ルリドラゴン ・ Ruri Dragon 🐲 Week 1

I don’t think I agree with this - Xって何 is a pretty standard colloquial way of asking what X is exactly. Not so much “I have no idea what that means” as “please elaborate” in this case (hence her being miffed at being fed a synonym)

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@TobiasW quick recommendation, if you include an image of the last page of the week, it’s easier for readers using other formats to orient themselves.

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Adding to this, I like using a single non-spoiler panel from the page.

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Just go out of your way to find the most spoilery part of the story and include that as an image. If you can’t find one, just write “The butler did it” across it in big bold letters

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I mean, I agree with you, more or less; that’s what my intepretation is getting at. I was mostly trying to say I don’t agree with saying, “What’s a dragon?” as the translation, as that doesn’t fit the context. (Though clearly, it’s what the mom took it to mean. :joy:)

“What do you mean by a dragon?” (I.e., wanting more detail on the situation) is the clear intent. Breaking it up slightly in the translation (even if the Japanese is a single sentence) makes that intent more clear, imo.

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Ah, gotcha. Yeah, that makes sense.

Out of curiosity I just checked the English version and at least the one I’ve read just skips over it entirely - mom initially just says they’re “ryu horns”, then Ruri says “come again?” and her mom responds with “dragon”, after which Ruri gets sassy because she wasn’t asking for an English translation. Kinda clunky if you ask me, not necessarily the way I would’ve gone about it, though it doesn’t help that English only has one word for dragon :smile:

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I mean, in this case, the page has a “17” printed on it, but it can’t hurt to just get into the habit of doing it. I’ll add it tomorrow!

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Yeah, it’s a bit of a hard joke to translate, unfortunately. I guess they actually could have gone the literal: “What’s a dragon?” route and had the mom make a sassy remark about, “Well, they have horns…”

It would be putting words in the character’s mouth, but would preserve at least the semblance of a joke.

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I follow along with the youtube reading, where there isn’t one. (It’s absolutely great btw)

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Could sidestep by mistranslating a bit, something like originally calling the dad a wyvern or <pick your favourite giant lizard> or just say “winged lizard” for ドラゴン, at which point ruri could be annoyed because of being talked to like a 4 year old

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ゴジラ?

Wait. That one’s probably copyrighted… not that, that’s stopped manga before. :joy:

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The manga has a few of those hard to translate jokes, actually. Some better translated than others.

Yeah, that was my first thought as well. Or maybe offering up a translation like she does here, but it feels really weird to lead with “ryu” in an English translation. Just flipping those around would already make it feel a lot less strange I think.

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The way I translate things, I always try to keep the Japanese intact, I absolutely hate localizations and I don’t like to change jokes. I use translator notes when I need to.

So something like this is actually a good way to do it I think. Since in original it goes from JP to ENG, it only makes sense the ENG goes to JP.

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Hello! I just finished reading the part. I don’t have much practice reading actual stories so this has been super helpful. Thank you so much for putting together the vocab list and all the tips here.

Ebook p14

言おう… was hard for me to parse even though I’ve seen those phrases individually so that translation was particularly helpful.

I love the sass so much.

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You got through the first week today so you’re doing well!

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Localization Off-Topic

So long as the audience is aware that Ryu means dragon in Japanese, sure. :wink:

I overall prefer to keep as close to original as possible as well, to be fair. I definitely rag on localizations a lot (Fire Emblem Fates is a sore point), but I also think that there is such a thing as a balance between localization and translation to be found.

Minor tweaks to make something land better? Great.

Calling onigiri a jelly donut, or translating a semi-serious (if not necessarily all that well-written) line into a bad internet joke? Bad.

I suppose in this case, it would be pretty well self-explanatory that ryu means dragon, honestly, but I also don’t know if the joke would land as well (which seems strange, because I did chuckle a bit at the Japanese, but seeing the reverse situation in English feels forced, prinarily because English doesn’t have two words for dragon). I like @Gorbit99’s approach of simplifying the word, since that’s essentially what the mom did: went from the kanji form/official word to a casual katakana form (that tends to show up in kid’s books). That would elicit the same chuckle from me that the Japanese did.

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Can always make sure with something like “It’d be ryu in Japanese”, I think that might still fall within “acceptable” levels of localisation without changing things up too much.

But yeah, something like “fire-breathing lizard” might work. Fits her deadpan attitude to the whole thing too :smile:

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Now that you mention it i dont think i read gorbit’s version that well, it is actually pretty funny in that way, i wouldnt have thought of it but i can accept it.

I mean dont get me wrong im not saying localizing has zero place, i do use it at times if i really have to, but my first thought is usually how can i preserve it? The reader is reading a manga not a comic book. Its like the way official translations omit honorifics, like come on we are all weebs, we know what they mean, or at least a general sense if they didnt search it up.

Some stuff like that is what gets me, and when i watch anime, im not good enough to stop using subtitles completely but im good enough to recognize when the subtitles are wrong and sometimes they change the meaning completely when it could have easily been translated.

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You seem to be having some difficulty telling your つs apart. I guess you get a feel for what word you’d expect to find over time, but big つ (on the right) is the same size as the characters around it, whereas small っ (on the left) is noticeably smaller.

Tsu sizes

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What irks me the most but I know it shouldn’t is the name ordering being switched, because they don’t think you can cope with the fact that Japanese name ordering is just reversed.

this reminded me of something

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