Hyouketsu Kyoukai no Eden Volume 4, Chapter 1 – As Much as a Wish

Good day to everyone! It is a glorious day as I finally managed to trudge through chapter 1 after throwing off various (major) distractions like Terraria and Animal Crossing. And Sonic and Metroid, etc, etc. There’s some work mixed in there, but the brunt of it can be attributed to games…

This is where you’ll really see how this is going to be formatted and such for the rest of Hyouketsu, as well as all the terms from previous chapter by CE Translations and how they’ll be preserved or chosen (eg. cadres guard or elite guard). That being so, it is also the time for you guys to tell me if you prefer something a certain way. I’ll take all the suggestions into consideration and try to remember them.

When I was posting this, I realized I’d forgotten to update the projects page with the links. I’ll do that now. Also, I looked over how to create a PDF for these chapters, but if somebody wants to create them for me, I’d be very happy (hint, hint). I’ll probably do that at the end of the volume (ie. batch work). Also, about the color illustrations and putting the text on them, I’ll probably end up doing that myself again. People want money and I’m a cheapskate. Sorry, I just don’t want to pay you for something I could easily do myself.

A note about the next chapter: it’s like 80 pages long. I’m not sure if I’m going to post it in parts or not (because I don’t particularly like doing that), but bear the length in mind before saying it’s taking forever.

I have yet to proofread this chapter. With all that out of the way, enjoy the read!

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Mondaiji-tachi ga Isekai Kara Kuru Sou Desu yo? Volume 4, Chapter 1

I’M DONE. Finally.

This chapter was about 40 pages long, and about 15 of them were complete bullshit. It took 4 days longer than expected to get this out, but to be honest I was actually procrastinating a lot due to my unwillingness to translate some of the grammar in this chapter.

I’ll explain in detail since some people had the wrong idea about my previous blog. I wasn’t going to just drop this project just because it was too hard, nor was I just going to spit something out that wasn’t even going to be accurate. What I meant was that the grammar used in this chapter wasn’t hard because it was that complex a scenario, but that it felt like it was hard for hardness’ sake. Like the author just put it in for a laugh, focusing on the details that, in my personal opinion, didn’t really matter.

After this continued for around 15 pages straight (it was mostly the part in the middle), I was really just up the wall trying to figure out not how the grammar translated to English, but why the author had decided to write the chapter this way. The extra 4 days were devoted to slogging through this part, and I spent most of that time trying to avoid putting personal preference in the way of work. The grammar was difficult, yes, but all it really takes is understanding what the sentence is saying in Japanese (very easy) and then creating a sentence from scratch using the same concept (not as easy). Here’s a good example of what I was dealing with in this chapter:

伝令の絶妙に奇妙な表情を言い表すのならば——-天上天下の不可思議を寄せ集めたような、機会で怪異で奇妙奇天烈摩訶不思議アドベンチャーな反則的ナマモノを目の当たりにしてきたような——-要するに、そんな絶妙に複雑な表情をしていた。

That is indeed, one sentence. I’ll let you figure out what it means.

In key terms related news, I received a suggestion to change You’s name to Yoh, like how most names with an ‘ou’ in their name is americanized to ‘oh’ (Touka to Tohka, for example). I’m not really keen on the idea, and it would still require changing the key terms (along with all of the previous translation slightly) if I were to make it stick, but I’ll leave the decision up to whoever wants to bring it up with Firebird. I’ve also noted that some more people like calling Calico Cat (currently named Calico) Mikeneko. If I see more support in the comments on this post, then I’ll go back and make the change stick.

Finally, my decision to start doing volume 7 -> 6 hasn’t changed, but I will be saving volume 5 for last, which means I will eventually be getting back to volume 4 no matter what happens. In this sense, I’m leaving volume 5 open for another translator to work on (possibly Drinkingwater on Baka-Tsuki, since at the rate he’s translating, he may be done with volume 2 next month). So the next update will be volume 7 unless I get a very good reason to keep working on volume 4.

Mondaiji-tachi ga Isekai Kara Kuru Sou Desu yo? Volume 4, Prologue

And suddenly, volume 4!?

My apologies for getting this in rather late, I was actually pretty much done with this about a week ago with two pages remaining (and another day waiting for proofreaders who apparently never showed up). Thinking about it now, I probably shouldn’t have introduced Summon Night 5 to sinemerald because I ended up getting hooked on it too!

For those of you who were expecting an update on volume 1, I decided that the progress being made on the first 3 volumes is proceeding steadily enough that I can expect them to be done by the time I finish translating the remaining 4 volumes, which I expect to have done within 2 months’ time. I know that you guys are probably still waiting on the rest of volume 1 and 2 to be completed before you start reading ahead, but I’m putting my faith on the translators at Baka-Tsuki in the hopes that they finish their volumes around the same time that I’ll finish mine. If it happens that I finish before they do, I’ll consider picking up the remaining unfinished chapters.

The difficulty of the grammar used in this novel is quite surprising; it is very easy to understand if I read it in Japanese, but actually quite difficult to smoothly transition it over to a coherent form of English. I had heard from sinemerald that this would be quite common for this author, but it still took me by surprise nonetheless. I’ve tried my best to make it work, but there are some parts that I’m not especially proud of. Feel free to submit a better/more accurate translation for parts you don’t agree with and I’ll take a look. Take note that I try to keep the original formatting of the text as closely as possible, down to the number of periods and commas in a sentence and the dashes between trains of thought. I’m glad that this author doesn’t freely use question marks because those are always a pain in the ass to preserve during translation.

A few things to take note of as you read this.

• I’ve taken the liberty of renaming Calico Cat （三毛猫/mikeneko) to just Calico, after You starts talking to him. In Japanese, it doesn’t sound all that weird to me, but in English, it gets kind of weird after a while hearing You saying “Calico Cat” all the time. If you don’t like the change or prefer naming him by phonetics (Mikeneko), let me know.
  
• The text is written in first person, but I’ve decided to change it to third person except for dialogue since sinemerald already started it that way.
  
• I am contemplating changing You’s name to Yo, like how some translators shorten names like Sakai Yuuji to Sakai Yuji, but for the simple reason that it’s just confusing to look at sometimes. If you’d prefer keeping it as You, let me know and I’ll keep it this way.

Looking for somebody who likes working with Photoshop

So it came to my attention that at least one person wants those color pages with the English printed on them. As such, I would like somebody to do them…for quality assurance, just do one of the four pages and send it to sakurahonyaku@gmail.com.

Please:

• Redraw the entire affected area. Don’t just put a gigantic text background and slap the text on that so that nothing show up between the text, allowing you to hide the fact that you pretty much cleaned nothing off.
• Remove the page gutter.
• Keep the text styling the same.
• Don’t cover up important parts of the scene with the text. For example, covering up a character’s face with the text should not be done.

These next ones are just “It would be nice~” kinds of things. Try to:

• Up the image quality (the color quality at least) by removing some of that color warping (particularly noticeable on faces)
• Sharpen the contrast in colors. I notice that the colors on the version I downloaded are kind of faded. It could be a lot better.

If you take this request up, you may want to try to find better raw versions than what I have. I’m fairly certain mine aren’t the best ones available.

Hyouketsu Kyoukai no Eden Volume 4, Prologue

I’m changing a few of the ways I usually do things for Hyouketsu Kyoukai no Eden. I’ll try to adopt as many of the nuances from CE Translations as possible, including throwing this note up here but not in red, and with asterisks.

The pictures that are weaved into the novel will be shown in “large size” instead of “medium” so you don’t have to click them to see the images.

Also, I’ll be throwing the [T/N: This is a note.] stuff in instead of packing it all up here in the pre-notes.

Another thing to note is that I will actually be translating the afterword as well.

The only thing I won’t be copying is the “Enjoy.” that seemed to dot the beginning of every chapter. I’m sure you’re all going to enjoy it anyway (haha).

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Hyouketsu Kyoukai no Eden Volume 4

Okay! So after finally finishing my reading of volumes 1-3 off CE Translations’ site, I’m finally getting started on volume 4 of Hyouketsu Kyoukai no Eden. In following with some of the customs I noticed from CE Translations, I will post all the color pictures and such here to begin with. I’ll try to figure out how to consolidate these to their own pages later.

Before I start, I created this IRC channel forever ago, but never released its details. If you want to bother me in some way, shape or form (actually, I’d prefer people to provide me motivation?), you can catch me on here: irc.rizon.net:6667 / #sakurahonyaku.

With that out of the way, here’s the stuff:

Title page has pretty much nothing. The bottom says “I will become strong — enough to protect the fallen you.” Pretty sure it’s referring to Sheltis.

Here’s the clean version.

What the Hell happened?

I’m sure that’s the question some of you may have about why nothing’s been done…and I have nothing to say. Okay, that’s a giant lie. I was caught up with work. But that’s not all…I found out my local library rents games, I bought a PSP from halfway across the city and loaded Summon Night 5 into it (I’m STILL NOT DONE!!) and bought Terraria after a friend of mine said they wanted to play it with me. Overall, my life has been about 70% work and 30% working on those aforementioned games.

I’m putting all of those aside (except work; but I’ve mostly completed what I have to do for a while into the future…kinda) and am starting on Hyouketsu. With Mondaiji being translated by Aphraelyn, I remember saying that I’d be moving to Hyouketsu instead. I’m currently in the process of reading the already translated portions and will probably begin working on it somewhere tomorrow. I have to say that the language looks insanely fun (difficult) to translate, though I haven’t seen the Japanese version yet.

I’m currently on chapter 1 as I’m writing this…hopefully this won’t take too long. And hopefully Facebook doesn’t reject my action approval submission AGAIN.

EDIT: Lemme add one thing I forgot. To whoever asked about Seirei Tsukai no Blade Dance volume 11…IT’S NOT OUT UNTIL JUNE 28!! I thought it had already come out because of that comment….

EDIT: JUST made it to volume 3. LIFE. WHY ARE YOU INTERRUPTING ME.

EDIT: Annnnnd finished (reading). After wasting 2 hours (or more) stuck in the chatbox to the right of the translation. I DIDN’T THINK I’D GET STUCK THERE WITH THOSE TWO (you know who you are).