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pleasesavetanaka · 8 years ago

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Ajin V9 - Vertical Edition

Volume 9 is finally here, and I’m looking over the translation once again! I’ve already noted the changes in art between the original magazine (and crunchyroll) versions and the tankobon, so they won’t be noted here.

Overall I actually feel pretty positive about this volume. There’s a lot of corrections and good changes, and while there’s a few issues and errors that crop up, the positive outweighs the negatives! I can pretty wholeheartedly recommend picking up V9, even if you held back on older volumes because of the translation quality.

Hirasawa and co are noted as ‘The Four Black Suits’, interestingly.

It’s also “Forge Safety” rather than “Forge Security”. This is consistent with previous volumes.

I’m not going to note every change, but I am going to note interesting ones, or ones that change the context.

Chapter 39:

Again, the translation in V9 is similar to the Crunchyroll translation, but with completely random changes. For example, “Is he with Sato...?” becomes “Is he with Sato?!”

There were a few things that were actually corrected, or at least better in the Vertical version. For example, when Kei grabs Kou in the staircase it was originally translated as “You listening...?” which is a stupid thing to say, because he’s literally directly behind Kou, there’s no way he could not be listening. It’s changed to just “Listen,”. The mumbles on the same page are also flipped so they’re horizontal.

“Five or six revolvers” was changed to “several” and “tranquilizer gun” gets shortened to “tranq gun”.

Another fix: Izumi’s “Tanaka has been neutalizi...” was corrected to “neutraliz-” to indicate she was abruptly cut off rather than trailing off.

First meme of the volume:

This is, so far, the first complaint I have about their translation.

Kei’s “We need to make this fast, Nakano.” was swapped for “We’re pressed for time, Nakano.”

Chapter 40:

Gulf squad dialog was watered down. “Direct tranquilizer hit to the arm. Target is asleep.” became “Tranq hit to the arm. Target asleep.”

Manabe’s ‘we met eyes’ is fixed to ‘our eyes met’.

The saliva thing is actually vastly improved.

CR: When you’re asleep, you secrete significantly less saliva. So if he’s really sleeping, you wouldn’t expect him to be swallowing. Vertical: You secrete significantly less saliva during sleep. So if he’s really asleep, it’d be some time before he swall-

Verticals is definitely the better translation and makes it less convenient timing wise.

“Look, you made me use it.” became “Damn, you made me use it.” which I think is a good change.

A lot of Kei and the gulf squad’s dialog has been cut down to be shorter, which makes sense considering how fast things are happen. Like, “Tanaka won’t be able to handle this situation on his own.” becomes “Tanaka alone can’t do anything about this.” While I’m sure there will be mixed opinions, personally I do like the more clipped dialog in combat.

Interestingly, Kei’s line about IBMs is swapped from “Only I can do that.” to “Only mine can.”, correctly changing independent IBMs to something the IBM does rather than something the ajin does.

Major Change:

Satou’s line “So how much of this was your plan, Nagai?” became “Which bits were even part of the plan, Nagai?”

This is a pretty big change because in the original, he’s implying someone else came up with the plan and Nagai took a backseat, while in the new change it’s more ‘you lost control of things’.

The original line is roughly “Was this your plan, Nagai?”, so I can see why the original line was translated as it was, but it left it ambiguous whether he meant ‘this plan was disappointing’ or ‘was this someone else’s plan’

Chapter 41:

Another fix. “Nothing, I’ll meet up with Shimomura.” became “No reply. I’ll meet up with Shimomura, then.”

And a new error pops up: “Having dealt with us, he must be in the CEO’s room.” sounds extremely awkward, and it’s followup line “Lets wake up Nakano and go after Satou” is split weirdly between bubbles.

“Why not give up and go home? I’m getting bored.” was perfect, but it was swapped to “Give up and go home, I’m kinda bored.” which is again split oddly between bubbles.

Tanaka’s “I understand making the assassination list...” became “I know I’m the one who made the hit list-” which again correctly implies he was interrupted.

“But I’m going to go bug Nagai a bit more.”

Never change Satou, never change. This is rather than ‘mess around with’ which sounds significantly more ominous than Satou probably intended.

They fixed Satou calling him ‘Kei’ over the intercom rather than ‘Nagai’.

Satou’s speech over the intercom is so good. I won’t write the whole thing out but just overall it’s been touched up a lot and feels more consistent with Satou’s dialog. He refers to Kei’s genius as a ‘gift’ rather than ‘something good’. The only thing I dislike is “I think you’ll be more decisive once you’ve experienced it.” became "You'll be down with it after one go, I'm sure of it."

“I know you can do it.” -> “You can do it.”

The final line is actually a correction! CR Translated it as “It’s time for the bonus stage, Nagai.” but it’s actually “Bonus stage, Nagai.” This is basically a double entedre. He’s both saying it’s time for Nagai to have his bonus stage, but also that Nagai is his bonus stage.

Chapter 42:

CR: “Here we go. All good, Nagai?” “There isn’t a thing that’s good about this.” Vertical: “Here we go, Nagai, okay?” “ ‘Okay’ it isn’t.”

I definitely prefer CR’s but this is a hard to translate wordplay.

“I’m going to die.” became “I’m a dead man.”

“No thanks. There’s no way that’s happening.” became “Nah. No effin way.”

Yes, for real, they put effin. Not fucking. Effin.

“Ah! You were a pretty tough guy!” was absolutely ruined because they fucked up the line. It’s “Oh my guy was pretty tough!” which should PROBABLY have been “Oh my, that guy was pretty tough!” which is still worse but is at least coherent.

Chapter 43:

Chapter title was changed from ‘Fight’ to ‘A Fight’.

They corrected ‘how are you getting back to the safehouse?’ to the correct ‘we’. They also fixed “Are you going to disguise yourself or something?” to a more natural “While you, what, disguise yourself?”

Kei’s ‘lowering my goals’ line became “Call it a downward revision of my goals.” which I really like for Kei.

“It’s this country that’s at fault anyway, not me! It doesn’t know how to deal with any type of violence that doesn’t fall into one of it’s categories!” became “It’s the government’s fault! It has no idea how to deal with atypical violence!” which is a lot punchier. Really, the whole of Kei’s lecture has been trimmed down to be much shorter.

“You think you’re so smart...” became “There you go talking B.S.-” which is, being real, more accurate.

The fight overall had a lot of changes. Kei seems a bit more passionate and his lines are shorter. He does say that Kou is ‘bitching’ which is pretty funny.

IMPORTANT CHANGE:

Kou’s all important background line, “But then... someone picked me up... gave me a job...! And gave me something to do...!” has become far more ominous. It’s now “But there were people who gave me a job! Who had a use even for me!”

#ajin #translation comparison

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