New SSiB Translation

[Leukadios No.]

It's storytime, bitches.

[Leukadios No.]

>>33238603

[Leukadios No.]

>>33238666
No edit here because I don't have the photoshop chops to remove that text without damaging the art

[Leukadios No.]

>>33238676

[Leukadios No.]

>>33238685

[Anonymous No.]

Where did you get this? The scanlations I read on mangadex look like crap.

[Leukadios No.]

>>33238692

[Leukadios No.]

>>33238697
>Where did you get this?
From yours truly.

>>33238698

[Leukadios No.]

>>33238719
Forgot TN for previous page:
>1. Ama-no-Iwato-Wake-no-Mikoto: A Shinto god of Boundaries and thresholds.

[Anonymous No.]

Will you upload this to mangadex or some other site like Mega when you finish dumping?

[Leukadios No.]

>>33238741

[Leukadios No.]

>>33238755

>>33238750
I was planning to upload it to Dynasty but I may distribute it elsewhere as well.

[Leukadios No.]

>>33238770

[Leukadios No.]

>>33238780

[Leukadios No.]

>>33238788
>2. Eight Hundred Myriad Gods—collective epithet for the Shinto pantheon.

[Leukadios No.]

>>33238803
>3. Inaba—In Reisen’s name, this is spelled in katakana as イナバ, whereas in Tewi’s, it is spelled in kanji as 因幡. The latter is the same Inaba as in the tale of the White Hare of Inaba from the Kojiki. Also, the "w" in "Tewi" is silent.
>4. Daikoku-sama—A god who helps the titular white hare in the aforementioned narrative. Also known as Ookuninushi-no-Mikoto.

[Leukadios No.]

>>33238833

[Anonymous No.]

>>33238719
Really? Good work then.

I did notice that these scans are missing some details, but compared to the old scans, these look much better overall.

[Leukadios No.]

>>33238845

>>33238846
They're not scans, actually; they're kindle rips.

[Leukadios No.]

>>33238857

[Anonymous No.]

Thank you for doing this. Is the old translation incorrect, or what?

[Leukadios No.]

>>33238857
>They're not scans, actually; they're kindle rips.
Which, by the way, means that they're based on the tankobon edition with updated art with less sameface. Pic related for comparison.

>>33238880
In a lot of places, yes. I won't go into examples here, but believe me; it's an infuriatingly bad translation.

[Leukadios No.]

>>33238872
(Actual next page.)

[Leukadios No.]

>>33238938
...I know I just said I wouldn't go into examples, but here's an example.
>[The rabbits] are fraught with panic. -> [The rabbits would just be] so excited...
>Rabbits love to exaggerate, so we cannot be certain that that account is entirely accurate. -> That's because the rabbits are such noisy liars. Who would know what to believe?

[Leukadios No.]

>>33238938
(Actual next page.)
It begins!

[Anonymous No.]

>>33239000
Doing God's work, anon.

[Leukadios No.]

>>33239015
My pleasure.

>>33239008

[Leukadios No.]

>>33239019

[Leukadios No.]

>>33239031

[Leukadios No.]

>>33239057

[Leukadios No.]

>>33239073

[Leukadios No.]

>>33239087

[Leukadios No.]

>>33239101

[Leukadios No.]

>>33239113

[Leukadios No.]

>>33239124

[Leukadios No.]

>>33239140

[Leukadios No.]

>>33239152
IT BEGINS

[Leukadios No.]

>>33239170

[Anonymous No.]

>>33238906
>In a lot of places, yes. I won't go into examples here, but believe me; it's an infuriatingly bad translation.
I'm looking forward to seeing how this changes things. If it does at all.

[Leukadios No.]

>>33239179
And this concludes the first chapter. I should make it clear that I'm taking many minor liberties with this translation. For example, in >>33239087 and >>33239140, Yukari actually promises Goki and Zenki "two tenths" and "three tenths" more reward than each other, using the slightly old-fashioned wari (割) unit. The Gaku Gaku Animal Land translation renders this as "20%" and "30%", which is technically more correct, but problematic because there are characters in this manga who actually speak in terms of percents, and Yukari isn't one of them.

[Leukadios No.]

Now for an important message!

[Anonymous No.]

>>33239559
>[e-mail]
how old is that? I don't know if cock.li is still around.

[Leukadios No.]

Oh, and you also may notice that I'm slaughtering a few cows that some may consider sacred:
- At >>33238788 I use "banish" as a translation for a word that has traditionally been translated as "exterminate". I don't like the word "exterminate", because that implies that Reimu is killing the youkai, which she's not.
- At >>33238803 I translate "Yaoyorozu" as "Eight Hundred Myriad", which shows up in old translations of the Kojiki but is afaik novel to Touhou translations.
- At >>33238872 I render "Brain of the Moon" as "Mastermind of the Moon", because the former makes me imagine a literal, physical brain at the core of the satellite itself. I could have translated it as "Brains of the Moon", but that sounds a little silly, especially next to an epithet like "Sinner of an Instant and an Eternity".

>>33239583
Yes, cock.li is still around.

[Anonymous No.]

I get the feeling I've seen your name before too.

[Leukadios No.]

>>33239684
This thread is the first time I've ever used this name, so if you've met any other Leukadioses, they weren't me.

[Anonymous No.]

>>33238938
Moonie propaganda! The Star Spangled Banner yet waves over the Moon!!! We won the war!

[Anonymous No.]

>>33240239
Wave yet it might, but star-spangled it is no more. Its white represents your shameful defeat at the hands of superior Lunarian technology!

[Anonymous No.]

>>33254104
The sun wipes all, even the blood of the Lunar menace as you seem to have forgotten.

[Anonymous No.]

>>33239672
I'd say 'brains of the moon' sounds better, if only because mastermind of the moon seems to imply that the moon is some evil plan that eirin is in charge of.
Not sure about 'banish', either, since there are lots of instances where 'exterminate' actually meant exterminate, like all the youkai that get actually killed in FS, by not only reimu, but marisa and mamizou as well.
that said, you're the one with the japanese knowledge here, so I defer to you. Just my two pennies, though.

[Leukadios No.]

>>33254650
Feedback is absolutely welcome! It's a big reason I chose to debut this as a storytime on /jp/ instead of uploading it straight to a scanlation site. You guys know Touhou. I know some Touhou, but not enough to make this translation as good as I'd like it to be without your help.

>Not sure about 'banish', either, since there are lots of instances where 'exterminate' actually meant exterminate, like all the youkai that get actually killed in FS, by not only reimu, but marisa and mamizou as well.
The word is 退治 (taiji), the basic meaning of which is "riddance" or "suppression". It is used for lethal pest extermination ("The exterminator got rid of my rat infestation,") but also for things like the suppression of criminal presence ("I will rid the seas of pirates!")... and for exorcism. It's mainly because of that last meaning that I chose the word "banish", to communicate a sense of expelling a malevolent supernatural entity. We don't really use the word "exterminate" for that in English.

>I'd say 'brains of the moon' sounds better, if only because mastermind of the moon seems to imply that the moon is some evil plan that eirin is in charge of.
You're right, "mastermind" does have pretty sinister connotations. "Brains of the Moon" is definitely the best translation as far as basic meaning is concerned: the word being translated (頭脳, zunou) does literally mean "brain" and is used figuratively in the sense of "the brains of [an operation]". The only reason I'm reluctant to go with "brains" is because it sounds a little silly, but maybe that's just me.

[Anonymous No.]

>>33255445
it's always great to find a translator open to all sorts of feedback, so I'm glad to be of some (limited) help. I do think it's important to be able to escape some of your own biases in translation, especially with stuff like 'it sounds kind of silly'. There's a lot of stuff that can seem kind of silly in translation, but silly doesn't necessarily mean bad.

[Anonymous No.]

ok thank god the translation on mangadex is just bad I thought i was a moron for not liking it and not getting it

[Leukadios No.]

>>33255510
You don't need to be a carpenter to tell if a set of chair legs are about to give way underneath you; you don't need to be a translator to identify a bad translation. Just ask, "Does this dialogue form a coherent conversation? Am I getting a sense of the character's emotions from the words they use? Do the words make sense in the contexts they're used in?" If you can't answer "yes", you're probably looking at a bad translation. Gaku Gaku Animal Land SSiB fails all three of those tests even before you get into the actual inaccuracies of the translation.

[Anonymous No.]

>>33255864
Not him but I'm a novice to translations. I didn't know about the inaccuracies test, but makes sense when it seems unnatural for the characters or even the overall situation.

[Leukadios No.]

>>33255505
Iff a native speaker of the original language reading the original text would find a thing silly, then it's good for that thing to be silly in the translation as well. Otherwise, silliness is not ideal. But it's not the end of the world either.

>>33255928
It's not a test for whether a translation is correct so much as a test for whether a translation is coherent. For another metaphor: you need to know your destination in order to tell whether your taxi has dropped you off at the right place, but you DON'T need to know that in order to tell that your taxi has crashed.

[Anonymous No.]

>>33255445
>to communicate a sense of expelling a malevolent supernatural entity
you probably just want exorcism

[Anonymous No.]

Awesome, I was considering rereading SSIB so this has come at the perfect time. Thankyou so much for the better translations and improved visual quality.

How far along is this retranslation project?

Regarding >>33255445 and the use of “exterminate”, I’ve always found that word’s usage in the series weird. It’s always used regardless of how badly the opponent was beaten, so as a translation it’s not great. Didnt know it had to do with a phrase about actual pest extermination in Japanese, that explains a lot.

How about using the word ‘exorcise’ as a translation? That word is nebulous enough to cover spirit extermination, banishment and appeasement. It would also carry some of the ‘pest exterminator’ connotation in the sense that Reimu is doing a job of sorts. May not be as direct a translation as ‘exterminator’ but now that I know why that word has always been used, I dont really agree with using it.

I actually used to think ‘exterminate’ was sometimes intentionally misused by Reimu to cover up the fact she’s not really always exterminating youkai but sometimes just beating or appeasing them. Funny that it was just wonky translation this whole time.

[Leukadios No.]

>>33258042
>How far along is this retranslation project?
Pic related. I've been working on it for a little over a month now. Chapter 2 is translated but not fully cleaned and typeset. Chapter 3 is mostly translated. Chapter 4 is partially translated. If/when I can find someone who can help me with the image manipulation, progress should speed up significantly.

Again: whoever thinks he can help, let him write to me at the email address "toehoe" at the domain "cock.li"!

>How about using the word ‘exorcise’ as a translation? That word is nebulous enough to cover spirit extermination, banishment and appeasement.
I don't know. "Exorcise" focuses on the procedure. It brings to mind someone sprinkling a place with salt or anointing with oil or carrying out whatever other rituals are required to chase off demons in whatever tradition of spiritualism is practiced in your culture. "Banish" focuses on the result: whatever your means, you are forcing the demons to leave. 退治 is similarly result-focused: some things are 退治する'd with salt, others with traps and poison, others with lead. The only similarity here is the end result of being rid of something. And even just with respect to youkai, not every form of 退治 can really be called an exorcism. The word is also used in contexts where we would say "slay", in the sense meaning "to heroically kill a monster". It carries this forceful sense of "conquering" or "defeating" that "exorcise" doesn't quite get at. "Banish" doesn't get at it directly either, but at least it sounds a little more forceful.

This is a word that really doesn't have any perfect translation that will work in every context, not even in every context within limited subset of its meaning that Touhou uses. The best solution will be to switch up what word is used depending on the context. I'm probably going to end up writing some big commentary files discussing all my translation decisions where I go through the recurring words that I'm translating inconsistently and list which alternatives I use where.

Banish. Expel. Eradicate. Defeat. Conquer. Vanquish.

>Funny that it was just wonky translation this whole time.
The English Touhou corpus in its current state is full of wonky translations just like that. It's what you get when you have an army of well-meaning amateurs building on top of one another's work.

[Anonymous No.]

>>33259758
>It brings to mind someone sprinkling a place with salt or anointing with oil or carrying out whatever other rituals are required to chase off demons in whatever tradition of spiritualism is practiced in your culture.
It may not be the most historically precise, but exorcism is plenty forceful in the Western popular tradition as well as the anime-adjacent subculture. In Western popular culture, exorcism is less about knowing the exact oils to use in a sacred ritual and more about some crazy looking dude in a trench-coat banishing the devil through sheer force of faith or will.

In anime it only gets even more blatant, pretty much anyone who does magical combat with evil spirits or the minions of hell gets labeled an exorcist. I don't think anyone is in danger of mistaking exorcism for a largely peaceful state of affairs.

[Anonymous No.]

>>33259758
>Pic related.
I think you forgot something, friend.

My knowledge of Japanese ends after hiragana and some katakana so I didn’t realize there was also an aggressive connotation in the original word.

Reimu seems to use it almost like a catchphrase, in which case it’d probably be best to be consistent with the word. But in all other cases maybe it would work to change it depending on context? I don’t know.

I think exorcism sounds forceful but I think of the word as related to stuff like The Exorcist and other over the top Christian Hollywood movies where priests are shouting at demons in storms of flying furniture and such. I don’t know if that’s a result of living in a Western context or just me.

What about ‘purge’?

>I'm probably going to end up writing some big commentary files discussing all my translation decisions where I go through the recurring words that I'm translating inconsistently and list which alternatives I use where.
Please do.

>The English Touhou corpus in its current state is full of wonky translations just like that.
Interesting, but not surprising. Any particularly glaring examples?

[Anonymous No.]

>>33257176
>all your base are belong to us
I'm in ur base. killing ur dudes

[Leukadios No.]

>>33262142
>I think you forgot something, friend.
Oops!

[Anonymous No.]

I'll look for SSiB again.
What do you think about the other translated works?

[Levkadios No.]

>>33260953
>exorcism is less about knowing the exact oils to use in a sacred ritual and more about some crazy looking dude in a trench-coat banishing the devil through sheer force of faith or will.

>>33262142
>I think exorcism sounds forceful but I think of the word as related to stuff like The Exorcist and other over the top Christian Hollywood movies where priests are shouting at demons in storms of flying furniture and such. I don’t know if that’s a result of living in a Western context or just me.

I never thought about it that way, but you're right. The only difference I see here is that Reimu often physically fights with youkai (albeit with what basically amounts to a soft-sparring martial art) in order to 退治する them. Physical combat falls under the basic definition of 退治 even outside of the context of action-packed contemporary entertainment: again, slaying an oni with a sword counts. Pic related is the example picture that Pixiv dictionary uses for the tag called 退治.

>What about ‘purge’?
I can see the /tg/ memes already, lol. Actually not a bad recommendation!

>Interesting, but not surprising. Any particularly glaring examples?
Hmm, let's see. "Extermination" is the worst one I've discovered so far, but let's see:
- 賽銭 (saisen) -- "donation". What Reimu never gets any of. This is an explicitly religious term, so I prefer to translate it as "offering".
- 妖術 (youjutsu) -- "sorcery". Chen's ability, as well as the source of Byakuren's power. In general this isn't that bad translation of the word, but the 妖 is the same "you" as in "youkai", so in Touhou the word has a specific connection with the powers of youkai. For example, since Byakuren's immortality is derived from youjutsu she started sheltering youkai: if youkai died out, the power of her youjutsu would fade, and she would die with them.

Some more minor, "easy fix" departures from convention I'll be taking for my SSiB translation:
- "Hourai Elixir" -> "Elixir of Hourai". Hourai is a place, a land of deathless bliss in Chinese mythology, so "Elixir of Hourai" would probably be more apt (and would just sound nicer).
- "Lunar Capital" -> "Capital of the Moon". The latter has a more fairy-tale-like sound to it, which is more appropriate given that the phrase itself originates from the Tale of the Bamboo Cutter.

>>33272735
Touhou translation seems to have come quite a ways since the late aughts when this was first translated, but... >>33273882

[Anonymous No.]

>>33274777
Thanks for the rundown, and thanks again for your work retranslating.

I wonder if ‘dark arts’ would be a better translation for youjutsu. I definitely feel like I’ve missed some context by reading it as sorcery. Chen’s spellcards make way more sense if her magic is derived from youkai essences. I’ve been playing pcb lately and her references to red and blue oni in the extra stage felt somewhat out of left field compared to her stage 2 spells, with the only connection I saw being that some of her stage 2 spells use a red and blue color scheme. I figured that was her showing her ‘true powers’ but I guess this was also just a result of weird translation. If youjutsu is sort of like using youkai essence as magic it makes perfect sense for her to call on the red and blue oni.

I guess ‘dark arts’ wouldnt really clear that up either though. Maybe ‘devilry’ would do it but that’s a little too focused on mischief and not enough on magic.

Well, I’m not gonna retranslate the games so it’s a moot point I guess. Knowing that original word does clear some things up though.

[Anonymous No.]

Thank you so much. iirc back in the day Eirin's title used to be translated as Brain of the Moon or Genius of the Moon. For some reason Brain's the one that stuck, must be what was in the patch. Mastermind of the Moon is good.

[Anonymous No.]

>>33274777
Offering works better. Donation works too, but it never had the same feel to it if that makes sense.
"No shrine offerings this week"
>Byakuren's immortality is derived from youjutsu she started sheltering youkai: if youkai died out, the power of her youjutsu would fade, and she would die with them.
That's interesting

[Anonymous No.]

does reading the original standalone patch for EoSD give you an aneurysm?
Also, I wonder what you think of Cage in Lunatic Runagate? Was the translation for that poor as well? I refer back to it a lot when I'm talking about characters like Mokou, since it's pretty much the most characterization she ever received.
That said, I've heard some horror stories about trying to fix translations on the touhou wiki, because there's loads of people who sit on certain pages and revert any and all changes made to them.

[Anonymous No.]

>>33283212
>does reading the original standalone patch for EoSD give you an aneurysm?
That's a very good question actually.
I want to know what changes if it's sub-par

[Anonymous No.]

Bump

[Anonymous No.]

>>33285206
there's no way to read eosd's dialogue without having an aneurysm. better translations can't save you when the original doesn't even make sense in the first place.

[Anonymous No.]

>>33290873
I could’ve sworn I read in an interview somewhere that he wanted the game to feel dreamlike and tried to make things sort of ambiguous to achieve that, including dialog.

I don’t remember exactly where I got that from, though.

[Anonymous No.]

My vote against banish for all purposes. It's weaksauce. Banishing is what you get when you have to beseech a rituals master to get a spirit to stop haunting something tied to an accident in my perception, whereas exorcising is when you have a more forceful confrontation to do. Exorcism sounds good to me and somewhat flexible for both destruction and mere removal. Purge also, even expel. In the context of supernatural entities, banish only puts me in the mind of its dismissal and evacuation. Hardly suitable for something which can encompass outright extermination. If you insist on being precise on the result focus, I wouldn't insist on a single word because there isn't any word I can think of which is suitable, and would urge you to switch between words as the situation demands. If you insist on the catchphrase instead, then I'd say pick the stronger word as a deterrent.

I don't know what you have against Brain of the Moon. The fact that it makes you think of a literal brain sounds extremely silly and literal. On the contrary, it being singular, no plural, makes it obvious it does not refer to a physiological fleshy subject, and sounds suitably evocative in comparison to the pompous and a little ridiculous mastermind.

>>33238770
Slap zips or whichever aggregate format you like up on some file sharing. The usual suspects will be wanting them for archiving purposes anyway.

[Anonymous No.]

>>33291311
>tried to make things sort of ambiguous to achieve that, including dialog
Well he certainly did achieve that. Everything leaves you hanging.

[Anonymous No.]

>>33283212
>does reading the original standalone patch for EoSD give you an aneurysm?
God yes. As others in this thread have said, the original doesn't make too much sense either, but the translation moves it from surreal to non sequitur. It's a difficult text to translate to be sure, but the old static patch does a poor job of it by being too literal.

>Also, I wonder what you think of Cage in Lunatic Runagate?
It's flawed, but it's not obviously broken the way the SSiB translation is. (Of course, it might be broken in non-obvious ways; I haven't examined it that closely.)

>>33291406
>I don't know what you have against Brain of the Moon. The fact that it makes you think of a literal brain sounds extremely silly and literal. On the contrary, it being singular, no plural, makes it obvious it does not refer to a physiological fleshy subject, and sounds suitably evocative in comparison to the pompous and a little ridiculous mastermind.
In Japanese, 頭脳 carries a figurative meaning that the English singular word "brain" does not. "Brain of the Moon" is unidiomatic and thus apt to conjure images of the literal meaning of the words before it conjures their intended figurative meaning, no matter how silly those images are. "Brains of the Moon", on the other hand, is readily recognizable to someone with native or near-native mastery of the English language because we uses expressions like "the brains of the operation". Thank you for your feedback on the word "mastermind", though; I'll take that into consideration.

[Lefkadios No.]

>>33296740
Forgot name, whoops.
You'll also notice that I've changed the spelling

[Lefkadios No.]

>>33296752
...I should know better than to try to edit my post while the timer is counting down. Anyway, I was going to say that I changed the spelling to be consistent with the Modern Greek pronunciation of Λευκάδιος.

[Anonymous No.]

.

[Anonymous No.]

Are you gonna have an extra page for the TNs

Thing about using "banish" is that I'm pretty sure 退治 gets tossed around in a lot of contexts and I'm not sure banish is really a flexible-enough word. iirc in SoPM Byakuren asks them to use a different phrase from 退治, so maybe it should sound a little harsher than just banish. I dunno, probably all the options sound a little weird, banish, exterminate, exorcise, etc.

You're translating sama as Madam (vs say Lady) because Yuyuko and Kaguya actually have noble backgrounds while Ran's just Yukari's underling? Just curious because honorifics always throw me.

[Anonymous No.]

I would argue that translating honorifics isn't worth the headache.
They're used in too many context, and unless you want to be trying to keep all the different translations you've used in your head, it's just not necessary. I also can't really see anyone using 'Madame' in the way you've got Ran using it to refer to Yukari. You'd almost be better off just having Ran refer to her as 'Master' or 'Mistress', though I'd personally just leave honorifics untranslated and include a T/N if there's an instance where the same honorific has different enough meaning.

[Anonymous No.]

>>33296740
>Brain of the Moon" is unidiomatic and thus apt to conjure images of the literal meaning of the words before it conjures their intended figurative meaning,
Hard disagree. It's immediately obvious it is a figurative title specifically because it's a non-standard usage of the term. It makes your reader pause to parse it, a which point the context (translated manga) instead evokes the way asian compound monikers end up grandiloquent multi-word titles in English, which is much more familiar to English readers reading translations, and helps understand it as a title.
Brains of the moon on the other hand is much less obvious because the plural dilutes the emphasis and "brains of the operation" then misleads your reader into thinking about what's behind what they see, because that's the context of its use. So instead, it evokes, "Who/What's behind Eirin?" , and that leads to the lunarians. At which point, yes, it does evoke the wrong image.

[Anonymous No.]

.

[Anonymous No.]

>>33238685
>The time is come!
Dropped

[Lefkadios No.]

>>33306504
>Are you gonna have an extra page for the TNs
Yes; pic related. I thought I had uploaded in this thread but I guess I haven't.

>Thing about using "banish" is that I'm pretty sure 退治 gets tossed around in a lot of contexts and I'm not sure banish is really a flexible-enough word.
No word is flexible enough, unfortunately, which is why I'll be using different translations of that word in different contexts.

>You're translating sama as Madam (vs say Lady) because Yuyuko and Kaguya actually have noble backgrounds while Ran's just Yukari's underling? Just curious because honorifics always throw me.
Yes, that's what I'm trying. I've always disliked "Lord" or "Lady" as a generic translation of "-sama"; those terms imply noble status—but of course, some people in Touhou do have noble status. This is just something I'm trying; I'm open to changing it if people dislike it.

>>33306540
I'm not going to translate every instance of "X-sama" as "Madam X" or "Lady X", but I will always attempt to convey the meaning of that honorific in the dialogue somehow (that meaning being a sense of deference and respect). Also, I do indeed keep track of different translations I've used in different places—not in my head, but in my notes.

[Lefkadios No.]

>>33314724
What, you didn't know that up until quite recently in English the perfect tense was expressed using the auxiliary verb "has" for verbs involving a change in the object and the auxiliary verb "is" for verbs involving a change in the subject? You didn't know that this is the reason why still say "I am done" or "I am finished" to express that we have completed something we had been doing? Whatever do they teach children in school these days?

[Anonymous No.]

>>33315070
Nice work fren, it's good seing new translations
I really wish this manga was available in English on paper tho, but official translations of 2hu suck (AoCF, FS)

Do you have an archive of SSiB textless? I’d like to try some lettering for myself

[Lefkadios No.]

>>33320403
>Do you have an archive of SSiB textless? I’d like to try some lettering for myself
I don't, unfortunately. That's going to be the biggest obstacle going forward. There are some very nasty redrawing jobs up ahead.

[Lefkadios No.]

Does anyone have scans of PMiSS at a higher resolution than pic related? Dear God please let there be higher resolution scans of PMiSS than pic related.

[Anonymous No.]

>>33314956
>which is why I'll be using different translations of that word in different contexts.
If there's an important repeated phrase that you translate differently, that's a crap translation. Your english readers are missing out on information you could be conveying to them. If you use different words, it's not clear in english if there's different levels of Reimu's actions towards youkai when in the end it's all just taiji. In a 2hu lore thread down the line I don't want someone asking "what's the difference between youkai banishing and defeating youkai, youkai vanquishing etc?" and have the answer be "There's no difference, Lafcadio was dicking around".

Extirminate sounds weird in most contexts but at least its consistent. Pick something and stick to it even if it's just "getting rid of youkai"

[Anonymous No.]

>>33323350
I don't.

[Anonymous No.]

>>33325067
>Pick something and stick to it even if it's just "getting rid of youkai"
It would be nice if there were explanations in the story itself that explained her actions as a shrine maiden. Not everyone has prior knowledge, so going about saying "she gets rid of troublesome youkai through the means of extermination. They don't really die or anything" would be beneficial. I don't know how it can be achieved without authors notes.

[Lefkadios No.]

>>33325067
>In a 2hu lore thread down the line I don't want someone asking "what's the difference between youkai banishing and defeating youkai, youkai vanquishing etc?" and have the answer be "There's no difference, Lafcadio was dicking around".
The thing is, there IS a difference between those things; it's just that the word 退治 does not make the distinction. English, unfortunately, can't get rid of the distinction, and attempting to do so by shoehorning a word into contexts where it doesn't fit can lead to confusion of the sort that >>33258042 experienced in thinking that Reimu was lying about having exterminated a youkai when she had only beaten it. Ideally, the reader shouldn't have to think about the difference between "exorcising" a youkai and "defeating" it or "driving it off"; they should just read it and interpret it in a roughly similar way to how a Japanese speaker reading the Japanese version would interpret the word 退治 in that context. This does unfortunately diminish the significance that the Japanese builds up around the word 退治 through repetition, but for this translation it's a higher priority of mine to make sure the dialogue flows naturally and communicates its message than it is to preserve the significance of every word.

Another example (which >>33262142 should find interesting) of a word that is difficult to translate because of multiple meanings is 人形 (ningyou), usually translated "doll". This is the word used for the things that Alice uses for puppets, so in many cases the most apt translation is "puppet". But the sense of 人形 meaning "doll" as in the girls' toy is also relevant. Alice plays with dolls, isn't that sweet? On a less sweet note, she nails straw dolls (藁人形, wara-ningyou) to trees as effigies. And the SMT demon she's party based on plays with dolls that are clearly not puppets. All this fits together thematically because the Japanese language does not usually make a lexical distinction between puppets and dolls. But English has no such word, and if you try to use more specific words in this more general sense, you get strange results. You also lose meaning, because depending on the context 人形 may have connotations that "puppet" does and "doll" doesn't. The same goes for 退治.

(Incidentally, it turns out that there's another word that shows in Touhou that's often translated as "exterminate", and that's 駆除 (kakujo), which is much closer in meaning to the limited sense of the English word "exterminate". It's applied to beast youkai like Nazrin and Wriggle who are associated with pests.)

[Lefkadios No.]

>>33329995
>But English has no such word,
Fuck. I mean that English has no word that means both "puppet" and "doll".

[Anonymous No.]

>>33330026
No worries friend.
brb.

[Anonymous No.]

>>33332516
This thread has been an interesting read.

[Anonymous No.]

>>33329995
I think you can translate it as just one thing like defeat or exorcise and people can still interpret it based on context. That's not exclusive to the japanese language.

I think 退治 can be weird even in Japanese. For things you normally 退治 , whether its termites or dragons or pirates, you don't 退治 them and then have them show up all chummy at your flower viewing like what happens in touhou.

[Anonymous No.]

Woah, danger zone.

[Anonymous No.]

>>33329995
>Another example (which >>33262142 should find interesting) of a word that is difficult to translate because of multiple meanings is 人形 (ningyou), usually translated "doll". This is the word used for the things that Alice uses for puppets, so in many cases the most apt translation is "puppet".
Puppets are operated by sticking your hand inside them. If it's controlled with strings, it's a marionette. Alice has never used puppets AFAIK.

> But the sense of 人形 meaning "doll" as in the girls' toy is also relevant. Alice plays with dolls, isn't that sweet? On a less sweet note, she nails straw dolls (藁人形, wara-ningyou) to trees as effigies. And the SMT demon she's party based on plays with dolls that are clearly not puppets. All this fits together thematically because the Japanese language does not usually make a lexical distinction between puppets and dolls. But English has no such word, and if you try to use more specific words in this more general sense, you get strange results. You also lose meaning, because depending on the context 人形 may have connotations that "puppet" does and "doll" doesn't. The same goes for 退治.
English does have a word for dolls with both "darling" and "witchcraft" associations, though: "Poppet".

[Anonymous No.]

>>33329995
>Ideally, the reader shouldn't have to think about the difference between "exorcising" a youkai and "defeating" it or "driving it off";

The thing is I think exorcise has a broad enough meaning that it covers defeating, driving off, banishing, destroying and even pacifying. In most Western works exorcised demons often aren’t destroyed, just chased back to hell. It can also cover complete destruction or purification though. The purification thing would mean appeasement isn’t much of a stretch at all as far as potential meanings go.

It also might clear things up if we have a better idea of what context you’d use a different word. If it’s Reimu saying her little tagline then it should always be “Exorcism complete” unless she changes it in the original language. Now if it’s something like youkai talking about how Reimu chased them out of someplace, I could see why you might have them say “Reimu expelled us” or something instead of exorcised.

[Anonymous No.]

May as well ask here

Reisen’s name is written in katakana right? So does it actually have a meaning or is it just a sound? Would Raisin actually be an in/accurate translation of her name?

I know about the Inaba name lore stuff, more curious about her given name.

[Anonymous No.]

>>33349550
Reisen (the dumb bunny only good for her sex appeal) has her name spelt with Kanji, while Reisen 2 has it spelt in katakana. The watatsuki's name her Reisen (2) because of Reisen (1), so it is to be pronounced the same way.

[Anonymous No.]

>>33349550
>Reisen’s name is written in katakana right? So does it actually have a meaning or is it just a sound?
Katakana are phonetic, yes. In that レイセン is a *transcription* of her name. To put it another way: if her name was Bob, ZUN would write it as ボッブ (Bobbu), and say she took a kanji name that's read as Bobbu.

Then LoLK made things more confusing by introducing moon rabbits who already had kanji-based names. Maybe they're Earthaboos?

>Would Raisin actually be an in/accurate translation of her name?
Depends on your accent, really.

[Anonymous No.]

>>33238603
>Spam

[Anonymous No.]

Without trying to sound rude or cause any offense, can I just ask... Is English your native language?
Some of the things brought up in this thread, and some of the translations you've used, are using archaic grammar or word use, such as 'madam' and using 'is' instead of 'has'
They're not necessarily wrong, after all, but they are archaic and not generally (or much at all, even) used in modern English.

[Anonymous No.]

I am wondering why you chose to omit an article in front of the word "vampire"?
Also, I think genius would fit better for Eirin than mastermind.

[Anonymous No.]

>>33347100
>Puppets are operated by sticking your hand inside them. If it's controlled with strings, it's a marionette. Alice has never used puppets AFAIK.
"Puppet" is a generic term for any object in the form of a living creature that can be animated by a performer who manipulates it. Puppets that you operate by pulling strings are called marionettes. Puppets that you operate by sticking your hand inside are called hand puppets. The reason why "puppet" usually means "hand puppet" these days is presumably because hand puppets are the most popular type of puppet these days.

>English does have a word for dolls with both "darling" and "witchcraft" associations, though: "Poppet".
You are correct! Fuck, now I'm imagining a vocal arrangement of Doll Judgment featuring a yandere Alice using Western-style poppet magic on Marisa...

>>33349550
As >>33349744 and >>33349888 say, there are actually two Reisens, one from the games and a second one from this manga (specifically, her >>33239073). Reisen 1 spells her name with kanji; the Reisen 2 just uses katakana. Reisen 1 spelled her name in katakana while she was on the moon, but adopted a kanji spelling when she came to Earth in order to blend in among the Earthlings. But these kanji (鈴仙) were chosen for their pronunciations, they don't mean much as kanji themselves. "Bell" and "immortal Taoist mountain hermit like Toyosatomimi no Miko", respectively. ZUN actually calls this spelling "quite contrived" in her IN profile.

>>33350226
Yes, I am a native speaker. The more literary style of language is a semi-conscious choice on my part. This chapter is a bit of an outlier because Yukari (>1200-year-old Daiyoukai), Ran (mathematician shikigami of said Daiyoukai), Eirin (ancient sage implied to be a manifestation of Yagokoro-no-Omoikane), and Kaguya (THE Princess Kaguya!) get lots of lines, and that's just how those characters sound in my head. The other characters -- Reimu, Marisa, the rabbits -- speak in a more conversational register.

As for "Madam", that's mainly an experimental translation of the -sama honorific. GGAL translates -sama as "Miss", which actually isn't the worst of choices as long as you don't also use it for "-san", but A) it does imply that you're unmarried, and B) it just doesn't quite sound honorific enough. "Ms." sounds bland and possibly anachronistic; "Madam" sounds interesting.

As for two lines you didn't mention but which I know you're thinking of:
>It begins... that pure and righteous battle of the arrogant Lunarian race for dominion over the Capital of the Moon... the Lunar War.
>It begins! That fair and beauteous battle of fantasy! The Second Lunar War!
both of these lines use clearly archaic wording in the Japanese.

>>33350565
>I am wondering why you chose to omit an article in front of the word "vampire"?
Typo. Thank you for pointing it out; this is why I'm showing this to you guys before disseminating it elsewhere.

[Anonymous No.]

.

[Anonymous No.]

>>33296740
So this has stirred my interest in cleaning up the CiLR stories and posting them as .5 chapters on Mangadex, like some of the "English editions" fans have made. Just to confirm, you don't currently have any plans for those yourself? Because I don't want to snipe you.

[Anonymous No.]

>>33350565
>Also, I think genius would fit better for Eirin than mastermind.

>The Scholar of the Moon
>The Egghead of the Moon
>The Thinker of the Moon
>The Brainiac of the Moon
>The Noggin of the Moon
>The Expert of the Moon

[Anonymous No.]

>>33368779
>The Polymath of the Moon
>The Virtuoso of the Moon
>The Factotum of the Moon
>The Wizard of the Moon
>The Architect of the Moon

[Anonymous No.]

>>33368810
Polymath, Virtuoso and Factotum sound pretty badass

[Anonymous No.]

>>33368915
virtuoso implies she were a musical genius though

[Anonymous No.]

>>33350565
Savant is like Genius, but smarter

[Anonymous No.]

still going to call her Brain of the Moon thanks

[Lefkadios No.]

>>33366323
When I posted this first chapter on Mangadex someone recommended that in a comment. I'm actually not that familiar with Mangadex; can you upload plain old prose in text form or do you have to typeset it in an image file?

I don't have any plans to do CiLR now, so go ahead. Shoot me an email with contact info so we can coordinate our translations for consistency with each other!

[Anonymous No.]

>>33351617
>"Ms." sounds bland and possibly anachronistic
Wait, what's anachronistic about "Ms"? Not that I'd suggest it as a translation for -sama, but I must be a baka because I have no idea what you're talking about.

[Anonymous No.]

>>33238803
>>33239672
>The Eight Hundred Myriad
Why not "The Myriad Gods"? That's a way more common translation, and less clunky.

[Anonymous No.]

>>33239672
What's Marisa's tone in >>33238788 ?
>"If we get stronger, we'll just be better at banishing them!"

Would it be appropriate to use something like
>"If we get stronger, we'll just be better at kicking their butts!"
?

I mean, "butt-kicking" is a bit too casual to use for *every* instance of 退治, but aside from that I think the implications of the term are about right. And seeing Marisa talk formally is weird.

[Anonymous No.]

>>33368915
Polymath and Factotum imply a wide range of skills, and the others overlap with her "Sage of the Moon" title.

"Architect of the Moon" is... a title she has a legitimate claim to, given that she helped them move there in the first place. "Thinker of the Moon" also sounds good, giving the vibe of a bottomlessly deep mind.

[Anonymous No.]

>>33368915
Polymath and Factotum imply a wide range of skills, and the others overlap with her "Sage of the Moon" title.

"Architect of the Moon" is... a title she has a legitimate claim to, given that she helped them move there in the first place.

"Thinker of the Moon" also sounds good, giving the vibe of a bottomlessly deep mind. And considering her name 八意 (Yagokoro) can be translated as "infinite thoughts"...

[Anonymous No.]

>>33370878
PNG only. Might be easier to post the draft I had here, so that more people can comment on it. Though it's edited from the Touhouwiki version rather than starting from scratch.
Translating 話 as "Tale" partly because the stories are episodic, partly because "Chapter 1.5: Chapter 1" would be confusing

Right away, looking at chapter titles, the final one is a two-parter called 二つの望郷, translated on Touhouwiki as
>Two Kinds of Homesickness
Except that while 望郷 does mean "homesickness", the individual kanji can be read as something like "full moon town" - clearly the "two kinds" means both readings are intended. Taking into account puns, the connection to the ending itself being in two parts, and the events within, I planned to go with
>To Moon For Earth, Twice Over
(assuming things get that far)

[Anonymous No.]

>>33377393
Not him but that again runs into the authors notes suggestion from a few posts up.

[Meganisi No.]

>>33383250
The aphorism, from the hardcover edition. I've got some Translation Notes prepared for the end of the chapter that explain the reference.

Original
>考える葦が考えることを止めたのならば、地上は確かに穢れの少ない草原になるだろう。
>月の民はそれを願うのか。

Touhouwiki translation
>If thinking reeds stopped thinking, the Earth would surely become a less impure grassland, I guess.
>Do the Lunarians desire that?

[Meganisi No.]

>>33383250
>>33386506
And this is what I had for page layout. I wanted to capture some of the style of works like "Kwaidan", so I was using old-fashioned diacritic styles and assuming a low power level on the part of the reader (e.g. explaining what mochi is). It probably doesn't work as well in comic form.

Touhouwiki uses "monthly Lunar Festival", a clarification that wasn't necessary in Japanese where "moon" and "month" are literally the same word. I was going to stick with that, but I wanted to match >>33238845

And yes, Reisen's name gets a section in the translation notes.

[Lefkadios No.]

>>33372762
It just seems inappropriate to me for a 1200+-year-old daiyoukai to have her servant to call her such a modern word. "Ms." first came into widespread use in the 1950s. I guess it's not that anachronistic if you assume that everyone is speaking ordinary 21st-century English, but I do feel like Ran and Yukari should sound a bit more old-fashioned than that.

>>33377393
The literal meaning of the word "myriad", which comes from Greek, is ten thousand. The word comes after "thousand" in the same way that "thousand" comes after "hundred": one, ten, one hundred, one thousand, one myriad, ten myriad, one hundred myriad, one thousand myriad...

English just groups its powers of ten into threes, so it doesn't normally need the literal sense of the word "myriad", and the figurative sense meaning "countlessly many" is much more prominent. But when translating languages that do use a myriadic scale, the literal meaning becomes useful again, and Japanese is one of those languages. "Eight Hundred Myriad" is a direct word-for-kanji translation of "Yaoyorozu": 八 (ya) = eight, 百 (o) = hundred 万 (yorozu) = myriad. Normally I would never use so literal a translation, but "Yaoyorozu" is a very old word that first shows up in the Kojiki, which is the closest thing there is to a Shinto Bible, so it's only natural to translate it with a word-sense that shows up in translations of the Christian Bible and other ancient literature.

Incidentally, "Eight Hundred Myriad" is the name used in Meiji-era Japanologist Basil Hall Chamberlain's classic translation of the Kojiki. Most readers probably won't get the reference, but the translation "Myriad of Gods" obscures the reference so that it's impossible to get. The other option, "Eight Million Gods", is problematic because it's more likely to be interpreted as an exact figure.

Lastly, an unusual choice of words is actually a good thing in this case because it makes the proper noun stand out in comic dialogue that's already in all caps.

>>33378184
>What's Marisa's tone in >>...?
Standard tomboyish Marisa-speak da ze:
>なんで妖怪が人間に稽古をつけるんだ？
>力をつけたって自分たちが退治されるだけのに
"Kicking their butts" sounds a little too goofy. If I decide I want the line more informal it'd probably be something like "we're just gonna be better at beating 'em!" I'm trying to tone down Marisa's slanginess in this translation. She isn't super slangy in the Japanese; the defining characteristic of her language is that she talks a bit like a boy. That's hard to get across in English, but excessive slanginess isn't the best answer.

>>33383250
>To Moon For Earth, Twice Over
I don't quite get it, but I have a feeling that the thing I'm not getting is pretty clever.

>>33388572
>Kwaidan
Classy!

I actually wanted to use diacritics in the first place, but I was having too much trouble getting them to work with the fonts I was using. The main reason I've assumed a solid power level was because I didn't want to drown the reader in translation notes. Thinking back on it I could probably do more for accessibility, though, like using phrases like "mochi rice cakes", "odango dumplings", etc.

Come on, hit me up. [e-mail]. 4chan's nice, but it can be difficult to have a focused conversation here.

[Anonymous No.]

>>33389131
Since you seem informed, what translation would you recommend for the Kojiki? Chamberlain’s?

I know I should probably just get back to learning Japanese myself so I can read it in its native language but egghhhh

[Lefkadios No.]

>>33389425
Chamberlain's is the only one I've read. It is not an easy read. It has some pretty odd translation choices, like translating the kanji 御 as "august" seemingly wherever it occurs—Lafcadio Hearn did this too, so it may have been standard at the time. I liked it, but I can't fully recommend it. You'll probably want to go with a more modern translation.

>I know I should probably just get back to learning Japanese myself so I can read it in its native language but egghhhh
Egggghhhhhh harder: remember that the Kojiki is in Old Japanese, and is as far removed from Modern Japanese as Beowulf is from our Modern English. You Will Never. (But if you do, we will all be very proud!)

[Anonymous No.]

I just want to say this thread has been extremely fascinating, and it would be interesting to see what an entire theoretical retranslation of commonly accepted Touhou terms would be like.

[Anonymous No.]

>>33395346
I support more accurate translations, but some of the retranslations here seem a little more like just retranslating for the sake of it. Stuff like Eirin's title and retranslating Lunarians as 'people of the moon' when they're the same thing since the -ian suffix is used for something that belongs to something, as the lunarians belong to luna, especially.

[Meganisi No.]

>>33389131
>using phrases like "mochi rice cakes", "odango dumplings", etc.
That sounds pretty clunky, to be honest. Those are supposed to be common things to the characters speaking, which they can speak about casually and confidently, and using technical language doesn't sell that. Call them either "dango" or "dumplings", but not both (I mean, the story already describes how the dumplings are made by pounding rice, so while I went with the Japanese term I don't think it was badly needed).

Yeah, I did translate "jinja" as "Shinto shrine", but I'm only going to do that once.

I think lengthy translation notes are fine in a comic, as long as they're all at the end of the chapter. Though the way you've included footnotes in speech bubbles is unusual - it's more common for TNs to reference the page number (which is much easier to find in a comic reader), and maybe include samples of the raw or translated page to illustrate it. And stuff like Yaoyorozu is short enough to fit in the margins easily.

I'll get in touch with you, just might take a little while

[Anonymous No.]

>>33395381
>retranslating Lunarians as 'people of the moon'
Both terms exist.

"Lunarians" = 月人 (tsukibito)
"People of the Moon" = 月の民 (tsuki no tami)

It's normally pretty consistent, but in >>33386506 Touhouwiki was translating 月の民 as Lunarians.

[Anonymous No.]

>>33395346
Some of the weird ones are "magician" and "hermit". Though hermit is reinforced by WaHH, and other common translations like "sage", "immortal" and "wizard" all have issues.

There's also how "mahou" and "youjutsu" both tend to get translated as "magic", which is weird for such a youkai-centric work (some just leave youjutsu untranslated, and even something like Dr. Stone renders it as "sorcery"). See >>33274777

[Anonymous No.]

>>33395737
What's the original word for magician and why is "magician" a weird translation for it?

[Anonymous No.]

So there's a section of CiLR's Japanese script on Touhouwiki that says
>そう話しながら、私には気がかりな事があった。先ほど見た光の筋は紛れもなく月の羽衣である。使者なら地上に一人で来る筈は無いのだが……正体が判からない<>。てゐもそれを見つけて消えたのではないだろうか？
https://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Cage_in_Lunatic_Runagate/First_Chapter

Is... that <> meant to be there?

[Anonymous No.]

>>33239672
Is "Mastermind of the Moon" really better? Or accurate? When I first saw Eirin's title, the initial goofiness of it actually stopped me from interpreting it literally and led me to adopt a more symbolic understanding of its meaning, like "The Moon's Intellect", pretty naturally.

[Anonymous No.]

>>33395737
"Magician" is actually reinforced as well, in Forbidden Scrollery. Marisa's title is apparently "Extremely Ordinary Magician", in katakana. Not saying you're wrong that it has issues as a translation, just noting it does have some official backing.

[Lefkadios No.]

>>33395411
>That sounds pretty clunky, to be honest. Those are supposed to be common things to the characters speaking, which they can speak about casually and confidently, and using technical language doesn't sell that. Call them either "dango" or "dumplings", but not both (I mean, the story already describes how the dumplings are made by pounding rice, so while I went with the Japanese term I don't think it was badly needed).
Oh not in dialogue. I was thinking more in the context of prose captions like in >>33238857. Now that I think about it there actually aren't too many of those in the comic anyway.

>Though the way you've included footnotes in speech bubbles is unusual - it's more common for TNs to reference the page number (which is much easier to find in a comic reader), and maybe include samples of the raw or translated page to illustrate it.
You're right. Page references would be useful. How does pic related look? For this chapter I don't think there are any samples worth including, but I can definitely think of one for the next chapter.

>And stuff like Yaoyorozu is short enough to fit in the margins easily.
It is, but I want to keep the margins free of footnotes except for those which are actually in the source text (one of which we'll see in chapter 2). I find footnote TNs quite distracting.

>>33395737
>>33407365
I actually really like "magician" for 魔法使い. In modern English, that word usually refers to illusionists, but afaik that's a shift that only happened in the latter half of the 20th century. On a literal level it means "practicioner of magic". It's better than "witch" and "sorceress" because it's neutral in connotation; it's better than "wizard" because it doesn't sound male; it's better than "mage" because it doesn't sound like D&D-influenced genre fantasy... if you can get past the "magician=illusionist" association, I'd say it's almost ideal.

>>33406650
The reason I'm definitely not going with "Brain" is because it's literally translating something that has a idiomatic figurative meaning in the Japanese into something that doesn't have that same figurative meaning in English. There are entires for this sense of 頭脳 in monolingual Japanese dictionaries... which, on closer inspection, indicate that "Mastermind" is not the most accurate translation. "Genius" is probably more accurate than "Mastermind" in the first place, actually. I think I'll go with "Brains" for now.

[Anonymous No.]

>>33368779
>Egghead of the Moon
w

[Anonymous No.]

>>33368779
>>33368810
>>33419104
>Prodigy of the Moon
>Smartypants of the Moon
>Nerd of the Moon
>Intellectual of the Moon
>Literata of the Moon
>Philosopher of the Moon
>Wise Woman of the Moon
>Guru of the Moon
>Mentor of the Moon
>Professor of the Moon

>Doctor of the Moon

[Anonymous No.]

>>33408812
I understand your concerns with "brain". There's always an event horizon when you approach the core of a language beyond which perfect translation is impossible. It just so happens that the awkwardness of the moniker "Brain of the Moon" gives readers a moment of pause that leads them to consider more abstract meanings behind the word. It's not good translation, but it works practically somehow, lol.

>>33420673
>>33419104
Nerd of the Moon sounds about right.

[Anonymous No.]

>>33420866
>Nerd of the Moon sounds about right.
I mean, she's a genius. I wouldn't call her a nerd. I just found egghead a funny to describe her.

[Anonymous No.]

Are you there Lefkadios? New game
>>33430525

[Meganisi No.]

>>33408812
The chapter isn't ready to show yet, but one thing that stood out:

月の使者 is currently translated as things like "lunar emissaries" and "emissaries of the moon". But they seem to be a specific organization (formerly lead by Eirin, now lead by the Watatsukis), and their duties include things you wouldn't associate with an emissary, so I wonder if "Lunar Emissaries" should be treated as a proper noun, always capitalized (and likewise capitalizing "Emissary" when it appears alone). They're called that mainly in reference to the group who came for Kaguya in Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, right?

[Anonymous No.]

>>33408812
>the w in Tewi is silent

[Anonymous No.]

Is this the ESL translation thread?

[Anonymous No.]

>>33449159
But it is. ゐ　is an obsolete hiragana that nowadays is pronounced exactly the same as い.

[Anonymous No.]

.

[Anonymous No.]

>>33454110
>obsolete hiragana that nowadays is pronounced
Gensokyo would be such a place where modern pronunciations may not be used. If anything, the older pronunciation is far more likely.

[Anonymous No.]

>>33460688
There would be a few exceptions though? Like Yukari would be somewhat hip to modern lingo.

[Anonymous No.]

>>33460688
>>33466059
These pronunciation shifts are much older than the spelling changes. Until WWII, the relationship between kana spelling and actual pronunciation has been inconsistent, with the spellings were based on the way words sounded waaay back during the Heian Period. Basically, Japanese used to be spelled the same way English is today: inconsistently, based on how words used to be pronounced a long time ago.

Gensokyo was cut off from the Outside World in the late 19th century during the Meiji Period, by which time the language had largely settled on its modern pronunciation. For scale, the Heian period was back in the triple digits AD when English had grammatical gender. All that time, the pronunciation of the language had been changing, but the spellings stayed mostly the same right up until the nukes dropped.

These changes did a whole lot more than remove ゐ and ゑ. Before the war, "touhou" was "touhau", "youkai" was "eukuwai", and "Gensoukyou" would have been "Gensaukiyau". But all were pronounced the same as they are today.

The "w" in "Tewi" is silent. The "h" in "Mayohiga". I don't know of any other examples of the medieval clusterfuck orthography in Touhou, but the series is olde-timey enough in flavor that I wouldn't be surprised if more existed.

[Anonymous No.]

>>33460688
>>33466059
These pronunciation shifts are much older than the spelling changes. Until WWII, the relationship between kana spelling and actual pronunciation has been inconsistent, with the spellings were based on the way words sounded waaay back during the Heian Period. Basically, Japanese used to be spelled the same way English is today: inconsistently, based on how words used to be pronounced a long time ago.

Gensokyo was cut off from the Outside World in the late 19th century during the Meiji Period, by which time the language had largely settled on its modern pronunciation. For scale, the Heian period was back in the triple digits AD when English had grammatical gender. All that time, the pronunciation of the language had been changing, but the spellings stayed mostly the same right up until the nukes dropped.

These changes did a whole lot more than remove ゐ and ゑ. Before the war, "touhou" was "touhau", "youkai" was "eukuwai", and "Gensoukyou" would have been "Gensaukiyau". But all were pronounced the same as they are today.

The "w" in "Tewi" is silent. The "h" in "Mayohiga" is also silent. I don't know of any other examples of the medieval clusterfuck orthography in Touhou, but the series is olde-timey enough in flavor that I wouldn't be surprised if more existed.

[Anonymous No.]

>>33467666
Wait. How did I forget. Hinanawi Tenshi.

If you don't believe me, listen closely:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35Z2dfzkvtY&t=20
>Miss! Hinana(w)i! Tenkoooo!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmzuD2bwits&t=13
>Te-te-te-te-Te-(w)i (Tet-Te(w)i!)
>Te-te-te-te-Te-(w)i (Tet-Te(w)i!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFRq4DxqaMo&t=57
>Te(w)i! Te(w)i! Te(w)i! Te(w)i! Te(w)i! Te(w)i!

[Anonymous No.]

>>33467666
So what I'm hearing is that we should spell her name as Teæ

[Lefkadios No.]

Hey y'all, Lefkadios here. Just about ready with Chapter 2. I had intended to wait until this thread was off the board before storytiming it, but you guys have worked really hard to keep this thread on the board, and even with chuberculosis it looks like this board is slower than I remember.

I don't know the what bump limit around here is these days. Should I start a new thread so we have more room for discussion or should I storytime the chapter right here?

>>33437910
I see that, very cool!

>>33441959
>They're called that mainly in reference to the group who came for Kaguya in Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, right?
I believe so, but I haven't been able to find a source that says they're actually called 月の使者 in the original Tale. I found a full copy of what I believe is the original text online, but it's split over different pages and it's going to be tedious to get them all into piece so I can search for those words. I'll get back to you with what I find.

[Anonymous No.]

>>33450138
Yes

>>33469215
Bump limit is 350 on /jp/, you're probably still good to go here.

[Lefkadios No.]

>>33450138
I'm not ESL! I promise!

>>33469251
Alright then. Here goes.

[Lefkadios No.]

(Swap the order of pages >>33469409 and >>33469215. I posted the second page first because I thought it looked better as a "title page".)

[Lefkadios No.]

>>33469436
Holy shit, Reimu is worst girl?

[Lefkadios No.]

>>33469526

[Lefkadios No.]

>>33469534
Moonies have healing factor, apparently.

[Lefkadios No.]

>>33469553
Bun buns.

[Lefkadios No.]

>>33469596

[Lefkadios No.]

>>33469606

[Anonymous No.]

Awesome, glad to get chapter 2. Thanks for all your hard work on this.

[Lefkadios No.]

>>33469626
And another possibly-sacred cow bites the dust. I'm changing Chang'e's name back to Jouga—the Japanese version of the name, which is the version ZUN uses.

My knowledge of fandom history isn't strong enough for me to say this confidently, but I believe the long-standing custom of referring to this character as Chang'e and not Jouga in English can all be traced back to this page. Touhou Project already makes plenty of references to Chinese mythology and folklore by the Japanese names of the folkloric elements referenced. Hourai and Tougenkyou, not Pénglái and Táohuāyuán. And the English translations almost universally preserve the Japanese names rather than re-Sinicizing them, with this being, as far as I know, the sole major exception.

My guess is that Gaku Gaku Animal Land decided to switch the name to Chang'e to make the reference to the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program work better in this scene, and that that choice stuck. It's actually not a bad decision in this isolated case, but a single reference isn't a good reason to change the character's name across the entire Touhou Project for all the rest of time. I'll take the hit and explain this reference in a translation note.

Also, Chang'e is not the definitive pronunciation of the name of this mythological figure. It's just the pronunciation that modern Mandarin happens to use. The Mandarin language is not the only or the definitive member of the Chinese language family. That is a lie. Do not listen to Pooh Bear. Free Tibet, Tiananmen Square, Human Rights, Republic of China, Dalai Lama, Uyghurstan.

[Lefkadios No.]

>>33469944
Whenever I read an unpronounceable Lunarian name, this is the sound that plays in my head:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8o4zJUT27E

[Lefkadios No.]

>>33469973

[Lefkadios No.]

>>33469989
It's not weird to have a Shintoist say "God damn it", is it?

[Lefkadios No.]

>>33470102
Also, forgot to comment on:
>Can't I at least claim a reward for finding lost property!?
As Yukari from the Suiten Ippeki discord server so helpfully explained to me, this is a reference to a Japanese law that allows someone who finds a lost belonging and returns it to its owner to demand a portion of that item's monetary value in payment.

[Lefkadios No.]

>>33470156
Hopefully now that Reimu, Marisa, and yet-unnamed-wabbit have gotten enough dialogue to really contrast them with Eirin's dialogue you guys can see what I'm doing with character voices. The lines of certain characters, as well as those of the "narrator" on pages like >>33469944 and this one, are consciously written in a more literary style. This is as much my interpretation of the characters and their personalities as it is a reflection of the way the characters talk in Japanese, but I feel it's appropriate to the series. I will be the first to admit that this may at least subconsciously be due to me perceiving this as sophisticated literature out of hero-worship of ZUN on my part.

[Lefkadios No.]

>>33470293

[Lefkadios No.]

>>33470309

[Lefkadios No.]

>>33470322

[Lefkadios No.]

>>33470330
>Besides, I just can't stand getting hoodwinked by a tanuki!
If any newfriends aren't sure why it's a meme that Reimu is racist against youkai, hopefully this chapter has cleared up a bit of confusion.

[Lefkadios No.]

>>33470359
And that concludes chapter 2. Thanks to drpepperfan from Dynasty Scans for editing QA, and thanks to you guys for lore-related QA (go ahead, roast me).

[Anonymous No.]

>>33469526
>>33469626
>>33469989
>feather-shawl
I know it's a literal translation of "hagoromo", but that sounds terrible. 90% of the time (including here) the "gossamer shawl" translation is more accurate anyway.
Just keep it as shawl, maybe have Reimu call it "my lovely shawl" once.

>>33469606
>>33469626
>>33469944
>>33469973
Not sure how clear the "unpronouncable name" part is. Maybe replace it with a black box or scribble, like "I am Yagokoro Omoikane".

[Meganisi No.]

>>33470477
I'm about done with the CiLR chapter too; I should have it to you within a few hours.

[Anonymous No.]

>>33473881
>replace it with a black box or scribble
If you use scribbles, be sure to position them so that you can just barely make out that Eirin's saying "Here on the Earth, Chang'e is called Jouga."

[Lefkadios No.]

>>33473881
>90% of the time (including here) the "gossamer shawl" translation is more accurate anyway.
It's not, though. Gossamer is a real fabric. Hagoromo are mythical garments worn by celestials, Buddhist angels, and other heavenly beings in Japanese folklore. They defy the laws of physics by floating freely in the air alongside the wearer. The term SHOULD be unfamiliar to Western readers, because it refers to a thing that will be unfamiliar to them. I have translation notes for this written up, but they're not typeset yet.

>Not sure how clear the "unpronouncable name" part is. Maybe replace it with a black box or scribble, like "I am Yagokoro Omoikane".
This chapter explains what's up with that, though. It's not obvious from the typography, but the dialogue at >>33469626 makes it clear.

In the Japanese, the names are rendered as "××", which is a bit like putting a blank or some question marks there. GGAL renders it as "XX", which is a poor choice because it invites the reader to pronounce it as "ecks ecks". You're supposed to "draw a blank" when when you read it. Covering it up with a black bar is a clever idea, but that would suggest that the text has been [REDACTED], which isn't the case. These names aren't secret; they're just unpronounceable to the unclean Earthling tongue.

For other commentary:
In a couple places I've tinted the characters' dialogue with the fact that they're from the moon:
>>33469626
>Who in Heaven are you?
In the Japanese, Miss Bunny starts to say something that I would normally translate as "Who on Earth are you?", but I found it for someone from the moon to be using that expression, so I tweaked it a little. (If you're thinking, "Well, from the Moon's perspective, isn't it the Earth that's in the heavens?", I'll get to that topic in a minute.)

>>33469944
>...it is this Jouga for whose punishment must many lunar rabbits forever spend their moons pestling ingredients for the Elixir.
>>33470156
>I'm sick of grinding Elixir ingredients for Lady Jouga's punishment moon after moon after moon, never knowing when I'll be done!
Normally I would say "forever spend their days" and "day after day". However, for the same reason that we only ever see one side of the Moon, one day on the Moon is exactly equal to one (lunar) month on the Earth. What we see as the cycle of the moon's phases is, from the perspective of someone on the Moon, the day-night cycle. So logically, it wouldn't make sense for Lunarian society to draw any distinction between days and months.

None of that sounds too weird, does it?

RE: The Heavens
Now, in few other places in this chapter and the previous I've used the word "down" in conjunction with the word "Earth":
>>33238938
>hurled back down to the Earth
>>33470156
>down here on the Earth
>>33470330
>down from the moon to the Earth and back up
I've actually inserted the word "down" in all of these cases. I've also made sure to say "the Earth" rather than "Earth". My reason for both of these decisions is that the only word for "Earth" that has been used so far in this manga is 地上 (chijou, "earth-surface"), rather than 地球 (chikyuu, "earth-globe"). The Earth beneath your feet, not the planet Earth floating in space. The use of this word reflects flat-Earth thinking: not necessarily the belief that the Earth is flat, but frame of mind that thinks of the Earth as flat for everyday purposes. Even among the educated classes who knew the Earth was round, this was just how people how thought about the Earth for all of history up until astronauts started back sending back photos of blue marble.

Japanese science fiction typically prefers the word 地球, because that word embodies the modern understanding of what the Earth actually is, but Touhou is a fantasy work that evokes Times of Old even when it does explore science fiction themes. But English doesn't distinguish between 地上 and 地球, so to try and communicate the same feeling, I'm tweaking the dialogue to talk about space in a distinctly geocentric frame of reference.

[Anonymous No.]

>>33477945
Different anon here

I dont really like feather shawl cause when I was reading I just figured it was a shawl made of feathers rather than this specific celestial reference. What about Celestial Shawl as a translation? I’d think that should bring all the necessary context.

I think the —— as a name placeholder is fine.

>who in the heavens
>moon after moon after moon
So for me, whether this works depends on how explicit the original script was. Like, would ‘who on earth’ and ‘day after day’ just be conventional but nonliteral translations for what was said? Then it’s fine.
But, moreso for the latter example, if it was specifically ‘days’ then I think that should be maintained. Touhou is magic and it’s totally possible lunarians use a day night cycle even if it doesnt make sense. Who knows, maybe they use the rotation of the earth for that. A translator altering/adding lore that wasnt there should be avoided, even if the translation version seems more sensible.

Like I said, if ‘day after day’ wouldnt be a literal translation then this should be fine. Even a nice touch, in that case.

Interesting about all the earth surface stuff. I agree with all your reasoning there.

[Anonymous No.]

>>33469215
bump limit is 300.
image limit is 250
enough room for multiple chapters

[Anonymous No.]

>>33480241
and don't forget the cicrclejerking, the honest QA and feedback, and the shitposting fucks trying to derail us

[Anonymous No.]

>>33238603
.gg/freezer

[Anonymous No.]

>>33469944
>My knowledge of fandom history isn't strong enough for me to say this confidently, but I believe the long-standing custom of referring to this character as Chang'e and not Jouga in English can all be traced back to this page.
That's obviously the case, but the debate did resurface after LoLK.
The gist of keeping Chang'e basically boiled down to: ZUN seems to treat her as THE original character from the myth, who just happens to be featured in Touhou, and not as a myth-inspired Touhou character, so this means the translators of the target language (in this case, English) are allowed to "translate" the name as whatever said language normally uses (same reason why we always see "Buddha" and never "Hotoke", even though that's what the dwellers of Gensokyo are uttering). And the Anglosphere widely knows this mythological lady as Chang'e. The furigana, it was said, didn't necessarily represent what ZUN had in mind as pronunciation, but rather were just a way to make the Japanese reader understand who the lady in question was.
https://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Talk:Chang%27e
You can read the whole discussion here. I'm not taking parts here, though I guess I do prefer Chang'e out of habit.
I just wanted to say: thank you for putting SSiB under the spotlight once again, it's one of my favorite official works.

[Meganisi No.]

>>33477945
I've sent that email. Afraid there's no quantum attachments though, and I couldn't find any flying rabbits to deliver it.

>None of that sounds too weird, does it?
Honestly after the sheer number of times people say "moon" in this story, the word is starting to lose all meaning to me. I don't know if it needs more.

>Covering it up with a black bar is a clever idea, but that would suggest that the text has been [REDACTED], which isn't the case.
Eh, I think it would work fine; as you said, it's cleared up by the dialogue. On the other hand, I've never seen an English-language comic depict things with a line like that; even knowing what it was, I kept reading it as a long pause. Alternatives I guess would be an effect like TV static, or writing something in squiggly nonsense-script.

>>33238857
...are they making mochi in SSiB and dango in CiLR?

[Anonymous No.]

>>33483947
Speaking as someone who has tried to typeset a bunch of doujins with hidden names like that (usually presented as ○○ーsan) there isn't really a good way to express the intent in English while having it look pretty. I experimented with writing the name and then 'melting' it via an oilify filter in gimp, but it really just made it look like a scanning error rather than an unpronounceable name. I do wonder if the SMT YHVH approach of static over the name when it is said might be workable here, though it would require messing around with filters a bunch.

[Lefkadios No.]

>>33480216
>Like, would ‘who on earth’ and ‘day after day’ just be conventional but nonliteral translations for what was said?
Yes.

>>33482793
>ZUN seems to treat her as THE original character from the myth, who just happens to be featured in Touhou, and not as a myth-inspired Touhou character
But the Chang'e that appears in Touhou is still the Touhou version of Chang'e. Just as there are many variations of the story of Chang'e, there are many ways to read 嫦娥, and Touhou uses the Japanese one, so we might as well use the Japanese name to refer to this version of the figure. The Italian poems about Roland call him Orlando, and translations traditionally keep that name, because the poems are about these specific Italian interpretations of the figure.

>(same reason why we always see "Buddha" and never "Hotoke", even though that's what the dwellers of Gensokyo are uttering)
But on the other hand we see Bishamonten rather than Vaisravana, Daikokuten rather than Mahakala, and Hourai rather than Penglai. We also see Hong Meiling rather than Kurenai Misuzu: because of its Chinese pronunciation, Meiling's name stands out from the other orientals in the cast, who use standard onyomi, kunyomi, and nanori readings. Calling this character Chang'e makes her name stand out for the same reason, even though in the source text just it's just a regular onyomi reading, consistent with the kanji's component radicals of 常 and 我. I want to keep the Japonized version of the name for the same reason that I'm keeping the family-name-first name order for orientals: ZUN uses foreign linguistic conventions in contexts where their foreignness is relevant. Anglicizing the name order and re-Sinicizing the reading of 嫦娥 flattens out these differences.

>And the Anglosphere widely knows this mythological lady as Chang'e.
Does it? I didn't think it widely knew her by any name at all!

>The furigana, it was said, didn't necessarily represent what ZUN had in mind as pronunciation, but rather were just a way to make the Japanese reader understand who the lady in question was.
Yeah, I'm gonna call bullshit on that one. Of course the furigana show the intended pronunciation. That's what furigana are for. They can be used in other ways, but here they're not. Jouga is the standard pronunciation of 嫦娥. Also, remember that the context in which this name was introduced is literally "Don't say !@#$%; say this." I think it's kind of strange for a Lunarian exile in Japan to introduce the Chinese version of a name as an alternative to the Lunarian one.

>>33476587
This is actually a really neat idea, and a decent compromise between Chang'e and Jouga. How does pic related look?

>>33487471
How do you think this looks.

>>33483947
>...are they making mochi in SSiB and dango in CiLR?
Holy shit, you're right. No idea what's up with that.

[Anonymous No.]

>>33470477
Thanks for the new chapter

[Anonymous No.]

>>33487737
>How do you think this looks.
Big upgrade from the line version.

[Anonymous No.]

>>33480241
>image limit is 250
image limit is 300

[Anonymous No.]

.

[Anonymous No.]

>>33477945
>So logically, it wouldn't make sense for Lunarian society to draw any distinction between days and months. None of that sounds too weird, does it?
When I played EraTohoPM it felt like the words "day" and "month" were being used interchangeably

[Anonymous No.]

.

[Anonymous No.]

>>33505929
>EraTohoPM
?

[Anonymous No.]

>>33521207
https://www.wiki.eragames.rip/index.php/EraTohoPM

[Anonymous No.]

>>33521714
Oh.
I never played that one.

[Anonymous No.]

>>33469526
>Holy shit, Reimu is worst girl?
No, just rude.

[Anonymous No.]

>>33450138
Judging from the reasoning behind their choices, yes.
That or crippling autism.

[Anonymous No.]

huhh anybody wants to continue this with me? a joke translation would be pretty funny

[Anonymous No.]

>>33538738
next page

[Anonymous No.]

>>33538738
I like it

[Anonymous No.]

>>33538756
p3
>Reimu: "No way!" "You can't have my sleeves!"
>Marisa: "Oh, showing off our arms, are we?" "Get a load of these babies!"
>Reimu: "No one wants to see yours, Marisa" "Christ, this girl..."
>Marisa: "Hey now! I'm the face of the franchise!"

[Anonymous No.]

>>33538948
needs more stuff, like p2 too

[Anonymous No.]

>>33538738
>>33538756
>>33539299
This is all shit you losers.

[Anonymous No.]

>>33541343
ok write something funny then

[Lefkadios No.]

TNs for chapter 2.

>>33450138
>>33537055
If you have any constructive criticism I'd love to hear it.

[Anonymous No.]

Table of contents for the Upper Volume translated. This took a while because I was having some difficulty shooping out the Japanese text.

Chapter names are tentative. The ones changed from GGAL's are:
>The Jeweled Rabbit's Letter -> The Jade-Rabbit's Letter
>Our Old Friend, the Rainy Moon -> Ugetsu, My Old Friend
>The Sumiyoshi Project -> Project Sumiyoshi
>The Three-God Moon Rocket -> A Sanshin-Style Moon rocket
"Jewelled Rabbit" and "Jade-Rabbit" are a translation of 玉兎 (gyokuto). 玉 can refer either to precious stones in general or jade in particular. "Jade rabbit" is a sort of kenning for the moon in old Chinese and Japanese poetry, because the moon looks like it's made out of white jade, and is repurposed by Touhou as the Lunarian name for the moon-rabbit race.
"Ugetsu" (雨月) is a Japanese term that means "being unable to see the harvest moon because it's raining". I'm going to leave it untranslated not only because no suitable English translation exists, but also because it's an archaism in Japanese, and Yuyuko has to explain it to Youmu in the chapter itself. (It's great when the text itself removes the need for a translation note!)
"The Sumiyoshi Project" is rearranged to "Project Sumiyoshi" on the pattern of "Project Apollo".
"A Sanshin-Style Moon Rocket" is a more direct translation the original name (三神式月ロケット) than "The Three-God Moon Rocket". I'm leaving "Sanshin" untranslated because it's a proper noun.

[Anonymous No.]

>>33541343
I'd crank up the autism and do one, but hey... I could always do it later.

[Anonymous No.]

A bit off topic, but what font do you use for normal dialogue? I want to make silly manga shoops, but I never managed to find one that makes the shoop look "legit".

[Lefkadios No.]

>>33554539
CCSamaritan. For thoughts I use Spinner Rack BB and for some exclamations (like in >>33470330) I use CCSamaritanTall.

[Anonymous No.]

>>33454110
Ah.
I thought I added the second part, but I guess the pronunciation was right all along.

[Anonymous No.]

>>33544951
Updated. Am I correct about that last bit of information?

[Lefkadios No.]

>>33571121
Whoops, forgot name.

[Anonymous No.]

>>33559267
Thanks. And again, thank you for the re-TL.

[Anonymous No.]

>>33528345
Don't deny the truth anon. We know it, everyone knows it.

[Anonymous No.]

>>33528345
Outright stealing someone's shit is worse than "rude", I'd say

[Anonymous No.]

next chapter when?

[Anonymous No.]

>>33594542
It's coming, but there's a really difficult CLRD job in it that I don't think I have the chops for although I'm constantly surprising myself with what I'm turning out to be capable of in that department. Once I've fixed it up to the best of my ability, I'll storytime a WIP if you want. That should be some time later this coming week.

[Lefkadios No.]

>>33594542
It's coming, but there's a really difficult CLRD job in it that I don't think I have the chops for although I'm constantly surprising myself with what I'm turning out to be capable of in that department. Once I've fixed it up to the best of my ability, I'll storytime a WIP if you want. That should be some time later this coming week.

[Lefkadios No.]

>>33594542
It's coming, but there's a really difficult CLRD job in it that I don't think I have the chops for although I'm constantly surprising myself with what I'm turning out to be capable of in that department. Once I've fixed it up to the best of my ability, I'll storytime a WIP if you want. That should be some time later this coming week.

[Anonymous No.]

>>33595871
You'll be surprised how easy some seemingly difficult tasks can be if you take your time. That's the one downside, however, 'taking your time'. Someone more experienced might be able to do it in a more timely manner on top of better. Either way, good work.

[Anonymous No.]

>>33595871
it's chapter 3 next, right? Is it this page?
if it is, the panel with korindou is the same picture that shows up in the PMiSS article on korindou, so rather than cleaning and redrawing, it might be easier to replace the picture and try and replicate the effect that's already on the scanned page
Anyway, as much as I've bitched about some of the retranslations here like the new honorific translations, this project is still an immense undertaking and you have my utmost respect for going for it, you crazy bastard

[Anonymous No.]

waiting warmly

[Lefkadios No.]

>>33598795
That would be the one. It's actually not quite identical to the one in PMiSS, but it's similar enough that I should be able to graft from one image onto the other. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find scans of PMiSS at a high enough resolution for this to work. I've considered ordering a hard copy of PMiSS so I can scan it myself.

>Anyway, as much as I've bitched about some of the retranslations here like the new honorific translations
No, no! Constructive feedback is very much welcome. I'm being very experimental with my approach here. I hope I don't seem too defensive in my explanations of my choices. I've already taken a lot of the advice posted in this thread.

[Anonymous No.]

Thanks dude.

[Anonymous No.]

>>33608432
>ordering a hard copy of PMiSS
that would be fantastic. It's alright to read translated stuff on the wiki, but I'd love to do a proper typeset of some of the printworks
I was actually considering typing up CiLR into a solid PDF, but since Meganisi seems to be doing it, that's all good.

[Anonymous No.]

To the sky

[Anonymous No.]

Is there any kind of untranslated official 2hu media out there?

[Anonymous No.]

>>33630355
I -think- all of strange creators is caught up. Anything else official usually gets grabbed up pretty quickly. But, sometimes it's a matter of some of these translations being really old and possibly incorrect.

[Lefkadios No.]

>>33631528
Yeah, "badly translated" is hardly better than untranslated. Even though SSiB has been translated before, I still feel like an explorer, seeing lands no Western man has ever seen, come back from, and described articulately.

WIP coming through. This is the other page in this chapter that requires a little more shoopery than I'm comfortable with. You'll notice that I have a new font for the chapter title–a Bodoni variant, chosen for its resemblance to the thick-stroked Ming typeface used for chapter titles in the Japanese version.

[Lefkadios No.]

>>33632538
Love Remilia's expression on the lower left here. It just oozes with "What the are you on about Sakuya? Where's my PG Tips?"

[Lefkadios No.]

>>33632538
Love Remilia's expression on the lower left here. It just oozes with "What are you on about Sakuya? Where's my PG Tips?"

[Lefkadios No.]

>>33632654
Here she is. HERE SHE IS. Queen. Queen. Best girl. Mai waifu. Make way!

[Lefkadios No.]

>>33632760
"Hah!" Is my rendering of Remilia's catchphrase フーン. That one is tricky to translate because its meaning is very highly dependent on the tone of voice in which you say it, but "Hah!" seems to work in all or almost all of the same places that Remilia uses it.

[Lefkadios No.]

>>33632816

[Anonymous No.]

>>33632928
>that stance

If Remilia wasn't sitting on that couch, a full set of Adidas track suit would have spontaneously appeared in place of her dress.

[Anonymous No.]

>>33633132
Ремилия

[Lefkadios No.]

>>33632928
It seems a little strange that the technological miracle Ran brings up here is an unlimited energy source. Does Gensokyo even have an energy crisis? I guess perpetual motion machines have a certain universal appeal.

[Lefkadios No.]

>>33633389

[Lefkadios No.]

>>33633409

[Lefkadios No.]

>>33633470

[Lefkadios No.]

>>33633567

[Lefkadios No.]

>>33633610
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6qpa-mRLnI&t=63s

[Lefkadios No.]

>>33633681
Even if Rinnosuke were not best boy by default, I think he would still be best boy. The current translation of CoLA doesn't seem as bad as this translation SSiB, but I'm too much of a snob about translation enjoy it. And that's real shame, because Rinnosuke is awesome.

Speaking of translation: I'm not quite sure if what I have for Sakuya on the lower right is quite accurate. Like I said: WIP. That technically applies for all the stuff I've posted in this thread so far; I've been constantly tweaking it over the past couple of weeks. Damn, it's already three weeks since I started this thread. I had no idea threads could last this long on /jp/.

[Lefkadios No.]

>>33634062

[Lefkadios No.]

>>33634093
Here's something I did NOT pick up on when I read the GGAL version. Rinnosuke attributes the apperance of books about the Apollo program in Gensokyo to the existence of moontruthers: Gensokyo is the place things go when people don't believe in them anymore, and there are people who don't believe in the moon landings anymore. But the GGAL tranlsation splits the sentence where Rinnosuke says in two, and keeps them in the same order that clauses came in the original sentence, making it sound like he's saying "This information is forgotten; therefore it's appearing in Gensokyo" rather than "This information is so forgotten that people don't believe in it anymore; therefore it's appearing in Gensokyo."

Have people picked up on this from the GGAL translation, or is this plot detail new to you guys? I never realized it until I started reading the Japanese.

[Lefkadios No.]

>>33634093
>Saturn Vee
There's something I forgot to mention. This manga taught me something: it's Saturn Vee, not Saturn Five! Yay for furigana. I thought I'd leave that bit of pronunciation information on this page for other people to enjoy as well. I can remove it if it looks weird.

(Actual next page.)

[Lefkadios No.]

>>33634315

[Lefkadios No.]

>>33634355
Strongly tempted to typeset Patchouli's quote like this, but I think I won't.

[Lefkadios No.]

>>33634355
Aaaand this concludes the WIP of chapter 3! Thank you for reading, and I anticipate your feedback.

[Anonymous No.]

>>33633389
>Where is the joy in a life spent menially slaving away for the sake of one's company?
>The outside world is might in science and technology, yet its spiritual condition is truly wretched
Wow, can you say "social commentary"?

[Anonymous No.]

>>33634093
"A book on the Apollo program, hmm?" feels like a really clunky response to what Sakuya asked for. I feel like "Hmm, a book on the Apollo program?" would work better.

Him starting his response with "A book on the Apollo program" is something he'd only say if she'd *specifically* asked for the Apollo program. It feels too much like a conversational beat was skipped.

If he says "Hmm, a book on the Apollo program?" it's more like he's considering her request and making a suggestion. That also probably flows better into his explanation on what Apollo is and why info on it is in Gensokyo.

On another note, something about "That people are appearing who think it was a hoax" sounds kind of awkward. Maybe "That some people have begun to believe it was a hoax" would work better?

I also might've kept the "but" before "as a result" from the old translation, although that one isn't a big deal. I just feel like it helps establish more of a direct connection between the conspiracy theories and the material's presence in gensokyo.

Aside from these three points on this page I have absolutely zero criticisms of this chapter. Good job mate.

In addition to the retranslation, I am REALLY appreciating the improved scan quality. The character art is simple but still very charming, and I can appreciate it far more now.

>>33634315
It is pronounced Saturn Five, I think Rinnosuke just doesn't know that.

[Lefkadios No.]

>>33634941
>"A book on the Apollo program, hmm?" feels like a really clunky response to what Sakuya asked for. I feel like "Hmm, a book on the Apollo program?" would work better.
>Him starting his response with "A book on the Apollo program" is something he'd only say if she'd *specifically* asked for the Apollo program. It feels too much like a conversational beat was skipped.
Yeah, you're right. The thing is that the Japanese is literally "Apollo project-GENITIVE book INTERROGATIVE.MALE?" It's clear he's hearing what she says and concluding that she's talking about the the Apollo program (even if she may not know of it by name). Maybe I'll make the line something more like GGAL's and have him say, "The Apollo program, you mean?"


You're also definitely right that his line about the moontruthers could be worded better. The only thing I'm not sure about with your version is that "starting to believe" implies a certain tenativeness that hardcore moontruthers show no sign of at all.

>It is pronounced Saturn Five, I think Rinnosuke just doesn't know that.
Oh, it is? I thought for sure he was right given the fact that there were only three Saturns. Now I feel dumb. Actually, Patchouli makes the same mistake on the next page (>>33634315) even though there's no way a native European wouldn't recognize the Roman numeral, so it's probably ZUN's mistake, not Rinnosuke's... but it does seem like just the sort of mistake Rinnosuke would make. I kind of want to keep there for that reason. Possibly put scare quotes around it.

[Anonymous No.]

>>33636188
>"The Apollo program, you mean?"
I think that would work just fine.

>The only thing I'm not sure about with your version is that "starting to believe" implies a certain tenativeness that hardcore moontruthers show no sign of at all
That’s a fair point. I’m not sure what the line should be, but I do think it should be changed somehow.

How about “That some people now believe it was a hoax.” ?

If that’s still not forceful enough maybe replace believe with claim?

[Anonymous No.]

>>33630355
a good half or more of the latest Who's Who of Humans & Youkai book is untranslated, and there's god knows how many interviews and talks left floundering
From what I hear, trying to fix translations on the wiki is like pulling blood from a stone, so if what is translated is poorly done, don't expect it to ever be improved

[Anonymous No.]

>>33633132

[Anonymous No.]

>>33633312
>>33643687
Remislav is a treasure. 100% more natural and comfy without any loss in charisma.

[Anonymous No.]

How do you feel about the new translations for the older games?

[Lefkadios No.]

>>33651026
Haven't looked at them in detail but they do seem better. If nothing else, the new system for translating the games is very promising. THCrap is what the community needed from the very beginning.

[Anonymous No.]

>>33637549
Does it just have overzealous editors who don't like to be shown up?

[Anonymous No.]

>>33653819
Mostly going off what I've heard, but yeah, stuff like that. Some people have their own pet pages where they'll camp all day to revert any changes made to them.
Since you have to get approved to even edit things there, its also really hard to just get stuck in and edit things

[Anonymous No.]

>>33637549
>From what I hear, trying to fix translations on the wiki is like pulling blood from a stone, so if what is translated is poorly done, don't expect it to ever be improved
Looks like everything has to be done from the ground up if that's the case.

[Anonymous No.]

>>33643878
I'm surprised there weren't any edits, or if there were, I didn't see them.

[Anonymous No.]

Thank you so much for the updated translations so far, Lefkadios! I read SSiB a long time ago and was fine with the translation at first, but comparing this and the older one now is like night and day. Sometimes you're just used to shitty translations, especially when you've seen MTL stuff.
>>33658024
Should just make a new wiki with updated translations if that's the case, even one on Miraheze is better than nothing. I don't even like the English TouhouWiki staff, they basically have a stronghold on translations and it's hard to correct fandom misconceptions with the way they personally interpet and therefore word things.

[Anonymous No.]

>>33632760
ah, my naizuri slave

[Anonymous No.]

>>33664934
>I don't even like the English TouhouWiki staff, they basically have a stronghold on translations and it's hard to correct fandom misconceptions with the way they personally interpet and therefore word things.
I think the made-up "Dragon God" is probably the worst one. They backpedalled on that, but only halfway.

[Anonymous No.]

>>33666693
...so is that idea of there being a dragon deity that’s the highest in the touhou pantheon just complete bullshit then?

[Anonymous No.]

>>33670474
Mistranslation IIRC
Dragons do exist though

[Anonymous No.]

>>33670474
>>33677156
https://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Perfect_Memento_in_Strict_Sense/Dragon
I don't see how "幻想郷の最高神" is mistranslated.

[Anonymous No.]

>>33678324
it is not the highest dragon god
it is just the supreme deity of gensokyo

[Anonymous No.]

>>33678324
By making it singular. The article is in the species section of PMiSS, alongside kappa, celestials, etc. Instead of
>The Dragon is the highest god of Gensokyo
it was supposed to be
>Dragons are the highest gods of Gensokyo

The Touhouwiki page used to be outright called "Dragon God", even though the title of the article is just "Dragons". Its current name of "Dragon" was intended as a compromise (all the other species articles have plural names).

[Anonymous No.]

>>33679850
And yes, "Ryuujin" does appear later in the article, and that is the title of an established Shinto god (so translating it into "Dragon God" is like if Amaterasu was only ever referred to as "Skyshine"). Depending on which version of the stories you go by, he's also the Watatsuki sisters' father.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryūjin

But that's not who the sages were negotiating with, they just thanked the dragons by building a statue of their patron, and Touhouwiki editors decided that means Gensokyo is monotheistic for some reason.

[Anonymous No.]

>>33679850
But Japanese fans also seems to refer to the Dragon god as a singular entity:
http://blog.livedoor.jp/coleblog/archives/51904618.html
https://w.atwiki.jp/thranking/pages/128.html
And the statue also depics a single dragon.

[Anonymous No.]

>>33682100
All this tells me is that I need to do another round through the series. to freshen my memory.

[Anonymous No.]

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[Anonymous No.]

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[Anonymous No.]

>>33238603
This thread has made question what I have been reading in other fan translations. I have been working on my own doujin novel and I want it to be at lest somewhat faithful to the official media.
Also, op did a good job on this translation. SSiB is underrated. It's the only official plot driven work print work and the ending, wile disappointing, is also rally funny and I love the lore behind the moon racket. I think it would have been better received if the Watatsuki sisters weren't such Mary Sues.

[Anonymous No.]

>>33701536
same.
I'm waiting to see the other chapters as well.

[Anonymous No.]

up again.

[Anonymous No.]

>>33701536
This.

Been years since I first read SSiB and I’m enjoying this read a lot more. This manga was better than I thought. I’d also forgotten how nice it is to have a touhou manga with a fast paced plot.

[Anonymous No.]

>>33238685
I'm really late on this, but
>The time is come!
Don't do this. I read your justification, and I understand it, but it isn't having the effect you want it to. Most people don't know that 'is' used to be correct in this case, and it's only going to come off as poor grammar rather than the meaning you want it to have. Seriously, I understand what you're going for. But it will not be understood unless you put a translation note in, and if you do it for that, you're going to have to put translations notes for half the dialogue if you want to throw any other archaic grammar in there.

[Anonymous No.]

>>33238685
seconding >>33717672.
Direct translation is one thing, but it should roll smoothly when you read it.

[Anonymous No.]

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[Anonymous No.]

>>33717672
>>33721982
Or you could just learn English

[Anonymous No.]

>>33724369
>learn English
>the time is come

[Lefkadios No.]

>>33717672
>>33721982
>>33724374
Whaaat? You mean people don't remember minor grammatical details of Early Modern English from when they were forced to read Shakespeare in high school? Poppycock!

Point taken. Honestly, I wasn't very satisfied with that line to begin with. The original line is:
>さあ行きなさい
>私の式神たちよ
The phrase the "time is come" is there to communicate the same sense of urging ("Yes! Go now!") as the word さあ, and also to fill speech bubble space, but it does have a bit too much explicit semantic content for what I'm trying to do with it. I just thought it sounded nice and felt like it fit. Of course, my idea of what "fits" and "sounds nice" might be a bit warped.

[Anonymous No.]

>>33734217
If what you're trying to convey is that she uses an old way of speaking, what about something like "hath" instead of "is"? Assuming that's correct to use. Or if you're trying to communicate the same feeling as "Go now!" maybe you could use "your time has come" instead. I feel like さあ would translate more literally to something like "Now then," but I'm no expert. Just my two cents, it's still a great translation so far.

[Anonymous No.]

>>33734217
Fair.
It's still old English, and most people won't even remember small stuff like that. Shakespeare or not.
That kind of stuff goes in one ear and out the other. They use it once and that's it. They'll resort back to their own way of speech so it's lost on them why it gets translated that way despite reading it before.

[Anonymous No.]

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[Anonymous No.]

>>33238603
NICE

[Anonymous No.]

>>33749861
NICE

[Anonymous No.]

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[Lefkadios No.]

>>33734903
>If what you're trying to convey is that she uses an old way of speaking, what about something like "hath" instead of "is"?
"Hath" I feel is a little TOO archaic. This construction with the word "is" actually lasted longer than that, and again, echoes of it still linger in the language with phrases like "I am done", "it is gone", etc. It's also fossilized in "Joy to the world, the Lord _is_ come", and "Now I _am_ become Death, destroyer of worlds." But I guess it isn't fossilized well enough to be immediately recognizeable. I guess that shouldn't surprise me as much as it does.

>Assuming that's correct to use.
Given that the "is come" construction outlasted the word "hath", it's technically not correct. Back when people said "hath", they said "is come" instead of "hath come".

[Anonymous No.]

Bump limit is getting close.
Will there be a followup thread?

[Lefkadios No.]

>>33757188
Yes. The next chapter is coming along a bit more slowly because I already had drafts of the script completed or nearly completed when I started this thread, but I do intend to storytime every chapter.

[Anonymous No.]

>>33757402
Ok, godspeed.

[Lefkadios No.]

Now that Mangadex is back online I've uploaded the second chapter there. I've also been updating the first chapter based on your advice.
https://mangadex.org/title/2282/touhou-bougetsushou-silent-sinner-in-blue

Thanks for the support, guys! It keeps me going.

[Anonymous No.]

>>33721982
It's not direct translation because she's not speaking archaically in Japanese.

[Anonymous No.]

>>33772136
Just read it.
Good work!

[Anonymous No.]

>>33755006
I know you've probably resolved your choice, but I just wanted to give my input that 'time is come' is indeed correct.

[Anonymous No.]

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[Anonymous No.]

>>33777114
It was more about the phrase being old rather than correct but I digress.

[Anonymous No.]

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[Anonymous No.]

Anything new?

[Anonymous No.]

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