So obviously a lot of my projects involve translating Japanese to English. But I'm not yet an expert or a professional at it. I often try to explain this in casual conversation, but I feel like I should finally explain it in detail somewhere publicly.

Back in roughly August or September 2000, I started teaching myself Japanese because I wanted to play some video games with no existing translations (at the time, anyway). A noble endeavor, right? Anyway, it wasn't long before I'd mastered the grammar basics and learned to read kana almost as well as I can read the Latin alphabet. But that's the easy part.

Fluency is about vocabulary and ease of use. Eleven years would sound like plenty of time to gain that fluency, wouldn't it? Except that I did not spend the full eleven years actively studying. Probably not even a fourth of that. It's not that I've been lazy about it so much as I've been undisciplined and unfocused for most of the past decade. I've also been hindered by the fact that I haven't had a teacher to guide and correct me, or a pen pal or someone to converse with regularly.

But I have learned a great deal. Far more than the average fanboy. And I constantly see improvement in myself whenever I look back on old translation attempts. (The fact that I can go back and correct my old errors is the main reason I pretty much only do translation work on my site, rather than in any outside group projects.) So I'm confident that my unorthodox learning methods can work (along with some new study methods I'm trying). I've also recently gained the focus and discipline I need, so I'm going to bump up my immersion in the language.

Which finally brings me back to the website, and that stuff I mentioned a couple weeks ago. You'll be seeing an increase in translation projects, as part of this increased focus. I know people would prefer that I went back to the Dragon Ball guidebook translations, but frankly I think it's a little out of my league at the moment. Instead, I'll be focusing heavily on my Sailor Moon projects for the next few months, until I feel more confident about going back to the guidebooks. I need to surpass myself and climb over the wall of Super Translator before I can defeat the Daizenshuu.

Various computer problems have hindered some site things I had planned for the summer, and now summer is over for my hemisphere. So, things didn't happen.

On another note, for a number of personal reasons, my site priorities will be shifting a bit in the near future. I'll go into details in the next couple weeks, but in short, there will probably be a lot more progress on translation projects than writing projects. You can speculate if you want, but the majority of you will probably be disappointed, unless you're a fan of racecar drivers, violinists, and cyborgs with multiple personality disorder. That's not to say that any projects are canceled, by the way.

Also, I've been considering turning the main site news feed/journal into a combined news feed for all my projects, but I'm not sure how visitors would feel about that. Would it get redundant, with all the individual news sections and feeds? Would it clutter things too much, so important general site news is lost in the (theoretical) flood? Are people already happy with the site Twitter and main page to combine all the news as it is? Or would it be a welcome change? I would love some feedback, either on Twitter or LJ (the only options at the moment, until I set up a new site email).

The combined news on the main page is a pretty recent stealth addition. It currently requires a lot of manual tweaking to do what I want, but I might try to improve it in the near future. I also want to improve a lot of visual and technical things, but actual content is still the highest priority (believe it or not).

And one final note: Chris Jericho didn't win last season, and Cell isn't on the current season, so we don't care about Dancing With The Stars anymore.

I'm (sort of) halfway done now, because the script for Act 26 is done! Along with the reprint version, Act 29! I forgot to do the reprint script until last night, but luckily for me there were very few changes. Also, I have revised and compared Acts 15-18 (16-19 in the reprints), which means I'm finally done cleaning up the 2006-2007 stuff. So now it's just a matter of getting comparisons done for the rest of the 2011 stuff.

Over the past year or so, I've seen lots of comments about translation practices, mostly in regard to Japanese to English. Some people favor heavy localization, while others prefer to be so literal that they leave many words untranslated. In essence, I think both viewpoints get too extreme. Too much localization can result in loss, while being too literal can make things confusing. It's all made me do a lot of thinking about my own translation practices, too. I think there's a healthy middle ground, and that's something I aim to show. (Whether or not I'll succeed, who knows.)

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Since every show took some sort of holiday break, I decided to wait and throw November and December thoughts into one giant post. But the problem is I have no short term memory, so I've had to Google to figure out what the context was for a lot of my notes. Also, I can barely read my own handwriting ("armstrong kick" looked like "armstrong lock" and confused me for a minute). So at the very least this has been very interesting for me to type up, but I can't guarantee you will enjoy it as much as I have.

Anyway, many many sentences this time. There are thoughts on November/December episodes of Kaizoku Sentai Goukaiger, Kamen Rider Fourze, Pocket Monsters: Best Wishes, and Chuck; the mid-season finales of 90210, CSI: Cheers, Young Justice, and Star Wars: The Clone Wars; the season finale of South Park; the something finale of ThunderCats; and the series finale of Batman: The Brave and the Bold. Everything is a spoiler for everything, and you can use the anchor links to hop around between shows.

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New year, new month, and new script: Act 25! As well as the reprint version, Act 28! I've also finished revisions of Acts 12-14 (13-15 in the reprints), and of course comparisons for all of it. The Dark Kingdom arc is done again, and the rest of the old old stuff should also be done very soon.

The day is almost over, but I do have Act 24 ready! And its reprint counterpart, Act 27! Also revisions of Acts 10-11 (10-12 in the reprints), and comparisons for both the old and new stuff. (Farewell, Street Fighter and Terminator references...) It may not sound like it, but everything combined amounts to roughly the same amount of pages as I did last month, so I guess I'm still keeping a pretty consistent pace.

Before I get to the actual subject, let me just say that I'm not trying to sell you on anything or change your mind. I'm only trying to explain my own reasons and maybe clear up some misinformation. In other words, this is meant to be informative rather than persuasive. And I feel the need to give this little warning up front because the subject in question is one of the most polarizing forms of entertainment in existence. So much so that non-fans probably would have stopped reading by now, which would be unfortunate considering that's my target audience in writing this.

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So much TV, so many sentences, so little else. This time, the subjects are the season premiere of Chuck; the mid-season premiere of South Park; and October episodes of Kaizoku Sentai Goukaiger, Kamen Rider Fourze, 90210, CSI: Cheers, Pocket Monsters: Best Wishes, Batman: The Brave and the Bold, Young Justice, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, and ThunderCats. Lots of stuff and such, including thousands of spoilers, so watch out, and use the anchor links to help avoid stuff.

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It's only taken, what, four years? But the Black Moon arc is complete with this script for double length Act 23! At least I'm consistent now. And I've also revised Acts 6-9, with separate scripts for each version (and of course comparisons) and some much needed clean up work. One tankoubon a month is a lot slower than I expected for this sub-project, but I think it will speed up when I get to the stuff I did in 2011.

Speaking of the revisions, one thing I didn't mention before is that things are more colorful now. If a character has colored manga art somewhere, their name is in color. But at the same time, attack names won't be colored anymore, because I now think it's a little obnoxious. And I've also been de-Wapanizing things a little further, like removing a lot of old quirks ("GC") and reducing the amount of in-story translation notes. Names are now written in Western order (Usagi Tsukino, Mamoru Chiba, etc.), and certain honorifics (oniisan, senpai) are now translated. I remembered it's a plot point that they don't know Motoki's name at first, so that's something you definitely can't omit or change to his name. You can find more details about this and other stuff on the notes page.

The next act is double length in both versions, so it would certainly be a fitting/annoying start for simultaneous double script releases.

Fall TV begins, and so does my desire to shoot words about it at the internet. I've combined both of my ramble formats into some strange concoction of mixed-tense sentence fragments, sprinkled with some profanity for the most natural flavor. Thus, you'll find words about the season premieres of 90210, CSI: Cheers, Batman: The Brave and the Bold, Young Justice, and Star Wars: The Clone Wars; the series premiere of Kamen Rider Fourze; and the September episodes of Kaizoku Sentai Goukaiger and Pocket Monsters: Best Wishes. So a mix of new and old subjects, and of course lots and lots of spoilers, so be careful.

This isn't exactly the new format I wanted to try, because computer problems ruined my plans. But I kind of like this one, so maybe I won't bother to try that anyway.

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October is a relatively big month. First, here is Act 22! This is the penultimate chapter of the Black Moon arc (at least in the older books), and I've already made a lot of progress on the final chapter (which is double length), so yay.

Second, I've finally started a related sub-project that I've always wanted to do: separate scripts for both versions of the manga! Here's the indexes for the old books and the new books, and another page for comparisons between them. I acquired copies of the reprints a couple months ago, but I wanted to finish the Black Moon arc before I started on them. I'm close enough now that I decided to go ahead with it anyway, but so far I've only managed to do up to Act 5.

With those separate scripts also comes a lot of translation revisions I've been meaning to do for a while, which is part of why I haven't gotten many separate scripts done yet. I've also been reformatting the pages to include page numbers from the corresponding books. Act 22 doesn't have most of these changes, and neither does what I have done of 23, but ideally everything will be updated to have all the new changes before it's time to start the Infinity arc.

A new month, and Act 21 is ready. Very close to the end of the Black Moon arc now, with a certain character making her "debut." It seems pretty obvious who she is in context, which is why I used the relevant color codes all throughout. But her name is treated like a big reveal, so I left her unnamed through the whole chapter. Do spoiler-phobes agree? Or does everyone already know the story well enough anyway? You can give your thoughts at the site Twitter or something. (Until I come up with a news comment-y system, anyway.)

Before I had a chance to finish the second chapter, I already had my copy of the third. So, here's both together: "Episode of Bardock" Chapter 2 and Chapter 3! That's the whole mini-series, so I can stop spending crazy import money on V Jump issues for the time being. And now I can get back to working on stuff from the 80's.

This should have been done two months ago, but I missed a scene in "City Sushi," so I had to wait 30 days for it to be re-added to the official site. Then another month passed before I watched it again because... I don't know. But anyway, these were some South Park episodes, and below are my scattered, mixed-tense little thoughts on them. There are many spoilers, as usual.

There is a chance that this will be the last post of this type, but that depends on how well my experiment goes.

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On schedule again with Act 20! As I mentioned last month, this is double length, so it spans two Acts in the reprints. Now the different numbering will be even harder to keep track of... There was one line I really hit a snag with, and it should be obvious when you get to it. Hopefully I'll be proficient enough to fix it one day soon.

This chapter also has a bunch of flashbacks, which brings me to something I've always wanted to explain. When there's a flashback to a scene we've seen before, they often contain identical dialogue to the original scene. But there are also many times where the flashback dialogue differs from the original dialogue. I always go back to the original scene and compare the lines. If the dialogue is the same, it's a matter of copy and paste, but if it differs, so does my translation. So if you've ever noticed flashback dialogue differing from the original scene, that's not an inconsistency on my part; that's a reflection of the original text.

Once again I have another script for you: Chibi Usa Picture Diary #1! I'm sure people were expecting Act 20, but since I'm working from the tankoubon, this chapter is what comes after Act 19 in volume 5. So it's a lot easier for me to do it now than getting this book out again post-Stars or something. But I've tweaked the navigation bars at the bottom to account for both the main story alone and the tankoubon layout.

Also, Act 20 is double length, so this has conveniently given me extra time to work on it. But I won't get such a convenience for Act 23...

Lots of little things today. First, I've started adding screenshots to the anime and movie pages! Just a couple of small ones per finished page, though. I don't want them to be too large, for copyright reasons. But there's a good chance I'll go larger and/or add more per page in the future, once I figure out how I'd want to implement that stuff (in-line images? fancy gallery thing?). I'd also like to do the same with the manga pages, but for the time being I can't use my scanner. (A reverse of the old days where I could scan but not do screenshots!)

Second, in addition to the two screens, I've (finally) fleshed out the miscellaneous section for the first movie. And third, I've added more to the terminology page. Not more people names, but place and thing names. Still not going past the revised/new summaries with it, or else that page would be the only thing I ever do.

On that note, there's something I forgot to mention in the "Episode of Bardock" update. None of the name spellings are exactly "permanent" yet (which is why I haven't added them to the terminology page). I'll probably try to decide something for the new characters after the series is finished, and the old characters probably not until I get to the Freeza arc. Not that any of my spellings are necessarily permanent, because I've changed my mind and gone through massive find+replace operations more than once.

So here's something new and spur of the moment: a summary of the first chapter of "Episode of Bardock!" If you haven't heard, this is a new three-part series that just began publication in Japan this week. It also ends up being the debut of a new "specials" section I'd been considering, although I don't have anything else to put there right now.

I took a break from working on some other things to do this, which should be ready in the next couple days.