Fruits Basket, chapter 108 -- non spoilery

[timepiececlock]

Chapter 108 of Furuba is up at stoptazmo.com.

I liked it, but reading highlighted one of the things that's been bugging me about the last few volumes in scanlations-- they're hard to understand. I can barely ever tell who's saying which thought bubble, and the sentences often aren't complete sentences or whole thoughts. Nearly every sentence is fragmented or jumps around. It's getting so bad that I'm almost certain it's a translation problem, not a writing problem. I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be this bad if read in native Japanese.

It's making me consider going back to the purchased volumes again, because at least the translators would attempt to use complete English statements. Although I've mostly read the scanlations for the last five volumes because of timeliness, it takes so long for a chapter to come out these days, and I already avoid ff.net spoilers like the plague, so what do I care? While there might be infintessimal differences in how dialogue makes a scene read in English or Japanese, I have no guarantee that the scanlation gives any more accurate a translation than the professional translation done by Tokyopop.

I've put up with the fragmentation of dialogue for a long time now, but this chapter is almost breaking point for me. I think there was one statement from Shigure's speech bubbles that was a complete sentence in the conversation with Tohru. I reread it a few times and it still doesn't make sense to me. I get the gist of the conversation, but if I wanted to settle for "the gist" of what's going on I'd read the fucking chapter summaries. The only reason I wait so dilligently for the chapter scanlations is the promise of details. But it's getting downright annoying and I'm about ready to throw my hands in the air and say "fuck it" and buy them.

If the kind of grammar used in these scanlations were to be in a fanfic, I would've pitched that fic in the trash bin four volumes ago.

Comments

[fadingembers.livejournal.com]

A lot of the manga I've been reading lately gives me that problem (namely, the "Who the Hell said that?" bubbles), so it may not be the fault of the scanlators, unless in their translation, they white out any art inside the bubble that clues you in as to who's talking (the onigiri or dog or cat, etc.)

[donna-c-punk.livejournal.com]

Is the current translation group the only game in town? I know of another place that archives FB scans. It's where I was reading the manga when I was attempting to get into the series. I can link you there, but I'm not sure if they have the newer chapters, tho.

Also? I posted about DW.

[buttercup0222.livejournal.com]

I've been having that problem too, though I assumed it's because I'm fairly unused to reading manga. But yes, there have been several times where I've read the page over and over and still couldn't figure out what the character was supposed to be saying.

I also go here (http://www.thespectrum.net/manga.shtml#furuba) for FB translations. They're a couple chapters behind stoptazmo, but you can look at the manga directly on the site instead of having to download every chapter. You might try that to see if you feel it reads better.

[flutingfrenzy.livejournal.com]

It really has gotten to the point where Fruits Basket (either by itself or in English translations; the non-Japanese-speakers among us may never know) has become a bit of a caricature of itself. Not that I won't be continuing to read every damn chapter and loving it, but it would be nice if we could at least figure out whose thought bubbles we're reading.

(Volume 13 is out now. I read it today in the bookstore. It's the awesome one with Yuki's parent/teacher conference and Momo and Kureno and the class trip. SO MUCH LOVE.)

[sub-divided.livejournal.com]

Completely Futile wrote and article about all of the ambiguities present in the Fruits Basket translation that are not present in the original Japanese. It's the official translation under discussion, not the scanslations -- but I've read the scanslation, and they're worse. If you're having problems, it's not the material, it's the translation.

(This hasn't always been true, but these days I think most official translations are better than most fan translation, just in the writing quality and transmission of nuance. Of course, they are also much more Americanized; for some people it's a question of taste.)

[http://users.livejournal.com/_rednovember/]

Whoa. I was only able to read Fruits Basket up to Volume 4 or something, quite awhile ago, because my friend lent them to me. Then he and I had a falling-out and now we don't talk so T__T.

Thanks so much for the link; I'll check it out, even though there are grammar and translation problems like you said. I can put up with quite a bit (I tutor some ESL students in English writing) but if it gets too much I'll probably stop as well.

[umadoshi.livejournal.com]

It's *definitely* a translation problem--not that I read Japanese, but I just went through the scanlation and compared to the translation I originally read, and the scanlation version is just gibberish, esp. on some important things Shigure's saying. I've had issues with the scanlations before (starting with their habit of using the wrong honorifics or, in Rin's case, spending whole chapters having *everyone* refer to her by her nickname when most people call her "Isuzu"), but this is ridiculous. O_o

I'm not in a position to pass translations around, but I just did a comparison post that includes the much-more-coherent version of Shigure's most-butchered dialogue, if that helps any.