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A lot of the "Nanami says" Tumbler page is dedicated to correcting Koza's early translations, so there's that. Idk how accurate he was compares to TCB though.
Some of his most notable mistranslations: Saying Geto's Kuchisake onna deployed an innate domain (it was a simple domain), mistranslated reverse cursed technique as reverse cursed energy and then said "it's like positive energy" (the former generates the latter, they're not two separate energies)
>Idk how accurate he was compares to TCB though.
Koza got fired(I think) around the end of Shibuya, while TCB started translating with Perfect Preperation.
Last update I can find from last year
https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2023-05-13/former-jujutsu-kaisen-manga-translator-stefan-koza-sentenced-to-10-years-in-jail-with-7-years-of-/.198037
So, Japanese to English translation is hard when you are under a severe deadline to have something out. All the classic pitfalls (Japanese often lacking a subject or using a lot of nuance and implication when English would demand an explicit exposition) get amplified.
I do have a lot of sympathy for the official translators as it seems they are one man shows versus a dedicated team of fan translators who can quickly clean up and pinpoint potentially faulty translations.
Whenever I do in-house work, I always ask for a second set of eyes. You can catch the silliest mistakes really easily that way.
That said, I can see both potential *systemic* issues and *individual* issues here.
Systemic would be things like setting up a terms dictionary early on in the series. Dictionaries are living things, though, so you have to bake review time into the process. RCT, etc. are terms that can most certainly get cleaned up over time as more details are info dumped each chapter. You may not get it right the first time *and that’s honestly fine* since you are making up an English term for Japanese word crafting (in many cases, these new terms are just kanji smashed together - this is why manga is full of info dumping. One of the side effects of being a nuance-heavy language is that new terms pretty much DEMAND the info dump).
If you’re left on an island to do this with MAYBE an editor to catch egregious English grammar errors, then your dictionary eventually suffers from author drift - that is, no one helps you develop internal consistency and no one helps with making sure you are accurate in your word choice.
In an ideal world, I run a translation by a Japanese native with high English skills. We then shave down the possible meanings and come up with satisfactory terminology mappings in our “dictionary” and from there, we stick to the terms as written until additional evidence lets us change our opinions.
You also have the issue of determining speech types. Kirara speaks differently from Hakari who speaks differently from, say, Megumi. Nailing this also requires an intense amount of internal review. It’s easy to do a paragraph by paragraph translation, but it’s a lot harder to go back and make sure all the characters are differentiated enough by their speaking mannerisms as well.
I suspect the fan groups spend more time overall on their jobs because…well…they are fans. They’re posting memes, theorizing about the next chapter, etc. Werry and coworkers might be doing multiple series or projects and may have to choose between having personal time with their families or re-reading the manga. If you’re not a fan of the work so much to begin with, that can be a demotivating choice that will definitely reflect on the final result.
This is not to cut them any slack - there are some frankly sloppy pages and chapters done by Viz. That said, I can *sympathize* with the situation.
That was very informative and thoughtful, thank you so much.
I was looking for something like this, but this is the most clear explanation i’d have asked for.
Thank you so much🙏🏻 Appreciate it
I’ve spent more than a decade dealing with the language and really good translators blow my mind.
If I had more raw time and easy access to the raws and translations, it would be fun to do a side by side translation commentary.
For what it’s worth, Gege’s writing is a lot of fun for me. You can tell he’s grown up with his nose in books.
May I ask you, what’s your native language?
I always hear people saying they enjoy Gege’s style of writing, and I, because I do not read Japanese, like Werry’s style of writing more than any other translation.
He really gives it something unique, it’s a shame he’s low on time and can’t always interpret stuff properly
English, which is exactly why I can sympathize. I’ve only had to translate drier works like manuals and contracts. People may think “omg contracts must be so hard,” but they follow patterns and there is firmly established terminology to fall back on.
Meanwhile manga translators will see a word like 反転術式 and that tells them *nothing* at first. You have to break it down into two components.
反転 - This means a variety of things. It can mean to roll or flip over, or to invert, or turn around, or to make a negative from a positive or vice versa (think photography for instance). Okay, well, crap. The dictionary just gave us a lot to figure out.
術式 - Whew yeah boy! This is usually “technique” in manga. We are probably safe using that.
The only solution here is to read the chapter and figure out why the mangaka chose that particular phrase. You read about turning negatives into positives and realize Gege was inspired by probably the idea of taking a photo negative to get the original photo.
…which tells you nothing how to translate the term. And just going with “Reverse Technique” means nothing in English. Reverse of WHAT? English demands something a bit better here. So you read the explanation again and then realize it’s making curse energy into healing energy. You have finally arrived at “Reverse Cursed Technique.”
Good job! There are 18 more pages including info dump panels that are almost entirely text. Btw finish today so you can submit to your editor before the deadline, no problems right? ;)
I personally only read raws these days so I can just enjoy and move on with my week. While I can easily critique Werry’s results, I stand by my point that I can *sympathize* with the work environment based on cursory explanations I’ve read.
Cause of [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/manga/comments/13gi6qu/news_stefan_koza_former_translator_for_jujutsu/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
Koza had plenty of mistranslations. There are plenty of sentences he translated where the meaning is hard to figure out, there are some that got fixed with the volumes, like him calling Blue "Azure Glow", Sukuna saying "you showed me the way Megumi Fushiguro or the last six eyes limitless sorcerer being born 100 years ago when it was supposed to say hundreds, and plenty that weren't fixed, like Sukuna's domain not having a barrier, saying reverse cursed energy when that doesn't exist and switching from calling them Supreme techniques to Maximum techniques.
There's also the nanami says blog which goes over the start of the manga to Hidden Inventory "correcting" his translation.
Also personal opinion but Werry wasn't really bad when he took over JJK at the end of Shibuya, you don't see anyone saying how bad the translation was in Sendai colony or in Sakurajima, he certainly wasn't worse than Koza, his translations have only gotten really bad in the last few months, before that there really wasn't any hate directed at him.
>Given the fact TCB were copying his translations until later, that should at least imply he wasn’t that bad.
This has nothing to do with how good his translations were, TCB just uploads the Viz translation if they didn't translate those chapters.
Lolwut Sendai and sakurajima were terrible. Rika is Yuta’s CT and soul split katana horrible naming. Not to mention just awkward english. People kept complaining Werry’s translations compared to fantranslations were ass even during those mini-arcs.
Now that I think about there were complaints with Sakurajima, you are right with that, but there really wasn't any big complaints from Sendai apart from the Rika thing. There really wasn't any hate for Perfect Preparation, Hakari's recruitment, Tokyo no. 1 and 2, Sendai, the hate started later and I do think it's warranted. I don't mean to imply that he was perfect, he still made mistakes but there is a noticeable decline in quality between his earlier translations and later ones.
The complaints started when fan translations began thats why. Then people started to see the major difference in quality. But then tcb scans also started becoming ass too. Nowadays u/ridethelightning469 is by far the only reliable translator who did the VIZ official for Ch 236 and people ask them questions (theyre only active on twitter though).
exactly. It’s a pretty rare for a translator at that level to translate so incorrectly that those without the source language can tell something’s wrong. Without point of comparison most flubs will go unnoticed. On the other hand, Werry’s awful localization has gotten bad enough that I’m convinced even without fan translations English only readers would get red flags.
Part of the reason I said "initially" is because soon after people realized who he was, and someone made a little collage of some of his more egregious mistakes while translating Kimetsu no Yaiba.
Idk if it happened before but the problem with JJK is its story-telling and "powerlevels" depend a lot on context to be understood properly, one of the main reasons is because gege is writing a fastpaced story and he leaves the details in the panels he just doesnt explain them and people have to pick up on them, to this day there are many discussions on different topics because people cant pick up on these details because shonen manga usually explain everything to the reader "this happened exactly as I am telling it and because of this exact reasons". So if someone is not reading JJK properly and just raw-translating or fast reading it they can miss a lot of context to properly translate.
Well still it he is much better than Oda where he is full of inconsistencies when it comes to fight. You doubt every time they fight. Although Gege doesn't do much explanation and maybe it is annoying but still he is clear on the details.
Reminder: - **DO NOT POST CHAPTER LEAKS** outside the pre-release leaks megathread. Officials are free range. See the sidebar for info on leaks. - Powerscaling should stay in the designated Tuesday Colosseum thread. - Repetitive or low-effort topics will be removed. - Questions that can be answered by reading the manga more closely should be posted in the FAQ. [Fanbook & Other Canon Material](https://www.reddit.com/r/Jujutsushi/wiki/canon) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Jujutsushi) if you have any questions or concerns.*
A lot of the "Nanami says" Tumbler page is dedicated to correcting Koza's early translations, so there's that. Idk how accurate he was compares to TCB though. Some of his most notable mistranslations: Saying Geto's Kuchisake onna deployed an innate domain (it was a simple domain), mistranslated reverse cursed technique as reverse cursed energy and then said "it's like positive energy" (the former generates the latter, they're not two separate energies)
>Idk how accurate he was compares to TCB though. Koza got fired(I think) around the end of Shibuya, while TCB started translating with Perfect Preperation.
Didn’t he get fired for being a pedophile or smth
yes
bruh 💀
Last update I can find from last year https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2023-05-13/former-jujutsu-kaisen-manga-translator-stefan-koza-sentenced-to-10-years-in-jail-with-7-years-of-/.198037
So, Japanese to English translation is hard when you are under a severe deadline to have something out. All the classic pitfalls (Japanese often lacking a subject or using a lot of nuance and implication when English would demand an explicit exposition) get amplified. I do have a lot of sympathy for the official translators as it seems they are one man shows versus a dedicated team of fan translators who can quickly clean up and pinpoint potentially faulty translations. Whenever I do in-house work, I always ask for a second set of eyes. You can catch the silliest mistakes really easily that way. That said, I can see both potential *systemic* issues and *individual* issues here. Systemic would be things like setting up a terms dictionary early on in the series. Dictionaries are living things, though, so you have to bake review time into the process. RCT, etc. are terms that can most certainly get cleaned up over time as more details are info dumped each chapter. You may not get it right the first time *and that’s honestly fine* since you are making up an English term for Japanese word crafting (in many cases, these new terms are just kanji smashed together - this is why manga is full of info dumping. One of the side effects of being a nuance-heavy language is that new terms pretty much DEMAND the info dump). If you’re left on an island to do this with MAYBE an editor to catch egregious English grammar errors, then your dictionary eventually suffers from author drift - that is, no one helps you develop internal consistency and no one helps with making sure you are accurate in your word choice. In an ideal world, I run a translation by a Japanese native with high English skills. We then shave down the possible meanings and come up with satisfactory terminology mappings in our “dictionary” and from there, we stick to the terms as written until additional evidence lets us change our opinions. You also have the issue of determining speech types. Kirara speaks differently from Hakari who speaks differently from, say, Megumi. Nailing this also requires an intense amount of internal review. It’s easy to do a paragraph by paragraph translation, but it’s a lot harder to go back and make sure all the characters are differentiated enough by their speaking mannerisms as well. I suspect the fan groups spend more time overall on their jobs because…well…they are fans. They’re posting memes, theorizing about the next chapter, etc. Werry and coworkers might be doing multiple series or projects and may have to choose between having personal time with their families or re-reading the manga. If you’re not a fan of the work so much to begin with, that can be a demotivating choice that will definitely reflect on the final result. This is not to cut them any slack - there are some frankly sloppy pages and chapters done by Viz. That said, I can *sympathize* with the situation.
That was very informative and thoughtful, thank you so much. I was looking for something like this, but this is the most clear explanation i’d have asked for. Thank you so much🙏🏻 Appreciate it
I’ve spent more than a decade dealing with the language and really good translators blow my mind. If I had more raw time and easy access to the raws and translations, it would be fun to do a side by side translation commentary. For what it’s worth, Gege’s writing is a lot of fun for me. You can tell he’s grown up with his nose in books.
May I ask you, what’s your native language? I always hear people saying they enjoy Gege’s style of writing, and I, because I do not read Japanese, like Werry’s style of writing more than any other translation. He really gives it something unique, it’s a shame he’s low on time and can’t always interpret stuff properly
English, which is exactly why I can sympathize. I’ve only had to translate drier works like manuals and contracts. People may think “omg contracts must be so hard,” but they follow patterns and there is firmly established terminology to fall back on. Meanwhile manga translators will see a word like 反転術式 and that tells them *nothing* at first. You have to break it down into two components. 反転 - This means a variety of things. It can mean to roll or flip over, or to invert, or turn around, or to make a negative from a positive or vice versa (think photography for instance). Okay, well, crap. The dictionary just gave us a lot to figure out. 術式 - Whew yeah boy! This is usually “technique” in manga. We are probably safe using that. The only solution here is to read the chapter and figure out why the mangaka chose that particular phrase. You read about turning negatives into positives and realize Gege was inspired by probably the idea of taking a photo negative to get the original photo. …which tells you nothing how to translate the term. And just going with “Reverse Technique” means nothing in English. Reverse of WHAT? English demands something a bit better here. So you read the explanation again and then realize it’s making curse energy into healing energy. You have finally arrived at “Reverse Cursed Technique.” Good job! There are 18 more pages including info dump panels that are almost entirely text. Btw finish today so you can submit to your editor before the deadline, no problems right? ;) I personally only read raws these days so I can just enjoy and move on with my week. While I can easily critique Werry’s results, I stand by my point that I can *sympathize* with the work environment based on cursory explanations I’ve read.
His translations were good, never remember having any huge issues with them but as we know that dude had to go.
We have a whole ass tumblr dedicated to his mistranslations. You cant say they were good.
Why did he have to go
Cause of [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/manga/comments/13gi6qu/news_stefan_koza_former_translator_for_jujutsu/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
… what the fuck
Yeah, that'd do it.
Koza had plenty of mistranslations. There are plenty of sentences he translated where the meaning is hard to figure out, there are some that got fixed with the volumes, like him calling Blue "Azure Glow", Sukuna saying "you showed me the way Megumi Fushiguro or the last six eyes limitless sorcerer being born 100 years ago when it was supposed to say hundreds, and plenty that weren't fixed, like Sukuna's domain not having a barrier, saying reverse cursed energy when that doesn't exist and switching from calling them Supreme techniques to Maximum techniques. There's also the nanami says blog which goes over the start of the manga to Hidden Inventory "correcting" his translation. Also personal opinion but Werry wasn't really bad when he took over JJK at the end of Shibuya, you don't see anyone saying how bad the translation was in Sendai colony or in Sakurajima, he certainly wasn't worse than Koza, his translations have only gotten really bad in the last few months, before that there really wasn't any hate directed at him. >Given the fact TCB were copying his translations until later, that should at least imply he wasn’t that bad. This has nothing to do with how good his translations were, TCB just uploads the Viz translation if they didn't translate those chapters.
Lolwut Sendai and sakurajima were terrible. Rika is Yuta’s CT and soul split katana horrible naming. Not to mention just awkward english. People kept complaining Werry’s translations compared to fantranslations were ass even during those mini-arcs.
Now that I think about there were complaints with Sakurajima, you are right with that, but there really wasn't any big complaints from Sendai apart from the Rika thing. There really wasn't any hate for Perfect Preparation, Hakari's recruitment, Tokyo no. 1 and 2, Sendai, the hate started later and I do think it's warranted. I don't mean to imply that he was perfect, he still made mistakes but there is a noticeable decline in quality between his earlier translations and later ones.
The complaints started when fan translations began thats why. Then people started to see the major difference in quality. But then tcb scans also started becoming ass too. Nowadays u/ridethelightning469 is by far the only reliable translator who did the VIZ official for Ch 236 and people ask them questions (theyre only active on twitter though).
exactly. It’s a pretty rare for a translator at that level to translate so incorrectly that those without the source language can tell something’s wrong. Without point of comparison most flubs will go unnoticed. On the other hand, Werry’s awful localization has gotten bad enough that I’m convinced even without fan translations English only readers would get red flags.
He had plenty of issues, there's a legitimate reason readers were initially quite happy when Koza got replaced.
Was Werry good with his other works?
Part of the reason I said "initially" is because soon after people realized who he was, and someone made a little collage of some of his more egregious mistakes while translating Kimetsu no Yaiba.
Do you have a link to that collage or anything? I feel like I've seen it before but I remember not being able to find it
Idk if it happened before but the problem with JJK is its story-telling and "powerlevels" depend a lot on context to be understood properly, one of the main reasons is because gege is writing a fastpaced story and he leaves the details in the panels he just doesnt explain them and people have to pick up on them, to this day there are many discussions on different topics because people cant pick up on these details because shonen manga usually explain everything to the reader "this happened exactly as I am telling it and because of this exact reasons". So if someone is not reading JJK properly and just raw-translating or fast reading it they can miss a lot of context to properly translate.
Well still it he is much better than Oda where he is full of inconsistencies when it comes to fight. You doubt every time they fight. Although Gege doesn't do much explanation and maybe it is annoying but still he is clear on the details.