Yamaguchirow omake (Setsuen)

[wombat1138]

Omake break again. There are three of them scattered through "Setsuen" but they're all indirectly linked, appropriately enough.

Some of the lines may be direct quotes from the original manga. I haven't gone back to check. For the format key, check one of the longer translations.

#6#

Kenshin:
= [Tomoe]-no [iinazuke] mo kono [te] de....
= Tomoe's fiance also these hands [P]
-- "And with my own hands, I'd killed Tomoe's fiance, too..."

+++

Kaoru:
= [Kiyosato]-san... dakke
["dakke" seems to a conversational noise that indicates an uncertain memory; not sure of the etymology]
-- "Do you mean... Kiyosato-san?"

+++

She glances at him with a small "?!" while he doesn't say anything.

+++

Him:
= moshikashite
[Variant of "moshi-ka-shitara", a phrase which Kodansha lists as "perhaps" but seems to break down along logical lines more like "if that were to be said"]
-- "I guess so."

Her:
= [namae] [wa]reta to ka?
-- "You forgot his name?"

Him:
= (un)
-- "(...yeah.)"


#15#

Kaoru:
= konna-[koto] shite'te mo | [Tomoe]-san ya [Kiyosato]-san [yoroko]banai-wa yo!
= this-sort-of-thing continuing-to-do | [name] and [name] not-making-happy[T] [mM]
[Interpolating a bit from the wider plot context of Jinchuu]
-- "Your quest for revenge | isn't what Tomoe and Kiyosato would want!"

+++

Enishi:
= urusai
= annoying/noisy/nagging
-- "Oh, shut up."

= (--[Tomoe]-- | --[nee]-san)
-- "(--Tomoe-- | --my sister)"

+++

= (--[nee]-san)
-- "(--my sister)"

+++

Suddenly, he looks up from his reverie.
= (to) dare? | ([Kiyosato] 'tte)
= and who | [name] [quote]
[Flipping the syntax.]
-- "And Kiyosato, you said? | who's that?"

Her:
= o[mae] mo ka
["omae" is a somewhat impolite pronoun.]
-- "You too? What a jerk."


#48#

There's a vague image of Kiyosato floating next to Kaoru in the first panel, but not afterward.

Her:
= [me] datta no de atta [koto] no-nai [Kiyosato]-san-no [koto]-wo [omo]i-mita...
- "omoi" <- "[omo]u" (think up); by analogy with similar construction like "[omo]i-[da]su" (recall from memory; dasu = bring/send out) and "[omo]i-tsuku" (remember something about a person; "tsuku" = attach), "omoi-mita" is the past tense of "omoi-miru": see in thought, mentally envision?
[Does the start of the sentence break up into "...datta-no de-atta" (with two different past forms of the copula? that doesn't make sense) or "datta no-de atta" (but then what does "atta" belong to?)
[There's a linebreak after the first "de", so "de-atta" seems even more unlikely.]
[The single word "[me]datta" could be the past tense of the verb "medatsu" (stand out, be conspicuous); my dictionary writes it with two kanji as [meda]tsu, but hey. Hmm... "medatta-no" could be "the fact of having appeared"?

Corrected(?) transcript:
= [me]datta-no de atta koto no-nai [Kiyosato]-san-no [koto]-wo [omo]imita...
= past-appearance from was[iX] stuff [fM]-not[iX] Kiyosato's stuff[O] envisioned
[Bleh. Resorting to guesswork and reshuffling.
-- "Did something just appear? No, it can't be. I was thinking about Kiyosato..."

+++

Little diagram over her head:
= [Kiyosato]-san--(fuufu)--Tomoe-san--(fuufu)--Kenshin
- "fuufu": married couple

Her:
= to, iu te to wa!!
[Bloody particles. Guessing.]
-- "So... so that's almost like saying..."

+++

Another diagram linking her name with Kiyosato's:
= [fuufu] mo [douzen]!!
- "douzen": natural similarity?
-- "I'm married to Kiyosato too!!"

[I think her speech balloons in this panel just have incoherent squiggles.]

+++

Somewhere else in the house, Wu Heishin looks around.
= BOSU kono [kikoe]-wa? (sakki kara)
- "BOSU": loanword from "voice" or "boss"; I don't know if Wu calls Enishi "bosu" in the original series, though.
= [?] this strange-voice[T] (just-now from)
-- "Boss? What was that weird scream? (just now...)"

Enishi:
= [ki] ni suru na
= spirit in do [P]
- "ki ni suru": idiom for "worry"
- "suru na": brusque prohibition, "don't do that or else!"
-- "Just forget about it."

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Oh, thanks a lot. I was slightly obsessed with these omakes. I wrote you on Stasy's forum. Hope you don't mind if I give my thanks here too ^_^
Poor Kiyosato, it seems his track in history was too small...
*goes to read "A cohabitation age"*
Tons of thanks one more time. :)

Radda.

P.S. BTW, do you post your translations anywhere else? I belive, we're not the only ones, who would be grateful for them ;)

[wombat1138.livejournal.com]

You're welcome :) at least Kaoru still thinks of Kiyosato, even if it gives her weird thoughts....

I haven't posted these newer translations anywhere else because I don't know where to put them-- when I uploaded some of my older translations onto fanfiction.net, they were eventually deleted by the management on grounds of plagiarism(?!? I don't really understand their reasoning on that, but there's no point in arguing with them). I think they also disappeared from adultfanfiction.net just before that entire site went into its present limbo/renovation stage. There was another site somewhere that had them, but I don't know if it still exists... I wouldn't have those at all anymore if Stasy hadn't saved them and emailed copies to me. (I should probably upload those here, too, just to keep them all in one place.)

The little omake things are fun, though. Might try a few more, depending on which scans Stasy has....

[(Anonymous)]

Speaking of sites - what about mediaminer.org? Or it's only for fiction/art and doujinshi translations are not allowed there?
Because there are much more English-speaking doujinshi fans than Russian and they are certainly will be happy to have your translation. Judging by InuYasha fans, they have desperately done their best to find a good doujinshi translator...
You shold be read world-wide :)

[wombat1138.livejournal.com]

I don't think I really qualify as a *good* translator ^_^; since it's not as if I actually know Japanese. But also, oddly enough, I'm not sure I *want* a lot of English-speaking fans to know about the translations? Because eventually, one of them might turn them into English-language scanslations, which I have weird feelings about. (Though maybe not as weird as Kaoru's about Kiyosato.)

...See, I don't mind Stasy making Russian scanslations because I assume it's harder to buy the actual physical doujinshi from Russia. But most English-speaking fans are probably in the US, where it's possible to get them from eBay (that's how I bought all of mine-- a lot of them were air-mailed from Japan, though there are also some US/Canadian resellers). And since scanslations are probably made in Photoshop or a similar digital medium, that increases the chances of someone eventually selling CD-ROMS of English scanslations on eBay. (Lots of people already sell CD-ROMS full of doujinshi in the original Japanese-language format. I hate that.)

I mean, I enjoy doing the translations (at least most of the time :b ) and I'm never sure how accurate they are anyway, so I have no objection to working on them on a volunteer basis-- but I would hate it if other people made money from my work without telling me. (This happened to a piece of Star Wars fanfic I wrote years ago-- someone took it off the web, put it into a print fanzine, and sold copies of it. At least they had the conscience to find my email address after that and give me a free copy.)

Though the entire economics/morality of doujinshi and the resale market is very complicated anyway-- if I pay some ridiculous price to someone on eBay for "Kyouken 7", the extra profit goes to them, not Yamaguchirow. On the other hand, if they know they can make a huge profit from each one, then they'll buy as many copies of "Kyouken 8" as they can carry away from the next Comiket, so Yamaguchirow still benefits in that way. And doujinshi and fanfic are both technically copyright violations anyway-- does any part of the sale price of "Kyouken" ever go to Watsuki as the creator of RK? Nope... except if "Kyouken" indirectly encourages people to go buy licensed RK stuff that sends a percentage back to him.

I should add that on one of my usual RK discussion boards, some people were FURIOUS to accidentally find out that Stasy was translating some RK fanfic into Russian. Strangely, none of those were the actual English-language authors of the stories; I know there was at least one other of those authors there besides me, and we were just vaguely surprised/flattered.

(Besides, obviously there's worldwide access to LJ; I haven't friends-locked the translation entries, so anyone who knows about them can still read them... I'm not sure how much I want to publicize their existence, though....)

[(Anonymous)]

The subject appears to be more complicated than I've thought... We've already spoken about authers rights violation and this problem in America/other world is much more serious then in Russia - my country is amateur in this fild... I understand your arguments and very appreciate your permission to use translations you've done for my scanlations. And I should assure you: Russian scanlations could be hardly solved for money - firstly, we haven't so much funs for this otaku stuff. And secondly the e-auctions are pretty rare in our contry. Yeah, Middle Age. ^_^
And wombat-san shouldn't be so modest - may be your translation are not precisely accurate from the academic point of view, but they have been done whole-hearted and they are really cool.
...two knuts about fandoms, translators and other stuff... Firstly... oh, it's pretty funny. I've always thought that our planet is small, and all people - one way or another - know each other, but when I've read your post about Cassie Claire I was partly shocked, because I know her too - I'm her "official Russian translator"... And for people trying to find something offensive in this translation I should inform that the link to my work is in her LJ and she is completely aware about it :) As well as other authers who's novels have been translated by me. Most of them. I ask permission (if I can find auther's e-mail) and usually get it and don't see any problems with this: I don't earn any money by translations (heh, on the contrary...) and all I want - to share intresting story with my friends. And on the authers place I would be very pleased if someone translated my stories into other language...
I'm wrong?

...sorry for mistakes - I'm very confused and frustrated...

[(Anonymous)]

I honestly don't understand what is bad in good translation with all copyrights saved. Russian anime fandom is not so big and people prefer making fansubs, not fanfics. Apart from Stasy's thanslations, we almost don't have any RK fanfiction at all. I fell in love with RK thanks to one of them and it worked with not only me. So it's a good thing, right?
With permission or not (for instance, we tried asking Linay, author of Broken Pieces, about three times, but didn't recieve any answer), all translations on Stasy's site have copyrights and links on the original (if we managed to find it). Besides, it's good works without language violation ^_^ though I probably can't prove it to you. ;)
Radda.

[wombat1138.livejournal.com]

I honestly don't understand what is bad in good translation with all copyrights saved.

Especially since, according to US law, fanfic/doujinshi are illegal copyright violations in the first place, so they *can't* be copyrighted at all, and selling them for profit is extremely legally questionable.

Japanese companies don't seem to worry about doujinshi. However, many Japanese fans object to having their artwork cut and pasted into other people's (usually American fans') webpages without identifying the original artists... but if these were individual fan artists (not doujinka) who were simply posting them online to start with, there was no possibility of making money from their art in the first place, and the other websites' copies probably aren't making any money from them either.

I do think that the key step is keeping the identifications for the original author/artist. If something is based on RK, then Nobuhiro Watsuki deserves some form of credit for creating the characters, artwork, and setting. If something is based on a Yamaguchirow doujinshi, Shinji Yamaguchi deserves credit for creating the artwork/story for that. If something uses lines of dialogue from "Buffy the Vampire Slayer", then Joss Whedon deserves credit for creating the characters/setting and writing those words (unless he wasn't the specific scriptwriter on the episode they came from, but still). It may not always be legally actionable, but it's just good manners.

What I find really, really interesting is that I *think* there's been a recent trend for some fan artists to first post their fan-art online, and then get a contract to re-use the same art in licensed products, such as Amoka (http://amoka.net/)'s artwork for "A Song of Ice and Fire" (his portfolio shows many, many pictures he's made for the ASOAIF-based collectible card game) and yet still keep the original artwork online. (Well, sometimes revised somewhat if the early art is just too embarrassing, but....)

It doesn't work exactly the same way for written fic-- Cassie Claire got a professional publisher's contract based on her work in fandom, but she has to write entirely new material instead of just reprinting her fanfic in an anthology. Or at least so I've heard; I haven't followed her case very closely, though it may not look that way from recent remarks... some of the things I've heard about her, such as the accusations of plagiarism and the attempts to sell t-shirts, seem rather distasteful, but I do not actually care that much either way, since it has nothing to do with me. *self-centered*

[wombat1138.livejournal.com]

It's a confusing and frustrating subject :b There are all kinds of arguments, based on morality, artistic integrity, economics, historical tradition, copyright law, and I don't know what else.

At the extreme end, some people think that *all* fanfic/doujinshi is automatically immoral because it's based on someone else's original work without the author's specific consent and it might "violate" the original characters in some way-- the professional author Robin Hobb has a famous rant (http://www.robinhobb.com/rant.html) from this point of view. (Tolkien probably would've been startled, to say the least, by some of the fanfic that's being written about this characters.) On the other hand, I don't think when Virgil wrote the Aeneid, way back in Imperial Rome, that he had permission from Homer to use characters and events from the Odyssey.

(There's an *extremely* long discussion thread about fanfic here (http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/007464.html), on the personal webpage of two of the editors of Tor Books (they publish SF/F; I don't know which of their authors might've been reprinted in Russia-- Robert Jordan?), based on a slightly earlier discussion (http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/007459.html) about someone who tried to sell her Star Wars fanfic book on Amazon.)

...Cassie Claire is slightly more complicated, since the original controversy about her "Draco" series was about large-scale plagiarism-- lots of small(?) pieces picked up from published books, tv dialogue, etc. and re-used in her story without any indication that she'd borrowed them from somewhere else instead of inventing them. I don't really know a great deal about the case, since I only read some of "Draco" and I've never read the main book she was accused of lifting *really* big pieces from, though I did recognize a distinctive line of dialogue somewhere as having been written by the British author Tanith Lee. (shrug)

For me, my gut feeling boils down to part economics, part artistic integrity. Is the fan author/artist making significant original effort? Are they making money from it? If the respective answers are "yes" and "no", then generally, I don't see the problem. But that may just be me. (more shrug)

[(Anonymous)]

Recently I've known a bit more of plagiarism in the English-speaking fandoms... It is rather frustrating - I felt myself faced with the Spanish Inquisition. :) Forbidden... Prohibited... And even paraphrasing can be considered plagiarism (c)... And if we speak about doujinshi, fanart and fanfiction it turns into some kind of twisted hypocrisy, which my brain can't cope with.
I like somethind. A lot. Movie, book, anime - it doesn't matter - I want to do something about it: to write, to draw, to translate, to make a scanlation. Without any profit. Just to have fun together with my friends and soul mates. That's all, nothing more.
Is it really so hard to live just having fan, doing something you really like - writing, drawing, translating - and sharing your joy with friends without being accused of doing something illegal?.. I speak only about hobbies, of course (but it sounds pretty tempting in different ways though... ).
Speaking of Cassie's Draco it's the very amusing point for me. Some time ago I've written two rather big fanfics in the Russian HP fandom, where a lot of extracts from my favorite books, famous Russian movies dialogues and significant phrases were presented. And nobody accused me in plagiarism. Of course, I informed my readers beforehand about this and we all together had been playing this literary quest... And now I see how serious this topiс abroad... I'm really scared. So - it's another mentality, isn't it? (Or just Middle Ages I've mentioned early ^_^).
People shouldn't be so terribly serious about such a smallest things. In one condition: if it's not dealt with money matters - here I'm completely with you.
But we don't make money from our trans-scan-lation, do we? So let just have fun!

...I've found omake you've spoken about.
*gets ready for another scanlation* :)

[wombat1138.livejournal.com]

Some time ago I've written two rather big fanfics in the Russian HP fandom, where a lot of extracts from my favorite books, famous Russian movies dialogues and significant phrases were presented. And nobody accused me in plagiarism. Of course, I informed my readers beforehand about this and we all together had been playing this literary quest...

Well, again, personally I don't care very much about plagiarism if there isn't any profit involved, except in extreme cases where someone puts their own name onto an entire story/artwork created by someone else and "loses" the original creator's name. And with excerpts from classic literature and famous movies, generally you expect other people to already recognize where those lines came from in the first place, instead of thinking that you're a genius for "inventing" lines that were written by Shakespeare. Most classic literature is now public-domain and free from vicious copyright lawyers. It also helps if you clearly tell your readers to look for the quotes sprinkled all over the place.

IIRC the objections to CC's "Draco" work, at least as originally posted, were that she *didn't* warn people that she was borrowing lines from various sources. Not only that, but many of the sources were still recent enough to be clearly under copyright, without being famous enough for her readers to recognize them anyway. So a lot of people would've simply assumed *she* had written every word of the funny dialogue, poignant emotions, vivid descriptions, or whatever else she'd borrowed from someone else.

When I read whatever part of "Draco" that I did, I didn't notice anything particularly strange about the long sections that were supposedly borrowed from Pamela Dean (whom I heard of, but whose books I've never read) or Joss Whedon (I hadn't watched any of "Buffy" yet, but might recognize those lines now) or any number of other sources.

This is the one clear example that I *do* remember recognizing. I think CC adapted it for Hermione, hiding with a boy in a wardrobe (don't remember if it was Harry or Draco?). The original line was written by a British author named Tanith Lee, for a story called "Magritte's Secret Agent" that was first published in 1981:

"The skin of his face had the sort of marvellous pale texture most men shave off when they rip the first razor blade through their stubble and the second upper dermis goes with it forever."

AFAIK Tanith Lee has never been a best-selling author, though she's one of my longtime favorites. There are a lot of classic works where people recognize common quotes even if they've never seen/read the entire thing. This is not one of them. Most of CC's readers had probably never heard Tanith Lee's name before, and simply admired CC for coming up with this delicately geeky observation for Hermione to say.

It would've been nice if she'd given some credit to the original source, indirectly encouraging her readers to go buy some of Tanith Lee's or Pamela Dean's or whoever else's books. But it's not as if she was actively taking money away from Lee or Dean either, just bits and pieces of intellectual credit. And the whole Heirs of Slytherin/Gryffindor/Hufflepuff/Ravenclaw thing was kind of neat, and how much absolute creativity can you really expect in something that's fanfic to start with anyway?

:b

(I have a feeling that I'm confusing my own argument. Whatever it is. Oh well.)