fleecedragon

[fleecedragon]

If you've heard of Persona 4, you've probably heard of the infamous controversy over whether major character Naoto is a trans boy whose character story went into transphobic detransition propaganda...

...but you may not have heard about the part where Naoto's writing was actually a lot more straightforward in Japanese, while the most alarming aspects of it were actually a byproduct of the official English translation making some abysmally terrible wording choices.

In today's Leaked Experience article, H.C. goes into a breakdown of the Japanese and English text of Naoto's key scenes and how only a handful of wording and nuance differences in translation can end up derailing an entire character arc.

[fleecedragon]

Well, it looks like MangaDex received a bunch of C&Ds, which means our releases (Saint Tail and Dream Eater Guide) went down with it. Fortunately, we still have our website, but I'll be looking into other distribution methods in the meantime.

(But seriously, Kodansha, it'd be great if you could actually license the titles you took down!)

[fleecedragon]

Have you ever wondered "this translation has issues I want to address, but I don't know how to do it without throwing someone under the bus"? This article is for you.

[fleecedragon]

I've seen a couple people say that they've wanted to get into Cell of Empireo, but were put off by the fact that there wasn't a complete English translation uploaded.

This channel has just uploaded a translation of all of the currently available games, from base game to Interlude. If you've been on the fence about starting something without a full TL, or if you've been intending to rewatch, now you can do so a lot easier!

[fleecedragon]

hi!!! i’m making a cell of empireo wiki on fanlore.org and was wondering if it would be okay to use your translations with credit? thank youu ^_^

Yes, it would be, just let me know which ones you plan to repost specifically. You're also welcome to DM me if you'd like my own translations for any of the in-game text to post or timelines to reference, etc. Good luck!

[fleecedragon]

The Cell of Empireo artbook has been released digitally as a pdf and can be bought here.

I have a text-only translation that can be read alongside the artbook, and it can be found here.

Happy reading, and be careful of spoilers!

[fleecedragon]

Please read!!!

In today's post, H.C., having heard the fallacy "Madoka killed the magical girl genre and made everything into ironic parodies or nostalgia milking" one too many times, goes into the actual reasons you don't really see as many new magical girl IPs nowadays and discusses how people who often claim to be "defending" the genre are actually just as guilty of underestimating it.

[fleecedragon]

Please read this!!

Have you ever wondered "this translation has issues I want to address, but I don't know how to do it without throwing someone under the bus"? This article is for you.

[fleecedragon]

I've made a partial, text-only translation of the artbook to be read with your own copy. The artbook can be bought here and will be released digitally within the next few months, if you don't already own a physical copy.

Please keep in mind that this artbook includes spoilers up until HR and Interlude, so take care when reading if you haven't finished all of the main series.

The translation can be read here.

[fleecedragon]

Download: MEGA | Google Drive

We’ve released a retranslation of the two oneshot chapters that were included with Saint Tail volume 6, A 16-Year-Old’s Tiara and The Day the Whale Went Around! As with before, these were technically included with the original Tokyopop English release as well, but on top of the already existing issues with their Saint Tail release, volume 6 has some particularly…let’s say, unique problems:

An entire page is missing from A 16-Year-Old’s Tiara (a critically plot-important one, at that)

All of the pages after it are shifted to the wrong side, meaning important details are sucked into the spine while page edges have excess leeway

Multiple lines are erased and not replaced with anything at all, often leaving conspicuous blank spaces and omitting plot-important information (something that impacts Saint Tail‘s final chapters as well)

(Yep, that’s actually how it’s printed in the book. Yes, that’s where the most important line in the last page is. Needless to say, it didn’t take much convincing for us to pick these up.)

Tachikawa’s author comments for these two oneshots can be found in Saint Tail chapter 23, on pages 45 (A 16-Year-Old’s Tiara) and 57 (The Day the Whale Went Around). If you’ve read our release and were curious about what those were referring to, here’s your chance to check them out!

[fleecedragon]

Download: MEGA | Google Drive

Today, we're bringing you a retranslated version of oneshot manga chapters Portrait of a Morning Glory and The Music Box That Brings Forth Spring by Megumi Tachikawa, both of which were originally published in Nakayoshi extra issues in 1992...but which you may also recognize as the extras included with Saint Tail volume 1! While they were included with the Tokyopop English release as well, they were subject to the same major issues that necessitated our Saint Tail retranslation project, so we went ahead and revisited these too. I've also decided that I'll be working on the chapters included with volumes 6 and 7, so please look forward to them!

Portrait of a Morning Glory is about a morning glory flower that makes a deal a la The Little Mermaid to become human and spend some time getting to know a boy she'd fallen in love with, while The Music Box That Brings Forth Spring is about a world where the changing of the seasons depends on the maintenance of an astral music box. If you're a Saint Tail fan, you may recognize some early prototypes for some of the themes and concepts that would eventually get used there, so I definitely recommend you check these out ☺

[fleecedragon]

birthday art for @fleecedragon, who gave me an excuse to draw My Guy from this game (with all his magical boy merch) <3

[fleecedragon]

As of today, all 27 manga chapters and 43 episodes of Saint Tail have been fully retranslated from scratch! Please click here to check it out!

This project started at around the beginning of July, so I have to admit that it's quite the feeling to have finally finished all of the translation work! To be honest, I was a bit self-conscious about how the unusual release schedule and the abnormally extensive documentation would be received, but we've gotten quite a few supportive comments, so thank you so much!

(Look, it's just really hard to make a claim like "almost every page of the manga has wordplay or some kind of metaphor, meaning previous English translations lost almost a whole half of the plot and made the entire ending and epilogue come off as saying the opposite of what they're actually supposed to" unless you have sufficient evidence to make a case for it...)

It may not be exaggeration to say that this has probably been the most challenging translation I've ever tackled to date, even though the deceptively simple plot doesn't make it come off as that kind of series at first glance, so I hope all of the effort that the rest of the team and I put into it can come through and that people can enjoy it as much as possible.

In regards to future plans: I want to take a look at some more of Tachikawa's works (I made a post about this earlier, but none of her other work has been treated well in translation), as well as perhaps some other magical girl series that need translation love. But I can't make any explicit promises, especially since I'd have to juggle it with a huge backlog of other stuff...and also, I need a break after almost six months straight of this 😅 I'm off to enjoy the rest of the winter holiday, and I hope you all do too. If you do decide to check out the series with the new translation in the meantime, I'd definitely be really happy if you posted reactions 😊

[fleecedragon]

As of today, all 27 manga chapters and 43 episodes of Saint Tail have been fully retranslated from scratch! Please click here to check it out!

This project started at around the beginning of July, so I have to admit that it's quite the feeling to have finally finished all of the translation work! To be honest, I was a bit self-conscious about how the unusual release schedule and the abnormally extensive documentation would be received, but we've gotten quite a few supportive comments, so thank you so much!

(Look, it's just really hard to make a claim like "almost every page of the manga has wordplay or some kind of metaphor, meaning previous English translations lost almost a whole half of the plot and made the entire ending and epilogue come off as saying the opposite of what they're actually supposed to" unless you have sufficient evidence to make a case for it...)

It may not be exaggeration to say that this has probably been the most challenging translation I've ever tackled to date, even though the deceptively simple plot doesn't make it come off as that kind of series at first glance, so I hope all of the effort that the rest of the team and I put into it can come through and that people can enjoy it as much as possible.

In regards to future plans: I want to take a look at some more of Tachikawa's works (I made a post about this earlier, but none of her other work has been treated well in translation), as well as perhaps some other magical girl series that need translation love. But I can't make any explicit promises, especially since I'd have to juggle it with a huge backlog of other stuff...and also, I need a break after almost six months straight of this 😅 I'm off to enjoy the rest of the winter holiday, and I hope you all do too. If you do decide to check out the series with the new translation in the meantime, I'd definitely be really happy if you posted reactions 😊

[fleecedragon]

I'm finishing up the retranslation for Saint Tail's anime right now, so I'm at the stage where I'm thinking about my next few projects, and I've currently at least decided that I want to do something for Megumi Tachikawa's other works as well. Tachikawa is an incredibly amazing writer, and it's such a shame that her work has been so poorly represented in translation; even beyond the fact that a good chunk of her work hasn't even been translated at all, the ones that were translated seem to have been run through the translation equivalent of a meat grinder.

I prioritized Saint Tail both because it's her most famous work and because it's the one that took the most damage (it's definitely pretty disturbing to find out that around half of the plot was translated to suggest the opposite of what it was actually supposed to mean!), but I do want to call attention to Cyber Idol ☆ Mink (localized by Tokyopop as Mink), generally considered to be Saint Tail's spiritual sequel. Unlike with Saint Tail, the Tokyopop release of Mink didn't flip it horizontally, and it doesn't have incomprehensible nonsense lines like "Great Big Deal!!" that Saint Tail's release did, but...well, I think some examples would demonstrate it better.

Here's Tokyopop's version of a spread from chapter 6:

And here's the proof of concept I sent to my group when pitching this series (done very quickly, so definitely not my best work, but probably enough to get the point across), which was retranslated directly the Japanese text:

...Huh? That's not even remotely similar! The original scene is meant to draw a clear parallel between Mink's view of the chocolate and her view of herself, and the progression of the scene plays on the ambiguity of whether "あたしじゃなくて" means "this isn't from me" or "this isn't me". The reason Mink is considered to be Saint Tail's spiritual sequel is that it explores similar concepts of self-identity and the feeling of inadequacy compared to an idealized, sanitized self, something Mink is even less subtle about than Saint Tail at times, but the nuance here seems to have been lost in translation. (In fact, I'm not entirely sure what must have led to the Tokyopop version's interpretation; the Japanese text doesn't resemble what's there at all.)

Which also means that when you get to later parts of the series like this...

(Tokyopop version)

(Our proof of concept retranslation)

In this case, the Tokyopop version roughly corresponds to the Japanese text but interprets it in ways that really don't get the point of this scene very well, ranging from not catching the specific use of "small and tiny" (ちっぽけな) to invoke the earlier scene with the chocolate to making too many specific assumptions about Mink and Kyo's feelings that are actually out of character. (Let alone the fact that the way they phrase Mink's lines here really just doesn't convey the sheer level of desperation and emotion at all...)

For instance, it's a very important part of Mink's character that she doesn't have self-awareness about wanting to feel needed; she says 必要としてくれるなら because she legitimately feels like she's useless or has nothing to offer without the help of the WANNA-BE program. This kind of thing is a common trait of Tachikawa protagonists, and while I know many people might think it's not that big of a deal, I think the difference between "wanting attention and thinking your alter ego is cooler" and "having insecurity from believing you'll never be good enough unless you blot out all the undesirable parts of yourself" is big enough to mean something to a lot of people who would be reading this!

In any case, once I'm done with Saint Tail, I do have some other projects I want to prioritize first, since Mink's official translation is at least somewhat readable (kind of a low bar, but...). But I did want to call attention to this for now in case anyone was interested, because while Saint Tail and Mink are far from the only shoujo or magical girl manga from this era to have such poor treatment in localization, I don't think this issue has been well-documented when it comes to Tachikawa's work, and it really does break my heart.

[fleecedragon]

Saint Tail Retranslation — Episode 34: Let's Bring a Thoroughbred Home!

Script (Fonts): MEGA | Google Drive Translation notes for this episode (link leads to page with spoilers) Project page and more information

How to use: Put the subtitle file in the same folder as your video file and rename it to match the video’s file name (e.g. if the video is named “ST_01.mkv”, name the corresponding subtitle file “ST_01.ass”). If done correctly, players like SMPlayer, MPC-HC/MPC-BE, or VLC should automatically load the subtitles when you play the video. Since this is a raw script file, it doesn't come with embedded fonts, so while it should still show up fine on most computers, I recommend installing the fonts from here on your computer (if you don’t have them already) for best results.

The contents of this episode make me wonder where exactly in Japan Seika is and what kinds of cities the Limited Express K would stop at, as well as how this would work now that the Hokkaido Shinkansen exists. I wouldn’t say I’m a particular train enthusiast or anything, but I do think trains are pretty cool.

[fleecedragon]

Saint Tail Retranslation — Episode 21: Let’s Steal a Keepsake Harmonica!

Script (Fonts): MEGA | Google Drive (No translation notes for this episode) Project page and more information

How to use: Put the subtitle file in the same folder as your video file and rename it to match the video’s file name (e.g. if the video is named “ST_01.mkv”, name the corresponding subtitle file “ST_01.ass”). If done correctly, players like MPC-HC/MPC-BE or VLC should automatically load the subtitles when you play the video. Since this is a raw script file, it doesn't come with embedded fonts, so while it should still show up fine on most computers, I recommend installing the fonts from here on your computer (if you don’t have them already) for best results.

This episode took a little longer than usual, but hopefully the pace should pick up a bit after this. I’m currently hoping to have the full series done by next month (I feel like it’d be nice to marathon the series over the winter holiday).