#i dont really have the words to describe it

[brofightiscancelled]

yapping about how i approached translating karamatsu's brand new world. just discussing the localization liberties i took and other things i think are interesting. i just love yapping sorry

part 1/4 because i forgot about tumblr post image limits lol

establishing my ethos: im still learning japanese but have been translating (chinese -> english) for over 7 years, so my translation skill is higher than my japanese skill. if there's anything i get wrong here pls point it out!!! i usually translate mostly songs, anime (donghua), and manga

The Title

japanese has multiple alphabets: 2 phonetic ones and 1 derived from chinese characters (kanji) that dont tell you anything about how they're pronounced

kanji characters have multiple pronunciations. for example, 心 can be pronounced "kokoro" or "shin" depending on the context it's used in.

"how do you know which kanji pronunciation to use" you guess. alternatively, media geared towards children (who have lower language skills) will sometimes spell out the right pronunciation above the kanji in little letters

sometimes people will just make up their own pronunciations for kanji for Style Points, in which case they will also spell out the intended pronunciation above the kanji

so this title actually reads "matsuno karamatsu's brand new morning". however the Style Points pronunciation guidelines indicated that this is pronounced "Brand New World". i deliberated over this for a while and ended up going with "brand new world" because the phonetic pronunciation is in english so i assume this would be the preferred title for an english localization. unfortunately this did lose the interesting double reading of "morning" and "world" but sometimes it just be like that.

Chapter 1

every time choro says something about the chopsticks in this first part, he's repeating the same thing each time: "Stop [pointing with your] chopsticks". but this 1. doesn't sound very natural in english, and 2. is too long to fit into these speech bubbles.

translations often have to take liberties due to the medium. in anime subtitles, they need to consider how fast a watcher can read the subtitles. in manga, it's often about how many words they can fit in a vertical text bubble.

the underlying impression is that choro is annoyed he even has to tell oso to stop pointing with his chopsticks (this is common sense, you're a grown ass man, why don't you know table manners, etc), so i tried to write it in a way like he's saying it short and snippy like an annoyed mom who has already reminded you 5000 times about this exact thing: Chopsticks.

oso calls totty "あざとい" here after hearing that he's trying out pancakes at a new cafe. as far as i can tell, this roughly translates to "cunning" or "sly" and is used to describe women kinda derogatorily, like a girl at the office who speaks harshly to the women but sweettalks to men (like tsunoda from aggretsuko).

i couldnt really think of a natural-sounding equivalent to this implication in english, so i settled on the kind of close "coquettish" to get across that oso is calling totty girly in a strange and insulting way. oso's dialogue here literally goes something like "sly.... you really are sly...", but since "coquettish" is kind of a weird word to use in english, i ended up localizing this around to suit my weird word choice to make it sound like oso was thinking for a second about the right word to call totty, which i also think comes off as a little more natural-sounding

japanese (and chinese) have a plural second-person pronoun, but english doesn't (besides y'all, which i did use in oso's dialogue earlier lol) which is a real headache and almost always needs some creative thinking to get sounding Normal. this was a relatively straightforward case: "how would a father address his sons as a collective?" -> "Boys"

CHAPTER 2

the dreaded jp onomatopoeia without an english equivalent. im lucky that these boys' whole gimmick is being from an old cartoon so i could get away with the very cartoony "honk" sound effect for "blowing one's nose".

the source material always translates イタい as "painful" so i do it too but i wish osmt had come out like just a few years later when "cringe" was in the common vernacular because it's a way better localization. in my opinion.

also a minor note: in the first bubble totty is actually repeating kara's words back at him "someone's? watching? me?", which is made clera by him using kara's self-pronoun (オレ) and not his own self-pronoun (ボク) (if you don't know about self-pronouns i will talk about them more in a future note). however this nuance is lost in english and could be misconstrued so i just went and made it so he's repeating back what kara said but not using the exact words

"頭おかし" does literally translate to "strange in the head" but colloquially just means "insane" or "crazy". but ichi is being really harsh to kara here, and kara does start questioning his mental sanity later in the chapter, so i went with a more harsh translation here that specifically references the head. also "YOU'RE INSANE" does unintentionally have a different meaning to most of us here on tumblr dot com, doesnt it lol

i dont know what the consensus is on giving iyami a french accent when localizing him. it's probably overkill to do both this AND keep the zansus. however i cant convey a mid-atlantic accent in writing so this is my next best way to convey that iyami talks very strangely. also it's funny

this panel was really hard to redraw. please clap

anyways same use of "strange" here as before with the head thing ("crazy") but it can also have the vibe of "abnormal". i thought "is something wrong with me?" helped convey both these meanings. come to think of it later in chapter 6 i translate okashi very literally as "strange". maybe i shouldve said "is something wrong with me" there, too....

CHAPTER 3

jyushi literally says "why do we do the olympics?" here. i localized it this way because it means essentially the same thing and is funnier. dats the art of translation babyyyyy

japanese personal pronouns quick rundown: in english we tell others to refer to us as different pronouns- him, her, they, etc., but we only have one pronoun to refer to ourselves with (I). japanese has many self-pronouns, and which one you use to describe yourself with is usually based around context and personality (some pronouns are more polite to use than others, some give off the connotation of being stuck-up or of being a country bumpkin, etc). this is helpful for characterization and also being able to tell who is talking through written dialogue

we aren't meant to know who this figure is at first, but we're also meant to have the clues to figure it out (if you were to investigate, you would find that f6 oso is the only one with full black gloves and knee high boots).

oso usually uses the masculine self-pronoun 俺, which is a rude and casual pronoun very fitting of the slacker eldest. however, f6 oso, a reliable and polite dreamboat, uses 僕, a polite and proper masculine pronoun (normal choro uses this pronoun). so this pronoun use masks the identity of this mysterious figure- but if you looked into it, you'd be able to see that this does link up to f6 oso. it's also possible the artist didnt know this and just went with 僕 to fit the fairytale prince vibe here though lol

i have no way to convey this in english so all of this is just lost nuance in translation. womp womp.

for the record these are the boys' personal pronouns:

oso: 俺 (ore can convey that he's rude, kanji alphabet can convey .... he's old-fashioned, possibly? shrugs?)

kara: オレ(ore can convey that he's full of himself, katakana alphabet can convey that he's [trying to be] stylish or loud)

choro:　僕 (boku can convey that he's polite, kanji can convey that he's proper)

ichi:　おれ (ore can convey a kinda casual-lazy vibe, hiragana alphabet can convey that he's soft-spoken kinda?)

jyushi:　ぼく (boku can convey that he's Just A Little Guy, hiragana alphabet can convey that he's childish)

totty:　ボク (boku can convey that he's Just A Little Guy, katakana alphabet can convey that he's [trying to be] stylish and modern)

CHAPTER 4

demonstration of localization for the medium: totty's dialogue here translates most literally to "What are you talking about?", but "talking" and "about" are pretty long words that are hard to fit into that skinny dialogue bubble. "the hell are you on about?" conveys the same thing, has shorter words that are nicer to fit into a bubble, and also shows a bit more personality (and i think is a little funnier).

this part ends here becaues i forogt about the tumblr post limit. i will continue in future posts

part 1 / part 2 / part 3 / part 4

[miss-midnightt]

This afternoon, I went to my grocery store. I went to the apple section, as I would normally, to pick out some honeycrisps. I grabbed the most perfect one I could find.

About fifteen minutes ago, I peeled the sticker, washed it off, cut it up, like I would any other time to cook it.

This time, I did not microwave it.

I ate my first raw apple in eight years. I forgot how good they tasted raw, how the crunch sounds so good and how its texture is perfect, and how it's juicy and flavorful and sweet. I'm going to cry.

[bugbuoyx]

i just wanna say shoutout to my guys who didnt know they were guys at first, who didnt "always know"

my transmascs who were girls before they were men

my transmascs who wore push up bras and pretty skirts and dresses and pink

youre still trans, even if you werent always

[spyroz]

Being non dysphoric trans at least for me is more of a political statement than a description of literal reality. It says "I'm for bodily autonomy in all circumstances and without explanation" but it does also say "I love my trans body"

Every person in the world would likely become 'dysphoric' if described or gendered or viewed in a way antithetical to their self image, trans or otherwise. So pulling the "erm technically you do have dysphoria" response just isn't necessary. We already know this. It depends on how you define the word "dysphoria", but idgaf about semantics like that, my goal is simply to send a message and describe myself in the *closest possible way* to the truth. But nothing is ever *entirely* true

People posting about how "non dysphoric trans people aren't really non dysphoric" are missing the point because dysphoric or nondysphoric was never a binary in the first place. These are made up words and I'm using the one closest to my experience, doesn't mean it has to fit 10000% of the time. It isn't so black and white, nothing is.

[puppyeared]

i have to say its a strange experience taking classes on branding and marketing while being vehemently anticapitalist and scorning the economic system

[narzissenkreuz-ordo]

hi im in fucking SHAMBLES

[frobby]

okay so ive been into jeweler richard for a while now, i watched half of the anime when it came out and found it unremarkable (now it fills me with rage) but i didnt start actually thinking about it until the manga came out and i actually read it. I stand by my reccomendation of the manga and in still looking forward to reading it when more volumes come out (volume 6 got delayed till next year). I knew OF things in the LN and they intrigued me but i wasnt really into light novels cuz i read on my phone but i didnt know how to get books(for free) on there. Untill i started reading orv that is(thanks dokja). Its really not that important for the story but recently ive been ravenously reading the jeweler richard LN (im on volume 5 now in the past like weekish)

And uhhhhh wow its so good. Like acutally good i totally get what people say about seigi now he is absolutely unreliable about......everyone around him. This is my reccomendation if you watched the anime and liked it or read them manga pleaseee read the light novels. It is the ideal JR experience

[astrallar]

I want to kiss your Halsin art so bad help me I'm obsessed he's so pretty and your art is so fabulous I can't handle it I'm going to explode into hundreds of tiny ducks

You are so correct he is such a handsom man, im glad we are on the same wavelength

[vraska-theunseen]

got asked tonight if i was a butch lesbian or a trans man... its working

[nyctohyloph0bia]

That moment where you see someone talk about their otherhearted-ness after just a long while of not seeing someone do so and you get so happy because, holy shit, this is such an important topic to me , I want to see what the other person who is otherhearted like me has to say

And it's just "this isn't rlly important or significant".

Ouch.

[thedrotter]

you know how my display name is straight up local catboy even though im outright terrified of cats. well this week a miracle happened: ive interacted with a cat for once?!?!?!?!

you see i was at campus this week and the college cat started chasing me everywhere and even waited for me as i went to the bathroom and i was so scared😭 as i got out of that bathroom I was cornered girl was already camping outside... I thought i was going to faint to die but then turns out she was running after me because she wanted to rub herself on my legs???😭😭

it struck a soft spot in my heart because she reminded me of my dog because she does the same thing (plus bonus points my dog is black and the cat was a black cat so. double hit) and here's the miracle... I crouch and talk to her🫣🫣 this sounds very simple but i usually keep cats at a distance since they terrify me so this this was a very intense moment for me fr

so yes display name local catboy who also happens to be terrified of cats despite that display name interacts with cat for once in his life

[schizowitchic]

also like i partially found out i might be intersex because i was looking at trans stuff and there was like "(however many) months on t and finally seeing some bottom growth" and like pictures of t-dicks and i was like.... um.... that's kind of just what my clit looks like anyways. so i was like "hey google give me a quick rundown on this" and learned what clitoromegaly was and then i was like. hm. intersex resources. and it's like a sign? symptom? side-effect? of certain intersex conditions

[sundays-mutt]

eight years in november and somehow i do not love him any less and i cannot imagine ever falling out of love either

[hiroshotreplica]

extremely rough design observations for deep cut

because im really autistic about splatoon and cant stop studying it. despite not knowing much about character design. yeah.

this is written out badly and some of these are stretches im aware. i just like looking at this trio i think. theyre all connected in some kinda way and i like observing.. anyway.

section 1

basically covers the sort of, flow of their poses? shiver and frye pointing their hands down while big man points his fins up. the way shiver and frye's masks, arms, and legs bend in the opposite direction compared to each other. how their hair is near identical in how it flows off to the viewer's right in the front and to the viewer's left in the back. the use of angles in general. also, a detail about how they all have a translucent element to their design (clothing for shiver+frye, the fins for big man) neat stuff!

section 2

colors, in relation to each other. they all seem to "borrow" colors from each other and its super neat in my opinion (though big man barely has any yellow in his design unfortunately). im sure he'd have more yellow accents if he were more humanoid like inkfish, though. there's also a lot of red accents on shiver and frye, and the accents by their eyes in general are on the opposite sides of each other. i think shiver and frye having more red accents than they wouldve needed on their own is super neat, sort of lets big man fit in more color pallet wise (i think).

section 3

image of pure text transcribed: lots (of the shape language differences between shiver and frye) ar edue to differences between octolings and inklings but some are outside of it

shiver and frye are the main subjects of this specific shape language usage. they both have sharp and round elements, but shiver mostly possesses round shapes while frye mostly possesses sharp shapes. using the other sparingly to create contrast in the individual designs and help match them up when put together is great. also, big man has very round shape language, though his design is more simplistic compared to shiver and frye so i didnt look at it as much in that way.

extra

the typical idol branding. the way its implemented into deep cut's designs is typical but super neat in my opinion. i think you could argue a "m" shape is used to identify big man but im not too sure on that so i left it out.

okay thats all...off to the void i go

[ninelivesastrology]

Y'all gonna hate me for this one, but you can't call it a homoerotic friendship if that woman was never into you. It's called lust, limerence and delusion.