Witch Hat Atelier - Vol. 12 Ch. 68

[Rillant]

Well, simply put: an official US translation is something that's solely available and localized within the US. It's not an English translation, which is available anywhere. Overlocalization tends to be another can of worms the US is very fond of doing (especially Viz and Funimation), something that an international Enlgish translation would be less likely to do.

At this point, having been able to compare a fair bit of both official and fan translations acquired through various means, I can confidently say that the vast majority of official translations are middling at best as they overlocalize (or even worse, censor stuff for no apparent reason). Meanwhile, fan translations can go from raw garbage to a quality that far surpasses the average official translation (though usually not through the official team's fault, might I add, but often due to their directives I'd imagine).

Thanks a lot for the detailed response! I definitely agree with you on a lot of points. I am not a fan of localisation companies like Viz and Funimation. The reason I still read fan scans for Jump series is because the official US version (like you called it, I agree) is just pretty bad.

However, I believe it's different for Kodansha. They employ people globally and a lot of them are former scanlators. I know of lot of people that started in scanlation and now do freelance work for Kodansha (and none of them are American or even live in the US). They also don't localize as much as Viz or other companies, they're far truer to the original text. Even when we as a scanlation group sometimes take liberties with the translation, the official Kodansha releases are always truer to the original text (there's even some examples in this chapter of WHA).

So while I do agree with you that Viz overlocalises things and tends to produce their translations for the US market (even though it's available worldwide, which is interesting), I see Kodansha more as a global translation effort. Unfortunately due to licensing issues it's only available in the US at the moment, but they are working on bringing it to more territories and eventually globally (I was told this from someone at K Manga directly).

 

[MrDDA]

I hope someone would upload a fake chapter "postcard" and link to the official source just so that we can keep forum discussions here on MD. Without it I have to go to reddit or other places to find discussion on latest chapters which sucks ass.

Stupid debates on forced homosexuality and thoughtful insights on key details that you might miss when reading is the spice to the reading experience that I cherish.

Even when MD re-opened the website felt unusable to me for the simple fact that there was no forums.

 

[Kefrayba]

The chapters continued on Batoto.

 

[drake646]

I understand your decision but unfortunately K Manga is not available in my country 🗿 guess I'll have to find a way to buy the manga

 

[Asriel2137]

Since I’ll likely be buying the rest of the volumes, is this chapter the end of volume 12, or is there more to the series? MU doesn’t list chapters by volume unfortunately

 

[ComCubeV972]

Siiiiiigh~
Another title lost. Usurped by another piece of shit platform.
After reading the previous convo, I only don't understand one thing:
"the code of respect" this, "the code of respect" that.
Respect for who exactly? Official publishers, localizers? Those who don't give a flying fuck about the quality of translations or their yet another subscription platform? Respect for them?!
It would be Funny if it wasn't so infuriating.

It's never about which is a better translation but who releases first, which is why everyone cries about chapter "sniping" despite the quality of the faster releases. Scanlators can't compete with official translations that will get copies in advance so it's better to just leave the race.

This also is such a piece of bullshit. This is a stupid short-term thinking. When I pick up a title, that's been running for a while or even an older title that's been completed, it doesn't matter what was coming out faster that the time. It. Bears. No. Effect. On. The Quality. Of. What. I'm. Reading. In the. Present.
EVERY title will be that no matter what, simply because that's how time works in our universe.
The actual care put into translating is the only thing that will be left.

 

[ComCubeV972]

They will provide chapters of higher quality than we ever could as fans.

I went through this ch. in the official TL and I honestly don't understand how you can say that. Both #dropout an you were much more eloquent in your TLs.

 

[Ahab19]

Anyone else think the plot of this manga is paper thin?
Like am I meant to believe the brimhats aren't massively OP compared to the normal witches and that they couldn't achieve any of their goals easily and the only thing stopping the brimhats and any sort of breaking of the witches laws is upheld by a handful of the knight guys?
The levels of corruption and rogue witches within the few characters we know also doesn't bode well for upholding the laws either especially when most of the human kings are shown to be power hungry and even one of the sages turned out to be corrupt lol.
It's all pretty silly and hard to buy into especially when the cripple kid becomes a proficient magic user fast and beats one of the knights easily.