Okay, volume 49! Holy shit we’ve just got 3 volume versions left. I wrote a recap of what’s going on with this project here.

So yeah, same thing as the last one. We’re using some tools to quickly find typos and minor errors. That’s all gone really well so far.

This volume is the end of the Planet Excaliburian talking swords arc, then a video game parody chapter, then the arc with Ikumatsu and her backstory and looking for her father. This time I made it say Katsura is into NTR. Back when I first translated this in uhhh January of 2013, I did not know the phrase “NTR” was a known English phrase so I just translated it as “cuckoldry” at the time. I’ve long wanted to fix that. Anyhow that’s done now I hope I’ve made some of you out there happy. Then there’s a chapter about buying clothes. A chapter about the Shinsengumi and Mimawarigumi solving a crime that looks similar to the legend of Momotarou, and then a chapter about the new Four Devas of Kabukichou.

So right now Teppy is checking through v46-48 and I’m working on finalizing the fixed up V73-77, which will make those volumes which we did back in 2018 or so on par with these ones. That’s almost done, too, I’m trying to finish it up. Then my plan is to do the same thing for V33-35 and then do the much more labor intensive V36-45, which will take much longer because we translated those back in like 2011-2015, so revising them to the current standards is more work, but this is still WAY less work than doing it from the magazine versions. All the extras and such are already done, to start. But for V35-45 we need to typeset the sound effects in-line rather than in the margins so that’ll take more time. I’ll maybe release those in batches. But after that, we’ll finally be done and all of what we’ve released, Volume 33-77, will be all finished in full quality, something I’m excited to finally reach. This series is VERY difficult to translate and clean and typeset really every step, so reaching that I feel would be a huge accomplishment and feel like a minor miracle. So yeah that’s how I’m spending my October-November what are you all doing?

Also, we have a Discord! Come hang out and talk about manga. https://discord.gg/Nw45rfJYZF

Gintama Volume 49 (Ch428-436)
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Okay, volume 50! We have finally gotten through volume versions in the 50’s and beyond and we’ve got 4 volume versions left. I wrote a recap of what’s going on with this project here.

Not really much has happened since the last one of these. We’re using some tools to quickly find typos and minor errors and fix them so we’re just finalizing the remaining volumes. And then just checking them over with a couple people and then they’re done. I’m also going through the Gintama volumes we already checked and released with that tool just to be extra safe on those. I’m also using it on some other series we’ve worked on recently to fix any issues in those. I did it on the first few volumes of Kokou no Hito already, since that series has not too much text, so I figure it will take less time to go through.

This volume has the whole gender-swap/Yagyuu Juubei arc. Then a few one-off gag chapters, then the beginning of the Snot Diamondz 48/Hanakuso Diamondz 48. So lots of memorable stuff in this one. I’m really hoping we understood all the jokes this time.

There’s a bunch of stuff almost done, then there’s a new Jojo and 3-Gatsu no Lion coming out sometime soon as well. See ya later!

Also, we have a Discord! Come hang out and talk about manga. https://discord.gg/Nw45rfJYZF

Gintama Volume 50 (Ch437-445)
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Okay, volume 51! We’ve got 5 volume versions left. I wrote a recap of what’s going on with this project here.

So, one thing I did between this volume and the last one is I found a couple of tools I could use to help automate checking a little. I found a python library I could use to extract the text from the PSDs and then take that extracted text to find spelling mistakes and typos of the sort you’d get a squiggly green underline under in Microsoft Word, this way it’s a lot easier to find mistakes. I’m using this in addition to a Github project we’ve been using for a while called PanelCleaner which you can use to get basically accurate OCR’d text from the manga into an excel file. So it becomes a lot easier to then check the Japanese text against the translation for each page. I’m hoping this speeds things up a bit and makes checking easier, not just for this series but for doing checks on other ones too. I mentioned this in the last few posts but basically this project is a giant mountain of busy work, the sort you’d like to automate but even automating as much as we can it still takes a good few minutes per page and there’s about 4,500 pages total across these 25 volumes. Anyhow using that seems to have helped, hopefully everything was caught and I found all the jokes I had slightly wrong cause I misread them or whatever, but if anyone notices any other mistakes in these let me know and I’ll try to fix them.

This volume is the latter half of the Snot Diamond’z idol group battle, the short arc about Hijikata winning the lottery, the whole Kurokono Tasuke and Gin-Katsura-Sakamoto reunion arc, and then a single gag chapter about hiding erotic books. I’m not sure about you all but I basically forgot some of these arcs existed. Well I would have probably if I didn’t spend so many hours on this series that a blur of every chapter I worked on is permanently seared into my brain and will be for the rest of my life.

Besides this, all the other of V46-50 are in progress and being finalized. I’m also using the tools mentioned above to find any mistakes from the volumes we already released and fixing them which requires some manual work to check. And I’ll be doing that for a bunch of our other series, too, once I get to it. It makes things a lot faster but I still need to go through every suggestion and make sure the typsetting didn’t get messed up. Also The JOJOLands volume 9 and Executive Managing Director Shima V3 are almost done. And there’s a 3-Gatsu no Lion chapter in the next Young Animal and the next new The JOJOLands chapter comes out in 8 days. So a lot going on at the moment. But we’ll get through it all.

Also, we have a Discord! Come hang out and talk about manga. https://discord.gg/Nw45rfJYZF

Gintama Volume 51 (Ch446-455)
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Okay, volume 52! We’ve got 6 volume versions left. I wrote a recap of what’s going on with this project here.

The thing with doing these is I essentially have to do a translation check on every single line. And doing a translation check is a really grueling experience. You basically need to translate the whole thing from scratch just you’re saved the effort of typing it out if what was already there was correct or good enough. But if I can think of a more natural way to write a line I’ll entirely rewrite it.

I’m finding lots of little mistakes which were a result of one of two things. Either due to it being a weekly series, the outcome of a twist or story revelation hasn’t been published yet, so I need to go off of the little information given in that chapter which is slowly entertaining the audience while explaining all the plot points, making it hard to be sure I picked the right interpretation of a line. And then the other is because I was needing to finish these all in a day and it’s very exhausting to need to translate a series like this that fast when I was also doing a slew of other projects and working a full time job. So basically I couldn’t afford to take more than a day to translate it and then I would check it over at the end after it was typeset, and then I’d release it. That’s because I was going to have some other thing occupying my time so I couldn’t spare another few hours considering alternate possibilities for what lines meant or making myself a glossary to keep terms consistent or re-read the last few chapters to see what I did before and refresh my memory as an arc came out over the course of 2 months, stuff like that. And honestly even now when I’m way more experienced going through these it’s still quite exhausting, though I can check/edit a couple chapters in a few hours. Getting everything “perfect” or as close to perfect as I can requires a huge amount of time and energy for a series like this.

Anyhow, this volume contains a couple gag chapters, the Kagura’s fake funeral arc, the Kondou in a cockroach mask at the festival on a date with Otae arc, and the first half of the Yaemon/Asaemon executioner arc. I tried really hard to make sure all the lines flow better and the typesetting is nicer in addition to fixing any typos or minor translation mistakes. I’m pretty happy how it’s turned out. But back when I started this project my plan was to just give them a quick read through and fix any obvious mistakes. What I’m doing at this point is really overkill. Regardless, I hope folks check it out! We don’t have too much left, and then it’s on to doing some of the V32 and earlier volumes. We’ll see how that goes.

Also, we have a Discord! Come hang out and talk about manga. https://discord.gg/Nw45rfJYZF

Gintama Volume 52 (Ch456-465)
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