I’m nearing the middle of 鹿の王 volume 1. It’s interesting and not hard to read in terms of grammar, but there’s just a LOT of vocabulary. At 150 pages it doesn’t feel like the frequency is really going down, and logically I know this is because the introduction/setup part always has a lot of vocab, and in a 4-volume book that means the entire first volume is probably crazy vocab. Even knowing why, it’s tiring.
This morning I saw Bookwalker is having more promotions, including one for free first volumes of “manga so beautiful you’ll fall for it in one glance.” So I got the first volume of 岩元先輩ノ推薦 to try. It’s by 椎橋 寛 and it’s about a school for people with supernatural powers in the 1910s. It has full furigana and the difficulty level is IMO similar to 暁のヨナ。 And the art really is great. Giving out the first volume free was a good idea. (I think Young Jump is doing the “beautiful manga” promotion on several platforms right now)
So I suspect that is actually singular because the previous sentence was describing an older colleague of Suzui’s.
Hahaha yup. It’s very hard without (and even sometimes with) context. This one I’m largely sure that the sportsy/loud voice/broad shouldered person is the section manager and Suzui suspected upon initially meeting him that they would not get along, but the sentence also seems to say that the section manager was inclined to not like Suzui because he was 生っちょろい and came from the planning department. I think it’s the switching between viewpoints which gave me whiplash reading it.
Thanks for giving it a shot! I’m glad I’m not alone in finding these a bit tricky.
Probably because it’s usually written in hiragana When I see those kanji my instinct is to read it as ちゅうちょ because 躊躇 is read that way. It also means hesitation, so no change in meaning.
I could start today's manga reading, or I can reply to things.
At the end of each volume of the series Detective Conan, the mangaka has a drawing of himself having been murdered in a different way. The series has been running since 1994, and is 101 volumes long and still going. As the mangaka’s about to hit 60 years old in one more year, I’m hoping he already has pre-drawn-out story arcs to tie up all the story threads that have been running for decades, just in case he doesn’t survive long enough to draw them up! At the very least, I believe he’s said he knows how everything will end. So if he’s written that down, and maybe storyboarded some of it, something else could mimic his art style (and hopefully someone his writing style?) and finish up the series if anything happens to him.
The Japanese novel series Guin Saga comes to mind. Over 120 books in the series had been released until the author became ill and passed away at age 56. I had seen the 26-episode anime, and wanted to know more about the main character’s (in-story) origins, but it looks like the main character’s mysteries will never be revealed. There was enough material to publish a few more books the author had written, then another author took over the series and it’s still going.
Another case is The Familiar of Zero, a light novel series that was still unfinished at 20 books when the author passed away at age 41. Another author took the original author’s notes and finished off the series across two final books.
It’s for these reasons that I typically aim for completed series unless it’s a slice-of-life series.
It probably sounds a bit bad to reduce these authors to a single work, but especially if it’s a long-running one, this is what we will know about that person though. We don’t know the authors personally, but we do know their work.
Hopefully some authors who face this will discover they actually have enough fans that they can publish online using financial systems such as Patreon (or perhaps Pixiv has similar financial options?)
As much as I enjoyed the series (manga), the ending definitely felt rushed, disappointing, and there’s no way Tenma’s bright enough for where she is.
Not only that but there’s a one-month time skip in volume three.
(It was literally the last chapter!)
My internal reconciliation is that we’re actually seeing cases from many parallel worlds that each have the same “storyline” cases, but the rest of the cases are specific to each parallel world =D This also explains the discrepancies between Ai’s sister in the manga and anime!
ぺこぺこ: bowing repeatedly
えらいぞ !: Good job!
からかう: to tease
先祖 (せんぞ): ancestor
邪魔 (じゃま): hindrance, nuisance (as in お邪魔します)
ひょこ: bobbing
仲良く(なかよく): on good terms with
知り合い (しりあい): acquaintance
にこにこ: with a friendly smile
ふつうに: normally, naturally
In news only a little related to reading: I’ve been making my way through various “best Japanese films” lists, and last night I watched リリイ・シュシュのすべて, which involved a fair amount of onscreen reading (with help from subtitles, but baby steps). Unfortunately it gave me nightmares, but is a film worth watching if you can stomach the extreme horrors of adolescent bullying.
So I succumbed to peer pressure (okay, it was just a gentle prod from @NicoleIsEnough) and read the first chapter of Tugumi. It was a pleasant read, and easier than 化身. Strangely, I liked it better in Japanese than in translation (the part I had read from the sample, at least). I don’t mean that the translation wasn’t good, it’s just that in Japanese it sounded, I don’t know, milder? I’ve noticed it before: some stories just don’t have the right tone in translation, even when the translation is as good as can be. I don’t know how to explain it. Probably a culture thing? With a different language come different expectations I guess.
Okay, so it looks like I might be able to keep up if I just need to devote a day per week to the IBC? Although the mystery pick has much longer chapters. And August will be hard in any case, as I will be on the road most of the time.
I just finished reading つぐみ in translation and throughout I found that Tsugumi’s dialogue sounded very awkward. I look forward to the day I can read it in the original so I can have a sense of what she really sounds like.
You know what’s funny? I once read a book that was translated from English to Japanese, and there it was the same - the Japanese sounded milder, and hmmm I don’t know, more wholesome maybe?
That’s what I figured as well.
I’d be super surprised if you needed more than one day. The assignments will roughly stay the same length throughout.
If you give me an example that you found awkward (preferably from the first chapter ), I can send you the Japanese as a teaser So you can compare and also test your abilities.
Ok, I’ve looked at the sample on Amazon, and if I were to summarize the awkwardness, it would be in the expressions that I imagine are meant to make her sound belittling and slightly aggressive, but that never sound quite right. So, for example,
“Listen, kid, I’m a hell of a lot closer to death than the rest of you assholes…I was in bed earlier, right, and the old guy showed up in my dream…The thing is, kiddo, that you were in the dream too…I went and took a peek in the mailbox, right, and damned if…Hey kid, did you ever tell him about the haunted mailbox while he was alive?”
I can sort of see what’s supposed to be happening here, but the “kiddoes” and “damneds” sound so very unnatural.
I noticed the same thing when I watched Josee, The Tiger, and the Fish. The disconnect between what was being said in Japanese, and the word choice for the translated English was quite noticeable to me. Specifically 管理人 sticks out in my mind still, where the English subs chose to use the word “servant,” which isn’t quite wrong, but felt more harsh than the “caretaker” vibes I get from the actual 管理人 (and personally, isn’t how I would translate the word, because it has different vibes to it).
I definitely agree it’s a culture thing. When I mentioned that to my tutor, she mentioned that she feels like a lot of times when translating into English for shows and books, the word choice/tone often becomes a lot rougher or rude than the original Japanese.
Oh my, that does sound unnatural . I guess it’s an effort to translate おまえら and such, but it’s really taking it too far. I don’t believe even Tsugumi would speak like that to her cousin of roughly the same age…
To be clear, I’m not blaming the translator at all - it must be incredibly challenging. Some things just don’t translate, and the character of Tsugumi seems to be an instance of that. Just goes to show how deeply embedded our characters are in our own cultures and languages.
I’m not blaming the translator either, but I tend to prefer when speech isn’t so arbitrarily localized like that. This might sound natural to an American audience, but there’s a wider English-speaking readership out there. I do understand the difficulty though. The Japanese can be much more subtly “rude” in ways that would never register in other languages. Another argument for always reading the original if at all possible. How I wish I could be fluent in every language there is…
Interesting, so it’s possibly more widespread that it seemed. Especially when translating between cultures with such different approaches to, well, nearly everything, it’s really tough to keep the tone right.
That said, my previous experiences with the translation just not sounding as good as the original was between European languages, so no huge cultural differences, although of course there are a lot. I’m really having a hard time explaining it, but let’s say, you expect different speech patterns and even investigation methods from a British detective compared to a Mediterranean policeman, so when you read one in translation you tend to imagine the other and it feels off.
I can read most of it phonetically (other than a few of the kanji), and because I have the translation right here I can piece the meaning together, but it would be very difficult for me to read such a passage in the wild. I’ll be sticking to Yotsuba and Shirokuma Cafe for a while before I start tackling novels. But your encouragement means a lot!
Honestly had bigger problems with that one because the vocabulary can be pretty obscure and the situations are sometimes so out there. Plus the humor and wordplay is hard to grog without being pretty fluent in Japanese.
There were definitely moments when it was difficult (I finished the first volume a while ago). I found it very funny though; I loved the puns and was sorry when they tapered off. Although my language skills are poor, I think having lived in Japan for a couple of years gave me a bit of implicit understanding of some things. That said, having poor language skills and having NOT lived in Japan for a long time means that I am probably often blissfully unaware of how much I’m missing! And in general, manga supply so much context that is helpful and that you don’t get in a novel.
Random article - about MuseScore, the music notation software. Was not expecting to read about a program that I use regularly, and used earlier today, weird coincidence.
When I see those kanji my instinct is to read it as ちゅうちょ because 躊躇 is read that way. It also means hesitation, so no change in meaning.
) and read the first chapter of Tugumi. It was a pleasant read, and easier than 化身. Strangely, I liked it better in Japanese than in translation (the part I had read from the sample, at least). I don’t mean that the translation wasn’t good, it’s just that in Japanese it sounded, I don’t know, milder? I’ve noticed it before: some stories just don’t have the right tone in translation, even when the translation is as good as can be. I don’t know how to explain it. Probably a culture thing? With a different language come different expectations I guess.
Then you can read the whole book. So far it was not more difficult than that, I’d say.
I can read most of it phonetically (other than a few of the kanji), and because I have the translation right here I can piece the meaning together, but it would be very difficult for me to read such a passage in the wild. I’ll be sticking to Yotsuba and Shirokuma Cafe for a while before I start tackling novels. But your encouragement means a lot!
