Talk:Rental Magica Volume 1: Prologue

As a general point, please try not to change the meaning of what the translator has provided. If there's a question about his translation, please make a note of it so the two of you can resolve the issue and avoid having me change something back to the way it was. --Tetsu-nii 23:45, 3 June 2011 (UCT)

"Do not patronize me. How could one be a proper, English gentleman if he did not see off his pupil at the gate?"

• "patronize" would be more fitting in this instance since MacGreggor sensei seems to be portrayed as being somewhat pedantic. While "belittle" would still convey the meaning, it would fail the measure of his characterization. That being the case, I'd rather honor what I infer to be the translator's intention.
• Comma required because "proper" modifies "gentleman" and not "English"
• "see off his pupil" is more correct because the phrase "see his pupil off" would be splitting the verb phrase, "see off"; and I have real difficulty imagining someone as Proper as MacGreggor-sensei being any less punctilious in his speech.

In any language; historic, polite speech most befits a gentleman.

• Semi-colon used because "In any language" is another subordinate clause which isn't necessary to convey the primary meaning. A comma would be inappropriate because it could lead to too much confusion—a comma there would imply "language" was another modifier as are the next two comma-separated words. Since this is not the case, and since moving the clause to the end of the sentence would make things too awkward, and potentially change the meaning of the sentence altogether (depending on the interpretation of the reader), the semi-colon is the best choice.

His students, unaware of the circumstances, spread rumors that McGregor had finally gone loony.

• "His students" restored because not only because it was the original translator's choice, it emphasizes the fact that even those students with the greatest exposure to MacGreggor-sensei are confused by his behavior and think he's gone loony.
• "unaware of the circumstances" is a subordinate clause and unnecessary to convey the primary meaning of the sentence, making the use of commas necessary.

"Well then... how about one last graduation exam from your former teacher?"

• Again, original translator's choice restored. Ellipsis used in this instance are perfectly appropriate. While a comma would also be correct, there's no point in changing it.

She had been surreptitiously examining the equipment he had with him—it was all right. She had airmailed all her large magical items already [...]

• You changed the meaning of the first sentence. The translator wrote that Honami examined his equipment, but you changed it to her taking inventory of her own equipment.
• Using "airmail" as a verb is fine, there's no need to make changes to this sentence.

"Now–now, no hesitation. Rather, you seem already sufficiently prepared."

• The n-dash is necessary to avoid a repeated word. Normally, I'd separate them with a comma, but the comma which follows the second "now" makes that a bad choice.

Breaking apart with a sound, smoke billowed, pushing away the fog all at once, and surrounding Honami.

• Removed "outward" since nothing in the original translation mentioned direction. Since billowing implies direction, it's sufficient without modification.

McGregor observed dispassionately.

• Again, translator's choice. And while "calmly" and "dispassionately" can be used as synonyms, there are different connotations. Please respect the translator's choice as much as is possible.

The letters EMETH were carved inside cane, which had been held together with with varnish; though the E had been marred by the arrow's impact.

• The change you made could imply that the cane was still held together. Since that was not the interpretation I made from the translator's text. I've also changed it back to the beginning of its own paragraph since short paragraphs help convey a sense of fast-paced action.

"Mistletoe Spear, eh? Again, a classic."

• Reverted to translator's choice.

"Oh-ho!" McGregor joyously blew out his cheeks. "Well then, you said you had a childhood friend or something? It would not be outside the bounds of gentlemanly behavior to leave it at that. But do tell me of your circumstances."

• Reverted to translator's choice. I think your changes would change the meaning too much.

"Bah! It is a meaningless distinction." If any other English gentlemen had heard him, he probably would have been killed. "Well, whatever. For now, I am just happy to see the face of Miss Honami.

• Reverted to translator's choice. The two final sentences of the paragraph feel like they are continuations of the sentiment instead of a portion of the following paragraph. As an aside, as you probably know, the closing quotation mark is omitted on purpose since the same speaker continues in the following para.

"So, where exactly in Japan are you going? Are there Celtic Magic minors over there? I heard it's almost all Shinto and Buddhism pulling the strings there."

• While I'm not 100% certain, I left it "Celtic Magic minors" instead of changing it since it's possible that MacGreggor-sensei is referring to a student who is studying Celtic Magic as a minor. I thought this was not-impossible considering his academic background and presumed mind-set.

"Yeah... About that... I made the decision to do this ten years ago. Take a look, Sensei."

• I put "to do this" back in since there's no reason to cut it that I could see. Again, it was the translator's choice.

---

Dear Tetsu-Nii,

As you can probably tell, I'm quite new to this site and unaware of many of its tacit workings. However, this fact allows me to question the status quo - is this really how things should be done?

Following are a few arguments which I would like all readers to consider.

I) This site is a wiki — by definition this is "A Web site developed collaboratively by a community of users, allowing any user to add and edit content."[1] This is further supported by the fact that the pages are not locked and users like you or I can change things at will. However, what you are proposing is equivalent to locking editing of a page for everyone except the registered translator. All changes that add or remove words will have to be submitted as a change request, which the translator needs to approve. This is against the spirit of a wiki.

II) The process of discussing changes with the translator before committing them is not a good use of either the translator's time or one's own time. Consider the process that we would need to go through:

1. I would make note of changes I want to make, including some context, and send this to the translator, who will review those changes.

2. After reviewing the changes, the translator will either
---a) commit the changes that he approves of, or
---b) send a message back to me indicating the changes he approves of, so I can commit the changes.

Now, let's consider the wiki process.

1w. I would make note of changes I want to make, and commit the changes. The translator will, having watched the pages he translated, receive an automatic message that there have been changes.

2w. He will review those changes through the diff tool, which automatically puts them in context, and revert the changes he disapproves of.

The end result is the same, but note that 1w and 2w combined is actually just 1! The entire step 2 has been eliminated, of which 2a is a waste of the translator's time, since he needs to find the locations within the document to changes, and 2b is a waste of my time, since it is the equivalent of me committing the same changes twice. In fact, 1w is simplified too. In 1, I would need to note both the original content AND the proposed new content, as well as send a message manually.

III) Translators make mistakes too. I am not implying anything here about the abilities of anyone. However, it is a fact that humans make mistakes. Thus, there is no basis for you to assert that the original translation by the translator is preferred. Of course, there is no guarantee that all of my changes are correct either. In fact, they probably aren't. Thus, this is where step 2w from argument II comes into play. However, undoing the changes prevents us from making progress into eventually converging onto the best interpretation.

Although I understand why you are willing to give the benefit of doubt to the translator, following my 3 arguments above I see no reason for you to undo the changes. If I was a translator, I would be glad to have people not only reading my translations, but also to have people willingly try to make the translation better. Nobody is paying the users anything, and so when they are making relevant changes it is easy to accept that they are truly trying to make the script better. Of course, if I disagree with any of the changes, I would change it back, and the users at that time will understand. However, when a third party undoes the changes because they "see no reason to change this", it ends up annoying the users. Another side of seeing no reason to change something is seeing no reason not to change that thing.

Now let's think of this from an anonymous reader's point of view. Would it matter to them whether or not relevant edits that are hard to debate to be right or wrong without help from the translator is posted before or after the translator verifies it? No, because in this case the edits are probably quite insubstantial in regards to the overall arching plot, and nobody can easily tell which is "correct". Thus, trying to say "doing it this way would make it bad for the readers" doesn't cut it.

So far I've only talked about relevant edits. But what about irrelevant edits? Well those can usually be identified at a glance and in that case they should definitely be rolled back. However, it's not like that's not going to happen with the current system, but will happen with the system I proposed above, so it does not enter into this debate either.

That said, I'm only yet another user, and I have no authority in this wiki to dictate anything, so for now I will follow this guideline. However, I will send the translator a message, and if he agrees to adopt the wiki process I proposed above in argument II, then that is what I will do on the pages he translates.

---

I will now voice the reasoning behind several of my changes, as a direct rebuttal. Of course, I will not be doing this with every change in the future, as that would definitely be too much work, and as I said before nobody is paying for this work.

"Do not patronize me. How could one be a proper, English gentleman if he did not see off his pupil at the gate?"

• While McGregor-sensei is pedantic, I do not believe that is the case when he is with Honami. There are some strong evidence against this in the later part of the prologue. And anyways, I do not believe saying patronize portrays someone as more pedantic than saying belittle. That said, the reasoning behind my change is because patronize has a strong nuance of superiority and condescension, which is definitely not true in this case. Being a proper gentleman, McGregor-sensei will probably never claim that his favourite student patronizes him in any way even as a joke. However, belittle is a suitable synonym of underestimate [2], and fits the light mood perfectly.
• Comma is not required as "English gentleman" is a noun, and it is not "English" "gentleman". It must be either "he is a proper English gentleman" or "he is a proper, English, gentleman", where in the second case both proper and English modifies gentleman. Saying "he is a proper, English gentleman." does not make sense.
• Although "see off" is a verb phrase, when it comes to "seeing somebody off" the use is different. To "see someone off" is an idiom and part of proper English [3] [4] [5], and so it is harder for me to imagine someone as properly English as McGregor-sensei to misuse such a common idiom.

"Stroking his orderly, Colman moustache"

• There shouldn't be a comma here... I might as well note that while I'm writing all this up.

"In any language; historic, polite speech most befits a gentleman."

• I had a lot of trouble with this one, pondered it a long time. You made a good point that a comma might imply that language was another modifier, and that the sentence could not be easily restructured. I had noticed these too. However, the usage of the semicolon is a very tricky thing, and it is very easy to misuse it, especially in places like this. The most important part of the usage of a semicolon is that the clause that precedes it must be an independent clause. [6] [7] [8] However, "in any language" is not an independent clause, and thus the semicolon does not apply. Currently I am proposing to change this sentence to: "In any language, a historic, polite dialect most befits a gentleman."

"His students, unaware of the circumstances, spread rumors that McGregor had finally gone loony."

• Sure, your point of the emphasis is well made. But the thing is that the original text did not contain anything implying that the students were his students. In fact, one could interpret this change as saying that only his students were spreading the rumours, which is not true based on my interpretation of the original text. Additionally, this change implies that all of his students were unaware of the circumstances, which is not true.
• Sure, when you change it to "his students" you need the commas. But when it is just plain "students" the commas are unneeded, and actually change the meaning when added.

"Well then... how about one last graduation exam from your former teacher?"

• Again, the original text had a comma. Also, McGregor-sensei as one can tell is quite energetic — as described in one of the sentences, he was "showy and childish". One can quite well imagine from this that he talked quite fast. Thus, the ellipses are not consistent with the impression of McGregor-sensei that we get.

"She had been surreptitiously examining the equipment he had with him—it was all right. She had airmailed all her large magical items already [...]"

• As you noticed, I had changed the meaning. This is because this is how it is written in the light novel - she was taking inventory of her items, not his. The correctness of this can be logically derived. If by examining his equipment she could decide that what she had was alright, this implies that she had to at least have an idea of what each of his items did. However, this is obviously not true, since she had no idea what the wine cup does, and McGregor-sensei went into a lengthy explanation of it.
• I was unaware that airmailed was an actual English word. I guess now that we're in an age where "googled" and "woot" have made their way into print dictionaries I should have expected this much...

"Now–now, no hesitation. Rather, you seem already sufficiently prepared."

• The usage of the hyphen is mainly two-fold: one is to join compound words together, and the second is to indicate that a word continues on the next line. [9] However, there are many other situations where hyphens should be used, and the rules for these situations are quite hazy. However, it seems that the only rule relating hyphens and repeated words applies only when the repeated words are followed by a noun. [10] You may have often seen repeated words hyphenated due to this, or due compound words composed of repeated words such as so-so, bye-bye. However, for cases such as "now now", or "there there" it would be inaccurate to use a hyphen. Regarding using a comma instead, a comma introduces a pause such as in "quick, quick", which is not generally found when using the phrase "now now" in colloquial speech. I have seen "there, there" though so it may be perfectly fine to use "now, now". But it definitely is fine to use "now now".

"Breaking apart with a sound, smoke billowed, pushing away the fog all at once, and surrounding Honami."

• I was just emphasizing that the smoke came from the cup. Otherwise, it is completely possible to interpret this as "the cup broke, and smoke billowed around it". Where did the smoke come from? Who knows. That said, the original didn't specify that the smoke came from the cup either, so it's just my personal interpretation. I'm fine with it either way.
• However, I found an additional grammatical error with this sentence. It should be either "and surrounded Honami" or just plain "surrounding Honami".

"McGregor observed dispassionately."

• I would not say calmly and dispassionately are synonyms. The original used "じーと" which is more like he motionlessly observed her or he observed her with a fixed stare or he patiently observer her. None of those meanings come even remotely close to hinting at being dispassionate. I thought of using disinterestedly in order get rid of the connotation of McGregor-sensei not caring about her, but he is not disinterested either, so I settled on calmly.

"The letters EMETH were carved inside cane, which had been held together with with varnish; though the E had been marred by the arrow's impact."

• Your observation is spot on and I had missed that. However, once again you use the semicolon incorrectly. Replacing the semicolon with a comma would make the sentence almost correct, save for the missing "the" and the repeated "with". I still personally think that this alternative provides more tension: "Inside the cane that had been together with varnish, the letters EMETH were carved, although the E had been marred by the arrow's impact." But that probably isn't enough reason to prefer one over the other.

"Mistletoe Spear, eh? Again, a classic."

• "eh" is Canadian, and being a Canadian I dislike seeing it used incorrectly. No British person would say "eh", except when joking around.

"Oh-ho!" McGregor joyously blew out his cheeks. "Well then, you said you had a childhood friend or something? It would not be outside the bounds of gentlemanly behavior to leave it at that. But do tell me of your circumstances."

• Yes it would change the meaning too much, and this change is actually the one I'm the most unsure of, because my Japanese skills are still quite lacking. But I thought, "this is a wiki, so if I made a mistake people can just correct it." My interpretation is that based on Honami's reply in the next line as well as the limited amount of information I could make out of the Japanese, it's more likely he said "if I didn't ask I wouldn't be a gentleman" over "if I didn't ask I would still be a gentleman, but I'll ask anyways". This one definitely needs the translator to look over, but that doesn't change the fact that I believe I should have edited it.

"So, where exactly in Japan are you going? Are there Celtic Magic minors over there? I heard it's almost all Shinto and Buddhism pulling the strings there."

• Nope. For this one I am 100% sure the translator made a mistake. Original is 向こうではケルト魔術はマイナーだろう？, with a literal translation meaning "over there Celtic magic is minor right?", but I didn't think that McGregor-sensei would be the type to use "right?" at the end of a sentence.

"Yeah... About that... I made the decision to do this ten years ago. Take a look, Sensei."

• No reason to cut it means no reason to leave it. But it's true that there's no difference here either way. The only thing I'm frustrated at is my inability to figure out some kind of transformation to make it clear to the player that Honami speaks in Kansai-ben. The only thing I could think of is adding a footnote explaining so. I'm waiting to see what the translator does with this for now though.

--jonathanasdf 05:28, 4 June 2011 (UCT)