The year started with a cat on my chest. Well, not exactly. Page found out we were awake (we have a CD alarm clock, and we let it go for a couple of songs before we get up), and then came to sit on my chest. Lately she seems very concerned about whether or not we're getting enough rest, because last night she inexplicably started meowing her head off. Then I noticed it was our normal bedtime, but we were staying up late for New Year's Eve, and when I explained to her what was going on, she seemed slightly less distraught. On the other hand, she woke Athena up at four in the morning for snuggles, so our health may not be her biggest concern.

The second big event of the first day of the new year came from a New Year's post from Kodansha USA! They did a blog post displaying Adachitoka's New Year's drawing of Yato, wearing a monkey mask for the new year! It was so cute! And it had Yato's catchphrase about goen...only it had the FUNimation version of its translation. I thought about playfully pointing out that they went with the anime translation instead of their own manga translation, assuming at first that they just got mixed up in their sources, or maybe the FUNimation translator is the one who did that interview we mentioned a few days ago, or something.

But then! the horrible thought occurred to me that maybe they went with the FUNimation translation because they like it better!!! Oooooooohhhhh nooooooooo!!! (<--for the Year of the Monkey (Fruits Basket reference)) And I thought about it and thought about it, and I was like, "Oh my gosh, maybe the FUNimation version is better! It does sound fancier, and Yato would want his fate to be intertwined with that of his clients, because it means regular customers!! We were wrong all along!!! Ooooooooohhhh nooooooo!! I'm soooooorrrrrryyyyyyy!!!!"

PS: We're using the Kuja icon because it's the year of the monkey, and we don't have a Zidane icon.

It took a while to talk ourselves off of that ledge. Actually, it's still bugging me, because we didn't have enough time to get it out of our systems before we had to get to work. Existential crises(?) do nothing to stop looming deadlines, after all. We would, of course, keep interrupting our work with comments on why our version of the line is okay anyway. Our version has Yato talking high and mighty, which is absolutely the sort of thing he would do. As for intertwining fates, for all we know, he didn't really have any faith in that sort of thing--like he never really believed he would ever have any followers (and that's something I can't explain in too much detail because of spoilers for those of you who for some reason haven't been reading it).

And I remember deliberating long and hard about that line, and trying to decide what would be better! I'm pretty sure we looked at the anime subtitles to see how they did it before we finalized our translation, so we would have considered their version, and I'm pretty sure it was more than just "not wanting to copy" them that had us choose a significantly different translation. But I don't remember all of our reasoning!! AAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!

Athena remembers doing a lot of research, looking up the meanings and connotations of the phrase at Japanese websites, so our choice was probably most heavily influenced by that. According to those sites, the main nuance of the phrase that is more commonly used (Yato has his own modified version, because he's a god saying it to his worshipers, as opposed to fellow worshipers saying it to each other) is basically, "I wish you the best," and people don't usually read more into it than that. (Like when people say, "You're welcome." How often do they really think about what that means?) And we found out about how "ties" would be the same as "good luck" and that sort of thing.

Whew, okay. That last paragraph really helped.

But anyway, today wasn't all lamenting over people not remembering (or choosing not to use) our translations of things! There were good things, too! Like working on My Little Monster! And more importantly, lyschan made us a collage of the covers of all the books we translated this year!


Tadah!



Isn't it beautiful? Thanks again, lys! We're gonna go post it on Facebook next!

Today I'm thankful for beautiful manga collages and friends who make them for us, kitties concerned for our sleep schedule, getting to listen to our DisneySea album (it only mildly interfered with work (it only rendered us useless for the length of two songs)), the super adorableness of the chapters in this volume of My Little Monster, and the delicious chilled caramel cocoa we had to ring in the new year.