Oishinbo - Vol. 22 Ch. 200 - The Tofu Showdown!! (Part 2)

[MangaDex]

 

[Mugiwara325]

And on the transition to a New Year, I upload my 200th(-ish) chapter.
It's a little awkward being in the middle of a story, but I think it's still meaningful. So I'd like to explain a bit (a lot) about my translation process.

Step 1: Plain Reading

Spoiler: Step 1

I just read through the RAW chapter in its original Japanese. This allows me to pick up on whatever themes or messages the chapter is trying to communicate, so I can adjust my wording to better accentuate that. At this step, those would all just be ideas.
If I encounter something I've never heard of before, I'd look it up and do a bit of light research. Often, if Kariya lists out a whole recipe or something, I'd just skim over it and save it for when I do the actual translation. The important thing for this stage is identifying story beats.

Step 2: Script Writing

Spoiler: Step 2

On a second, more thorough readthrough, I will have a Word doc prepared where I type my translation. Page by page, chapter by chapter. This is where I do my most comprehensive research as well, since I'd need to understand any new concepts I encounter to write about them properly. I'll also use Japanese dictionaries if I find words or terms I don't understand or are unfamiliar with.
The first draft of the script is usually very direct and mechanical. I'd have to go through the script a few more times, editing and adding character to the text. For most major characters, I usually have an established, imagined voice that I assign to them, sometimes a few key words that I consider a recurring part of their vocabulary.

Step 3: Typesetting

Spoiler: Step 3

Using Photoshop, I'll draw over the speech bubbles, then add in the text from my scripts. Things like the spacing, font size, paragraphing, are all controlled to make the text look as pleasant as possible to read. If there's particularly important non-speech Japanese text (like text in a newspaper or sign), I'll also cover them up and use appropriate fonts for the English text.
The Gourmet Notes are written at this stage. I'd go back through my research notes and try to condense it as much as I can. Any images I add are taken straight from Google Search. If a source feels particularly academic, or is tied to specific video creators, I'll provide credit.
Once all the typesetting is done, I save each page as an individual jpeg, but I don't upload it just yet.

Step 4: Quality Control

Spoiler: Step 4

For this step, I put the RAW chapter on one side of my screen, and my English pages on the other side, then read through them simultaneously to double-check my translation. Japanese is a very contextual language, so sometimes my first readthrough will be done with an incorrect assumption that only reveals itself a few days or weeks later. This step lets me catch these problems, when the flow of conversation feels 'off' or the characters explanations feel unrelated. The reread step also helps me catch typos (it's not foolproof).

And even after that, I don't upload the chapter immediately. I keep several 'ready' chapters as a buffer, for when I might not have time to translate regularly, or if I want to go on vacation or something. It's how I still have chapters to upload even during the holidays.

Thank you so much for reading my translations. Here's to a steady stream of continued chapters, up until the series' completion. (Well, 'completion'.)

 

[Sajer]

Thanks for sharing! Always lovely to learn more about someone's processes, especially given the amount of thought and effort that goes into your gourmet notes and translations!
If I may ask some questions for a bit more insight:

• What's the most challenging part of your process? I'd imagine there's a difference between when you first started and now, over 200 chapters in!
• What were some personal learning takeaways as you made your way through all these chapters? Whether workflow or something else.
• How long does a chapter now typically take to finish? I'd imagine there are some chapters that require more background research that would be more challenging/time-consuming?

As always, admire and appreciate your translation work. To keep at it for so long is remarkable, especially as a solo effort.

 

[Mugiwara325]

Thanks for sharing! Always lovely to learn more about someone's processes, especially given the amount of thought and effort that goes into your gourmet notes and translations!
If I may ask some questions for a bit more insight:

• What's the most challenging part of your process? I'd imagine there's a difference between when you first started and now, over 200 chapters in!
• What were some personal learning takeaways as you made your way through all these chapters? Whether workflow or something else.
• How long does a chapter now typically take to finish? I'd imagine there are some chapters that require more background research that would be more challenging/time-consuming?

As always, admire and appreciate your translation work. To keep at it for so long is remarkable, especially as a solo effort.

Happy to answer your questions:

- The most challenging part is the research, especially when the chapter touches on very specific incidents from its time, or information that's not readily available online, or sometimes just information from a book the author happened to read recently.
If we just mean at a technical level though, then the most challenging part is when the Japanese text is overlaid on a background but without a text border, which means I'd have to redraw the background after whiting out the text. Photoshop's Clone Stamp tool helps a lot here, but sometimes I still have to just draw tree branches or parts of a car or something.

- For personal takeaways, I find the Quality Control step to be surprisingly important. The amount of times I've caught typos, mistranslations, and other such problems is actually quite alarming. Even after uploading my chapters, sometimes I'll go back and read through and notice a small typo or missed word somewhere.
With regards to the content itself, one thing I've learned is to make peace with the author believing things that don't quite agree with me. The whaling chapters are a common incident to point to, but I'm personally a bit more bothered by how the author depicts Chinese cuisine. A lot of it focuses on high-end luxury, and he also seems very infatuated with shark fin soup in particular, a dish that is now frowned upon because of the shark-tossing practices a lot of fishers use. That information wasn't well-known at the time though, so what can I do really.

- How long does a chapter take? That's surprisingly difficult to answer because I don't actually go through all steps consecutively for each chapter. For plain reading, I've reached Vol 69, Ch 635. For script writing, I've reached Vol 35, Ch 322. For typesetting, I've reached Vol 24, Ch 220. On average, I'd say a simple chapter takes 5 hours to go through the 3 main steps, and a heavier chapter could take up to 8 hours for the 3 steps. I'm not including quality control because that step is very very nebulous.

 

[Mugiwara325]

Just a heads up for anyone rereading the chapter, I did update it to add an additional Gourmet Note, regarding the shop 'Miyako Tofu' that we see in this chapter. It wasn't there before.