@
Batora
Since we translated
jan-ken-pon as rock-paper-scissors, by "random romaji", I assume you mean
acchi-muite-hoi, yes?
I suppose we could have done "scorch the earth" localization and translated
acchi-muite-hoi as "look over there" or something to that effect, but we decided to keep it in
exactly because we wanted to highlight
the total foreign-ness of the concept. There are quite a few people out there who don't understand how different rock-paper-scissors is in Japan compared to other countries. No doubt, most people aren't normally aware that a mini-game often follows. Localizing such a concept seemed a bit too much for us, especially when we take account the fact that we have to localize for a global audience.
Had Takagi and Nishikata immediately jumped into the mini-game instead of prefacing it with a game of rock-paper-scissors, I could see a much stronger case for localizing
acchi-muite-hoi more radically, then explaining the game in an end-of-chapter note instead. However, since the two play a round of rock-paper-scissors first, I think the confusion over what they were doing would have made for a worse reader experience.
Granted, we could have blended the two options by totally localizing
acchi-muite-hoi AND prefacing the concept first, but once again, we decided to keep it as-is to highlight the foreign-ness of the idea.
Perhaps it seems sloppy and unnecessary to you because you've already been introduced to the concept of
acchi-muite-hoi, but I doubt that those who know nothing about it would share your feelings. All in all, I would say that yes, we do think that the readers gained something from the translation note since even @
Bainhardt was happy to learn more about a concept that had been veiled by heavy localization.
There was also an aesthetic consideration taken into account for not replacing "hoi" with "there." As you may have noticed, speech bubbles in this series are very thin, so it's often difficult to fit what we want into them. Of course, this is merely a secondary consideration when trying to make a translation as readable as possible, but it does factor into the decision-making process, since we can't write whatever we want if it won't fit into the space we are given. This is simply a part of manga translation, something that you can never entirely ignore if you want to create something that looks good.
You're free to disagree with our opinion, of course, but I thought I'd at least explain to you and the other commenters what our thought-process was on the decision, and that it wasn't a decision we made on the fly, but spent some thought on.
Ultimately, we'll never make everyone happy since everyone has their own opinion about how far one ought to localize something, so we can only do our best by weighing each option carefully and choosing whichever one we feel works best in our eyes.
P.S. Out of curiosity, what were the other easy translations you had in mind for this concept? I can explain why I don't think "Look away!" works, but I'm curious if you had any of your own ideas about viable alternatives.
P.S.S. I don't know much about Setokai Yakuindomo, but I assume it has a lot of gags, puns, and cultural jokes. We localize and recreate the majority of gags, puns, and jokes in Takagi in general. This time, we decided differently.
