Hey guys! I was a bit bored today so I decided I'd give a crack at quickly translating a few pages. I plan to finish chapter 1 and then post it on /a/ or something in hopes that translation groups (or individuals that have close ties to said groups) can gain an interest in picking up where I left off.
Keep in mind I'm not exactly fluent in Japanese or anything. I understand maybe 75% of what I read in this manga, and some of what I read I'd have the gist of what it means in Japanese without being able to really word it right into English. It's entirely possible there will be mistranslations, but they (hopefully) aren't big ones anyway. I'd translate the whole thing, but I'd rather have confidence that I can understand it at least 95% before picking up the whole translation on my own.
I don't even know how I'll handle stuff like honorifics. I decided to leave them out for now, I think those work better for certain translations. I do know for sure that I won't over-localize (for example, what GG does with their translations where "Call me Yuki-sama" turns into "Call me darling" or turning "tsundere" into "bipolar"). I'm not a very big fan of that. I do like wording sentences in a more natural manner, and that does occasionally require you to toy around with the literal translation a little and sometimes tweak it, but I hate removing the original connotation of a line, or inserting memes just because they kinda match what the character said ("Come at me, bro!")
Anyway, Poncho is a really cute slice of life 4koma following the every day adventures of Hiroshi and Pon. Hiroshi's just trying to spend time with his girlfriend, whom he's really lovey dovey with; but every time he goes to visit her house, she's busy working! Instead of spending time with his girlfriend, he ends up babysitting her little sister!
I was multitasking with this all day, so I've only got 3 and a half pages done (I'm lazy). When I finish the chapter I'll make a post of it and provide a download link, so just think of this as a preview for now. I'll be organizing the images to be opened left to right, but read them in normal manga format.
This one is a joke translation I made because someone asked me when the blood and fighting comes in.
I'll probably finish tomorrow, or at least sometime this week. Then I'll let it roam the net a bit and wait for someone to get interested in it. If anyone has any criticism to give, please feel free to post them.
~ Kirari ミ★
15 posts:
Oh man that looks cute. :3
And honorifics don't translate over to English that well. So it was a good choice that you omitted them instead of keeping them. In English it's more about tone, so *if* you can write in a way that it sounds like honorifics are being used instead of writing in _kun, -san. It way better.
But at the same time with the ones that you gave like the whole yuki-sama, that ones a bit harder to explain; because there's cultural stuff behind it. Though with Tsundere it's probably just assumed that people who read it will have an understanding of what that word is.
You beat me to translating something...you cheater. I checked your translations against the Japanese and I've got to say...you converted it really well. Having not actually translated much before, it's surprising to look at both languages side by side and think, "Oh yeah...you WOULD say it like that in English..."
Also, what are the fonts you used in your translation? I've been meaning to figure out what the basic, staple scanlation font is, but I always forget to find out.
Anyways, now that I see you translating I'll definitely have to go start my project tomorrow.
@Tigoris
http://www.unblessed.net/guide/main.html
Fonts and some quick rundowns on editing manga. I read it long ago so forgot most of it and pretty much just adapted my own style to typesetting.
This is pretty cute, I hope you actually translate all of this Kirari, I'd definitely read it. It's weird too, the 'joke' page looked pretty much legit.
Looking good =) I can't wait to read all of it. I haven't read a manga in a while.
Just going to point out some things that I noticed. Most of them is just me nitpicking things and it's not really necessary to make changes. I'll be referring to the panels in numbers (example below) to be more clear.
4 1
5 2
6 3
>p002 panel 1,4
If you place the punctuation on the same line as the last word it would look a lot nicer. If your font size is too large to allow that try going down 0.5-1 size. Panel 8 has the same problem, but keep in mind that you want to keep the font size in one bubble the same as much as possible. Try making the text box longer in width and nudging it to the left to see if it fixes it. This occurs in other pages as well.
Another similar problem is when you separate words with a hyphen. Using a smaller font size will normally allow the entire word to fit on one line in your case.
>p004 panel 5
This is boyfriend! --> This is her boyfriend!
Would this be better? I'm not sure if you just missed a word or if she's talking in a child-like manner in the Japanese dialogue.
>p035 panel 3
I personally think that the font in this panel would be easier if it was black text with a white border. this is just me being nitpicky though. The "Impossible" text is slightly harder to read than normal.
I also noticed that you're avoiding translating the SFX. Understandable if you don't want to spend that much time cleaning and cloning the more messy areas, but there was some easy parts in the earlier pages that you left alone. I thought you were only translating the more necessary SFX, such as the ding dong, but you also did the Bwoosh Bwoosh in panel 7. The font looks a bit too similar to your normal dialogue font too. Have you considered using a different font or at least making it into italic?
>honorifics
I tend to like it when things are localized as much as possible without screwing it up too much. Just make sure you're consistent throughout the entire thing and you should be fine.
Double comment.
Forgot to mention that several of your text are really close to the edge of the speech bubbles. Some are off center as well. Smaller font size and nudging will fix that.
@Cpt.Awesome
Thanks for the feedback. I've never done an actual typesetting project before other than small 1 page translations or edits here and there, so I don't have much experience with it. For a quick project I didn't really spend too much time picking a standard font size, I stuck with 4.7 which seems like it ended up a bit too big to work with.
>>p004 panel 5
Something I meant to address in the main body of text but somehow forgot to include it. Pon and Akira don't call him by name. They simply call him "boyfriend" which is later used in jokes, so I'd rather leave it unchanged. It sounds strange, but I'm not sure how to handle that translation. Just one of the things that don't directly flow right coming back into English that I was having trouble deciding how to handle. She always calls him "boyfriend" throughout the series.
>Using a smaller font size will normally allow the entire word to fit on one line in your case.
Something I could probably experiment with. I tried smaller font sizes before but it'd often be too small to take up a nice amount of space in the bubble, even if it makes every word fit without being broken into parts.
By the way, page 35 is entirely a joke page. The only reason "bwoosh bwoosh" is translated is to make it seem like an energy orb or something, the actual sound effect is something that'd come from a spinning or rolling ball. I tend not to translate sound effects unless they're important because they usually require some cleaning and are sometimes hard to find an English equivalent for. If I ever decide to do a more serious translation project where I'm confident in my translations, I'd probably take the time to do all the small details on the page and such.
But the purpose of this was mostly to just get a translation out so some group can pick it up. I'm sure they'll go over my translation with a better one of their own, so it's nothing I'm stressing too much over.
Thanks again for your feedback, I'll keep it in mind for when I finish the next pages and make sure to look out for these kinds of things in future projects (whenever I pick up a new one).
Also, the joke page literally took me about a minute or two to make. I wasn't caring so much about it because it was just a quick joke translation made on the spot. Had I cared more I would have made panel 5 look nice and make small changes on other panels.
That looks like a pretty cute manga, I hadn't heard of it before. It'd be good if someone does end up picking it up.
I don't mind a fair degree localisation where it's necessary - I tend to prefer subs without honorifics (I figure that if you know what they mean then you'll be able to hear them anyway, although that's obviously only applicable to anime rather than manga).
>I hate removing the original connotation of a line
I agree in principle but if there's, say, a joke or saying that would be meaningless if translated literally I'd prefer it be replaced with something that has the equivalent effect in English even if the literal meaning isn't quite the same.
>inserting memes just because they kinda match what the character said
Yeah, that's just annoying.
>turning "tsundere" into "bipolar"
Why.jpg
Damn, you got some helpful feedback there.
Nothing much that I can say, but it looks nice~
lol bipolar. I LOVE the joke page. I would actually read this >_>. I wonder how many "serious" manga are written with nothing but cliches like this...
I also just read and commented on your last post, I hope you are finding something you are good at and enjoy :<
I read a couple of pages and I decided to wait until you're finished. Hopefully you'll finish it and get somewhere with this. Don't you let us down Kirari~
Good job, the more you work at it you will figure it out.
>it'd often be too small to take up a nice amount of space in the bubble
Having a small buffer of blank space between the text and bubble's edge is alright as long as it isn't a lot. Ideally, you want it small enough to fit nicely, but still be large enough to read at the picture's actual pixels.
>page 35 is entirely a joke page
Oh right, I completely forgot.
Some translators like to leave SFX alone or just do a literal translation on them. Just find what you're comfortable with and stick with that. Of course, different scanlation groups have different standards, but I find that most readers don't care or even notice.
Post a Comment