大海原と大海原 ・Wadanohara and the Great Blue Sea (Absolute Beginners Book Club Starting in September)

I honestly don’t think that’d be fair to her. You’d be asking her to do an actual job that people get paid to do, but for free.

There’s an official English translation - you can just buy that.

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I also worry that’s a bit unfair to her, and I don’t think it’s necessary, I’m pretty confident that between all of us and the internet we can crack this thing open.

I’ve already worked my way through the prologue, first chapter, and a good chunk of the second chapter and I think there are only a few (dozen? few dozen?) points I still need clarification on.

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Translation is pretty difficult work, plus people typically translate into their native language not the other way around. Gonna throw my vote behind “not a good idea”.

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For sure :woman_shrugging:

I’d be more interested in a literal translation for comparison than the English version, however. I don’t have experience in manga, but anime tends to get butchered with English translations.

In my defense, there’s nothing unfair about asking, not that I’m missing your points.

Anime has timing constraints. I thought of comparing the sample chapter available online with my English copy to see how close it is, but I forgot that I hated the ending so much that I got rid of it, so I can’t. Other manga I’ve been reading have been pretty close, though - but perhaps I won’t mention the number of outright mistakes I keep noticing in the Yuru Camp translation. :stuck_out_tongue:

She may feel obligated to accept. She may accept without realising how much work would be entailed, and feel unable to back out later.

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This is the free sample for that first page (before the prologue). It’s not butchered, the meaning is portrayed, but it’s also not literally translated.

The first couple speach bubbles in the next pages also seemed about what I could figure the translations would be- but again potentially not literal.


Aaaaanyway, I haven’t harrassed any unsuspecting Japanese natives so all’s good.

From a practical PoV, I’m not sure what you’d get out of those translations that you likely won’t get out of the book club. Asking your friend for help with particular lines seems a better use of their time, rather than asking them to do large chunks most of which presumably the book club will already have answers for.

It is quite common for members of book clubs to post breakdowns and translations as they go along, here are a few examples from a previous book club I was part of
breakdown
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I have some friends I exchange grammar/language help with, but so far pretty much every question that came during book club reading I’ve found an answer through the book club, the internet, or existing resources (e.g. dictionary of Japanese grammar).

For this book club I’ve been writing out every line in a Google Doc and doing a (rough) breakdown and translation.

Note that the book club hasn’t officially started yet, so we can expect the volume of activity to increase once it starts.

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Interesting that they got the first bubble wrong too. I’m not surprised per se but I do always hope for better from professionals. I suppose it could have been a deliberate choice but even so, while I’m of the opinion being overly literal makes for a bad translation, if the translation is too liberal it simply won’t be helpful to someone trying to learn the language.

I’m generally not a fan of checking translations honestly. Scanlations are frequently horrible but I’ve come across some appalling errors even in officially licensed manga. One that sticks out in my memory is a line which was translated as “when I lie in that bed, I can’t have nightmares” in a scene where the guy was literally talking about how he has nightmares every single night (it turned out that the translator just didn’t understand the ~しか~ない construction and got the exact opposite meaning).

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What’s wrong about the first bubble? I mean, it’s not as poetic as it could be, but it’s not wrong.

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I mentioned it in the prologue thread. The ありました here is sort of a “once upon a time” device. The もの in that first sentence is the same 者 in the later bubbles (you can tell for sure because otherwise その wouldn’t make any sense).

From Imabi:
image

From a slightly modernized version of 竹取物語:

むかし、いつのころでありましたか、竹取たけとりのおきなといふひとがありました

(The original used ありけり, where けり is the poetic past tense and hence ありけり is the same as ありました)

Another random example of this off the top of my head is 二人の娘 by KOKIA.

Tofugu actually mentions this use case in their いる・ある article:

You’ll still see the classical use of ある in traditional creative writing, and it’s one facet that adds to the archaic feel of fairy tales and traditional folklore. Within these styles, even creative works being written today use ある like this sometimes. For example, to introduce a character named Kyoko, you may see either いる or ある being used.

So yeah I would say the translation got it wrong.

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I’m sorry, but if the もの of the first bubble was the same as the 者 in the later bubble, then why is the kanji usage different? That feels like it points to もの in the first bubble being 物, since it’s being differentiated from 者 right? If it was supposed to be the same, why not use the same kanji?

Also the その can make sense - it would just be quite vague

It could be that the intention was to be slightly ambiguous at first and then expand in the following sentences. But even if that wasn’t the case, there’s no reason that two words on the same page, or even in the same bubble, have to use the same kanji despite referring to the same thing.

Regarding その, it has to link back to a noun that was previously stated. When conversing with someone else, その would generally point to something your 相手 mentioned, but when monologuing it refers to something you just said. In this case it’s calling back to the previous sentence, but you do it in the same sentence as well; or example, いとことその両親 “my cousin and his parents”, literally “my cousin and the parents of that thing I just mentioned”.

Prior to bubble 3, the only other nouns are 時, 月, and 海, none of which make any sense to be the subject of the next sentence. “No matter how much time passed; nor how many nights did the moon illuminate the sea, that もの, (its) feelings never wavering, continued to pray and wait.” There’s literally only one option for その to be pointing to and it’s the もの in the first sentence.

Not to mention, if it wasn’t supposed to link back, there would be literally no reason for the first bubble at all. What’s unchanging if not the character who, day after day without faltering, prayed and patiently waited for an answer?

I also feel like people are glossing over the fact that ありました is past tense? like, this character is clearly telling a story about something that happened in the past. Whatever the unchanging thing was, its unchanging nature is not necessarily unchanging anymore. (could this be foreshadowing? idk I haven’t read the second book yet)

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Is it okay to joing the club today, even tho it technically already started? :slight_smile:

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Yes of course! For bookclubs on wanikani people can join whenever and can read along with the schedule, or at their own pace.

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Amazing, thank you!

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jojo reference

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@bearytoast, what do you think about putting a poll in each week’s thread for people to mark that they are reading along? Often there are people who are reading but not commenting and it’s nice to get a feel for how many are still reading along.

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That’s a great idea. I’ll get it added to this week’s thread!

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I cant find vocabulary for Page 13 to 15(Physical copy).
I think its after Prologue and before the start of chapter 1.

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It is part of chapter 1. I just double checked, and the vocab for those pages is on the chapter 1 sheet.

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