rainfall: A girl stands in the midst of fallen leaves. You can't see her face. (Default)
Rain ([personal profile] rainfall) wrote2020-05-10 12:04 pm
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Translation F.A.Q.

I've been getting a few questions more than once, and isn't that what F.A.Q.s are for?

  1. What should I call you?
    Rain, Rainfall, Li, and Libek are all fine. (I mean, you can also call me 'the weirdo CG fan with too much time on their hands'.)

  2. Current projects? Completed projects?
    It's pretty much all Code Geass-related at the moment!

    Complete

    Incomplete

  3. Will you ever translate Oz the Reflection?
    I'm not planning on it. But I wasn't planning on ever translating Lancelot & Guren, either, so there's always a chance.

  4. Where's the next chapter of Lancelot & Guren/Re;surrection/anything else? Why isn't it up yet? When are you going to get back to working on it?
    ...Yeah, you may expect the next chapter when you see it, at this point. I'm not making any promises on exactly when that will be. Sorry. The world's just kind of on fire right now.

    Addendum (05/17/2021): Every time someone makes me re-explain this, it makes me want to translate this manga even less. I have a full time job! I am exhausted by the pandemic, by personal losses I have suffered in just the last two months! I'm sorry other groups have abandoned this manga, but that doesn't obligate me to translate it faster. 😔

    Addendum (01/25/2023): Adjusted this question because it was obviously not clear enough before that my addendum applied to more than just Lancelot & Guren. The pandemic (still ongoing, yes!) and my working full time and being stressed out are generally applicable conditions and affect all of my hobbies, actually.

    I would love to get back to translating. I will do it when I can. The second I have a new chapter done, it will be posted here. You don't need to ask, and asking will not make it happen faster.

    Addendum (08/16/2024): I'm back, baby.

  5. Why are you translating the R1 novels? They've already been translated.
    Well, originally it was just an exercise that I hadn't intended to publish. I assumed the official translation was accurate, and that I could use it to spot-check my work and improve as a translator.

    Unfortunately, the more I compared the official translation to the original Japanese, the more I found that that just... was not the case. It's rushed, lots of lines have been cut (often the more difficult-to-translate ones), and in some places it even seems to have been deliberately censored. Since I'm here anyway, I might as well share the fruits of my labor with y'all.

  6. Psst, the new chapter is out!
    I appreciate the thought, but I probably already know; NewType is where I get most of my scans, and they have predicted dates for the next chapter printed on their website for every manga.

    As many chapters come out late at night my time, though, it may be a full day before you see my translation. I have a full-time job and I need sleep. Sad, I know. 😭

  7. I'd like to commission you!
    I actually already have a commissioned project that I'm working on, very slowly. (It's a josei with characters and a setting I'm completely unfamiliar with, so I can't, unfortunately, just rattle off a chapter of it in an afternoon, like I can with any of the CG manga.) (The person who commissioned me has been inhumanely patient about this.)

    But thank you for the thought! ♥
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rainfall: A girl stands in the midst of fallen leaves. You can't see her face. (Default)

Re: special chapter

[personal profile] rainfall 2020-07-12 05:35 pm (UTC)(link)
There is a Kindle edition on Amazon.co.jp, but I can't purchase or download it, just as I can't order the book directly. Some products, Japan is happy to ship outside the country — video games, for one — but others, you have to use a proxy service or go through a designated retailer for. I'm not going to attempt to speak to the politics of it, but I've noticed that manga fall into the latter category, at least sometimes.

(I think the policy is very much on a case-by-case basis. The only way to be sure what you're trying to buy isn't available through direct order is to put it in your Amazon cart and attempt to check out. Either you'll be allowed to, or you'll hit a special error page, informing you that the item cannot be shipped to the address you've selected and asking you to choose another shipping address or buy something else.)

Like, I was able to get the (gorgeous, by the way) 2015 5.1ch Bluray box set shipped to me directly. I was able to get Lost Colors, the PS2 game, shipped to me directly. But manga? Every time I've tried to order manga, like the Complete Edition Sailor Moon manga, or this (I've ordered all four volumes, on the off-chance that something worth translating is in one of the other three as well)... well, I've had to use other sites.

If you're into importing stuff, by the way, I would strongly recommend you do what I unfortunately usually did not, and shop around a little. Some things you can only get through a service like Buyee, which will make the purchase from Amazon.co.jp or Yahoo.co.jp or Rakuten, then ship it to a Japanese address, then ship it to their own warehouse, then ship it to you. This adds a lot of time, and sometimes also a lot of expense, but can be the only way to get certain items, particularly if they're out of print.

(YesStyle and Dokodemo and CDJapan are all good options for getting other things, though you might also want to price-compare with your local brick-and-mortar import shops, which can sometimes special-order things for you in a cheaper fashion.)

(In the case of the Sailor Moon manga, I tried Kinokuniya first, and they did have it, but it was seemingly a lot cheaper to go through Buyee.) (It still wound up being a little cheaper, but that second round of shipping was a lot more than I expected it to be. If I had to do it over again, I probably would have paid the extra $40 to be spared the waiting and rigmarole.)

Also, to get the scans out of a Kindle edition, I think, requires jailbreaking your device, which I haven't done.

You might just have to put up with the-best-I-can-manage-with-cell-phone-scans for now. 😅
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