Tenju no Kuni - Vol. 4 Ch. 16 - Ideal Self

[miyako19]

@ReimuHakurei Why do you have to be so rude? It has been proven that fan translation doesn't effect the sale of the official release version. If we can buy the official release, we would have bought it already. Not everyone can afford the official release or they live in other countries where it is hard to purchase them. A lot of us still have to worry about getting enough money to put food on the table each day. Not mention that this only has a digital release. Maybe poor people shouldn't read manga?

@havelmom As the translator stated in the first page, just google it. It is easy to find.

 

[ReimuHakurei]

@miyako19 That doesn't change my point -- can't afford the official release? Just pirate it. You're better off pirating the licensed release than reading... this trash.

 

[sl]

Thank you for the chapter 😆

 

[deadlierziii]

@jesusworegucci while we apprecriate your feedback and will try to take your comment into consideration. I feel we have to defend ourselves in some way. We are not native japanese with fluent command of english, were are not hired translators, but a bunch of passionate language learners who wants to put something out for the community, by no means we produce high quality scanslations like other big groups that scanslate one piece, silver spoon, or horimiya on a weekly/monthly basis. Everyone has to start from somewhere.
Personal pride aside, we open a place for criticism and discussion on the way we translate, but please bear in mind we translate a chapter that has been already been released in english, and will continue to do so, simply because we like the theme the author set in the series, and this is only an interpretation of the author's work, coming from what we understand of the tibetan culture, their heritage, their customs, their way of life, their word usage. Sure it might deviate from the author's words, and we try to keep to the author's intention as closely as possible, but as much as we would like to refer to official translation for "authenticity" sake, which you can do so by buying the manga and support the author at the same time (we encourage you to do that wholeheartedly), what we are trying to do here, at least for me as proofreader, is to not copy what has already been out there (or even bat an eye at it), but to put our own interpretation of the literature. That is, to me at least, the joy in the interpretation of language. We have our different versions, and we discuss it based on what we know from other aspects, and not based on which words has a better 1 to 1 conversion from one language to another.
That doesn't mean we brush away all criticisms like cobwebs on our faces, and we make dumb mistakes as amateurs, but we encourage disscussions and we are interested in your perspectives, your interpretations, so do join our discord server and exchange them with us (or fight to the death too, if you are willing =D).

-Fish

Personal gripe: Canola oil came from rapeseed. So rapeseed or canola doesn't really make a different. The technique are the same, the raw component are the same. Now what you might not know is baacha might not be from rapeseed, but some type of mustard plant from the family brassica locally found in tibet.

 

[babibola]

so..
Star water is basically a cold water?

 

[Glaistig_Uaine]

@babibola

It's a bit more complicated than that. It's more to do with it being imbedded with star power/stuff like that. I didn't do that research this time (and on mobile), so I'll defer to @deadlierziiii to explain it

 

[RC1138Boss]

THANK YOU for doing this series.

 

[deadlierziii]

@babibola star water is basically water infused in the energy of the star. Eastern medicine, especially tibetan medicine believe that if you are sick, you either lack energy, or qi, depending on which word you are more familiar with. So in essence star water is basically water infused with qi.
Now where the author draws that reference from is basically from the tibetan bathing festival where people do down to the rover to bath under the star which last for 1 week straight to strengthen their health through the energy from the star, based on their belief.

 

[jesusworegucci]

@deadlierziii
Your personal gripe is a fair point! Although I would argue from a contextual point that canola is now used as a catch-all phrase for vegetable based oil. So, to ensure the meaning is properly understood in the context of 18th century Tibet, where canola as it is used now wasn't used then, rapeseed avoids all of those issues. Still, you are right that it's a minor point and perhaps was not worth mentioning.

I'd be happy to discuss the other graver points just as soon as you address them.
I'd much rather do it on Mangadex though. I don't use Discord and I'd also like to avoid talking to multiple people at once.
Plus, it is easier for me to do things in bulk rather than to do them in piece meal. Sorry, I hope you will understand.

Furthermore, the purpose of my comments was not to insult you, but to try and help you. Everyone has to start somewhere and it's great that you guys are challenging yourself with a series above your Japanese level! It certainly makes for faster improvement, and it would bring me joy if my comments did help your translator to improve. My suggestion to the translator is for them to study Japanese grammar. Most of the issues in this chapter were directly related to misunderstanding grammatical points which I'm afraid is unrelated to personal interpretation.

 

[sjiveru]

@jesusworegucci Hello, I'm the translator that did this! (I'll warn you, I don't intend to make this a long discussion and probably won't reply to anything.) I think most of the issue here is that we have rather different philosophies regarding translation - there are a few cases where you caught a real mistake, but most of the 'mistranslations' you describe seem to me like more questions of wording than understanding. My goal is to write a translation that sounds like fluent, natural and colloquial English, and if that requires rephrasing a few things here and there and departing from the original sense, I'm quite happy to do so, as long as that doesn't end up noticeably misrepresenting the nature of what's going on. For example, your comment about my translating a passive verb as active - if I were to simply say a sentence to the same effect in English, I would never use the passive there; it sounds noticeably unusual. Yes, there's a tiny nuance that might get lost, but I think it's worth it for a more natural translation (and I don't even interpret 'you' there in English as necessarily referring to the speaker, just the group the speaker's a part of). And I specifically chose 'canola' rather than 'rapeseed' because to me they mean exactly the same thing, and 'rapeseed' resembles unpleasant words, so why not avoid it?

I appreciate the desire to help, but I will say the comments you made came off more as dismissive and hurtful than helpful, and presenting a long list of problems (several of which I would dispute as actually being problems!) in a public forum feels like an attempt to publicly shame me for my incompetence and make it clear to those looking that you're better at this than me, not at all an attempt to help me improve and be better in the future. If you want to encourage someone to improve, that's not how to do it. That's how you make someone scared to ever try again.

 

[Zephyrus]

@sjiveru
Just wanted to thank you all for picking this up! The art is amazing in this series and I'm so happy to see it revived here on MD.

 

[sjiveru]

@zephyrus I appreciate that, thank you! It's a fantastic series!