Talk:Utsuro no Hako:Volume1 Prologue

Grarr, mind if I push my opinion a bit?

No worries at all; I don't bite/tend to _not_ thrive on drama :D I _can_ be a bit stubborn at times :P Also, HUGE caveat - I can't speak for EEE (though I occasionally can summarize his repeated comments/quote him off IRC logs :D)

I feel that in a novel, especially a surrealistic one like Hakomari, maintaining the stylistic individuality of the writing is much more important than following orthodox usage customs. "Break any rule sooner than say anything outright barbarous," after all.

For sure - in particular, character dialogues are probably the most obvious example where style dominates grammar, orthodox usage, etc.

A couple of caveats wrt just where I fall on the _targeted_ (vs. where-the-final-product-ended-up) anality scale. You may get the sense that I'm more anal than I actually want to be, based on the "evidence."

1. e.g., when I reworked the prologues, I was just starting to work w/EEE and Kadi on V5 on EEE's private wiki for the first time, so the prologues are probably among the stiffest of all the sections that I worked on (relative to the desired/contextually appropriate level of stiffness for a given section, of course). (Separately, I was treating 'O', like Daiya in V1, as ~= pretentious pricks for their default style...)
2. Another more specific example: the "his (or her)" edits re: 'O' in the V1-4 prologues were iirc my blindly re-implementing what EEE/Kadi had decided to do for the prologue of V5, in order to keep things consistent across volumes.
3. Separately, the sausage-making can sometimes get pretty ugly. EEE's first drafts for V5 were being pushed out in fairly raw form at times, and I/we could barely keep up with his massive TL'g power/speed. I ended up first-sweeping to fix grammar and blatant incongruities (often creating some long-ass, multi-clausal sentences to avoid losing any translated tidbits), planning to iterate later on for style and flow. This...didn't always happen. In fact, the first-sweeps didn't always catch everything, as your edits to V5 already demonstrate :P

A translation is a new work - and I feel that EEE imparted to many parts of Hakomari a very likable style, which I feel should be preserved.

Agreed, though there are a bunch of facts and circumstances issues that should probably be made more transparent (they largely haven't been, since I roughly thought that ~0 ppl would care - tho you actually do seem to, which is nice :) ) I suppose there's a question of translator's intent (as an analogue to authorial intent...)

1. Many parts of the oldest TL's for Hakomari are mutually acknowledged to be, well, barbarous/a hot mess by EEE and Kadi, who were responsible for them at the time - much of V2 is probably the best example (as cited by EEE himself yesterday-recently)
2. While parts of some of the TL's have enjoyable and deliberate style, EEE freely admits that much of the 2010 stuff was cranked out in a manner that he found problematic then, and definitely wants revised now. As to how that revision will proceed, I'd encourage you to participate (and while I can't speak for EEE/Kadi, your edits on V5 thus far seem fine w/one or two exceptions)
3. Where we're more likely to run into (some) disagreement further below...

For example, the change {I think I asked him something trifling then, something like ‘Why are you giving this to me?’} -> {I think I asked him (or her) something trivial at that point, along the lines of ‘Why are you giving this to me?’}. (Actually, rereading that, it should be edited to {I think I asked him something trifling then - something along the lines of ‘Why are you giving this to me?’})

It's very, very difficult to explain, but I feel there's an odd charm in the choice of words and phrasing in the original - in this case, it would be the usage of {trifling}, as well as the structure of {something --- then, something like}. Using {something trivial at that point}, while more consistent with current vernacular and rules, removes the bit of 'flavor' the original phrasing imparted to the story. A similar argument applies to many of your other edits - especially the more liberal ones. The original lack of conjunctions is another example of this charm.

So using this as a micro-example:

1. I largely buy your argument wrt reverting to some kind of "trifling" variant (though this is a subjective pref on both our parts wrt "charm"), and would rank (your revised edition) > (my stiff-upper-lip version) > (the oldest/unrevised, bit-too-messy version)
2. _If_ we're talking about the same things, the lack of conjunctions (in a decent number of cases) was EEE being lazy / probably wanting to change the style today.

I realize this is also a case of the version first read imprinting itself on my perception of Hakomari as a whole, like the King James Bible on our perception of the Bible - but I'd like to defend that first style, regardless. I do think lots of your grammar edits improved the readability though.

1. No worries; subject to EEE's opinions as dominant, of course.

Your view? LB_Kasen (talk) 03:00, 27 August 2012 (CDT)

I think some of the main issues are disentangling

places where I edit too formally (for whatever reason - laziness, time constraints, bad editing) / your style prefs are generally better

places where the old version was _really_ bad from a clarity/grammar/barely english standpoint, and my replacement was much-needed but dropped the ball on style points

places where you have an imprinted fondness for a certain style, but EEE definitely didn't intentionally create said style/actively wants it to be changed in a lot of cases

Separately, EEE's desire to have earlier volumes "edited" to some degree of clarity/proper usage+flow, and amount of bandwidth available for that purpose...

I'm leaving out another theoretical bugaboo - accurately capturing Mikage's style. It's quite possible that EEE today may be much more capable of doing so, and may want to do so - but that may create a version of hakomari that you find actively displeasing vs the one of your "impression-forming" days...

BTW, a general observation - the degree to which EEE actively prefers liberal editing (with his veto always being final, of course) from ppl he's worked with/trusts seems very different from the regular B-T TL level of preference. This is not particularly obvious since 99% of v5 TL+editing happened on his own wiki.

If you're planning on getting really active w/HakoMari editing, I can _ask_ to see how he'd feel about giving you access so you can get a better sense of how things evolved. (No promisese, of course - esp since v5 has already been released to B-T, he may not see much point to airing out the sausage factory as it were...) Grrarr (talk) 04:32, 27 August 2012 (CDT)

Sorry for butting in here, but I'd like to state my two cents. Also, I haven't read grrarr's comments yet because he posted while I was writing. :P

I agree that Mikage's writing style has a lot of special characteristics, but I think those that matter are mostly preserved. E.g. the choice of words is due in a large part to my poor grasp of spoken and written English, and I've actually been craving for someone to get rid of that forced, "I-Can't-Into-English" phrasing. Also, I believe it's a trait of Japanese in general (especially light novels) that it differs greatly from the common English style (speaking of conjunctions), but I don't consider that a reason to copy the original sentence construction 1:1. There are some aspects that should be kept, though, like those "revelations" or "cryptic lines" between empty lines. Long story short: I'm happy if it sounds more or less natural, and not like it was written by a Japanese in Engrish. Everybody has to decide for himself where to draw the line between literal and liberal translations, and personally, I agree with most of grrarr's edits. :D EusthEnoptEron (talk) 04:37, 27 August 2012 (CDT)

Open dialogue?

Just wanted to confirm that in this line:

The face of the person who calmly asked me that question, was continuously morphing into new and different faces. Ironic, don’t you think?”

There was meant to be a " before Ironic...? MatrixM (talk) 10:09, 9 July 2013 (CDT)