Many months late, here is Act 49! And its 2003 reprint equivalent, Act 57! Since I only did one chapter, I decided to go into even more detail with the comparisons between them. Namely I noted some things that I was too lazy to do before, like noses being added and text being moved around. Someday I want to go back and add those things to the earlier chapters, but this one has absolutely everything my eyes could find. (Assuming I didn’t forget to type it up or accidentally overwrite the entry, anyway.) Every single page but the last one has some sort of difference.

It’s only a matter of hours before I would have hit that thirteen month mark again. But I wanted to see how many other things I could get done first, so I only started on this a few days ago. Living on the edge, of course. I still don’t want to make any promises, but I’ll be shocked if there isn’t another update in five weeks or so.

It’s been a long time. I shouldn’t have left you without an update to check to.

Well, January 2015 is actually the 15th anniversary of this site. I don’t have an exact date beyond “January,” although I didn’t exactly intend to wait until the 31st to do this. Ideally I would have done this on the 1st, along with updates to each section and layout changes and everything. Big anniversary stuff. But that didn’t happen because of a problem.

Below the cut I’ll give you fifteen whole excuses about why I’ve been so terrible and bad. But before that I’ll give you a quick status update on each section:

Sailor Moon: I did manage one update last April, after a year long gap. The plan was to update the other sections before resuming it regularly (since they had been neglected even longer), and I haven’t finished either of those because reasons. But it will take a major disaster to keep me from breaking my promise to update again in less than thirteen months.

Words: I have a rather large update coming that is nearly complete, but I wasn’t able to finalize it before I hit my personal deadline with this status/anniversary post. It will definitely be done in the next couple weeks, barring death or disaster.

Dragon Ball: So I was working on some more Daizenshuu 7 revisions, but I haven’t finished the section yet because of reasons. In fact it’s been months since I last worked on it. I ultimately ended up focusing on the big blog project instead, though I use the word “focus” loosely. Odds are DB will have to stay in the backseat a bit longer, because I’ve just given public deadlines for the other two sections. However, I will give a deadline here of “before Fukkatsu no F hits theaters.”

All this new deadline pressure should keep me in line. Now here are some reasons/excuses.

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s a year late, but here is Act 47 and Act 48 at last! And their reprint equivalents, Act 55 and Act 56! And just because the series is nearly over doesn’t mean there’s any shortage of differences between them. Many dialogue changes, and countless visual tweaks such as blurry Wiseman. Only four chapters (and three side stories) remain, and I can say with certainty the next update will be less than thirteen months from now.

But my site is not the only Sailor Moon-related thing to experience considerable delays. Instead of aizouban we got kanzenban reprints after all, and as of last week the entire series and its side stories have been re-re-released. I do have all 10 so far (what the hell will 11 and 12 be?), but I’ve put off going through them thoroughly until I finish the current comparison project. Though in skimming through the kanzenban version of this update’s two chapters, they seem to be identical to the 2003 version anyway.

Things should mostly be back to normal for me now, but I don’t want to make any promises about the update schedule just yet. Especially since other projects of mine have been backlogged for all this time too.

Rei and Minako’s Public School Battle: Act 45 and Act 46 are up! Along with their reprint equivalents, Act 52, Act 53, and Act 54! I’m sure they have the least interesting set of differences in the galaxy, including a very one-sided table row. But that was the final double length chapter in the tankoubon, and that also finished the second-to-last PGSM volume, so there’s a pretty clear course to the end.

On another note, I theorized in an update months ago about a third printing of the manga, and I later found out there is indeed a third version (aizouban!) in the works. They’ve been delayed at least once, and the actual release date is still a mystery. But in turn, Kodansha has given the PGSM volumes another print run, so if you’re interested in those grab them while you can. (They were getting expensive with second-hand sellers.) As for the aizouban books, I do hope to collect them and potentially compare them to the other two versions. The comparison page badly needs to be reformatted (and split up?) anyway.

2013 already. I don’t know where the time goes, but I hope I find it while I’m still young and ambitious.

Well, to start, I did just update the agenda page, which gives a brief summary of my current site goals. I’ve also been brainstorming the previously mentioned layout tweaks for months, though the only part I’ve actually gotten done so far is changing a few filenames (and thus Shinken Red and long-haired me are temporarily back). January is my site anniversary month (13 years!), so if nothing else I plan to at least update the banner by the end of the month.

As for actual content, I’ll expound upon the updates to the agenda page. Right now, the Sailor Moon scripts are the highest priority, since A) I’m getting pretty close to the end, B) roughly 100 pages of comic per month is a relatively easy goal to meet, and C) staying ahead of the official releases helps ease my guilty conscience. Resuming Dragon Ball guidebook translations is right behind it, but between the recent flood of Sailor Moon double chapters and side stories, and various poor life decisions, I ended up having to put it on hold again. However, I will resume it as soon as I get through my Moon backlog, which will likely be next month.

I believe that covers the bulk of the current content and goals. But I also want to give an update on my Japanese ability. There is definitely progress, but no matter how dedicated I might be, true fluency is not something that will come easily. As far as I know, I don’t have any particular disorders or anything, though I’ve had annoying issues with concentration and short term memory since my early teens. And throughout my adult life, I’ve never been able to do anything quickly or efficiently. There are only so many hours per day, and I can be really bad at managing time, but this is definitely an attainable goal… eventually. TLDR: It’ll be a long ride.

First attempt at a double is a success, because both Act 29 and Act 30 are up! Also their reprint versions, Act 32 and Act 33! I guess it’s not a huge surprise, because I’ve done double-length chapters before, but time is a precious commodity. And there are comparisons for both of them, but there are surprisingly few changes considering the amount of exposition in these two chapters. There were a lot of minor atashi/watashi changes, but not nearly as many as there could have been.

I did break one minor thing with the RSS feed last month, and fixing it might cause a double post, so apologies if so. This should be the last of all that.

Despite the date, this is a completely genuine update. Act 28 is done! As is the reprint version, Act 31! Also, Acts 21-23 (23-26 in the reprints) have been revised and given separate scripts. And it all has comparisons, of course. With this, the gap between the old stuff and new stuff is now gone, and everything I’ve done so far has comparisons and separate scripts.

So from now on, it will be all Death Bastards all the time (at least until the arc is over). After a whole year of doing things once a month, I want to try bumping the pace up to two Acts per month. That would still include separate scripts and comparisons, of course. So that means 29-30 (reprint 32-33) is the goal for next month. But we’ll have to see how that works out in practice.

Also, I apologize if this update breaks the RSS feed. I’ve done my best to avoid it, but I’m currently setting up a new site-wide news system and changing stuff around. You can leave comments now!

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.

2011 sure is flying by. So much to do, both on the website and in my personal life. I did find time for a few updates this week, but I was hoping it would be slightly less few than it actually is. I’ll list them all here.

-A new banner for 2011. It’s pretty much the same as last year’s, but it has a more recent picture of me (still grayscale, for stealthiness), and GoukaiRed instead of ShinkenRed. Sidenote: One of the people in the banner is currently competing on Dancing With The Stars, and doing a pretty good job, so you should vote for them. It’s not Cell, although now that Dragon Ball Kai is over, he’s free to compete next season.
-A Sailor Moon news feed, so now all the big sections have their own feeds, for people who don’t like all my stuff. I also reorganized that section quite a bit, so now it has much better navigation.
-I also added a script for Sailor Moon Act 17, which I think is the first new one in at least two years. Oops.
-And I added a Dragon Ball name/spelling preference list, which is probably more useful to me than it is to anyone else. But hey, it’s there.

All of this is completely real and not fake. No lies. Only truth. If I wanted to play a joke, wouldn’t I have pretended to do even more updates than this? And had this ready at midnight?

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.