Poncho chapter 2 translation

I dunno if you guys still remember the translation I did for this manga months ago. So I actually finished this at like, the start of Summer. But my blog was closed down by then and so I never posted it here. I forgot that I never shared it with you guys. I mean, it'd make sense for me to post it here, right? I figured I might as well post it now. Better late than never, eh? I should probably repost these on /a/ as well or something. I dunno how to get these up on manga hosting sites like Mangafox because I'm too lazy to research what you should do if you want your translations posted places.

This time around, I did take into consideration the feedback I've received from my last chapter (thanks for that, guys) and if there's something still not to your liking, let me know. I still dunno how I really wanna handle sound effects, but I guess it's something I'll eventually get more used to if I ever plan to do full scale translation projects. I usually never have to really deal with that sort of thing, because when I'm usually translating, it's a single 4koma or something that's simple and doesn't require heavy editing or complicated sound effects.

As I said before, I'm not really good with Japanese yet. Some lines could be translated better, some may be a bit mistranslated, but I'm confident that it's mostly correct, so don't worry too much. It's a really short manga anyway, and each chapter is like 5 or 6 pages, which is really short. Especially since it's 4koma. 

Anyway, the download for the chapter can be found here.

 

~ Kirari ミ★

Has Kirari returned?

 Hey guys, it's been a while. I've had quite a few people asking when I was going to open my blog up again and why I even closed it in the first place. I'm not sure if I wanna talk about the reasons or not, but I figured I might as well give blogging another shot. I actually missed it. I've been trying to keep up with blogs, but I mostly lurk since I'm too lazy to sign into my account. Even still, I have a pretty huge backlog of your posts that I haven't read yet. I'll try to keep up a bit better, but I'm a bit busy now.

It's funny how I shut the blog down during Summer when I had no classes, and I'm not opening it up again right when classes are about to start. I essentially just closed it for Summer break, I guess, though that wasn't what I intended at all. To be frank, I actually wanted to close my blog down for good, but I guess I got around to just opening it up once again.

I'd be lying if I said not much has happened in my life as of late, but I guess at the same time I don't feel like diving too deeply into subjects. I guess one thing I can talk about is that I felt this Summer has been so busy that I've neglected my Japanese big time. I've still been reviewing frequently, but it's become something that I feel isn't even helping because I take so many "I'll just do a short review this time" days that I feel I've really just been left behind. My plans for the Summer were to really have cracked down, but due to unforeseen events I've been pretty preoccupied and unable to just make my full 3 month Japanese solitude bubble like I had planned. Instead, I feel my Japanese has gone nowhere sine the beginning of Summer. Then again, it's hard to tell progress. I guess today is a pretty nice day for me to just sit back and catch up on some animu that I haven't seen in a while. I think that's some of the only Japanese I've really been keeping up with decently, watching animu and various other stuff, subless of course. I still download the subs now and then but turn the subtitles off. If there's something I really didn't understand, I'll go back, turn the subs on, and then play the scene again without subs. It sometimes makes scenes a bit longer than they should be, but in the end I guess I have become accustomed to new words. I've still been pretty damn lazy though, I hardly even add sentences to my Anki deck and I focus more on reviewing kanji and sometimes neglect my sentence deck all together.

But I guess I'm trying to get back on track. And it's funny how I try getting back on track when school is about to start and I'm about to become even more busy. But that's fine, I guess.I'll just try to take it easy. Taking it easy is what it's all about. I'm disappointed in myself and at the same time I'm understanding of my own position. Though I sometimes feel I'm just making excuses.

In any case, I'll try to get back to posting, but I probably won't be posting as frequently as I once did. But I'll see how it goes. 

See ya

~ Kirari ミ★

Finals next week

 I didn't even realize my finals were coming so soon. They're next week. I'm not really prepared, but I don't mind much. Japanese I'll have no problem with, I don't think History will be a problem since he gave us the essay questions so we can focus on making good essays. I'll just gather information up this week. The only final I guess I should be worried about is the Computer Science one simply because the professor likes using vaguely worded questions and "fill in the blank from this textbook sentence" stuff. Plus, failing it or getting a low grade secures me an F in the class since I missed the first test. This week I spent mostly catching up on a few things. I plan to make a (late) post regarding what I'm watching this season after I finish my finals.

On Monday, nothing really eventful happened aside from me having a headache on and off for the day. After Japanese I was of course followed by the girl from before. Don't remember much about what subject she brought up, aside from Mirai Nikki and asking me if I could handle a Japanese conversation. At my current level, I can't, but I kinda took the classes to strengthen my verbal skills. They are helping for that purpose though. We eventually came to the point where I usually head to my bus stop, since I've no class after Japanese on Monday. She asked if I wanted to have lunch with her, and I declined. I actually just wanted to go home and watch Densha Otoko anyway.

On Wednesday she told me she wish she'd spoken to me earlier since the semester is ending so she'd have someone to walk with after class, but she's too timid to do so. That, and the class is filled with Koreans that don't even speak English fully, and she's one of the few non-Korean Asians in the class, so not many people for her to talk to. We actually don't talk much when we're with each other, that's pretty fine to me. When I'm just on my laptop waiting for the next class we're fairly silent aside from when she occasionally brings something up for small chat. Then again she could just be scared to speak up due to me being such a closed individual.

What was really eventful on Wednesday was me passing up the opportunity to make an easy $100. I totally regret it now. How'd I pass this offer up? There were fighting game tournaments being held at my school. Although I didn't want to really participate, I was in the mood for a match or two so head over there. I played Marvel vs Capcom 3 and Ougon Musou Kyouku (yeah, they actually had this there, surprisingly). With Seakitties I got a perfect on the dude I was against, and in MvC3 I didn't lose any of my characters. Apparently I was up against the best that the school has to offer, according to multiple people there (mostly trying to get me to join their game club). I left and, wouldn't you know, the girl from my Japanese class just so happened to be in the area and was watching me play and decided to leave with me. She asked why I didn't enter the tournament since I had a high likelyhood of winning the ones held for those two games. I had no idea how long they'd take, and I really didn't want to end up home at 12AM just for some fight money, especially with the late night bus schedules. $50 for each of the tourneys, and glancing at the other matches it didn't seem I'd have a tough time with anyone (they're mostly just button mashers).

When I got home I was hit with a huge wave of regret. I wish I'd stayed for that, because I realized I have to make a payment of $92 this week to debt collectors and I really could have used that money. But, too late for that now, and no use crying over spilled milk. So I'll just deal with it. Maybe if there's another one I'll go through with it.

I don't want to make this shitpost too long. I'll end it here.

~ Kirari ミ★

Poncho translation done

Took longer than I planned mostly because I was too lazy to really finish it. Hopefully another group can pick up where I left off. I worked with some of the suggestions given before. I may go back and rework previous text for consistency's sake if I plan on translating more chapters, but for now I'll see if a group decided to pick it up and they may even re-translate chapter 1 to fit their standards or something. It was fun, and it was the most I've edited. Poncho chapters are really short, so taking up chapter 2 in another week or two if nobody else does seems plenty doable for me.

You can download chapter 1 here.

 

 I'll post pages from where I left off on my last post.

 I know I was going to mention something else in this post but it's completely slipped my mind by now. Oh well, I'll just end it here. Hope you enjoy it. Leave feedback if you have any, I'll use them for when I make future released.

~ Kirari ミ★

Fill'er up

Was planning on finishing Poncho translation this week, but I've mostly been spending it catching up on my backlog. So I was going to make a Spring 2011 anime post today, but now I feel it's too late for me to take the effort, even though I'm not sleepy and will most likely be awake for another few hours. It's just that after a certain time I lose the will to be productive in anything. Well, aside from Japanese, I guess. But that's because it's not really much work if I just space it out with breaks in between.

So I'll just do a quick filler for now. Earlier this week I ended up leaving Japanese class and got followed by the girl from last time. Or, rather, she actually ran up to me and tried to get my attention because I was so far ahead and had my headphones on. But I always have my headphones on when I'm outside. In any case, it ended up with her running up and literally having to catch her breath from running to me. I actually wonder where she came from, because after class I usually stick around because the professor likes asking me about my learning methods and giving me various little pointers on certain things (and sometimes just feels like testing me by asking a random word and seeing if I know how to write it). In that time there's nobody in the class, so by the time I leave everyone should be gone.

Well, I didn't notice at all really. I normally would have just kept going with the excuse that I need to do something before my next class; but I decided I'd chat about Madoka's end with her if she was that eager to catch up with me.

So we headed somewhere and talked for a bit. She brought up the Madoka wiki and we talked about various speculations we had through the series and such (she freaking told me what that black cat was in the OP). Discussion moved around for a bit, I happened to have my Madoka manga with me so let her see it , along with some of the other stuff I had. Among them I had Utsuro no Hako to Zero no Maria, which was the first one she opened up and then immediately closed upon realizing it wasn't a manga. I told her she shouldn't be too frightened of it and told her she should try reading more Japanese materials than the textbook and such. But she's one of the students in the class that notably have a decent grasp on the language, so I assume she puts some effort into learning outside of formal lessons.

The conversation drifted a bit to her asking me if I've read Saya no Uta. She was interested in it because of Madoka but hasn't read it yet. She's read various other visual novels before and we casually chatted about some of them, but she's only really read a handful. Somewhere along the line she asked if I ever visit conventions or cosplay. But I don't go to conventions nor cospay, she was somewhat disappointed because she though I'd make a great cosplayer. I've no idea what really makes one a "great cosplayer" but I'll take her word on it.

It was about 20 minutes until my next class started, and I certainly had more time to hang out more, but I decided to leave early. Since we were browsing the Madoka wiki on my laptop, and it was on hibernate from before, I did end up having Skype open. So when I was packing up she asked for my Skype name. In the end, I didn't give it to her. My computer was off at the time and I said I was in a hurry, so she just gave me her Skype to add her. I still haven't and feel a bit bad for it, but maybe this week I'll make a dummy account and talk a bit. But then I'd probably feel bad being signed off all the time. I did mention I don't use the account much when she asked. Meh, I'll think of what to do later, if anything I could always just actually add her to my account if she's not too talkative.

After that I was supposed to have a presentation in the next class, where I show a movie scene and such. Luckily, it got pushed to next class. My group was last, and everyone wanted to show scenes that are ridiculously long and ate up the whole class time. I don't mind going next week, but the clips were boring to sit through really. And everyone loved picking sex and rape scenes.

But how about something less shitpost related? Here's a small treat for visiting. Before, I made a music post that contained some Chirinuruwowaka songs. Well, earlier this week they released a new album titled 白穴 （white hole) after about 5 years of no new releases as a band.. I thought it was just a side project that ended up dying out, but they've reformed it. I've been listening to the whole album all week. Very nice stuff, really like everything on the album. I'll just show 2 songs from the album. First is ホワイトホール (White Hole), the PV for it has actually been out on youtube for a while before the album was released.



Second one is やまみちにて...　(At the mountain trail), which is the second track on the album. I actually didn't know which one I wanted to use as the second post because I like all of them, so I just put my MP3 player on shuffle and let it pick which one I used.

Though, not entirely sure if anyone else will like them. I think they're pretty good, but I can never really tell how well my tastes match with others anyway. I'll see if I can get Poncho finished tomorrow. Or at least do a Spring 2011 anime post.

Take it easy.

~ Kirari ミ★

Poncho translation!

 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★

I don't think about the future

I don't think about the future. It usually gets in the way of taking it easy. The future is a bit too complicated to think about at times really, and I'm bad at predicting. I'm also extremely indecisive. But for some reason I found myself thinking a bit about it last night before drifting to sleep. Maybe it's because of the debt I've been accumulating and the fee I have to pay by next month before it escalates into a legal issue (in which case the fees would have increased dramatically).

If I had remained a NEET I could have avoided this really. I feel as if I've fallen into a scam I saw miles away but disregarded anyway. But that's just how it works when you take everything in your own pace. I'm not sure what I'll even do. The plan was never for me to work, even though it'd be obvious from the fees I'd have to find a job at some time. Being at a 2 year college, at least the debt isn't so large, still I've no idea what happens after I finish those 2 years. I could continue language in another school, but I'm pretty sure the only other school around that has Japanese would be an expensive private school that's hard to get into. And then for what? It's not like a degree in Japanese would really open any jobs that would be able to pay for the large debt I have. 

But if I just finish my 2 years and decide to start work after, what exactly will that lead to either? I guess it'd make nabbing an entry level job easier as resume fodder or something. But what the hell job would I work? For some reason I see myself working at a bookstore or something, through some entry level job like organizing shelves or working the register. And staying at this position to the point where 10 years from now I'd still be that quiet bookstore worker that occasionally knocks stuff over because of how clumsy I am. I'd still be paying off my debt by then due to my low pay and interest sprouting up. Of course, I'd still live with my mother, but this isn't something I've ever looked down on or thought was a bad idea. I find it more appropriate to live with your family, as it eases the burden of cash and you could always help support each other. But I guess some people find it as a sign that you can't walk on your own two legs so look down on it. Not something I care about really, I just felt like pointing out that I always thought it to be an odd idea to live on your own if there's no actual reason for doing so such as better job opportunities outside of one's hometown.

But as I was saying, it's hard to imagine myself doing anything more than small jobs. After all, I really don't think I've many skills. No, I really don't have anything special about me at all. People believe I'm good at computers, but I'm not really, I've just used them since a younger age than a lot of other people. In some cases some could say that experience alone counts as skill I have that others don't, but it's nothing that any employer would particularly find interesting. I know how to not be stupid with a computer, interesting skill I guess. I have a yellow belt in
Google-fu, which allows me to fix problems by stealing answers from other people. My family comes to me when they have computer issues and I usually just Google it and pick the first result to fix their computer. One could argue it's no different than learning information from a textbook, but I've no actual knowledge in how any of that stuff works most of the time. I guess what I'm trying to say is that anyone can do it, people just don't, so I'm not sure if anyone can call it an actual skill. I've gotten money for doing easy computer jobs from my father's technologically illiterate friends, but (no real offense to them) they're not exactly the brightest of the bunch anyway.

In the end I feel as if I can't really do anything. Maybe that's why I can only imagine myself at an entry level job that could be acquired without any college experience, and remaining at that position. A completely optimistic view of the future would be nabbing one of those nice translation jobs where I could work at home for a game company like Atlus or Capcom or something. Or maybe novel translations. Even manga translations. I can't even imagine this stuff paying much, but I'm sure it'd probably pay more than anything else in my head, and I'd have the benefit of not having to go outside. But I doubt this job has many openings, or that they'd be given to someone with no prior translation experience and only 2 years of classes to show for language proficiency. I guess if they actually tested my Japanese they'd know it was beyond the level I have a degree in, but that's not exactly something I expect them to do when shifting through resumes for a candidate.

But I suppose it doesn't matter too much. More money from a better job simply means I can get my loans paid faster. Besides, if I had too much money I'd probably stuff my room with too many figures and have a problem.

At least I've still got a strong goal and determination for learning Japanese. In my job working as a bookstore employee, or as a janitor, or as a cashier, or anything else, I can at least think of myself as being proficient in Japanese by that point. I don't think 2 more years on top of my current experience (which I've lost track of how long by now) would be an unreasonable time frame for me to be well versed in the language. I don't see myself dropping this determination. In fact, it's the only thing I've ever actually taken initiative and interest to sit down and study in my life. The only thing I really have a passion to learn. If I don't find success in Japanese, I really can't see myself succeeding in anything else. It'd be a huge fall, and a huge failure. But I'm not worried about this, because I've no doubts that I'll continue. I've come too far and I'm still far too determined to back out. That's why I can see myself being able to read novels and VNs fluently, even as a cashier. I can see myself taking my breaks in the bookstore to sit in a private corner and pull out a Japanese novel, reading through the pages at the rate I could read  through with my native language (maybe faster, kanji makes reading feel fast even at my current level). Because I really think that no matter what happens to me by that point in the future, my hard work now would shine by then.

But that's enough for today's shitpost. I downloaded Solanin yesterday and I'm going to give it a watch right now. Thanks for reading. Or skimming, I understand since my post is such a wall and I don't even know when to properly highlight certain points with bold or italics.. Or even just coming to this page to look at my image, that's fine too.

~ Kirari ミ★