#while a real translator hasn't appeared I guess lil old me will have to do

[orphiclovers]

Hmm, now that I've actually read a different translation of Yoo Mia side story I feel way better about my own. In some places they matched almost perfectly, in some places the other person made a mistake, in some places I made a mistake they didn't, in some places the original was unclear and we both made the same editorial choices and in some places we made different ones, where I still have no idea who is right... at least now I know what's what, and that my back alley Yoo Mia side story version was actually real (I had been quietly worried it was fanfiction someone tricked me into thinking was official. But no. Now I've gotten multiple seperate sources confirming it's the real deal.)

I was afraid of accidentally inserting my own bias into the Yoo Mia side story with my fumbling attempts at editing, so I left a lot of unclear parts as they are, even if it looked bad. But, now I had the golden opportunity to double check those parts that I was unsure about, which I'm super grateful for, obviously! I see the other translator struggled in some of the same places I did.

Like, at the very beginning when Yoo Joonghyuk gets into Kang Woohyun's car and they talk. The other translators version is like this.

And here is what google translate gave me when I was making my version the first time.

I thought it was an obvious translation error because wtf why does he say the words twice? So this is how I edited it.

But now I'm thinking maybe it was in the original too, only meant to show Kang Woohyun was repeating the words while emphasizing the sylables. So if I was editing it now, I would do it something like this.

"I still eat well."

"Just lettuce and chicken breast, right? What diet is that? You have to eat rice. Rice! And beef too."

...That's as natural sounding as I could make it, anyway.

I won't do a total side-by-side comparison of every scene, since Yoo Mia side story is more than 12k words long and I'm not that crazy. There's a lot more little things like this. I'll just point out the most important one. (I know I'm the only person who cares this much but let me nerd out for a minute okay?)

I MISSED A PAGE! My back-alley version of the original just...didn't have it, even if everything before and after was the same. Here it is.

This is a totally new part that I've never seen before, but it's so real!!!

I FUCKING KNEW YOO MIA HAD A SPEECH IMPEDIMENT!!! I was actually writing a meta/theory post on it just now, it's in my drafts and everything (might still publish it if anyone's interested) since it was implied in the main story too but I don't know if a lot of people noticed. But because for some reason my Yoo Mia side story was missing the one single paragraph it was confirmed in, it was just a theory of mine. Now confirmed. Holy shit. I feel like fucking Matpat.

I don't know if anyone would be interested in me re-editing Yoo Mia side story with the missing page + fixing the errors I made the first time? I'll make a poll.

(Psssssst. If a real translator who actually knows Korean wants to give me their Yoo Mia side story version I would be eternally grateful and like. give u a free art commission or something 👀😊)