#harie

Daily Utsu-P #130:

Episode 1393: A Musical Connection

Translator Notes:

Oh boy, I have quite a bit to say about this one!

First, “tomboy” is a bit of a slant translation - the Japanese word used was higomokkosu, which is a word I’ve never heard before this comic.  Using the slang reference site I often use, it appears to be a word that refers to a somewhat brutish sort of guy who’s temperament is stubborn and manly.  When used with regards to girls, it seemed at least fairly close in semantic meaning to the English “tomboy”, so since that both was fairly close and created a nice bit of English alliteration, I went with that.

Second, when addressing Augusta and Robertina in the second panel, the Japanese script has Cecile describing their activity as a henna gishiki, or “strange ritual” to translate it literally.  However, I felt like that sounded kinda weird in English, so since the intended meaning is just that Cecile has no idea what on Earth they’re doing, I figured that the English version I came up with was a reasonable more natural-sounding English approximation.

Third, for those curious, a tlepilli was originally an Aztec word for a bundle of resinous sticks burned for illumination.  So... yeah, actually, it has a similar sort of visual effect as glow sticks, in fact.  Cute bit of allusion by the original writers.

Episode 1387: The Island Rail Walk

Translator Notes:

This is one of the many cases where the punch line worked better in the original Japanese due to Vyrn’s name.  The Japanese word for a shoebill is hoshibirokou, which combines with Vyrn’s Japanese name Bii to form the joke name hoshibiirokou in the original script.  Given that neither “shoebill” nor “Vyrn” bear any resemblance to their Japanese versions, this ended up being kiiinda strained.

I also changed up Vyrn’s line - the original Japanese was Oira wa hashibiiroku!, which hearkens back to his classic line Oira wa tokage ja nee! (”I ain’t no lizard!”).  However, given that there’s no English version of Vyrn’s trademark oira usage, I figured that I should make it more explicit that this is intended to be a riff on Vyrn’s classic line, since the literal translation of “I’m a shoebyll!” wouldn’t have conveyed that nearly as well.