Natsu no Arashi! - Vol. 6 Ch. 36 - The Future In The Past
- Thread starter MangaDex
- Start date
[Warning: wall of text incoming]
Hi there!
First off, a huge thank you for translating this series! I had pretty much given up on ever knowing the ending until you and your fiancée stepped in and saved the day. You two are absolute lifesavers! Please keep up the amazing work.
That said, I do have a suggestion to offer. I work as a literary translator myself, but my language pair isn't Eng-Jap, so unfortunately, I can't directly contribute to your effort. However, I've noticed that sometimes your translations can be a bit clunky, which is quite common for non-professionals (people who know another language but haven't received formal translation training) or inexperienced literary translators.
While there's no real shortcut to becoming a professional-level literary translator besides dedicating significant time and effort to studying the craft, there's a 'crutch' that can help improve your translation's readability without requiring a lot of extra work: AI chatbots.
Now, it's important to note that popular AI models like ChatGPT, Gemini, or Claude still suck all kind of asses when it comes to language translation. What they spit out might be readable, but they'll often misrepresent the meaning and/or lose a lot of the nuances. Relying solely on them for languages you don't understand will result in inaccurate translations.
However, where they excel is in polishing your existing translations. Simply provide them with a prompt like this: "Here's a Japanese text and my translation of it. It currently sounds clunky. Please rephrase it to sound more natural in American English without changing the core meaning." This should give you a more polished version of your translation. However, proofreading remains essential, as there might be instances where the AI omits parts or adds things that alter the meaning or subtle nuances.
Let me illustrate this with an example. Please look at this tweet:
Since I don't understand Japanese, I'll use machine translation: "The latest episode of "Tonari no Seki-kun", chapter 133, is now available in the Comic Flapper issue! Sorry for making you wait so long. I'll keep drawing it steadily as the series is back!"
As you can see, the translation conveys the main idea, but it's quite clunky and reads unnaturally. So, I used Google Gemini (the free version) to smooth it out. Here's the prompt I used:
Gemini provided a few suggestions, like:
That's all I wanted to share. Again, this is just a suggestion, and it's entirely up to you whether you want to incorporate this step into your workflow. Regardless, I'll definitely be following your translations to see how the story unfolds. Best of luck, and thanks again for your fantastic work!
Hi there!
First off, a huge thank you for translating this series! I had pretty much given up on ever knowing the ending until you and your fiancée stepped in and saved the day. You two are absolute lifesavers! Please keep up the amazing work.
That said, I do have a suggestion to offer. I work as a literary translator myself, but my language pair isn't Eng-Jap, so unfortunately, I can't directly contribute to your effort. However, I've noticed that sometimes your translations can be a bit clunky, which is quite common for non-professionals (people who know another language but haven't received formal translation training) or inexperienced literary translators.
While there's no real shortcut to becoming a professional-level literary translator besides dedicating significant time and effort to studying the craft, there's a 'crutch' that can help improve your translation's readability without requiring a lot of extra work: AI chatbots.
Now, it's important to note that popular AI models like ChatGPT, Gemini, or Claude still suck all kind of asses when it comes to language translation. What they spit out might be readable, but they'll often misrepresent the meaning and/or lose a lot of the nuances. Relying solely on them for languages you don't understand will result in inaccurate translations.
However, where they excel is in polishing your existing translations. Simply provide them with a prompt like this: "Here's a Japanese text and my translation of it. It currently sounds clunky. Please rephrase it to sound more natural in American English without changing the core meaning." This should give you a more polished version of your translation. However, proofreading remains essential, as there might be instances where the AI omits parts or adds things that alter the meaning or subtle nuances.
Let me illustrate this with an example. Please look at this tweet:
Since I don't understand Japanese, I'll use machine translation: "The latest episode of "Tonari no Seki-kun", chapter 133, is now available in the Comic Flapper issue! Sorry for making you wait so long. I'll keep drawing it steadily as the series is back!"
As you can see, the translation conveys the main idea, but it's quite clunky and reads unnaturally. So, I used Google Gemini (the free version) to smooth it out. Here's the prompt I used:
Gemini provided a few suggestions, like:
- The long-awaited 133rd chapter of 'Tonari no Seki-kun' is finally out in the latest issue of Comic Flapper! Thanks for your patience as we bring the series back!
- We're excited to announce that Chapter 133 of 'Tonari no Seki-kun' is now available in Comic Flapper! Thank you for your continued support while we worked to bring the series back.
- Guess what? Chapter 133 of 'Tonari no Seki-kun' is out now in Comic Flapper! Thanks for sticking with us while we took a break.
That's all I wanted to share. Again, this is just a suggestion, and it's entirely up to you whether you want to incorporate this step into your workflow. Regardless, I'll definitely be following your translations to see how the story unfolds. Best of luck, and thanks again for your fantastic work!
Thank you for your feedback! I'm not a literary translator so it's nice to have some advice from someone who is! I completely agree, though, it is clunky at points. Like you suggested with the AI to make it more natural, I've been doing that with ChatGPT when necessary, but with no better results.. The Japanese source can be confusing even with context for AI, I think. I've already completed the translation for chapter 37 (it's currently in Mongo's trusty hands) and I already think it's a much better translation in terms of readability. I'll keep working on my translations and hopefully I can provide everyone with a more enjoyable reading experience! Thanks! 🤗
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