This is getting REALLY good but I'm having a hard time parsing a lot of the text so i feel like im missing some of the subtleties. They're really talking past or around a lot of stuff which makes things difficult, but also they sometimes say things that I don't follow or something and it becomes difficult even to attribute the dialogue bubbles. I'm not sure exactly what the source of the problem is yet because I couldn't figure out what was being said even when I tried, so I couldn't track what was going wrong. Think I'm going to need another read over this.
I'm hesitant to attribute it to the TL myself bc I don't know much about translating, but it does feel that way. Right now I think what's happening is some piece of text will have something wrong with it, and because of how much the mangaka is relying on the audience, that stumbling block creates a serious problem because suddenly you can no longer follow by inference because the trailhead to the next idea is gone. I really adore writing that trusts the reader significantly. so that's a huge shame.
It's definitely a translation issue. Whoever is doing it is producing a very literal translation instead of making an effort at localization, which leads to characters saying things that are awkward, out of place, overly blunt, etc. in English. Phrases/expressions/idioms don't generally carry over word-for-word between cultures, so translating them literally leads to stilted or confusing language like this.
You can definitely take it too far in the other direction as well, and lose the original cultural context entirely or add distracting quirkiness to the characters (e.g. the classic "let's turn Osaka-ben into a Southern drawl"). Translation/localization is definitely an art, and we should appreciate those that go the extra mile, whether officially or unofficially. :)
last edited at May 28, 2026 12:04AM
