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)
Mega
Online Reader (Cubari)
Online Reader (MangaDex)
Online Reader (MangaDot)

Okay, volume 53! We’ve got 7 volume versions left. I wrote a recap of what’s going on with this project here. So yeah, going through and editing the volumes that are primarily gag chapters is proving to be a much more time-consuming effortful task than I expected. Each one is taking several days to do. I’ve tended to notice lots of little minor mistakes that don’t really alter the plot or anything but are slightly wrong and if I want all these good in the end I need to go through every chapter and every line with a fine-toothed comb.

Like for example this volume has the end of the Executioner Ikeda Asaemon/Yaemon Arc. And part of that arc involves Sougo and Hijikata investigating the crimes of tsujigiri that have been going on. And basically they’re totally peripheral to the main plot regarding Gin, Yaemon, and Asaemon. But there’s a thing at the end where they have to wrap up their plot and explain how the Hitotsubashi faction isn’t taking the blame, and someone has to be blamed, so they blame Asaemon and Gin and they make it seem like Asaemon committed seppuku, but they really mean Asaemon is adopting her new identity as Yaemon the 19th and Gin is “executed” but not really. It’s a very convoluted thing to setup the ending scene which is easy to slightly misunderstand if you’re trying to do this in a few hours so you can get to the 500 other things you need to do that week and didn’t pay a ton of attention to the side plots. So for a few sentences I had like, the subject of the sentence wrong or my eyes glazed over a kana or two the first time. Along with fixing various typos because there’s just so much gosh-darn text it’s hard to catch them all. I hopefully got everything fixed for this version. This volume is the end of the executioner arc and the rest of it is the Gin and Hijikata switching bodies arc. Both pretty good ones.

So to update you all on the other stuff I was talking about last time, I finished scanning all of volumes 24-32. We also ran all our automation scripts, setup all the color pages, and whited out all the bubbles for all volumes. All those need is uhhh all the translating and typesetting. Which of course takes the vast majority of the time. But I did get all the early steps done. A couple people have volunteered to help typeset so we’ll see how that goes. If that works out they could end up getting done way faster than I expected.

Once I finish all of these volume versions (V46-72) of stuff we’vr ALREADY released once, I’ll start on those ones we’ve never worked on before at all and work backwards from V32 towards V24. I dunno how long it would take to do each one, I dunno if I’ll ever finish it all, and I’m gonna have to take breaks cause I can’t do all 79 chapters in a row (it’s chapters 203-282 plus the Thirteen one-shot and all the extra pages/interviews). So maybe we get one finished every couple months or something. I’ve said this in a lot of these posts, I’m trying to keep these projects from taking over my life and also I’m not sure how many people would read fixed up versions of old Gintama chapters to begin with. A lot of this is me being a perfectionist. So it feels like taking hours and hours of my free time to do these may not be worth it if I’m gonna keep going for months and months. But like a lot of these projects I do, I figure I’ll start on it and see where life goes and keep working on it bit by bit as I have time and try to pace myself. And I can always stop if I don’t feel like doing all of them. Aaanyhow, I hope folks are reading all this. Enjoy!

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

Gintama Volume 53 (Ch466-476)
Mega
Online Reader (Cubari)
Online Reader (MangaDex)
Online Reader (MangaDot)