Houseki no Kuni (Minimalist Color) - Vol. 1 Ch. 3 - Diamond

[MangaDex]

 

[Fish_Food]

@steveyouth112 if you colored these, there's an error on the tenth page. The gem that's turning is Phos, but you colored their hair iridescent, which is Dia's. Other than that it looks nice! If you tl'd it too, I'm pretty sure Ichikawa had mentioned they're genderless as well

 

[marika1899]

Yeah @fish_food is correct, their official pronouns are they/them since they're genderless.

 

[idle_taff]

What is this shit? Fuck off

 

[oichifan39]

>Jude

 

[A-tan]

@marika1899 No, is actually "he/him", since all the Earth gems grew around Adamant, who is modeled after a male human, and as such imitate him. Even the diamonds call each other brothers (and not in a non-gendered way, but in the literal one).

 

[dalp3000]

Pronouns (which is a debate far from old for this series) and old TL aside this is actually kind of really promising, I've literally been meaning to do this since my wife wanted to read the manga after the anime but had a hard time keeping up without color to tell who's who. I just never had the drive to bother even if it was as simple as only coloring the hair. I appreciate the gradient on Dia.

I wonder, where did you source the TL from? the ones on MD use he/him but if these are some old version with she/her that other aggregates had it would make sense, because I find it otherwise odd to go through the trouble of taking the TL as is but change the pronouns, and go through the trouble to match the typesetting/font. Unless you really want to push the fem pronouns for whatever reason.

EDIT: Just checked, yea the first scans had she/her, and most other sites never updated it.

 

[mangamerchant]

Comment deleted

 

[pbrgh]

shouldn't this be put under another listing(?) as a fan colour??

 

[steveyouth112]

@Fish_Food I did not translate it unfortunately, but can probably tweak it, so I may do that.
I'll get the colours changed! Must have completely missed it.

@pbrgh Honestly, I am pretty new to this site, and by gee they don't make it easy to navigate :')

So I'll see if I can edit the ones already uploaded.

 

[darkmaster006]

@steveyouth112 This should be in 'Houseki no Kuni coloured' so as not to sow confusion. Anyways, great work! I also like that you use 'she', the translations here have been used 'he' (and no one's said anything) and it's nice to see a change since the VA are women, the official translation does not give any pronouns and works around by mentioning the gems' names or in other ways. Definitely keep the 'she' if you're fine with it, it's as good as the other two choices. Keep it up!

 

[steveyouth112]

@Darkmaster006 and @pbrgh It's been moved now

 

[Fish_Food]

@steveyouth112 sure thing! This'll provide for a nice second reread that I've been meaning to do for a little while! You don't have to go in and try to edit the pronouns either if you didn't translate it! That was more of a suggestion if you had translated it since it would be easier to modify

@darkmaster006 @A-tan it would still be "they", regardless of the VAs being women or using かれ (kare) and the like. Japanese pronouns function slightly different than the ones used in English in that it incites a tone rather than anything else. For example, there are usages of 僕 (boku) or 俺 (ore) in speech by tomboys or similarly when it's mostly used by men. It's just more masculine sounding rather than being a direct "I (as a male)". But since English doesn't have something like that, it gets translated to be used as "I (male)" or "he/him/his"; even if that's not the original intent in the source language, Japanese in this example. Speech in most languages is more than just what's there verbatim since context plays a role in how it sounds and etc.

So even if we don't get into the full linguistics of Japanese or Japanese -> English translations, Ichikawa herself, and her editors, stated that the gems are indeed genderless and would use "they/them/theirs" for English publications. If you want to go by what's written alone, there could be an argument made for using "he/him/his" still I suppose, but taking what Ichikawa said into account as well, that argument would be moot.

 

[darkmaster006]

@Fish_Food Yes, I know all that, and it's not the point I was making. The official translation uses 'they' and it's good that they do that (although I don't think Ichikawa is involved in the translation). But if a fan traslation decides to use she (or he!) then it's their decision. A note at the beginning noting that gems have no sex would suffice. I was just noting that I hadn't seen anyone say anything to the other translators who've used 'he' (which is no different than using 'she').

 

[pbrgh]

@darkmaster006 i wouldn't say it's no different!

most translations would use "he/him" over "she/her" because 「彼」(kare) is specifically masculine;
if "she/her",「彼女」(kanojo) would be used instead, as it's the feminine form!
it's like referring to god as "He", despite god having no gender

not to get into an argument, just some info tidbit!

 

[darkmaster006]

@pbrgh It doesn't make any difference to what I was saying tho. Since clearly the gems are stated to be sexless, using any of the sexed pronouns is equally "wrong" (otherwise Ichikawa would be contradicting herself). (I have no idea if the Japanese language is 'male-by-default' as English and Spanish are, but I imagine that what causes her to use 'kare'?.) It's, ultimately, the choice of the translator, and it's valid, just as it'd be valid using 'she/her' for any other reason. It's like if you want to translate it into Spanish, you'd have to choose one of the set of pronouns because you literally can't do away with gender like in English (since most word classes inflect by gender). Thanks for the info.

 

[Fish_Food]

@darkmaster006 Oh I know, I should've broken the two comments apart better. That one is all on me. It was really only the first part that I said that was addressed towards you: the whole "it doesn't matter if the VAs being women". The rest was meant for the other person tagged. Most authors or their editors, to my knowledge, are at the very least in talks with the translation team when it's an official translation too. And in this case, both were directly involved due to the translation team asking about it specifically!

I didn't mean to only call this one out for using gendered pronouns either; it just so happened there weren't many comments, it's an older chapter, and I thought if they were translating it, it wouldn't hurt to inform them about it if they hadn't known already. I thought they might've been translating since the chapter done by the other group used he/him instead of she/her.

My reasoning for why Ichikawa used 僕 and 俺 and such is because that's what Kongou uses (I believe, it's been a minute since I've checked that), and so the gems picked it up from him! Either how a baby learns a language or because they want to be more like him/closer to him is anyone's guess though if that's the route.

 

[A-tan]

@Fish_Food The characters literally use "brother" and in general more masculine pronouns. Is like you said: Context matters in a language where context is oftentimes meant to be inferred. In the case of this series, the context is like I described.

About Ichikawa and the official translation: I read an interview they made about this (I think from the eng publishers or whatever) and It very much sounded like she really didn't want to get too involved in a work she has no expertise in, nevernind a language she doesn't know. Which is pretty standard jp behavior tbh. But besides that, I think she did confirm the gems used male pronouns, just that she wasn't opposed to the eng publishers to go that route If they (whose jobs is basically that) thought the usage was appropiate.

Also, again: The reason the gems use male pronouns is because of Adamant. We see EXACTLY how that went down the one chapter we get of Adamant meeting and raising the first gem to come into existence. The little bugger wanted to be more like Adamant. So what did it do? Used the same pronouns, probably is the reason they all use this powder on them that also serves as a protective coating, etc. This isn't up for debate or anything, is canon fact that can be infered easily.

 

[0DvGate]

@A-tan One of the only few people who understands, that even though the gems are extremely feminine they use male pronouns only because of Adamant.

 

[A-tan]

@0DvGate I wouldn't really say they are "extremely feminine" because not all of them are. They look androgynous and Ichikawa likes to shove the fanservice always, but that's a different thing.

That being said, I'm sick and tired of the hypocrisy of people wanting to label this series as "pwogwessive uwu" while blatantly ignoring the fact they aren't women and use male pronouns despite looking girly. Is dumb. We have the facts but nobody respects that or ignores it because they want to be superficial in a weird series like this one.