Touhou

I'm allowed to combined words however I want!

I don't think the Taoists have done enough sneaking to be properly sneaky. Seiga is a bit of a wild card, but Miko seems to tend to just mind her own business most of the time.

Of course, she has a rather broad definition of what constitutes her own business. So I'm not calling this one either way. Again.

To be fair, Eirin's Shady New Drug has factored into nothing ever, so I think Sneaky Taoists seems like a more reasonable addition.

Welcome to being a person. Man, seriously screw that spellcard. Its one of the 4 or so in the game that consistently give me trouble.

Welcome to the present! While we have your attention, I'm not sure if you missed the news about Seija being the protagonist of the recently-announced 14.3? I'm stoked.

And yeah... WAHH is worth catching up on.

Not to beat a dead horse, but... it's an effect of the mallet. Probably as soon as it regains her power she's gonna be big again so she's probably zapping herself with it over and over and hoping.

Not outside of Inabababa, anyway. Within it its kinda a running gag, though.

edited 24th Apr '14 5:41:11 PM by Impostermetaknight

Marisa's Mushrooms aren't really factored much into anything for incidents either, now that I think about it.

It's supposed to be a fanfiction template.

I feel that straight up Magic is a last resort for explaining things.

Everything, including citing the forbidden template, is on the forbidden template.

edited 24th Apr '14 5:56:29 PM by XionGaTaosenai

Remilia and Sakuya
Group shot
Chibi
Reading
Shinmyoumaru

@Clarste: Aaah, sorry, I had to go to bed before I could read your reply!

[1] Curses, humor is hard! Those lines seem inadequate now that I see them like that... Hmm, I did choose my suggestions to work well enough as the actual official translation, but it would be funnier (particularly out of context) if the gang in the back just shouted "YEEAAAH!!" or something?

Now that I think about it, a lot of fanslation groups put altered panels like that in the credits page at the end of the chapter.

Also also, say. Maybe we could cooperate from now on? I'd like to be involved in the translation process, if you don't mind.

[2] Today I seriously considered, if only for a moment, creating a Shinmyoumaru ask blog. She's just... such a perfect character...

No, bad! Bad 'Maru! Kyouko is my favorite and she's gonna stay that way!

...

...

I wonder if Shinmyoumaru's Danbooru tag is just as painful to peruse...

edited 25th Apr '14 12:45:18 AM by Fawriel

Out of curiosity, I scouted Shinyoumaru's tag. I believe that a hypothetical challenge picdump would only last until page two and the thing that I saw there was pretty grotesque. Definitely unlinkable.

I'm actually intrigued about how you'll feel about the way the fandom treats her. After all, a lot of the things that bothered you about the treatment of other characters (being treated like little pets, having their agency curtailed) happen to her pretty often, but the spirit of it seems to be different, you know? Also, truer to canon.

I told you they could say anything you like. It's really not hard at all to change what they're saying: I just click on a text field and type stuff.

While I love the idea of getting more eyes to see the translation, I don't think I'm skilled enough to double-check someone else's work. In fact, what you describe is exactly what I'm doing. The first, rough, translation work. I used to wait for Atrican to double-check, and now I'm waiting for someone else. I spend a lot of time waiting, because unlike me other people have important things to do.

That said, two heads are better than one, even when they're both bad at it. Maybe I shouldn't admit this, but when I'm stumped I sometimes use google translate for inspiration. Don't take that the wrong way: I don't actually use it to translate anything, I just look at the nonsense it spits out and see if that inspires a different interpretation. Anyway, if even that can be helpful I don't see how having you try your hand at it could hurt.

On the other hand, what you propose doesn't sound very fun for me. Translation is fun. It's a very holistic process for me: I don't read the chapter, write out a script, and then start editing panels. While I skim it at first to get the gist of what's going on, the translation itself is done page by page, panel by panel. I literally erase the Japanese text as I'm reading it, and then type the English on top of it immediately after. It's a process that works for me, and makes it very hard to collaborate. Also, I'm a contrarian and would probably feel compelled to reword all your translations on principle.

On the other other hand, you're like a professional translator, right? You're studying translation in university? This is literally your specialty and what you train for? Surely you have a better understanding of "translation theory" than my amateur ideas that I got from reading too much manga. Not only that, even if you start relatively green this is actually practical experience for you. I'm doing this as a hobby because I have too much free time, but for you it would translate directly into job experience? There's something inherently awesome about doing things that I don't want to deprive you of.

So if you're serious about your offer I think we could work something out.

I'm a practicing translator, just not of Japanese, and largely self-taught. WRT theory, I care more about linguistics and anthropology than translation theories, even though I've read abt the later.

I'm in the mood of replying to old posts. This is Faw:

Here's a presentation done in Bangkok, 2008: http://cardcaptor.moekaku.com/?p=112

I read it back when it first came out. With today's hindsight, I can see what the author got wrong, but it still is probably the only attempt at an intellectual presentation on the Touhou phenomenon in English. It has the distinction of appearing professional and respectable, unlike the Cracked article, fan videos, Touhou panels at American cons, or that French/German TV program.

On Clarste buying the WAHH Vol.3 special edition with figurine:

Unfortunately, depending on your point of view, you may have been short-charged. The special and normal editions of WAHH Vol.3 have different 4koma afterwords drawn by Azuma Aya. In the special edition, she only talked about the figurine. But in the normal edition, she showed us more of the manga's actual creative side: the headaches ZUN's script gave her.

I'll post pics later.

edited 25th Apr '14 3:25:12 AM by atrican

Some arts.

I am aware. I also thought it was a bit silly that the covers were different.

For people who are not Clarste, pics of the WAHH Vol.3 special edition can be seen here: http://tieba.baidu.com/p/2651020072

The normal edition afterword: 1◊ 2◊

Summary:

1. Let's talk about the making of the manga this time.

2. ZUN's script contains a high amount of details on dialogue and scenes. Realizing them requires a lot of effort. Every word written in the manga, except for sound effects, is his original writing.

3. Examples of scenes without dialogue:

Ch11, when Marisa showed her fully recovered arm, Reimu thought she was replaced by a youkai: "Reimu swoops Marisa down, mounts her."

Instruction on hobgoblin: "Evil seeps out from its expression."

4. And the shocking instruction for Kasen's expression in Ch13, when she promised she would help the mami who were turning into youkai: "Pleased with oneself, with compassion."

Azuma: "Pleased with oneself, with compassion!? ...How do you even convey this?"

edited 25th Apr '14 8:16:45 AM by atrican

That panel 2. Out of context, you think she is praising the script (or maybe that's the idea).

I think it's more like she's receiving the inviolable words from God. She doesn't have much room to interpret them or make her own input, so she feels diminished before them.

Haha, I love these manga bonus pages where the author/artist talks about stuff and uses characters from the manga to picture said stuff or represent him/herself or others; or where the author avatar interacts with OOC versions of the characters. Naoko Takeuchi did this a lot too in the Sailor Moon manga; thankfully, those bonus pages were included in the German release.

@Clarste: Aah poop. I actually went back after a few minutes to edit my post to be a more general offer of help, but you were faster than that!

Hmmm, I see your points. In the end, I don't have to be involved in those translations... If I want to practice, I can just try translating any given doujin on danbooru or whatever. It's not likely that being involved in the translation of a niche manga every once in a while is going to further my career options anyway... But yeah, I'd still like to be part of this project in particular, if we can figure out a way to do it without stepping on one another's toes. Maybe we could just do our own translations separately and then discuss our results?

(Also, I'm not really a professional translator yet... Basically all my education on the subject did is make me a little more confident in straying from an all too literal translation and sensitize me to various options I have when a problem arises.)

@atrican: Oh, that's some pretty good timing! I don't quite know yet what I'm going to be doing for my Bachelor's thesis, but I just re-decided on Touhou again for my presentation since that allows for more personal interpretation without requiring as much serious, academic sourcing. I just borrowed Azuma's "Otaku - Japan's Database Animals" from our institute's library for the weekend and I'm probably going to base it mostly on that and maybe some other writing on memes, but that presentation might help a lot with mine!

Now... actually, a Japanese-language source shouldn't be a problem and in fact we're encouraged to use at least one. What is this MAG.NET show? I think this is the first time I heard of it.

@afterword: Man, I really respect ZUN. (Crazy, I know.) The guy either doesn't know what he's doing, or he knows so well exactly what he's doing. Either way he definitely seems like a real artist.

By the sound of it, ZUN has a good vision of what he tries to convey, even if his own artistic talent isn't always quite enough to actually show it.

Well, I want you to be involved too. As I said, two pairs of eyes are better than one.

Well... cool!

... *squirrel noises*

Are squirrel noises a good thing or a bad thing? The only time I can remember squirrels making notable noises was when they were heckling a cat from the rooftops.