Yofukashi no Uta - Ch. 184 - A Dumb Party Trick (v2)

[dedmoroz]

Ah, so he doesn't even use the term "riajuu". Noted.

I understand where your frustration is coming from, because I've seen fan scanlators not put out scans that look not-bullshit but in fact are. Even if I don't have much grounds to demand better (any of us can do it ourselves or hire someone to do it, but we wait for people who do this stuff for free), the threat of not grasping the original intent of the mangaka's writing does make me anxious.

But compared to the straight goofy corporate adaptation for this manga jacking up verb tenses, flipping grammatical moods, needlessly euphemizing dialogue, and completely rewriting dialogue altogether for no practical or even censorious reason? Having Kou say "normalfag" (the actual usage of which has nothing to do with homosexuals) is nothing in terms of cost. It might be unclear to those not in any kind of know, but then, the /a/nons do this firstly for /a/non fans of this work. IIRC, the coordination of these scans are pretty loose, too-- the translator /a/non dumps their chapter translation in posts that just happen to be typeset by another /a/non that thought to do so.

At least be more mad that there's nothing in what he said that would "reasonably" be rendered into "normalfag" (I think I can see how the "dialectal" transformation went, but still).

yknow I keep hearing about how bad VIZ is but after reading a grand total of 2 chapters i don't see anything too egregious. it's true though that /a/ scanlations were basically perfect up until this point, and that it's unreasonable to expect a bunch of uncoordinated hobbyists doing something for free to match the quality of a professional scanlation staff.

also "riajuu" is completely innocuous, as far as i can tell, and is the most direct 1-to-1 mapping to and from the word "normie"

the actual usage of which has nothing to do with homosexuals

you know the type of people that this kind of language offends and drives away? ppl who like gay people. especially those that love them. really love them. possibly even the not-safe-for-work kind of loving.

 

[Eighty-six]

yknow I keep hearing about how bad VIZ is but after reading a grand total of 2 chapters i don't see anything too egregious. it's true though that /a/ scanlations were basically perfect up until this point, and that it's unreasonable to expect a bunch of uncoordinated hobbyists doing something for free to match the quality of a professional scanlation staff.

Seven Seas Entertainment has been caught red handed fucking up multiple light novels by deleting and/or rewriting chunks of them, on top of making systematic changes in the dialogue for I Think I Turned My Childhood Friend into a Girl in order to change its very premise because the translator thought it right to rewrite a crossdresser into an MtF transgender. It screwed with Vol. 5 of The Dangers in My Heart by having the male lead think about "mansplaining" in one of his self-critical internal monologues when he said no such thing in the original Japanese. In the past, Viz was caught redrawing manga (such as Naruto and Fullmetal Alchemist) for censorious reasons. There are paid corporate localizers that openly brag about how they make translation decisions expressly for the purpose of pissing people off-- which is why I abstain from calling them "professional", even if they're translators I can trust. Do recall that 4Kids was also a "professional company", and close to nobody that could sign up for an internet forum had respect for them.

Translation quality isn't the product of professionalism-- it's the product of skill, intention, and earnestness.

As for this manga? Viz doesn't translate it-- it adapts it. More specifically, they have a translator and someone in charge of "English adaptation".

You mentioned that you've gone through two chapters and found nothing egregious? I've talked at length for the past few chapters about what Viz changes and their actual or potential consequences ([1] (see all nested spoiler bars-- I also discuss what I found in part of chapter 1), [2], [3]).

Spoiler: Other adaptation issues

The person in charge of adaptation also seems to make it a point to euphemize the fact that Nazuna works as a "sleeping companion" by phrasing it as "helps people with insomnia" (I asked a question about one occurrence of this and had an answer from the translator /a/non relayed to me), even though we see what she does.

Remember how, during the Kabura arc, there's a joke where Nazuna speaks at length about the particulars of NTR to the point that her talking runs out of her speech bubble borders, and then she has to insist that she's not actually into it once she realizes Kou might get the wrong idea? Well, the Viz adaptation made her unironically into netorase, which is almost as bad as completely screwing with the point of that sequence:

1. It foreshadows the revelation that Kabura was made a cuckquean by Haru (right down to being left with the child Haru had with a human).
2. Because Nazuna's quick to make clear that she's not actually into netorare, Kou sees past her vulgar façade and deduces that she must actually want an "earnest love".

Meanwhile, Viz makes it so that she clarifies that she "likes dreaming up smutty scenarios" while chastising Kou for "mixing up fantasy and reality", and Kou just happens to bother to ask about how she would "imagine a normal romantic relationship".

I think the worst thing I've seen so far is what they did to Kou's closing monologue for chapter 104-- it was completely changed. Literally, Kou monologues from the future (he has to have for those words to make sense) to note that Mahiru wasn't reunited with until the time of the "last moments", with "last moments" referring to "the last moments of (someone's) life". Viz outright changes this into "Will I ever see my friend Mahiru again?"

The weirdest thing I've seen so far outside of making Nazuna a netorase enjoyer? Having Kyouko do even more onee/shota tease than she canonically does in chapter 182 by having her monologue regarding Nazuna's request to her, thinking "As you requested, Nazuna, I'll take care of [Kou]./And I'll do it in ways you've never imagined."

Now, based on what I could piece together, it's not all bad-- I suspect that regarding the discrepancy I noted earlier in this thread, Viz actually had the superior rendering. But while you have to make peace with the word "normalfag" in /a/ scans (and again, its usage has nothing to do with homosexuals), your alternative is contending with whatever the hell all of the above is and more in the Viz adaptation.

 

[dedmoroz]

Seven Seas Entertainment

say no more