Mao

[LordBort]

Definitely getting Inuyasha vibes chef's kiss

 

[erororo]

A heads-up regarding the status of the translation:
As you may have noticed, Mao was among the series that were hit by a large DMCA claim a week or so ago. Since the series has both an official English volume release and an English simulpub (though only available to Americans, I believe), I've decided not to continue uploading my translations here, nor to try and reupload my old releases (some of which were kind of cruddy, to be honest). I will continue to make weekly threads on /a/, if anyone wants to check them out.
Thank you to everyone who has enjoyed my translations here over the years. I encourage you to buy the official releases to support Takahashi-sensei's work.

 

[Margatroid]

A heads-up regarding the status of the translation:
As you may have noticed, Mao was among the series that were hit by a large DMCA claim a week or so ago. Since the series has both an official English volume release and an English simulpub (though only available to Americans, I believe), I've decided not to continue uploading my translations here, nor to try and reupload my old releases (some of which were kind of cruddy, to be honest). I will continue to make weekly threads on /a/, if anyone wants to check them out.
Thank you to everyone who has enjoyed my translations here over the years. I encourage you to buy the official releases to support Takahashi-sensei's work.

Hey, I want to let you know that I really appreciate all the work you've done translating Mao. Reading it each week has been a major part of my life for the past few years, and it's something I always look forward to. Your translation has been sensitive and intelligent, and I really appreciate it.

I'm not impressed with the quality of the translation work Viz does. Most of the time it seems very "basic" and plain without much thought put into it, and worse than that they often rewrite lines entirely in a way that makes no sense. You get the sense that they think their audience is a bunch of normie teenagers who don't understand anything about Japan or the Japanese language, and some of the choices they make I've just found downright offensive. Like in the last chapter of Rinne, in the final panels, Mamiya Sakura says "shikata ga nai," which I'm sure you know is a common Japanese phrase, and instead of translating it correctly as "it can't be helped," Viz just changed it to something else--something that made Sakura sound like she was being condescending and bitchy to Rinne. It was terrible. Like why ruin the ending of this great manga by translating it incorrectly? And overall, I found that their Rinne translation, compared to the scanalations I read originally, was just not funny. It's like whoever was translating it didn't understand it was a comedy, and was way too literal and direct about everything. Just dumb, like the translator didn't even get the jokes.

Anyway, my point is that I hope you don't stop doing your work. I want to read your translation, not theirs. Just looking at the last chapter you did, you translated one of Hakubi's lines as "Mei... Try to cheer Kagari up a little, would you?" and Viz translated it as "Mei, soothe Kagari." That is dumb. I don't know what the original Japanese line was, but It's like Viz just goes for the most bare-bones, direct, low-IQ translation they can think of. They do this all the time, and as I said, it really dimmed my enjoyment of Rinne. I don't want to read the last fourth of this manga I love so much translated in that way. You put personality and nuance into it when you do it. Translation is an art.

And frankly, I think Viz doing a DCMA based on the fact that they simulpub the manga for free is extremely weak. They aren't selling the digital chapters--at least not the current ones. And I love Rumiko to death, but she has more money than she will ever be able to spend, and I'm sure she'd be happy for us all to read a better translation of her work. Really.

Anyway, sorry for ranting, but it seemed like the appropriate place. I value this manga and your work on it a lot, and I don't want to see it taken away from me. I'm also not keen on trying to read through the crass, vulgar, juvenile filth of 4chan every week in order to read a Takahashi manga I love. But if that's the only option, I guess I can try to find your threads. I wish there were a way to keep the scanalations up on here.

 

[Zucni]

A heads-up regarding the status of the translation:
As you may have noticed, Mao was among the series that were hit by a large DMCA claim a week or so ago. Since the series has both an official English volume release and an English simulpub (though only available to Americans, I believe), I've decided not to continue uploading my translations here, nor to try and reupload my old releases (some of which were kind of cruddy, to be honest). I will continue to make weekly threads on /a/, if anyone wants to check them out.
Thank you to everyone who has enjoyed my translations here over the years. I encourage you to buy the official releases to support Takahashi-sensei's work.

I just want to say thank you for the work that you've done. I had really been enjoying your translation.

 

[erororo]

Hey, I want to let you know that I really appreciate all the work you've done translating Mao. Reading it each week has been a major part of my life for the past few years, and it's something I always look forward to. Your translation has been sensitive and intelligent, and I really appreciate it.

I'm not impressed with the quality of the translation work Viz does. Most of the time it seems very "basic" and plain without much thought put into it, and worse than that they often rewrite lines entirely in a way that makes no sense. You get the sense that they think their audience is a bunch of normie teenagers who don't understand anything about Japan or the Japanese language, and some of the choices they make I've just found downright offensive. Like in the last chapter of Rinne, in the final panels, Mamiya Sakura says "shikata ga nai," which I'm sure you know is a common Japanese phrase, and instead of translating it correctly as "it can't be helped," Viz just changed it to something else--something that made Sakura sound like she was being condescending and bitchy to Rinne. It was terrible. Like why ruin the ending of this great manga by translating it incorrectly? And overall, I found that their Rinne translation, compared to the scanalations I read originally, was just not funny. It's like whoever was translating it didn't understand it was a comedy, and was way too literal and direct about everything. Just dumb, like the translator didn't even get the jokes.

Anyway, my point is that I hope you don't stop doing your work. I want to read your translation, not theirs. Just looking at the last chapter you did, you translated one of Hakubi's lines as "Mei... Try to cheer Kagari up a little, would you?" and Viz translated it as "Mei, soothe Kagari." That is dumb. I don't know what the original Japanese line was, but It's like Viz just goes for the most bare-bones, direct, low-IQ translation they can think of. They do this all the time, and as I said, it really dimmed my enjoyment of Rinne. I don't want to read the last fourth of this manga I love so much translated in that way. You put personality and nuance into it when you do it. Translation is an art.

And frankly, I think Viz doing a DCMA based on the fact that they simulpub the manga for free is extremely weak. They aren't selling the digital chapters--at least not the current ones. And I love Rumiko to death, but she has more money than she will ever be able to spend, and I'm sure she'd be happy for us all to read a better translation of her work. Really.

Anyway, sorry for ranting, but it seemed like the appropriate place. I value this manga and your work on it a lot, and I don't want to see it taken away from me. I'm also not keen on trying to read through the crass, vulgar, juvenile filth of 4chan every week in order to read a Takahashi manga I love. But if that's the only option, I guess I can try to find your threads. I wish there were a way to keep the scanalations up on here.

Thank you for your thoughts. To clarify, the DMCA doesn't seem to have come from Viz, but rather some third party which hit a large portion of the site's catalogue: You can read MD's response here. Given the situation, I strongly suspect that scanlation is effectively going to be dead here, going forward. An alternative or alternatives of comparable quality may coalesce into existence in the future, but then, nothing is certain.

I can appreciate the issues you have with Viz's translation. I do have a fair amount of quibbles with their work as well, though I generally avoid reading their releases so as to not bias my own translation. I won't try to claim that my work is strictly better than theirs — I have made my fair share of questionable choices over the years, and as a result of trying to maintain an amount of consistency with the previous groups, I've never managed to keep my style quite as consistent as I'd like. And that's not even counting any of my outright translation errors.
However, this does not change the fact that they are the rightful copyright holders, and are thus well within their rights to translate the work as they choose and to remove unlicensed translations such as mine. Rumiko, I suspect, does not appreciate piracy of her works regardless of quality, which is perfectly understandable. I only originally embarked on this project so that I could get up-to-date Mao discussions on /a/, an effort which I'm glad has finally borne some fruit after several years of discouragingly few replies. Viz was already releasing English volumes by then, but they were a fair bit behind the raws, so I did not think too much of it. Them starting their simulpub came as a surprise, and since those also get dumped on /a/, I have on occasion felt like I am expending unnecessary effort. I have sometimes consider stopping my translations since then, though ultimately stubbornness has kept me going this far.

All that said, I will keep posting my translations on /a/ into the foreseeable future, out of habit if nothing else. I won't rule out the possibility that they may get uploaded somewhere else eventually — certainly, I won't stop anyone else from doing so if they wish. But for now, I'm going to keep to my little corner of the internet and wait and see how things develop.

 

[Humbloom]

Mao is getting an anime!! Anyone else excited?