Mondaiji-tachi ga Isekai Kara Kuru Sou Desu yo? Volume 7, Chapter 1

sinemerald notified me that someone on the animesuki forums had already translated v7ch2 and v7’s epilogue and decided to send it our way. Chapter 2 is just about 20 pages long, which is about a day of work for me, but as previously mentioned, I wanted to make some time to fix up all of my releases thus far and updating the key terms list with a bunch more than what’s currently on BT. From what sinemerald told me, it’s missing a few things here and there but for the most part it should be good, so I might end up using it to save a bit of time. I’ll let you guys know if I decide to use it or not tomorrow night.

Mondaiji-tachi ga Isekai Kara Kuru Sou Desu yo? Volume 7, Interlude

So I noticed that this author has tendencies to use very vague/broad kanji combinations for common descriptions that I assumed held the same general (read: most common) meaning. Due to this, it appears that I may have had several mistakes in my translations for some of these descriptions that I will probably go back and fix in my releases sometime this week.

sinemerald has also brought to light the fact that apparently I don’t follow a lot of the guidelines for translating; I don’t keep the paragraph structure as the novel does (which I actually didn’t really notice/care too much about until she mentioned it), nor did I keep the TL notes on the proper nouns and terms (ie. kanji combinations with a different phonetic reading and enunciations via ““` in the furigana space). I’m not really keen on some of the procedures but if it makes it easier to read, I’ll figure out an alternative.

Chapter 1 is around 30 pages long, so I’ll be on it for a bit. I’ll expect to have it out before Saturday.

In the meantime, here’s a short interlude.

TL Notes:

• Kouen no Miyako (煌焰の都) – The name of Salamandra’s city headquarters. I’m too lazy to flip through the earlier volumes to look for a proper/official equivalent, or maybe I’ve heard of it before and it slipped my mind. Either way, I’m looking for a good translation for this.
• I’m starting to doubt my kanji reading on some of these words due to the way the font tends to change the kanji. On one hand, it could be a font difference issue. On the other hand, it could just be Chinese. Who knows. If you notice something wrong, speak up.

Mondaiji-tachi ga Isekai Kara Kuru Sou Desu yo? Volume 7, Prologue

I am thoroughly enjoying this volume so far, and I feel like I made the right choice in moving onto this volume to keep my motivation up. The crazy grammar is still present, but it’s still a much better read than v4ch1, which makes it worth translating.

Those of you who would rather read this in a chronological order, I apologize, but the good news is that I’m pretty sure the entire series will get translated eventually with this many translators working on it (as I estimated, around the end of summer), so it’s just a matter of patience before then!

The prologue for this volume is full of mythology with India as its origins. A simple google search should explain most of them if you’re not familiar with Indra and the Adityas and so on, but there is one thing that I couldn’t find an english equivalent for, which is this:

Hounou-Enbu (奉納演武) – hosted by Shimogamo-jinja Shrine every May 4 in cooperation with the Society for the Promotion of Japanese Classical Martial Arts.

If you can give me a concise english equivalent for that, feel free.

And without further ado, enjoy!

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.

Mondaiji-tachi ga Isekai Kara Kuru Sou Desu yo? Volume 1, Chapter 3

I called it a “banner” in my translation, but it could just be called a “flag”. A flag doesn’t hang in as many places as a banner though, so I opted for banner. I forget which one was used in the anime.

The part about the wheel of transmigration is really, REALLY sketchy right now. I checked it over a few times and it’s still kinda messy. I’ll be clearing it up once I get more time to match my schedule to other people’s (to bother them).

The “New Year’s” gift mentioned is an “otoshimono”. If you know some Japanese, you may relate to the romanized version of it better than the English translation.

Many things start with capital letters because they use katakana over kanji in the original text. The majority of those are in [] braces, but some of the same ones are outside. I like my consistency, so a lot of things have capitals. Also, anything that seems to be some kind of important thing (eg. Divinity) is capitalized.

From now on, I’ll be releasing this thing in parts. I didn’t expect Mondaiji to be so ridiculously long, but it really is a lot longer and more complex than Seirei, so it’s best to just release the parts.

Made some quality of life changes that should help while correcting some grammar and spelling mistakes -AshenRaven

Part 1

They met at the water fountain plaza as the day was ending and, having heard what happened, Kuro Usagi’s rabbit ears were standing on end as usual in her anger. Storm-like preaching and questioning flew about in response to the sudden development.

“H, how did you come into contact with the leader of “Fores Garo” and even manage to pick a fight in that short time!?” “Moreover, the Game’s appointed date is tomorrow!?” “And to be battling in the enemy’s territory!” “We don’t have the time or money to prepare!” “Just what were you thinking!” “Are you listening, you three!!”

“””We pissed him off. We’re currently reflecting on our actions.”””

“Silence!!!”

Kuro Usagi raged at the the excuse that seemed to have been coordinated beforehand, possibly under somebody’s suggestion.

Izayoi who was watching that with a smirk delivered the finisher.

“It should be fine. It’s not like they were indiscriminately picking a fight, so forgive them.”

“Y, you may be thinking it’s fine as long as it’s interesting but the only thing we get from this Game is self-satisfaction, you know? Look at this [Geass Roll].”

The [Geass Roll] Kuro Usagi showed was a Gift necessary for those without a [Host Master] to become a [Host] and begin a Game.

The Game’s details, rules, wagers and prizes were written on it and it was sealed with the signature of the leader of the [Host]’s community. The contents of the prize section that Kuro Usagi was pointing at went like this.