ばか！バカ！　馬鹿ー月！

I know it's like a tad too late to say this now. But in the english version, right at the "start" of the memory recall for Kyon, in the english version you used the words "her" to nominate her gender, which definiately defines her gender as female. But as for the chinese version, it seems it refrains from using the "she" character in the whole recall until the very end when Koizumi announces grandly that "She is a girl that 8 out of 10 boys will fall in love for!" Wasn't it better if you "somehow" managed to refrain from mentioning her gender in the whole memory recall until Koizumi announced it, so it would be more grand? I think the mention of her gender was deliberately eliminted during kyon recall to build up the tension. (Atleast it felt like it)

Any comments?

I think everyone is aware of that, but it would be really odd to keep using her name, and I'm not sure anyone knows of a good way to refer to her without using a gender indictive pronoun. The translator tried using "he" and "him" as a reference, but the sudden change from one gender to another would be painfully confusing.

On the other hand, if you have any ideas, share them. Or edit you can edit it yourself to something you might think is better. It would be best to discuss it here first though.

The only way I can think of of referring to Sasaki without using a gender-based pronoun would be 'it', but that just sounds so wrong...

Now that I've given it a little thought, how about we make a list of names that don't let the reader realize Sasaki is a girl?

1. my middle school classmate
2. my old buddy (this one seems good, it definetly has a 'guy-ish' connation to it)
3. Sasaki (just use the name given)

That's all I can think of for now.

yeah buddy usualy is refering to a guy, even when girls use it it refers to a guy most of the time

What kind of english reader would think this sort of 'trick' is smart anyway? Just give it up.

You could use "This person" I suppose, but regardless of what you do it'll sound awkward.

Exactly.
I cringe whenever I see "That person" in a fan sub.

That's why I didn't list it. This is a friend anyway, so I doubt that would ever be used.

Or we can change it like this...

Sasaki held onto the handles of her bicycle while standing beside me, her face giving a gentle smile that is totally irrelevant to the contents of our conversation.

Sasaki held onto handles of the bicycle while standing beside me, with a gentle smile that is totally irrelevant to the contents of our conversation.

But it sound like she's holding onto kyon's bike

magus wrote:
But it sound like she's holding onto kyon's bike

heh, holding on to Kyon's handle....

Setherzam wrote:

magus wrote:
But it sound like she's holding onto kyon's bike

heh, holding on to Kyon's handle....

Lol........ she wish XD.

Anyway, shall i make it like that?

Looks good to me. What's everyone else think? It shouldn't change anything too much, in fact, doing that might be more faithful to the original story.

a bit ackward sounding but its better then the other suggestions so far

Being a little akward would be alright, it'll add to the suspension that the reader will definately know "something" is wrong.