Act 18, More Notes
So far so good on my “once a month” plan, because Act 18 is up! Chiral and Achiral use all kinds of crazy science words that I only vaguely understand. If you’re a chemistry nerd and something they say seems wrong, it’s probably Takeuchi’s fault more than mine. Probably. But what isn’t Takeuchi’s fault are a couple of non-science lines I had trouble with. They’re probably easy to spot, because they don’t make a whole lot of sense. But I intend to correct them one day when I know better (which will hopefully be in the near future).
I also added a lot to the translation notes page, including a new section giving brief explanations of the astronomy/mythology references. I’ll add more as it’s introduced in the story (or I remember it), but I want to keep it strictly limited to the astronomy/mythology stuff, because A) these kind of references provide insight to the story that the uninformed might miss, and B) at the moment, I don’t want to make a giant etymology page where I have to start researching minerals and junk.
Act 17, Reorganization
Finally making a news section for this project! I’ve rearranged the navigation a little, in preparation for further sections. Although I wouldn’t expect to see new sections anytime soon, since certain other projects are higher priority right now. More importantly, I’ve added something new: Act 17! It’s Calaveras time! I’m hoping to average one chapter a month for the rest of the year, while I prioritize other things. No guarantees, but think positive!
Starting with Act 17, I’m trying to be a bit less literal, just to the point that things sound less stiff, and more like natural English. Things should be just as accurate as they’ve always been, if not moreso (due to my very gradually increasing proficiency over the years). I fully intend to keep most honorific suffixes, but I’m trying to come up with alternatives to certain ones (namely “Motoki-oniisan” and “Makoto-senpai”). I don’t like to omit things, but I don’t want to be too Wapanese either. But everything that isn’t translated should be italicized now (though I haven’t gone through the older acts thoroughly yet). And on a similar note, I’ve changed around a few font styles (especially the “thinking” one), mostly to better match the different fonts in the books.
Name/Term Spellings
Minor update today. I’ve made a page detailing some of my spelling preferences. It’s not complete (only covers characters that have appeared in new/updated summaries), but I’ve been meaning to do this for a long time. It’s kind of necessary just for personal reference, but maybe you’ll enjoy seeing my reasoning too. This is definitely going to be updated a lot as I work on updating/creating more summaries. I was hoping to have another chunk of those ready today too, but things just didn’t work out that way.
(If you want to know a secret, a lot of the stuff in that page was pulled directly from my old DB “Articles” project that I took down years ago. I’d be shocked if anyone remembers it.)
Manga and Anime Updates, Guidebook Rearrangement
Long time no update! First of all, I’ve edited and added a lot to the manga and anime summaries, enough that both are completely up through the entire first story arc. I’ve changed my mind about a lot of translations (or lack thereof) since last time, so there’s also that.
I’ve also moved and consolidated all of the guidebook translations, so now there are less pages total, but more scrolling and more angry dialup users. In the end, I think it’s much easier for everyone, including me. But there is nothing new there, aside from one or two typos I happened to notice and correct. I haven’t even updated any of my name/term preferences to my current ones, because there are some other translation issues to fix as well, and the entire project is currently on-hold indefinitely. My motivation to finish it recently dropped a few notches, for probably obvious reasons if you view other Dragon Ball websites, but I certainly have not given up yet.
Oh, and I’ve made an RSS feed for easier tracking of updates. Hooray for modern web technology!