enabling communication while trying to maintain original meaning. Romaji isn't Japanese (well not technically). Heck, scholars debate on the proper romanization of many Japanese words. It's a phonetic transliteration. Going back to いただきます there is a difference in using the hiragana or romaji. There's also a difference in saying 頂きます (though that's way out of my wheelhouse). Kanji itself has distinct Chinese and Japanese readings and have meanings that change based on context and usage that isn't really conveyed in a complete hiragana writing and definitely isn't in romaji.
There's no perfect answer and to the translators, yeah it realistically doesn't matter. You aren't going to please everyone in the world and honestly one route isn't even easier than the other (especially as you're dealing with two different slangs which already warp grammar rules a bit in their respective languages). Again, I like transliteration in moments like this. You can even subject a transliterated word to the grammar conventions of the language you're using it in (like there's no such thing as capitalization and possessives are handled very differently in Japanese, but that doesn't stop us for writing "Pikachu's trainer..."). But ya'll can also ignore me. Really you'll not find a way to please everyone (and upholding doing two versions isn't worth the effort). At the end of the day none of us are those scholars who specialized in this subject and have dedicated their lives to discussing these issues. The group that's translating this is doing a free service (with optional donations to support) to make media more widely available. That's fantastic no matter what. My only issue with all the comments trying to dismiss the wider issue and complex nature of language.
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