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Quick note: By god, he really says his name is "ミケ"-- "Mike". There's not a lot of wiggle around here, even if it has the quality of rendering him more from Dayton, Ohio than from medieval Europe. Never afraid of a looser translation in search of an accurate effect, I massaged this as best I could.

Discount Sell-Sword Bell by @akitoaihara.bsky.social
Originals posted: x.com/a_akito17/
(2/2)

Discount Sell-Sword Bell by @akitoaihara.bsky.social
Originals posted: x.com/a_akito17/
(1/2)

For a short project or something with a lot of comedy, I might be a good fit! You can see more of this work posted to this account.

Don Dracula
Art + Story by Osamu Tezuka, Dec. 1979

Don Dracula
Art + Story by Osamu Tezuka, Dec. 1979

Hey! Short update-- Don Dracula is not dead! Life's been a little extra-busy so translation's had to go on the wayside. I'll be jumping in and finishing things up soon! Thanks for your patience!

Don Dracula
Art + Story by Osamu Tezuka, Dec. 1979

Don Dracula
Art + Story by Osamu Tezuka, Dec. 1979

Don Dracula
Art + Story by Osamu Tezuka, Dec. 1979

Don Dracula
Art + Story by Osamu Tezuka, Dec. 1979

Don Dracula
Art + Story by Osamu Tezuka, Dec. 1979

Don Dracula
Art + Story by Osamu Tezuka, Dec. 1979.
20 pages 🧵⤵️

Discount Sell-Sword Bell by @akitoaihara.bsky.social
Originals posted: x.com/a_akito17/

@akitoaihara.bsky.social Aihara-sensei! I made a fan-translation of your work. They're all in this 🧵. There's a few jokes added, but I tried to be faithful to the intention of your work. Seeing your recent drawings of Bell made me very happy. Good to see you on this site!

I think I'll take a short break before picking up my next project, but thanks for coming with me on the journey! Share these pages around, and post your thoughts, please!

At the end of the day, I accomplished by goal. I translated a chapter of my favorite comic, honed my lettering skill, and taught myself hiragana. Along the way I did a bunch of research into Journey to the West, the formation of the Japanese language and even cracked a pun that's bugged me for years

I don't like how verbose that page ultimately gets. Actually, looking back, I don't like how verbose I ran with a lot of this-- I think I have a strength in hitting each joke hard, but the whole work might suffer from the density. Ah well! It was a good experience all the same!

Maybe its the Midwest in me but there's something weird about joke being Bulma yelling "I pissed my pants". So I shift it a little-- Goku, clueless, still doesn't get what the 'little girls room' is, and Bulma, humiliated, gets one last rant to serve as her comeuppance.

I don't know if it works!

Goku's final line in Japanese is essentially "Welp! Glad that all worked out!" and Bulma replied "Wahh, I wet 'em!" and I dunno, it doesn't work for me. VIZ changed that to the utterly goofy "All's swell that ends swell!" and "What's swell about peeing yourself!?" which... also, I don't know!

Referencing the original Chinese wound up being a blessing. I *loved* that the name has BANG right in there-- its accidentally onomatopoetic, right? When I realized WHIM could contain the "As-You-Wish"ness and WHAM the BANG of it all, it felt fated!

You might remember Goku calling it "Power Pole", and the original translation just retains Nyoibo, and adds in a "You remember the tale of the Monkey King and his staff" in the closing narrator's box to tie the reference. But, as always, I wanted something that gets as much across by itself.

如意, Ruyi, means "As you wish" or "as desired". Chinese nobles would actually hold a stick called a "Ruyi" when it was their turn to hold the floor in conversation. 棒 is staff, club, etc. Other translations of Journey to the West call the Ruyi Bang the "As-You-Wish Cudgel" or the "Compliant Rod".

Final page! There's actually some fun meat to get into here, so this'll be a couple posts.

Goku's staff in Japanese is named Nyoibō. Like Goku himself, its inherited from Journey to the West, where in Chinese it's named 如意金箍棒 - Ruyi Jingu Bang (get the SFX gag?). Nyoibo is a contraction: 如意棒.

Next page: Extremely straighforward page. I took this into Procreate to remake the speedlines, the only time I used another program besides Photoshop in the production.

Next page: That said, this page is almost 100% faithful, except for changing Goku's dialogue from being a monologue to a conversation with "monster machine". Him never fully buying machines aren't alive is a good gag I wanted to keep going.

Next page:
Case in point, in the original Goku just says "Oh, are you her friend" and the dinosaur says "Uh, yeah. We're gonna go somewhere private to talk for a sec, be right back." You can see how I tried to keep the spirit there.

I added the plump jokes, and I stand by them, haha

Next page: ...it let me squeeze in another payoff to the butt trick runner.

Toriyama's dialogue is pretty straightforward here-- I deviated from the source fairly strongly here to push the humor of the situation more. I think if you wanted a faithful translation you'd be very upset with me here

Next page: In the original, Bulma (er, Blooma...) is a lot more forthright with Goku about needing to pee-- to which Goku charmingly responds "Why not just piss here? She's such a weirdo." I changed it to Goku still not quite getting what's going on because his unfamiliarity with girls is funny, AND

"After that, not much happened for half an hour"-- in the original, it just says "30 minutes later". Returning to narrator voice let me do a riff on a gag lifted from "Something Wicked This Way Comes", which has a chapter that is one line: "Nothing much else happened the rest of the night."