Translation Corner: Nagomibako

So I'm writing my first "proper" blog post on here. Here, I'll be detailing and highlighting some of the lines in the translation of Nagomibako that I feel are worth talking about. Despite its small script size, there's quite a bit of interesting lines and jokes that I thought I would go over. 

It's been a hot minute since the Nagomibako translation has released and now that the dust has finally settled, it feels about to do some reflection on several of the lines that I feel like highlight the translation job I did on Nagomibako. I'll keep this short and sweet and only talk about a few of the parts of the translations that I personally think are the extreme highlights. Potential spoilers and NSFW stuff ahead.

1. 

The original Japanese line for the final sentence is "血に塗れた由良の嗤い声が、聴く者も絶えた病院に何時までも響いていた。". A more direct translation of the line would be something along the lines of "Yura, covered in blood, lets out a laugh that echoes throughout the empty hospital". What I like about the final line is that it captures the emptiness of the hospital while also acknowledging the deaths that happened within the hospital. Yura's laugh is for the people she has killed and the final line conveys Yura's madness perfectly and how she is left all alone with only the souls of the dead being able to hear her ghastly laughter. I believe the final line is much more chilling in its delivery of Yura's extreme decent within this story.

2. 

The original Japanese line uses "秘唇" to describe Rin's vagina. Literally translated, it means "secret lips", though colloquially it is used to the describe the lips of the vagina, otherwise the vulva. I very well could have said something to the effect of vulva, or labia majora, but I instead opted for something more lyrical, and if you're a Harry Potter fan, definitely a reference. H-scenes also need their spice of life as well, and this is no exception. When the opportunity presents itself to take creative risks when translating, I will jump on that chance. I think "Chamber of Secrets" is definitely an intriguing and unique way of describing the vaginal canal, especially taking into consideration the original Japanese line. 

3. 

For much of this scene, most of Qwon's dialogue was taken straight from the opening scene in Full Metal Jacket. Most of the Japanese lines are translated directly from that opening scene. No really noteworthy translation-wise, but just an interesting tidbit I wanted to point out. You can watch the opening scene here (which also contains a lot of offensive content, if you aren't already aware):

4. 

There are two things worth discussing. First is Itty Bitty Titty Committee. I give full props to the editor, Pomelo, for this one. The rhyming scheme is perfect and rolls of the tongue perfectly. The original Japanese phrase to describe this is "貧乳", which literally translates into "Small Tits". Coming up with a full team name for small tits is simply genius. Again, Pomelo did great with this.

The second part is regarding the "century mark" part of the line. The phrase in question is "大台に届かない", which can be literally translated as "not reaching the mark". "大台" can also be used to describe the 100 yen unit in terms of economics. Therefore, an appropriate line could have been "You haven't reached the mark!" or "You aren't close to 100 cm at all!", with the latter denoting a specific size while the former creating a general difference between small and large breasts. However, I instead opted to go with "century mark", phrasing that aligns closer to the latter direct translation. Given that Nana was making the boob measuring into a competition, I wanted to throw in lingo that was commonly used in sporting events. See Connor McDavid reaching 100 points as an example used in sports.

5. 

This typographical error is here 100% intentional and meant as a way to play around English syntax while capturing the feel of the Japanese joke. The second line in Japanese is "「自分のおっぱいに訊いてみるっす」" will the fourth line is "「いや、自分の胸に訊いてみろっす。美華夏さん、何か疚しい事はないんすか？」". The second line directly translated says something to the effect of "Have you asked your breasts about it?" while the fourth line would be "Rather, I meant to ask have you asked your heart about it?". In Japanese, "胸" can mean both the physical chest and the metaphorically heart. This is why the switching between "おっぱい" (oppai) and "胸" (mune) is more seamless than in English where there isn't a natural sounding equivalent. Hence, the Nagomibako team put our heads together and create a joke entirely based on English syntax alone and this is the result, where consulted becomes consultit and keeping in the spirit of the boob joke. 

6. 

This whole section is something I brainstormed a lot to get something workable. I am willing to admit that the most ideal situation would be finding a fitting translation of "今日一日を面白おかしく過ごす為のファンタスティックな団" that fit the KOF moniker. And I did brainstorm for a long while to thinking of something that fit; alas, nothing came to mind. I did not want to do the joke or line a disservice by directly translating KOF's full name while it not matching the acronym. And that's when it hit me that I could write in a meta joke for this. Nagomibako is filled with meta and self-referential jokes, why can't the translation fit in one too? And so I transliterated KOF's full name instead of translating it and spun the whole joke into translated characters not being able to understand Japanese and being under the whims of their translators. While I would have preferred to have a fitting translation for KOF, I took lemons and made lemonade with these lines. 

And that's it for my short blog post regarding my translation of Nagomibako! I simply just went over a few lines, but I'm more than willing to do a deeper dive into more of my mindset and going over more general passages. If you want to see more of this kind of stuff, please let me know!