My fellow hentai brothers and sisters, with permission from RyuuTama who started the first chapter, Conan and I present to you a proper Japanese to English translation of Kisaragi Gunma’s Welcome to Tokoharusou: Chapters 2-4! Being a fan of Gunma-sensei, I could not stand idly by and see his work be continually defecated upon by poor translations and poor editing any longer! YOU GUYS DESERVE BETTER THAN THAT SHIT!
I’ll cut to the chase and give you guys the download links first before I go on with my little rant. I will comment, however, that after comparing this version to the current “English” version, I highly question the validity of the original Japanese-Spanish translation. Giving the Spanish-English translator the benefit of the doubt (via google translate or some other machine translation tool), the Spanish version is worlds apart in terms of accuracy. I can’t read Spanish, so my critique carries no weight, but it does boggle my mind a bit when comparing the works side by side.
*EDIT*Conan pointed out a typo on page 29, so I have replaced the MediaFire link with a V2 and updated the galleries. Sorry guys. (19-Feb-12)
*Edit 2* By popular demand, I have compiled Ryuutama’s first chapter along with mine on exhentai.
Fakku
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Other
E-Hentai (Replaced with Exhentai link because it was tagged lolicon for NO DAMN REASON!)
Ch.02-04 MediaFire (Version 2 Link)
Ch.01 Over at Ryuu’s Place
As an FYI, Ryuutama will be taking care of the rest of the chapters coming out unless time decides to be a bitch and leave him again.
I had originally wrote a very long and somewhat scathing essay for this post, but that was a few months ago and I can’t seem to find it anymore. Instead, I will give you guys a side by side comparison with comments to give you an idea why I was so repulsed by the hacked translation job. Furthermore, I will also like to direct people to Bamboo’s Blog who highlights in a very long entry the same feelings I have when it comes to second and first-hand translations. It’s long, but well worth the read in my opinion. Now, onto the comparisons!
In the grand schemes of things, I’m fully aware that my opinion does not matter in the vast sea of the internet (a reason why I’m usually quiet on most matters), but I’d like to start off by saying something that will probably upset a few people. I believe those who subscribes to the whole, “I’d rather see a bad translation than no translation…” or “This will suffice until someone comes around to fix it…” should just buy some transparent sticky notes with the words, “Fuck me!” and, “I’m Cumming” and stick them on their monitors as they’re fapping to any H-content. If you really don’t care about what the artist is trying to convey or say in their story (no matter how mindless or silly the plot maybe), then why the hell do you demand a translation? If you want to have a general idea of what’s going on, then the pictures should suffice. Otherwise, you only want some arbitrary English words to compliment your fap session to make the moment of climax that much more intense… I guess. If that’s the case, then my sticky note solution should work wonders for you.
Why am I saying this? It’s because of that sort of mindset that we get more and more bad translations flooding the community. I believe that those who decide to take up translating has a responsibility to convey the intention of the artist as closely as possible. For the audience, I believe the readership should at least take notice and try to appreciate the original intent of the artist as much as possible. Both are a sign of respect to someone who toils endlessly day in and day out to produce fap worthy content for our enjoyment. It’s the least we can do since most of us are getting this stuff for free to begin with. Without that sense of respect for the artist, we get crap like the following. The proper translation is on the left / top, hacked up version on the right / bottom.
Now, I have to admit that on my first time through reading the “English” version, I stopped here because I knew the rest of the chapter and subsequent translations were going to be horrid compared to my first read through in Japanese. Imagine the constant facepalmes I had to endure to make this comparison entry. My tool to “check” the spanish translation is google translate, and my Gawd, I really wonder if we read the same story. My Spanish brethrens… you guys deserve better as well.
There is no mention of cock in the first line… There is nothing in the second bubble that talks about the week. We have konya (Tonight) and Asa made (Until morning)… Furthermore, the dialogue violates the house rules which are introduced a few pages later. Plot consistency is not present in the Spa->Eng version. Moving right along…
Now we’re getting into dialogue that helps shape the characters and plot. Remember, no matter how mindless it may be, there is some semblance of story-telling in hentai. Here’s a very crucial scene in the second chapter that establishes why the manager is whoring herself to everyone. When comparing the two translations side-by-side here, you can get an almost completely different tone to the story. The Jap->Eng version highlights Yua’s “unfortunate” circumstances and establishes her whimsical personality which is further elaborated upon in the subsequent chapters. Although it’s already pretty obvious, we see these guys in a much more manipulative light in the Jap->Eng version compared to their slightly sympathetic stance in the Spa->Eng version. Of course, there are some technical errors such as speaker, idiomatic expressions, and a few other things that’s not shown, but are present in this page made in the Spa->Eng version.
Nonsensical humor in this part of the chapter, but still important as it presents the circumstances of our lovable horny old ghost.
Again, another whimsical part of the chapter that helps establish why Haruya is imparted with a voracious appetite for sex. Some people are probably saying, why should you care? The better question is, why did the artist go this far to create a back story for a book that’s about sex?
This hurt my head so much when I went back to read the “English” version. What’s worse, the Spanish version looked like this too. WHERE IS THE REST OF THE DIALOGUE? THREE WORDS TO SUMMARIZE SOMETHING THAT’S IMPORTANT TO THE *GASP* PLOT!?
Again, more important characterization that’s meant to accentuation your fapping experience depending if you find a girl with this kind of personality trait attractive. This line also gives a bit of insight on Yumi and her relationship with her sister. It also made Yumi even more attractive to me compared to her innocent slut of a sister. What? Those of you who have been following my blog from day one knows I love my tsunderes!
So yes, my main frustration stems from people who don’t give a damn about what the artist is trying to say. Mind you, I don’t consider myself to be a great translator. I make mistakes both simple and big and this whole process will always be one giant learning experience for me. At the very least, however, I strive to do my best to properly convey the emotions that the artist intended to impart on his or her readers. Whether that emotion is fluffly love or intolerable rage, every artist in the H-world is trying to tell us a story. To disregard that fact for simple words to make your fap experience that much more “enjoyable” is just down right fucked up in my opinion. Let’s not forget that the process to make manga (both H and Non-H) is a strenuous process. These people work hard to give us something to fap to. Don’t you think they deserve some recognition and respect for their work? Even more so if you’re never gonna buy their books?
Alright, I’ve talked enough. Please look forward to more quality translations in the coming weeks. I’m back from vacation and my mind is ready to take on the world, both real and virtual!
Fuke, you’re too kind. Too bad only a handful will “truly” appreciate this. To most of the ever-greedy reader-base anything with Roman alphabets is AWESOMESTUFF! /scanlator woes.
And balls of steel to you! I know I’ll never be able to bring myself to do a re-TL of anything.
Thanks a lot for that and you’re unfortunately right about the handful of people who would appreciate the efforts I put into this work. I’m glad one of those is a fellow colleague whom I respect
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Who gives a shit, it’s just porn.
HOW DARE THEE! First you claim tentacles are boring and now you trample upon my hard work. BEGONE FOUL BEAST! *Takes out pitchfork and torch*
I honestly wasn’t even aware there were translations past the first chapter, lol.
Anyways, thanks for the new chapters! Anything from Kisaragi Gunma is always appreciated.
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you have my gratitude for giving it the proper treatment. really.
I’m confused. This seems like vanilla so why is it tagged NTR on baka-updates?
Guess I have to read first but according to fakku and e-hentai there’s no NTR. OH WELL KISARAGI GUNMA IS AWESOME THANKS
A sad case of people not knowing what they’re talking about when tagging. Hell, the gallery was fjord because it was tagged as lolicon.
Yeah, taggers are a stupid lot. I have a gallery up that was tagged as lolicon, in spite of the fact that there are only traps (and one older woman) present.
I hate it even more when people just tag something based on the Title instead of reading it first. Introvert Little Sister kept getting the incest tag even after I said the main characters weren’t blood-related. I give up on people sometimes.
Not even close to NTR after reading it. It does kind of annoy you that she’s doing that but it’s definitely not NTR..
Gotta say that I really appreciate this as a reader. It’s like noticing the translation differences between mangastream who has a real translator and mangazone when they used google. I tried reading the second hand and couldn’t even get through it. Kudos to you.
Thanks the both of you for giving this a proper translation.
It’s a pity that when the (much less censored, as all Hotmilk comics) tankoubon is scanned, someone will likely redo it all over again…
Just want to Thank you for The Awesome Translation . I really Enjoyed your translation and conan editing Page by page and i even thanked you in e.hentai but unfortunately they deleted your work (screw them).
have one question if you don’t mind the . in page 27 in the second dialog second bubble (pink) if i remember correctly when i translated in google (hot or thick ) so just got a little confused ?
hope to see you translate ch.4.5 when it scanned although i doubt that but i well keep wishing for it
“the . in page 27 in the second dialog second bubble (pink) ”
Can you be a bit more specific? I’m a little confused as to which panel / line you’re referring to. If you’re trying to enter hira / kata / or kanji in the comments, it won’t show up. Haven’t gotten around to fixing that problem yet.
Congratulations for the hard work, and also for the explanative post, Fuke ! ^_^
It’s funny, you’re not the only one with this idea, I’ve also talked about this in there : https://plus.google.com/105781981300463067020/posts/2XmS8h3jkor
As for me, I was first going to go for the usual reply :
”
Since there aren’t enough translators when there’s so MUCH good shit worthy of a translation being released all the time, I think it’s better than nothing to have bad translations. As long as we understand the story, losing the literary quality is a tolerable price to pay, at least we understand what’s going on. If it were my money, I’d rather fund the translation of new works still in Japanese, rather than fund the re-translation of badly done jobs.
”
But then I saw your illustration pics… Jebus that was crappy O_o
I thought the grammar was bad in those Gunma chapters, but it was actually the whole meaning that was sent down the gutter O_o
My position regarding translators like Cgrascal still stands (better crap than nothing, and at least we understand what’s going on, it’s just the grammar that’s awkward), but fuck yeah, this time, I’m totally grateful for the re-translation you made, Fuke !
Thank you very much once again
People like Cgrascal takes my rage to a whole different level. It might not be as bad if his releases are once in a full moon, but the guy pumps out so much crap so frequently, it’s beyond absurd. Putting his awkward grammar aside, his supposed translations don’t necessarily give you a general idea of the plot all the time (though I’d argue ever). There are so many times where subtle nuances to a line that are important to the overall understanding (even at a general level) to the story are simply ignored by him. Reading his translations is no different than looking at the pictures and fapping blindly in my opinion.
As you mentioned on you Google+ convo, you don’t know Japanese and many people are in the same boat. Which is why you guys rely on translators to get the same experience as our Japanese bretherens. And I really want to stress experience here. You are putting your trust in us to give you an experience that’s close to the original source as much as possible. Even more so if you’re paying for our service. Language unites us, helps us to understand one another. Granted, we’re talking about porn here, but that doesn’t lessen the importance for translating something properly. Sometimes, hentai isn’t a sex comic that contains plot. It can be a story that contains sex as part of the plot.
Of course, I do realize that I’m taking this hobby way to seriously for my own good, but I do have my reason why I’m so passionate about producing quality translations. It’s inspiration. Let’s face it, I will have to retire eventually. When? Who knows, but when that happens, I pray that a new group of budding translators will take my place and continue to produce quality work.
This is more likely to happen when people are exposed to proper translations. The constant flood of shoddy work akin to Cgrascal and the likes does the community a massive disservice beyond giving people headaches when they’re trying to figure out what they just read. It perpetuates the idea that translating is easy, something that you can do to make a quick buck with little effort. Most people take scanlation for granted as it is, and I don’t want to see a massive surge of crappy translators with this kind of mindset taking my place now or ever. It really undermines the efforts of people like Ryuutama, Little White Butterflies, Gteam, and etc who are striving for quality.
My hope with this project is to fruitlessly ask the community to stop perpetuating this kind of mindset. It most likely won’t work, but it might inspire some poeple out there to look beyond the pictures and show some respect to our favorite hentai artists.
<3
Fuke , U Rock , Just Saying .. U Rock
Tnx again xD
Man I’m a Fan of Plot in the Hentais i Read , and i always Want it to be as much as Possible the Exact Meaning that the Artis Meant , For me this Story Feel a lot Better now than before
You can sometimes tell if the translations are bad by the awkward phrasing. It’s nice to have someone who cares about literal and accurate translations. Thanks for giving us that!
Awesome work, all saying os just porn are stupids scumbags, now, why fakku DDL never works? anyways thanks a lot for the mirrors ;D
@FUKE
You might as well add the first chapter to your gallery on exhentai to make it more “complete.” Of course, you probably should get RyuuTama’s permission, but I doubt he’d mind since he gave you permission to redo chapters 2-4. And once you do add it to your gallery, it should give me enough reason to have that abominable Spa->Eng version expunged off of exhentai for being garbage.
On the note of the lolicon tag, you can most likely thank Shadow Weaver for that. He’s an obsessive and aggressive control freak who literally spends all his time on the galleries tagging and un-tagging galleries to how he sees fit. And when anyone happens to disagree with him on that, he bitches and becomes a drama queen.
Unfortunately though, your gallery is correctly tagged lolicon according to E-Hentai’s rules. After some big fiasco involving the feds a few years back, the mods decided that anything that even REMOTELY looks lolicon shall be tagged lolicon, even if they say in the doujin that they’re above 18 years old. But for the incorrectly tagged galleries, there is a forum thread where you can post up a gallery and everyone will help to vote down the incorrect tag, assuming it actually is incorrectly tagged.
Conan and I numbered our files based up the first chapter that Ryuu did, so you could simply delete everything from Ch 2 and onward and replace it with this version without worry. Either that or hop over to Hentairules since Oliver took the liberty of combining everything.
As for tagging, I’ve pretty much given up on justifying my reasons for tagging one way over another. A lot of people’s takes on certain fetishes are either too wide or too narrow for me to please everyone, so I just let the powers to be do as they wish. I can’t tell you how many times people have altered my tags and description on Fakku, and I just let the denizens go tag happy on my galleries. I’d rather spend my time translating more stuff than argue over the correct definitions like NTR.
People will find my stuff one way or another. As long as I have control over my own blog, nothing else matters much. Though I do appreciate the info and concern
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Ah, I see you’ve misunderstood what I meant. I have no control over that other gallery full of aids, FUKE. If you were to add chapter 1 to your gallery, it’d make it just as “complete” as the other one, perhaps giving me enough reason to start a petition to expunge it. If I had uploaded that other gallery, of course I’d have done something about it once I saw your re-translation.
But another thing I could do is simply upload a gallery with Ryuu’s and your chapters all in one and petition to have both your gallery and the other one expunged. But I’d rather not do that to you, since expunged galleries don’t look good on your record.
It appears I’m late once again. Someone already has uploaded a compilation of chapters 1-4 with your re-translations grabbed off of Oliver’s site. I’m in the process of trying to keep it from being expunged by people who can’t see it’s not a duplicate gallery.
Indeed I have misread your earlier comment. I seem to have missed the line about expunging the “evil” gallery.
I just got back and happened to noticed the expunged gallery. In the grand scheme of things, I don’t mind having my work comp with other people assuming proper credits are addressed. The problem with that gallery is that no credit was explicitly stated in the description, plus Ryuu’s credit banner was removed from the compilation with pages rearranged for some strange reason. I can see why people would see it as a dupe.
Furthermore, translator’s galleries take precedents in this situation. I didn’t compile Ryuu’s work with mine because I’m not sure if I’d be the one to continue the work. Ryuu get’s first dips on the upcoming chapter in my view, so I decided to leave it as is.
I’ll have to talk to him first to see if he’ll be okay with me compiling our respective galleries.
Ryuu gave me his blessing, uploading now.
im a spanish speaker so i know that the jap>esp translation is the one that makes no sense. the esp>”eng” translation is fine. thank you so much for re-translating the chapters.
I KNEW IT! Thanks for the confirmation. I had a lingering suspicion that the original Spanish translation was mostly at fault (though it doesn’t excuse the second hand translation for me). like I said, even my Spanish brethrens deserve a proper jap->spa version as well. Shoddy work of all kind is inexcusable.
Thanks for this. Love gunma comics.
You bring up a lot of issues that I’ve been mulling over for a long time. I think these problems exist because of the scanlation model in general.
Because it’s all done outside of any official support or blessing, it has to be done by amateurs who have to go to some degree of effort and risk to obtain scans and perform the translation and editing work. In general, the public perception among readers is that anyone who’s willing to do this is worthy of praise and respect. Of course, there are also people who feel that they’re entitled to all the free labor they can demand, but they’re much less numerous.
When you combine that with how many of the people who read this kind of material are both not very literate and are simply looking for a quick fap, it means that in general, standards aren’t very high. There’s no correcting influence in the system. The nature of what makes it possible – the absence of publisher control – makes it impossible to impose any sort of minimum quality standard. The audience doesn’t demand it because the audience feels like if they upset whoever’s performing the free service, they’ll lose the output of that scanlator as they get fed up and quit.
I’m certain that there’s plenty of material floating around out there where the translation has been botched horribly and no one’s cared enough to point it out. There are very few people who would be willing to identify and correct those problems, perhaps because a person possessing that skillset probably has better things to do with their free time. I don’t really see this issue going away any time soon unless something comes in and disrupts the general scanlation system.
Hm, interesting analysis of how things are now, though from personal experience, I’d say that entitlement and apathy are more prevalent than praise. In any case, we have an audience filled with people who either don’t demand quality or don’t know when they aren’t getting it. So that leaves, us, the scanlators. We’re the ones who have skills and tools to detect and correct problems, so why shouldn’t /we/ be the ones to hold each other to high standards?
…Because it’s so draining. Given that over a third of the body of my own scanlation work was done in response to bad translations, and that I eventually quit because of it, I know that from experience, and I’ll be the first to admit it. But sometimes I wonder, if more of us were willing to do it, would that make it easier? If we all took the time and made the effort, could we become that disruption you speak of? By changing our own standards, we could potentially change the community’s.
Well, it would probably take a whole lot of work and commitment, but hey, I can dream.
As much as it pains me to say it, LD, you’re absolutely right. The current culture of the scanlation readership is an unfortunate reality that we all have to deal with. All the more reason why I recognize that my plea will fall onto many deaf ears.
I’m more inline with what Bamboo said in that there are more self-entitled and apathetic readers out there. It’s these kind of people who fuel that vicious cycle you speak of. Constant demands with no real appreciation for value that people like you and me put in our work. With this kind of demographic, it’s gonna take one helluva catastrophe within the scanlation community to make them realize that quality is something that shouldn’t be taken for granted.
I don’t want to acknowledge this, but the battle between high fidelity translations vs. things that pretends to be proper translations will always continue like you said. There will always be more of them than people like us. At the very least, there are still people like us who try to acknowledge quality and hold each other to that high level of standard. I hope that never goes away.
Here’s an idea to disrupt the system. How about we all go on strike? Let’s see how the community reacts when there’s nothing by inchorent rambles.
Well, the notion of a strike seems a little pointless when it’s free labor that would be easily picked up by someone else. If someone were to snipe a series I worked on, I don’t doubt that most readers would move to them, even if it came at a significantly reduced quality. And I don’t doubt that it would happen if I said I’d halted work on something.
Personally, my mindset is to focus on a narrow group of projects that I really like and try to do the best job on them as possible. Everything else I read raw, to avoid having to feel like I’m critiquing a translation and for the exercise in reading it provides. There’s some material that will just never be correctly expressed in English, but such is the nature of the scanlation model. It’s the double-edged sword of how the system functions outside of business. Content is freely available and can be worked on by anyone, but the lack of a profit motive on the part of the scanlator or financial outlay on the part of readers pushes standards downwards.
Of course, this doesn’t mean that capitalism magically solves these problems, but those are the weaknesses in the scanlation system as it currently stands.
Haha… I didn’t think the strike idea would work, but hey, it was worth throwing on the table. Once again you highlight another issue I noticed withing the readership and it’s the fickle nature of a lot of readers. From what I’ve seen, it seems like more and more people are being swept up in the whole, “OMG! THIS MUST GET TRANSLATED NOW!” mindset. No doubt, this is probably one of the major driving forces for terrible translations like these. People aren’t being patient enought for people like us to work our magic. If they can’t get it now, they might take matters into their own hands, and from there, there’s no guarantee that they’ll adhere to any sense of quality.
There’s no denying that the current scanlation model is far from perfect. And while I’m against taking money for my own work, I do recognize that money can establish some sort of standard for people to adhere to. However, that’s assuming that both parties are seeking out quality to begin with since I’ve seen plenty of bad translations that have been commissioned by people. A damn shame that they’re not getting their money’s worth.
As long as people like us exist, I believe that it’s enough to keep the quality flame burn a little bit longer. It won’t change the community, but at least we can establish a standard for others to possibly mirror.
I’m replying from my phone, so please excuse any autocorrect errors
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[*to Fuke] Hmm I accidentally stumbled upon this thing through this thing while spying on my bigbro’s browsing history (well to dig some dirt on him *evil laugh*) and I find it amusing that there are those who fight against mediocrity (even if you guys are talking about porn: no offense intended). But I have to agree that as an avid fan of scanlations in my opinion anyone who can put this much effort on anything is worthy of praise and appreciation. It’s sad to see that you kinda feel that most of those who benefit from your efforts are taking you guys for granted. Please don’t lose heart. Don’t forget that nothing can exist without a polar opposite otherwise it will never have a proof to its existence. As much as there are those who act like apathetic leeches there are those who really care ^-^. Same can be said about the sucky translation just consider their existence as a way to shine brighter and an inspiration to exert more effort (even if you guys are working on porn: again, no offense intended). If you ever decide to do a re-translation of non-H manga please try to do saki or bamboo blade or at least point me to a good place to find them since the scanlators seem to know best about this stuff ( I apologize in advance in case you find it rude for me to ask this of you) ^-^
@ LD : just a short reply, not trying to be rude, but, about the fact there is no “compelling” to do better :
Fuck, there are even people PROUD to do rewrites
@ Fuke : I can’t say I entirely agree on everything you wrote when you replied me and Cgrascal was mentioned, but that might be because most of the concerns you expressed are new to me, I’ll have to think twice about them.
Atleast I got you thinking.That’s good enough for me. I hope I did the same for others who comes to read my blog as well
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Well fuck, it’s hard to tell accuracy of translation when you don’t know japanese. You basically have to go by how the dialogue “sounds” or how much sense it makes. I mainly judge scanlators off of their editing skills because that is something I can judge just by looking. Anyways, thanks for taking the time to redo these, I basically have to rely on people like you to tell me if a translation is accurate or not. Haven’t read this one yet, but it’s Gunma so it can’t be bad.
I think a lot of folks are too busy sniggering at the nonsense weaboo phrases the bad translations have made up like “My hips are moving own their own!” and all that crap. If you can speak a line out loud in the proper inflection and it doesn’t sound at all like anything someone would say, even in context, then you should know something stinks to high hell. Either something got them too used to it or they have been indoctrinated too far into things. As if it were a popular style to be mired in shit. Well, I’ll be the first one to admit this one: Shit is not a style. It just stinks.
It’s English and I think that it should sound like someone is trying to speak. Not like someone is struggling to string words together. It makes everyone in the piece sound as if they had free brain surgery. But then again I really can’t expect a culture of people who say “LOL” in public out loud or write texting abbreviations in essays to really demand basic language and proper sentences in a translation.
That odd feeling when you’re reading along and someone threw in a buzzword like nakama or a phrase that makes no sense to keep it sounding as foreign as possible just adds onto a feeling of shame and anger that’s really starting to eat at me.
appreciate all the hard work man
Alright, finally read it. Not as good as Gunma’s other stuff, but it’s getting better by the chapter. Chapter 4 was my favorite (for obvious borderline-loli reasons).
Damn lolicon, or would you prefer pettanko connoisseur
?
Naw, lolicon’s fine, I’m comfortable with who I am.
Thanks very much for doing this, I really appreciate it. I find the text in some Gunma Kisaragi scanlations almost incomprehensible, and I had been wondering if it was the writer or the translators who had been responsible.