So, this seems to be a Beauty and the Beast retelling now? Confined to the manor and given rules about where she can go, initially scary but actually friendly supernatural staff, heroine breaks the rules and the owner nearly loses control and harms her, some sort of condition on how she can return to being human.

What a cute Rule 63 Good Omens doujin.

Kotonoha Amrilato is a really, really good VN and it's really great that more people will be able to experience it. The art here did a really good job capturing how cute and sweet Ruka is. It's probably the most exciting announcement for me this year, and I already own a copy. Hopefully its sequel(ish) Itsuka no Memorajxo will also be picked up afterwards.

For those curious or who want a taste of the characters while they wait, the drama CD translation animation referred to in the credits is here on Mega or in /u/'s game thread. Does anyone know if they announced if they'd be doing the audio dramas as well? If not, I might get around to doing the first one, now the actual game is coming over.

last edited at Aug 11, 2018 3:28AM

I'm not sure you were making appropriate points the whole time tbh. I really disagree with your stance ¯_(ツ)_/¯

I'm glad we had this productive conversation.

There's no reason why you'd think like that though
No one reads manga in American English and thinks "okay they're American". You sound like... a special case.

Just as was the case for Southern and Kansai-ben, we have an automatic mapping between English and Japanese. We know, by convention, that when we read standard English, it's coding for Japanese speakers and Japanese characters (for instance, consider how distracting a subtitle along the lines of "just tell me in English!" can we - the localization breaks our mapping by implying that they really are English speakers, not Japanese). There is no such mapping for Hakata being Scottish - I have no intuitive concept of what a Scottish accent means for a Japanese character, and so she just sounds Scottish.

If a defining and frequently referenced part of her character isn't a reason to include a dialect in the translation, what are your criteria for it being required?

If a dialect is necessary for the story or character to make sense, do it minimally. The approach in the first chapter was fine: she clearly talks differently, but - crucially - in a non-region-specific way. As soon as you bring a specific geographic accent in, you're instantly introducing a whole bunch of spurious connotations to the character that almost certainly undo any good the presence of a specific dialect could do. No, the generic "she talks differently" doesn't convey the same meaning as the original Hakata dialect - but neither does the Scottish, and it at least does so without making her seem to be Scottish instead. Ultimately, the only time the meaning of a dialect is going to be as clear to English readers as it would be to those of the original language is when it's directly referenced and explained in dialogue, and so generally the least harm a translator can do is to take it as far as is needed for those referenced to make sense without going overboard.

Ultimately, it's your translation and your choices to make. But I tried to read this chapter and just couldn't take her dialogue seriously, which is why I posted.

EDIT:

You do have to. That's what the translator has been repeating over and over. It's literally part of the character. Character has an unconventional accent, she doesn't speak in standard Japanese. She doesn't speak in a Kansai accent either, so no southern stuff.

I know what they said; I'm disagreeing with it. That's sort of the point of my post. When you translate a character with a dialect, you will inevitably do harm to their character. But you will likely do less harm avoiding or minimizing it than you will suddenly making them appear to be Scottish or Mexian or Italian or whatever. You lose part of one way one aspect of her character is expressed, but you avoid adding a whole piles of entirely new aspects of her character that don't really exist.

I'm sure the Japanese readers found the accent quite noticeable in Japanese too, lol

That's... not really my point. Noticing "hey, she's from Hakata" in a line doesn't take you out of the story; if anything, it draws you into it. Noticing "hey, she's Scottish... wait, no, that doesn't make sense. Oh, right, it's from the translation" does.

last edited at Jun 19, 2018 12:42PM

?? This is an English translation? Are you saying that a southern US accent makes more sense for a Japanese woman to have?
Or are you saying that you somehow want the Japanese Hakata dialect in... English?

I'm saying don't translate dialects when you don't have to, because it rarely works out well - such as here, where suddenly I'm being presented with an inexplicably Scottish Japanese woman. When did I ever mention Southern accents?

While we're on the subject, though, the whole Kansai-ben = Southern thing is a tiny bit better, purely because of how often it's used, which means that at least some readers will be able to immediately realize what it's coding for instead of simply seeing the character as being from the South. There's no mental mapping like that for Hakata = Scottish.

Also, if you really, really want a British "country-bumpkin" accent, well, there already is one, and it's West Country, not Scottish.

every time I see an "aboot" or "dinnae", I'm instantly aware that I'm reading a translation and taken out of the dialogue itself.
That's exactly it? This is a translation? I'm glad we're on the same page here then, would hate for you to miss the point of this being an English translation of a Japanese series.

Please don't be obtuse. As the part of the post you didn't quote said, the goal of a translation is to be as transparent as possible. Every time there's a clear Scottish phrase, I immediately am aware that "hey, look, an artifact of translation" and am taken out of actually engaging with the dialogue itself.

Okay, here's the thing.

A Scottish accent is not comedic or ridiculous. But a Scottish accent coming from a clearly-Japanese woman, speaking Japanese, in the middle of Japan... well, it kind of is. Accents aren't just random collections of funny pronunciations and slang, they have their own geographic and cultural connotations, and when you simply slot out one to replace with another, suddenly none of those fit any more. You say you don't want to injure her character by removing an aspect of it, and while I understand that desire, you're doing even more harm by adding entirely new aspects simply by introducing the connotations of a Scottish person to her where they clearly have no place. I can't engage with her character because the idea of a random Japanese woman in the middle of Tokyo with a cliche highlands accent is too ridiculous- and to be clear, I am Scottish, so I have no problems whatsoever understanding it. It also goes against the desire to have a translation be as transparent as possible: every time I see an "aboot" or "dinnae", I'm instantly aware that I'm reading a translation and taken out of the dialogue itself.

last edited at Jun 19, 2018 11:44AM