Ultimate Muscle - The 2nd Generation: Ultimate Chojin Tag - Vol. 17 Ch. 188 - Words That Cannot Be Said, Thoughts That Can Be Shared

[MangaDex]

 

[Planetman]

Great chapter, but I just wanted to make a quick note of a small mistake you made on page 19, where Mari says "Do you think he's happy?".
The line's "幸せって人それぞれだと思わない？”, which translates to "People have their own ways of being happy/kinds of happiness, right?", as in she's not directly referring to Kinnikuman there but to the idea that people have their own ways of being happy like she shows in her next line.
Again, great work, guys.

 

[Machineguns]

japanese is a contextual language, which is why translation is an art and not a science. we acknowledge that you are likely correct that "人" could refer to the plural, but it can also be used in singular, and mari often refers - in this scene - to kinnikuman as 'that person', which is why we chose to interpret this as the singular. looking at the grammar, along with "それぞれ" meaning 'respectively', we recognise that this could likely be the plural, as 'happy people' and not 'happy person'.

meanwhile "思わない" means "do not think", and "right?" would usually be "ね", so this sentence she is asking what rinko thinks. it made more sense to us - with context - to thus go with 'do you think he's happy'?, with the assumption this was singular

if we were to make this into people, as opposed to person, we would probably say 'don't you think each and every person can be happy [in their own way]?' . . . we will make that change now.

thank you for pointing out the plural/singular mistake

we will rectify

 

[Planetman]

I think it's kinda dangerous to believe translation's all art. It's about trying to get across the meaning of a text accurately, the art part should be more about how you do that or what you can do to smooth things out. Like 人それぞれ is an official expression meaning "to each his own" or "people have their own ideas", generally the idea of personal preferences, so it's not really up for debate on whether 人 is singular or plural, the inherent expression's plural. And I don't think you need to make it "each and every person" since that kinda reads a bit clumsily, I'd say any general plural would do fine, like "people" or "everyone" or "we all", etc. Also, she doesn't really directly refer to a person with a pronoun like あの, which kinda precludes the idea of a singular reference.

And と思わない does just mean "don't you think so?", a request for affirmation on a statement, like "right?", so they're both interchangeable. Although in context "right?" is more casual so it might not fit.

I think you might be ignoring the quoting Mari does with 幸せって, it should be clear that she's linking the expression 人それぞれ with happiness, 幸せ, with って, linking the expression of personal preference with happiness, ergo, personal idea of happiness, which makes sense in context since she goes on to say what makes her happy.

You're free to ignore all this, this is just my own approach to translation and you've already changed it, just wanted to say that it doesn't hurt to look a bit deeper into the grammar and wording of dialogue and consider how natural the ways you can translate it sound.

 

[Machineguns]

thank you for your reply. we will bear this in mind.

 

[Machineguns]

to planetman

i have made the changes you suggested and added you to the credits page

i am just waiting on sora to redraw the title page, and then i will upload and make a new post to alert people.

thank you for your help.

~ terry