Gal to Bocchi - Ch. 17

[MangaDex]

 

[chatnoirchatgris]

Aashi's name has been known since chapter 1 because she uses her own name to refer to herself in Japanese. This is weird when used in English so its changed to "I" instead.

 

[Krune]

thank you for the great start of the morning chapter, knowing her though next chapter will probably involve her inviting Hina as well which lead to Hina having another epiphany about her inability to handle gyarus especially her waifu.

 

[trenslime]

What a good girl

 

[Ranzo]

@chatnoirchatgris

You are truly wonderful for not having her refer to herself in the third person

So many other scanlators keep it in even though it sounds really bizarre

 

[Thrembs]

...ok, then.

 

[Moraza]

Ah!

I was just thinking how there keeps being chapters without Bocchi... and then I realized that she was second-billed in the title to begin with.

 

[Purplelibraryguy]

@Ranzo @chatnoirchatgris I respect the scanlators' choice in this because there's arguments either way. But my preference is to go with the weird self-naming thing because to me, it's not a language issue but a cultural issue. There are some Japanese people who talk like that, and others who don't, and it implies stuff about a person when they talk like that. And yes, North Americans don't talk like that, but North Americans don't put on yukata to go to the fireworks festival and eat takoyaki, either. And there are lots of things Japanese people would say that North Americans wouldn't, but I don't want a translator to have them say something totally different that's more North American.
Basically, I don't really want to be insulated from Japanese cultural expressions while I'm reading my manga written and set in Japan. If I wanted that I'd read North American comic books. I want a translation to tell me what the Japanese people in the story are saying, not to tell me what a North American would say if they were there instead. There's room for a certain amount of license to get reasonable flow, but you can go way too far with that stuff. I'm actually a little bit annoyed that this whole time I was reading this not knowing that she's the kind of person who says her first name instead of saying "I", and I only found out by accident. It would have noticeably changed my impression of her. Probably changed the feel of some of the interactions--I know that if she'd just been talking like that and then the other girl was thinking "I can't deal with gyaru" it would feel significantly more reasonable to me.

 

[CSmith327]

People using their first name instead of boku or watashi is somewhat of a character trait, so by translating as I you're throwing that away. I know in english it doesn't sound right but this is japanese. Since it's how she refers to herself it's part of her character and should be kept. She's not even saying watashi or anything that would translate as I. I didn't even know her first name until now cuz of how you're translating it. It might have been said by one of her friends but if so I missed it. I dislike it when translators try to take out all the stuff from japanese like removing honorifics and having senpai as senior and onee and onii as big bro/big sis. Yeah they directly translate as that but it takes the japanese feel out of it. It's ok for obscure grammar puns that don't translate to english though. I remember reading a manhwa and a character said "please speak proper english" when someone was rambling and I'm thinking wtf they're speaking korean we're just seeing it as english. You're doing an ok job, but I'd prefer having a translator who knows japanese and isn't using a machine translation like google. Anyways I agree with Purplelibraryguy on everything he said.

 

[hexrox]

Japanese referering to themselves in third person should be accepted as a norm. It will also help others understand their cultures

 

[chatnoirchatgris]

@Purplelibraryguy @CSmith327 @hexrox

The way Hayashibara refers to herself I use "I" mainly because that was what the first scanlators did and I wanted to keep continuity.

If I had done the translation from the start, I would have put in a caption that in Japanese she is using her own name then continued with using "I".

I know that this is in Japan and that they're speaking Japanese but it is a translation into English and in English using your own name is extremely uncommon, and in English it has a somewhat different meaning using your own name.

I find that using captions (which some scanlators really look down on for some reason) gives a good balance between explaining the Japanese cultural aspect of a line and keeping it sounding right in English.

Of course there are also times when I have no idea wtf is going on and have to vibe it out but that is something else entirely.

 

[CSmith327]

@chatnoirchatgris I didn't notice that you had continued off from another group. It would be jarring to have it switch from I to her name after the first few chapters so I can see how you did what you had to. It'd be weird to suddenly change now, so I'll just have to get over it. Maybe years from now it'll get a serialization and Seven Seas may do the official english. I hope so, gyaru x shy girl yuri is great

 

[Purplelibraryguy]

@chatnoirchatgris Certainly switching halfway through would have been jarring, so that doesn't give you much freedom on how to handle it.
But on the basic question . . . yes, it's extremely uncommon. The Hulk does it, but that's about it. Purplelibraryguy would never refer to himself in the third person; Purplelibraryguy employs normal diction.

But consider the senpai/senior debate. Some people like sticking to Japanese, some people prefer translating it to English. But I don't think there's anyone who says "Just remove them saying it at all because nobody calls each other 'senior' in English and it sounds weird" even though that would be quite true. Rather, it's generally agreed that Japanese people calling each other that, has to be dealt with somehow--it's a fact of what they're saying and you can't just leave it out. It seems to me that excising the first-name-instead-of-I is like that--it's not so much a translation or not translation, it's literally leaving a piece out. And, it's doing so because the readers are presumed not to want to deal with Japanese people acting Japanese, when that is precisely what the readers have decided to read about.

 

[Tsukinotaku]

How to change a jerk into a nice person


This is a very unique valuable skill that should be more important than beign able to argue over something. Don't argue with them, chnage their point of view

 

[lordWololo]

It's called breaking the frame or breaking the pattern. It's super effective against negative people. Awesome.