Watashi no Kokoro wa Oji-san de Aru - Ch. 36

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Okay I'm the tranlator dude here and I'm commenting cuz I'm genuinely confused, what's up with the hate? First time translating so idk about translating manners but what do you mean by sniping? Google says its taking another translators work, but I did this by hand with MS paint, litterally even tried to redraw some lines cuz japanese is vertical and english is not. Pretty sure its allowed to have multiple groups tranlating a single manga, ive seen it before so idk why so hostile? Its not like im stopping him from uploading or anything and I'm not doing anything to hinder anyone else so im a bit confuse, help me understand

Hey! I appreciate you posting asking for clarification and I wanted to drop a couple thoughts here to help explain why you're getting so much pushback. It is allowed to have multiple groups translating a single manga, but when a manga has been handled for a long time by a specific group, it's usually polite to ask if you can 'join in'. There's a couple reasons for this:
  • A lot of people will try to snipe in order to gather clout - for instance to try to get people to sign up for their ko-fi or patreon by spamming a bunch of series with sub-par translations - and a lot of people have seen a lot of bad-faith snipes. This has gotten a whole lot worse in the age of AI and people are on the defensive because of how easy it is to snipe these days.
  • Overwhelmingly, most readers will read the first translation that pops up and then never read another. This often causes a situation where a 'fast' group gets the most engagement, whereas a 'good / accurate' group gets left in the dust until they wonder why they're bothering, which is generally bad for the translation scene and just is a Feels Bad in general.

Regarding your chapter, there are a number of problems with it and I think it would do you good to get someone who can proofread for you, both in terms of the general style and the specific wording. People have already linked some of the resources elsewhere on the forum, but pulling out some bulletpoints:
  • The font choice is very hard to read, especially on the small pages. In particular it's very thin, which makes it hard to pick out on a monochrome page. Most comic fonts have pretty bold strokes so that they can be easier seen.
  • Your spelling isn't great and your wording choices are pretty rough. You want to be careful of using slang words unless you're very sure that a character speaks that way because it can come off as shoddy otherwise.
  • Your punctuation is pretty inconsistent. Some bubbles have commas and full stops at the end of lines, others don't, and that back-and-forth can get pretty confusing.
  • The meaning of the sentences usually comes through okay, I think? But they're kinda plagued by the issues above.

Give me a bit and I'll do a full PR pass for good measure.
 
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I've already mentioned the font and the punctuation issues above so I'll leave them out of this unless they're particularly rough. There's also a faint stiltedness to some of the translation that it's hard to really explain, but I'll see what I can do:

1.1 - Frankly, I'm on board with the sideways 'Woo!' here. I wouldn't use it for main dialogue but this is a hilarious and fitting way to typeset the text for a crowd's cheer.
1.2 - I think these bubbles could be a bit smoother, though I realize it's made harder by not knowing who's talking. assuming it's the announcer I think it would be better to be more wordy here, something like 'It's Decided' -> 'The match is decided! [name] has won the round!'
1.3 - 'abbesence' -> 'absence'. Again I'd use her name rather than 'she' because it's the announcer presumably being grandiose.
2.1 - 'freaken' -> I would be careful about using this and 'wanna' too much out of the blue. I can see that you're trying to use it to communicate an accent, but it usually looks kinda bad in text.
2.4 - 'yummy' -> Similarly, it feels odd to see Haruka, who is generally precocious with her words, use 'yummy' rather than e.g. 'delicious'.

As a side note - I realize that the last few lines are me comparing your chapter to those chapters that have come before, and it would be less obvious or less jarring if this were chapter 1... but unfortunately, that's the expectation that comes with jumping into a series midway.

3.1 - 'Who the heck is this' -> 'What the heck is going on?' or 'Why are so many people over there?' Just doesn't quite match the situation.
4.1 - 'your here with' -> 'you're here with'
4.3 - the redraw here is pretty clunky, but more than that I think this panel highlights the font issue quite well. The thin font kinda disappears into the art in a way a thicker font wouldn't.
5.3 - 'the murder goes after' -> 'the murderer goes after' / 'the victims consists of' -> 'the victims consist of' / 'occurance' -> 'occurence'
5.4 - 'That's why, Haruka you should be careful too' -> 'That's why, Haruka, you should be careful too' or 'That's why you should be careful too, Haruka.'

I'm not sure if you're ESL but I suspect you might be? A lot of the issues I'm spotting are common English grammar errors or specific contextual things like plurals, probably because my language is a dumpster fire. I apologize for English.

6.2 - 'Colin' -> previous scans have used 'Corin', which makes more sense as a female name. 'alot' -> 'a lot'.
6.2cont - 'There was a circumstance / Right now I've been travelling to chase after him' - this is one of those bubbles that could really use some reworking to flow better in English. Something like 'Thanks to various circumstances, I'm currently following his trail'.
6.3 - I'm not really clear on what the final bubble in this panel is. I guess it's Corin/Al talking to East?
6.4 - 'People who suck on the living's blood' -> very clunky possessive. Just go for 'the blood of the living', it's ok to be grandiose again here.
7.1 - 'destroyers' -> hmm. This is maybe meant to be 'demons'? 'Destroyers' seems like an odd choice, especially when you get 'destroyer races' in the next sentence.
8.1/2 - Another pretty clunky sentence. This isn't how you'd really say it in English - it's too harsh on its own and translated too literally, keeping the japanese word order too intact. Compare:
'You know, speaking about vampires... fair-skinned and beautiful, and deep crimson eyes' 'It really matches with him, huh?'
vs
'You know, they say vampires are all fair-skinned and beautiful, with deep crimson eyes' 'The same as his, huh?'
( '... speaking about...' used in the middle of a sentence like this is kind of a giveaway imo)
9.2 - 'this can't be helped' - a traditional translation trap. Looking ahead at the rest of the page, I think it would be better to go 'this is something I have to do' or something along those lines.
9.3 - ditto on the font, it's just getting lost. There's no great way to translate this panel, honestly, even with a thicker font it would be a mess. I would probably just punch some bubbles into the page - it's okay to do this, you don't have to keep the background intact so long as it comes across what's going on. I thought at first the text was the chatter of the townsfolk, but then I realized this is Haruka listing reasons why she should use herself as a lure for the vampire so it's actually important dialogue.
9.5 - Again, clunky wording. I think you're getting hung up on the word 'circumstances' a lot, when it's not something you'd really say all that much in English. For instance, you could soften: 'For East to chase this vampire, I wonder what are the circumstances?' -> 'I wonder what's making East chase this vampire?'
10.2 / 10.4 - More cases where blanking parts of the background to fit in a speech bubble would help a lot. 2 looks like Haruka is thinking to herself, and 4 the text is getting lost in the art again.
10.4 - The clauses need switching around. 'Because it's dangerous, I told you not to go out at night, right?' -> 'I told you not to go out at night when it's dangerous, didn't I?' is more natural a flow.
11.3 - 'It can be used to affect people's minds, mental magic as I call it' -> I don't know what to make of that second clause. Is this a mistranslation maybe? Something like 'It can be used to affect people's minds, like a form of hypnosis' or something like that?
13.2 - 'restrainted' -> 'restrained' / 'hinderance' -> 'hindrance'
14.2 - 'no, and now it's not the time' -> I think the idea here is 'No, and I don't have time to argue.'
14.3 - 'So? What's going to happen if I feel like going home' - I would be curious to see what the raws are here. I don't know if this is East bluffing that he's just going home to rest or if he's telling Haruka to go home or what. A bit confusing.
14.4 - 'your' -> 'you're' / 'restrainting' again

That's most of the things, I think. This is pretty long but please don't take it as trying to dump on you, I wanted to give some feedback on points I spotted and issues that would be good to bear in mind. I think getting a proofreader who can spot things for you is always a good idea - a second person to look over your work does wonders.

In general, I didn't notice anything significantly wrong with the meaning of your translation, so much as the word choices and technical issues, so that's a good start on that front and way better than some attempts I've seen where they simply didn't care. Again, I appreciate you commenting in the thread a lot.
 
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Okay I'm the tranlator dude here and I'm commenting cuz I'm genuinely confused, what's up with the hate? First time translating so idk about translating manners but what do you mean by sniping? Google says its taking another translators work, but I did this by hand with MS paint, litterally even tried to redraw some lines cuz japanese is vertical and english is not. Pretty sure its allowed to have multiple groups tranlating a single manga, ive seen it before so idk why so hostile? Its not like im stopping him from uploading or anything and I'm not doing anything to hinder anyone else so im a bit confuse, help me understand
I'm just happy about the update, no matter how bad it is. To everyone complaining, if it's oh so bad go buy the Manga and don't read it for free from a free translator lmao. Also this whole "sniping" thing is retarded, If a translator group wants to translate a manga, they should provide regular updates. If they don’t, they shouldn’t be surprised when someone else translates it. Thx for the Translation.
 
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I'm just happy about the update, no matter how bad it is. To everyone complaining, if it's oh so bad go buy the Manga and don't read it for free from a free translator lmao. Also this whole "sniping" thing is retarded, If a translator group wants to translate a manga, they should provide regular updates. If they don’t, they shouldn’t be surprised when someone else translates it. Thx for the Translation.
Will you say the same if this kind of quality applies on your favorite series?
Imagine if my hero academia sniped with this kind of quality, that is a villain move.

Even free reader have standard to support translators, and this is below that standard.
 
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Will you say the same if this kind of quality applies on your favorite series?
Imagine if my hero academia sniped with this kind of quality, that is a villain move.

Even free reader have standard to support translators, and this is below that standard.
1. it is my favourite series, i'll rather have this than wait months for them to translate the next chapter.
2. You can wait for the other translator group, u don't have to read it.
3. Most Readers don't support anyone and if it's so bad, why did they read it?
 
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...
Ngl it's such a hypocrisy how a pirated community decided to be a content police trying to shut people off from sharing stuff they work on and share with you.

...


This is why licensed translations are so fked many times where one company hold the licenses hostage, providing shitty services, and prohibiting anyone else to attempt translation by law, thus forcing you to accept that shitty service or stfu.

Do you guys want it to be like that? Isn't more people working on these stuff to be celebrated? I don't get this hypocrisy at all.
I get your take and it's, honestly, reasonable. BUTt. The fact that we are all lawless pirates doesn't mean we shouldn't have manners.

"When in rome, do as the romans do" (с) some smart guy
 
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Coming here expected to see discussion around the chapter but ended up having to see all these instead.

Ngl it's such a hypocrisy how a pirated community decided to be a content police trying to shut people off from sharing stuff they work on and share with you.

I get it. The quality isn't as good compared to the usual guy, but do you really have to be this harsh? Wow.

If the usual guy has so much ego as to drop the works that people have been appreciating over some ice cracks then, isn't the person the problem instead of the cracks though?

I'm speaking as someone who's disappointed by the quality myself. I like the previous guy's works more too, but can't we all be a sensible netizen and not overreacting? Bruh.

This is why licensed translations are so fked many times where one company hold the licenses hostage, providing shitty services, and prohibiting anyone else to attempt translation by law, thus forcing you to accept that shitty service or stfu.

Do you guys want it to be like that? Isn't more people working on these stuff to be celebrated? I don't get this hypocrisy at all.
100% Agree
 
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2. You can wait for the other translator group, u don't have to read it.
I addressed this in my post - while I understand the argument that you're getting something for free and shouldn't complain unreasonably, it's also okay to have standards and want to have those standards met, want to see collaboration between groups rather than adversarial behaviour, and want to see other people involved in the same hobby as you to improve. Otherwise the natural end point is that the only thing left are speedscans translated by AI that read like ass.

I'll admit this is a bit different to that case since the guy showed up here and asked why he was getting hate, but that's why I spat out a PR pass giving feedback about the translation in hopes that it'll help
 
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Okay I'm the tranlator dude here and I'm commenting cuz I'm genuinely confused, what's up with the hate? First time translating so idk about translating manners but what do you mean by sniping? Google says its taking another translators work, but I did this by hand with MS paint, litterally even tried to redraw some lines cuz japanese is vertical and english is not. Pretty sure its allowed to have multiple groups tranlating a single manga, ive seen it before so idk why so hostile? Its not like im stopping him from uploading or anything and I'm not doing anything to hinder anyone else so im a bit confuse, help me understand

People hate snipers because
1. It shows a lack of etiquette as I doubt you asked the previous group if you could take over the series or maybe try working together with them to translate the series
2. It causes the original translation group to drop a series. I can’t count how many manga and novels stopped getting updates because of snipers causing the original group to stop working on the series and then said snipers stops working on the series as well
3. The quality of your work just ain’t great. For starters you made a basic mistake of using “your” instead of “you’re” in TWO separate instances which shows a lack of care to make sure the translation is right when putting your translation onto pages. Not to mention the font and typesetting ain’t great.
4. There’s zero reason to work on a series that has a somewhat active translator rather then the myriad of manga series that haven’t been touched in years.
 
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Coming here expected to see discussion around the chapter but ended up having to see all these instead.

Ngl it's such a hypocrisy how a pirated community decided to be a content police trying to shut people off from sharing stuff they work on and share with you.

I get it. The quality isn't as good compared to the usual guy, but do you really have to be this harsh? Wow.

If the usual guy has so much ego as to drop the works that people have been appreciating over some ice cracks then, isn't the person the problem instead of the cracks though?

I'm speaking as someone who's disappointed by the quality myself. I like the previous guy's works more too, but can't we all be a sensible netizen and not overreacting? Bruh.

This is why licensed translations are so fked many times where one company hold the licenses hostage, providing shitty services, and prohibiting anyone else to attempt translation by law, thus forcing you to accept that shitty service or stfu.

Do you guys want it to be like that? Isn't more people working on these stuff to be celebrated? I don't get this hypocrisy at all.

I see someone has zero interest in etiquette. People like you are the reason why we lose so many series

PS it’s only piracy if one is posting official translations which doesn’t happen as that’s against the rules on mangadex
 
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I'm just happy about the update, no matter how bad it is. To everyone complaining, if it's oh so bad go buy the Manga and don't read it for free from a free translator lmao. Also this whole "sniping" thing is retarded, If a translator group wants to translate a manga, they should provide regular updates. If they don’t, they shouldn’t be surprised when someone else translates it. Thx for the Translation.

This right here might be the dumbest of all the comments in the comment section of this particular chapter and your use of the R slur makes you a bad person
 
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For ANYBODY who wants to do translations, select a heavier weight font than you normally would. This allows you to use a slightly smaller font size and will remediate the issue of trying to fit too much into too small a space, but will still up empty space if there isn't much to say.

Just doing that one thing will greatly improve quality, I'm not even joking.
 
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Coming here expected to see discussion around the chapter but ended up having to see all these instead.

Ngl it's such a hypocrisy how a pirated community decided to be a content police trying to shut people off from sharing stuff they work on and share with you.

I get it. The quality isn't as good compared to the usual guy, but do you really have to be this harsh? Wow.

If the usual guy has so much ego as to drop the works that people have been appreciating over some ice cracks then, isn't the person the problem instead of the cracks though?

I'm speaking as someone who's disappointed by the quality myself. I like the previous guy's works more too, but can't we all be a sensible netizen and not overreacting? Bruh.

This is why licensed translations are so fked many times where one company hold the licenses hostage, providing shitty services, and prohibiting anyone else to attempt translation by law, thus forcing you to accept that shitty service or stfu.

Do you guys want it to be like that? Isn't more people working on these stuff to be celebrated? I don't get this hypocrisy at all.
I agree with everything here and also my favorite restaurant is the poop store.
 
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Appreciate you trying, and you've gotten some constructive feedback here, hope you don't feel too discouraged. There are series that could use translating, but this one seems to be covered for now, just that chapters arrive in sporadic bursts every other month or so.

Personally hoping I'm a Commoner Living My Life Beguiling the Duke's Daughter gets picked up. I imagine others have a couple of series with a year+ of no updates too.
 
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Toxic entitled kids in here. Go learn Japanese and read the raws if you want a quality experience, otherwise stfu. Yall getting this for free from another person's donated time and energy.
Either block the dude and wait fir other scanlator or do it yourselves using your own criticisms.
This is the first time in well over a eecade I've truly felt embarrassed to be a part of this community.
 

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