Skip and Loafer - Vol. 3 Ch. 13 - Mad Dash for Popularity Before Summer Break
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Thanks for the chapter! And I think you did a great job on cleaning the pages 😃
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Thank you very much, this is one of my favorites ongoing series. I'm happy we're just 2 chapters into volume 3, meaning there's more to come in the near future!
I'm afraid Mitsumi will get hurt pretty badly by her feelings for Shima but in a way that will help her grow and learn a lot about how these things go.
I'm afraid Mitsumi will get hurt pretty badly by her feelings for Shima but in a way that will help her grow and learn a lot about how these things go.
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Mitsumi GOING FOR IT without realizing she's even going for it was an awesome character development moment. She's fretting and over-thinking things, but her enthusiasm and subconscious make her ask out her crush on a date the moment the opportunity presented itself...this girl is powerful beyond her own awareness and I'm totally here for it.
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I doubt that that girl will be a rival. This manga's too wholesome for that petty girl drama stuff
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@ThePaulBunyanTrophy
IIRC "Maison" is part of a proper name there, so you wouldn't have much of a choice, so probably not the best example.
What I'm saying about loanwords there is that foreign terms adopted into Japanese are especially treacherous because of how familiar they sound: more often than not their meaning has already gotten permanently distorted and/or lost entirely to a wild semantic drift. Hence they should fundamentally be treated as non-English words, and that usually means translated just like any other. A few common examples among my pet peeves:
* gyappu is never "gap" in a literal sense and means "contrast" in most cases that aren't fixed idioms
* jyusu can mean almost any flavored cold beverage/soft drink (carbonated drinks as well, unless it's explicitly a cola) that is not derived from tea or milk, even if it doesn't contain any juice whatsoever, so it's best translated as a general term
* yahho is always a greeting like "hi", never "yahoo" (an exclamation of accomplishment)
* sarariman is a misguiding term for an office worker or, if you want to emphasize the status aspect, a "company employee" (one relatively common mistranslation is "businessman"; businessmen are commonly understood to be self-employed rather than salaried)
* faito as a word of encouragement is most adequately translated as "go for it", "do your best", "give it your all", etc.; using "fight" only makes sense when a person is fighting in the more literal sense (such as at a sports tournament or for their life when in danger) and doesn't work at all when they are confessing or studying for an exam
* donmai is an expression of immediate reassurance following an inconvenience caused by another party, and it translates to "don't worry about it", "it's fine", "no big deal", etc. (there are cases when you can translate it as "don't mind it" or "I don't mind" depending on the context, but they are relatively rare)
* saabisu typically means a complimentary extra, a bonus addition, any other freebie, but almost never explicitly "service" ("furu saabisu" = "on the house")
* neemu, when used in context of manga production, is a "draft" or a "storyboard", but never a "name" (I see that, I drop)
(And while we're on the topic of mistaken semantics, I can't avoid the dishonorable mention of translating the closed-mouth うん as an uncertain "hmm" or the high-spirited おう as a surprised "oh", which I see all the damn time, lol.)
These are just some words off the top of my head; I could probably list them all day if I needed to, but I'm sure it isn't necessary. Note that this is not specific to words assimilated into Japanese: for instance, the word translyatsiya in Russian and some other Slavic languages (also existing as a loanword in some Eastern European and Central Asian countries) does not, in fact, mean "translation" in English, but translates to "transmission" (a relay of signal), and the word furnitura is not "furniture" but "fitting(s)" (the parts/accessories used to hold bigger pieces together). Falling for these common traps can be annoying at best, and outright disastrous in a business context.
Anyway, I digress. My point is when you have to explain a term that doesn't need to be explained because an equivalent concept either already exists or can be adequately worked around in the target language (even if not as elegant), it often comes off more impotent than flavorful, more so if you are working with the target language yourself and are aware of both its expressive ability and the associated pitfalls of translation by transcription. I don't think that the rather nebulous concept of preservation of culture in works that aren't focused on any degree of cultural authenticity is generally a safe road to travel, because it can—and often does—lead to various keikakuisms (the borderline unreadable Slam Dunk translation here on MangaDex is a good example) or nonsensical page-long discussions on whether removing honorifics from names of fictional Westerners needs to be condemned as Westernization (something you could encounter under Violet Evergarden fansub releases, for one).
That's exactly why I pointed out that you—seemingly intuitively so—correctly avoid it when translating dialects, even though you could just as easily Frankenstein some morphological monsters in the name of flavor like many amateur translators do. You have the good sense not to do that—and that's really the best way to go unless you know what you're doing really well. The surprising part is that you don't exactly follow through with either approach, and it isn't clear why, so it feels somewhat inconsistent.
While education can be a sub-goal of translation, you also have to be aware that it's something you as a translator choose to do, and not necessarily something the author intended in any capacity. Hence why I deeply appreciate TNs in, say, Golden Kamuy which explicitly wants to educate the audience of the Ainu culture and the historical context surrounding its decline, or in a gag series that uses a lot of obscure references that an outsider cannot be reasonably expected to pick up on their own. But I wouldn't appreciate it as much in a light read focused on simple everyday conversations that are supposed to sound natural and be immediately understandable by design.
It is an interesting discussion, though, and one deeply relevant to me as a professional translator (though Japanese isn't one of my working languages), so I hope you don't take it as unnecessary patronizing. I say so much because I care, not because I like to ramble.
I wouldn't bother commenting a bad translation, let alone discuss the specifics.
IIRC "Maison" is part of a proper name there, so you wouldn't have much of a choice, so probably not the best example.
What I'm saying about loanwords there is that foreign terms adopted into Japanese are especially treacherous because of how familiar they sound: more often than not their meaning has already gotten permanently distorted and/or lost entirely to a wild semantic drift. Hence they should fundamentally be treated as non-English words, and that usually means translated just like any other. A few common examples among my pet peeves:
* gyappu is never "gap" in a literal sense and means "contrast" in most cases that aren't fixed idioms
* jyusu can mean almost any flavored cold beverage/soft drink (carbonated drinks as well, unless it's explicitly a cola) that is not derived from tea or milk, even if it doesn't contain any juice whatsoever, so it's best translated as a general term
* yahho is always a greeting like "hi", never "yahoo" (an exclamation of accomplishment)
* sarariman is a misguiding term for an office worker or, if you want to emphasize the status aspect, a "company employee" (one relatively common mistranslation is "businessman"; businessmen are commonly understood to be self-employed rather than salaried)
* faito as a word of encouragement is most adequately translated as "go for it", "do your best", "give it your all", etc.; using "fight" only makes sense when a person is fighting in the more literal sense (such as at a sports tournament or for their life when in danger) and doesn't work at all when they are confessing or studying for an exam
* donmai is an expression of immediate reassurance following an inconvenience caused by another party, and it translates to "don't worry about it", "it's fine", "no big deal", etc. (there are cases when you can translate it as "don't mind it" or "I don't mind" depending on the context, but they are relatively rare)
* saabisu typically means a complimentary extra, a bonus addition, any other freebie, but almost never explicitly "service" ("furu saabisu" = "on the house")
* neemu, when used in context of manga production, is a "draft" or a "storyboard", but never a "name" (I see that, I drop)
(And while we're on the topic of mistaken semantics, I can't avoid the dishonorable mention of translating the closed-mouth うん as an uncertain "hmm" or the high-spirited おう as a surprised "oh", which I see all the damn time, lol.)
These are just some words off the top of my head; I could probably list them all day if I needed to, but I'm sure it isn't necessary. Note that this is not specific to words assimilated into Japanese: for instance, the word translyatsiya in Russian and some other Slavic languages (also existing as a loanword in some Eastern European and Central Asian countries) does not, in fact, mean "translation" in English, but translates to "transmission" (a relay of signal), and the word furnitura is not "furniture" but "fitting(s)" (the parts/accessories used to hold bigger pieces together). Falling for these common traps can be annoying at best, and outright disastrous in a business context.
Anyway, I digress. My point is when you have to explain a term that doesn't need to be explained because an equivalent concept either already exists or can be adequately worked around in the target language (even if not as elegant), it often comes off more impotent than flavorful, more so if you are working with the target language yourself and are aware of both its expressive ability and the associated pitfalls of translation by transcription. I don't think that the rather nebulous concept of preservation of culture in works that aren't focused on any degree of cultural authenticity is generally a safe road to travel, because it can—and often does—lead to various keikakuisms (the borderline unreadable Slam Dunk translation here on MangaDex is a good example) or nonsensical page-long discussions on whether removing honorifics from names of fictional Westerners needs to be condemned as Westernization (something you could encounter under Violet Evergarden fansub releases, for one).
That's exactly why I pointed out that you—seemingly intuitively so—correctly avoid it when translating dialects, even though you could just as easily Frankenstein some morphological monsters in the name of flavor like many amateur translators do. You have the good sense not to do that—and that's really the best way to go unless you know what you're doing really well. The surprising part is that you don't exactly follow through with either approach, and it isn't clear why, so it feels somewhat inconsistent.
While education can be a sub-goal of translation, you also have to be aware that it's something you as a translator choose to do, and not necessarily something the author intended in any capacity. Hence why I deeply appreciate TNs in, say, Golden Kamuy which explicitly wants to educate the audience of the Ainu culture and the historical context surrounding its decline, or in a gag series that uses a lot of obscure references that an outsider cannot be reasonably expected to pick up on their own. But I wouldn't appreciate it as much in a light read focused on simple everyday conversations that are supposed to sound natural and be immediately understandable by design.
It is an interesting discussion, though, and one deeply relevant to me as a professional translator (though Japanese isn't one of my working languages), so I hope you don't take it as unnecessary patronizing. I say so much because I care, not because I like to ramble.
I wouldn't bother commenting a bad translation, let alone discuss the specifics.
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@moozooh
I think there may be a fundamental difference in how you and I view manga scanlation. For me, it's not simply an entertainment. It's certainly not a service that I offer in exchange of something. If it were, the one who are due this service would certainly have the right to demand some kind of consistency and competence. First, I see this as a cultural exchange rather than a simple entertainment. So it will come with a certain amount of "learning" whether they want it or not ( more on that later). I usually attach a TL note at the end which gives me a place to explain and further expand on some of the terms they see. If they don't want it, they can always skip it. I don't have an intro page, my group splash page, recruitment page, "please give me donation page" or anything like that, and the TL note is always a single page coming at the end, the only exception being a warning note I added for My Broken Mariko with a suicide prevention hotline. I thought that was important enough to come first. At any rate, easy enough to skip if they want to. But if they're interested, they can read it and maybe get something more than 5 minutes of entertainment out of it.
Secondly, I do this for myself. I don't ask for donations or support. Frankly, I don't need it. I'm what they call a professional IRL and I make enough money to indulge in this hobby freely. I've explained this before in one of my TL notes but I owe the readers absolutely nothing. And I don't demand anything of them either. I've recently started putting QR codes for the titles I'm working on, but all the purchasers get is early release. The "freeloaders" still get theirs. What I'm not however is a professional translator. I recognize no obligation to either the work I'm translating or the author who created it, which you as a professional translator have to, I assume. Not that I don't understand it. IRL, I'm held to the absolute highest level of confidentiality and propriety in my obligations. But this is my hobby and how I waste my time. So the best practices and the generalized rules in the translation industry, I ignore, or follow. It's my entirely whim. So, again, I do this for myself, not the readers, not any "clients" and certainly not the authors, who I presume would rather I stop it altogether. And I think that's the difference between you and I.
I think there may be a fundamental difference in how you and I view manga scanlation. For me, it's not simply an entertainment. It's certainly not a service that I offer in exchange of something. If it were, the one who are due this service would certainly have the right to demand some kind of consistency and competence. First, I see this as a cultural exchange rather than a simple entertainment. So it will come with a certain amount of "learning" whether they want it or not ( more on that later). I usually attach a TL note at the end which gives me a place to explain and further expand on some of the terms they see. If they don't want it, they can always skip it. I don't have an intro page, my group splash page, recruitment page, "please give me donation page" or anything like that, and the TL note is always a single page coming at the end, the only exception being a warning note I added for My Broken Mariko with a suicide prevention hotline. I thought that was important enough to come first. At any rate, easy enough to skip if they want to. But if they're interested, they can read it and maybe get something more than 5 minutes of entertainment out of it.
Secondly, I do this for myself. I don't ask for donations or support. Frankly, I don't need it. I'm what they call a professional IRL and I make enough money to indulge in this hobby freely. I've explained this before in one of my TL notes but I owe the readers absolutely nothing. And I don't demand anything of them either. I've recently started putting QR codes for the titles I'm working on, but all the purchasers get is early release. The "freeloaders" still get theirs. What I'm not however is a professional translator. I recognize no obligation to either the work I'm translating or the author who created it, which you as a professional translator have to, I assume. Not that I don't understand it. IRL, I'm held to the absolute highest level of confidentiality and propriety in my obligations. But this is my hobby and how I waste my time. So the best practices and the generalized rules in the translation industry, I ignore, or follow. It's my entirely whim. So, again, I do this for myself, not the readers, not any "clients" and certainly not the authors, who I presume would rather I stop it altogether. And I think that's the difference between you and I.
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Thank you for the translation ❤️❤️❤️
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@errors
Hi! I wouldn't recommend this for a beginner if your intention is for JP practice. This is set in a school and most of the characters are young, but I'd say this is one of the more harder ones I've handled. Generally speaking, you'll have an easier time with a shounen/shoujo titles as they are easier and also have furigana support. Having said that, the best choice is a story that you find engaging and want to read because then none of it will be work to you.
Hi! I wouldn't recommend this for a beginner if your intention is for JP practice. This is set in a school and most of the characters are young, but I'd say this is one of the more harder ones I've handled. Generally speaking, you'll have an easier time with a shounen/shoujo titles as they are easier and also have furigana support. Having said that, the best choice is a story that you find engaging and want to read because then none of it will be work to you.
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