Translator's Notes[edit]
I wonder whether this prologue isn't a reference to the 2007 book Burumā wa naze kieta no ka? — Sekuhara to kokoro no kizu no bunka o tō by Satoshi Nakajima (the psychiatrist, not the baseball player).
Nakajima talks about how important bloomers were to him both as a high school student and as an adult, and says that when they suddenly declined and vanished around 1995 "it is no exaggeration to say that one of the joys of life had been torn away from me."
The way Twoearle talks[edit]
Twoearle spends almost the entire novel talking in polite (desu/masu) form, even in moments of extreme pain, which makes her sound like she is kind of screwing around. Or it makes her sound like a foreigner, since non-native speakers learning Japanese generally concentrate on the polite form and stick to it even at inappropriate moments. Either way, it's pretty artificial.
Part of the way I tried to represent this artificial feeling in English was by not using contractions, so she says "it is" instead of "it's" and so on. When she does use a contraction, it is either because I forgot, or because Twoearle herself occasionally forgets it when she's excited.
equally excited[edit]
There's a kanji pun here that I didn't try to imitate: When Twoearle had finished 嬉々 kiki "gleefully" pointing to things she was bowled over by a punch from a 鬼気 kiki "dreadful" woman.
a psychotic girl[edit]
She uses 2chan internet slang here: メンヘラ, someone who posts to the Mental Health forum on 2chan/someone with a mental illness. There's probably an English internet equivalent but it's not coming to mind right now.
lime juice!![edit]
She says "Kabosu!!" It is a type of citrus fruit.
...in the ruby[edit]
Ruby (ルビ) is little text written alongside a word. The proper use is to indicate the pronunciation, and in books for younger readers every kanji has ruby on it. In this book ruby is used only for moderately difficult kanji, leaving an entire column of text to be filled up with Twoearle's questionable English names for things.
I have translated them either as Japanese + English (空想装甲 -> Daydream Armor Tailgear) or just as the English (認識攪乱装置 -> Imagine Chaff), (空虚の思考時間 -> Seek Time=Zero).
By the way, the real name is Seektime Zero. The ＝ in the ruby's シークタイム＝ゼロ is just an interpunct, I think, the same as ・. In fact, now that the song is coming out you can see that when it's written horizontally it's シークタイム・ゼロ. But I couldn't resist.
...only got worse as she grew up[edit]
I had a hard time with this sentence. It used to be "...your mother grew up with an aggravated case of chuunibyou," but that doesn't make it clear that she made it to adulthood still suffering from it. The original line is 母さんはね、中二病をこじらせたまま大人になった人間なの。 "Your mother, ne, is a person who became an adult with a still-aggravated case of chuunibyou."
(While I'm talking about this: from the causative, it seems like she's saying she gave herself a bad case of chuunibyou, but in my examples when you "こじらせる" aggravate a disease it doesn't seem to be on purpose. For example, in 研究社新和英大辞典 5th edition, かぜをこじらせて１週間入院した is "My cold got worse/developed complications and I spent a week in hospital," not "I made my cold worse...")
Meteo or Ultimate[edit]
She also gives the kanji.
命天男 -> fate heaven man. Mei-ten-o and heavy-handed abbreviation makes it me-te-o.
有帝滅人 -> they who destroy a monarch. Aru-tei-metsu-to -> あるてぃめっと -> Ultimate.
South Magistrate[edit]
The text says Tōyama Kagemoto, a well-known historical figure who served as the South Magistrate at one point among other things:
Tōyama Kagemoto. My translation is a lie for the sake of comprehension. If you know the “stolen smell” case, that was a different South Magistrate, Ōoka Tadasuke.
Souji just says 金剛力士 kongourikishi "the guardian gods", since a Japanese reader would know what they are. Again, this is a lie for comprehension.
[1]downroar[edit]
I couldn't translate this pun nicely. I think this is what's going on here, except that the word Twoearle uses 小騒ぎ kosawagi is an actual word in Japanese. (And Souji says 『大』騒ぎ oosawagi uproar.)
The picture basically explains it, but Twoearle is replacing the “Yo” in “Yoisho” (a slang word to encourage someone that became popular in the Showa era) with “Za” so it becomes the name of a sexual position (座位 = sitting position).
Cedar woodware!![edit]
Then I will use slander![edit]
Another pun: the word for "libel" is 中傷 chuushou middle+wound, so Twoearle says she will 大傷 daishou large+wound.
It's bald. It's just bald.[edit]
Souji says “fruitless,” but I think he likes using this word because the kanji for it is “without hair.”
The third part of the Hour of the Ox, “when even the grass and trees are sleeping and the eaves of the houses curl down three inches.” Considered an appropriate time for demons to appear. Aka 2 am.
From it, she took out a carpet roller.[edit]
This is a little thing shaped like a small paint roller with a sheet of rolled-up tape, sticky on one side, that picks up random trash on the ground. The same idea as a lint roller, but for the floor. A surprisingly good substitute for a vacuum cleaner.
...eight troops and seventy-three of the Ultiroids, in a little more than twenty days.[edit]
Many of the lines from here on appear verbatim in the fourth episode of the anime. This line is exactly the same except that the numbers are different, and in the anime Ultiroids are counted as humanoid objects like dolls (体 tai), whereas in the novel they are counted as people (名 mei).
I didn't try to make the translations match up, though! So if you feel like you heard a similar line in the anime, it's probably just the same line translated differently. But there are a few actual changes in the dialogue too.
They See Your Eroge[edit]
The name of the test (エロゲミラ・レイター eroge mira reitaa) looks like it starts from “eroge mirare” (your eroge being seen) or “eroge mirareta” (your eroge was seen) and messes it up a little bit to make it sound like an -ator or -etor word in English.
By the way, what's a soujitype?[edit]
Souji seems to mistake 総二系 "soujikei" for a foreign word. This is a little bit less dumb in Japanese.
...a word I can't ignore hit my earlobe just now...[edit]
Oh man. Okay, the word Twoearle uses for “little girl” is “youjo.” It does mean “little girl,” but using it in this context has an implication that she is, uh... Drag Guildy has been using it too where he says “young girl,” but all the guildies are lolicons anyway, so I didn’t mention it.
...in perfect reply.[edit]
I swear the author made this word （絶酬 zesshuu) up. This is my guess at the meaning.
That is the fate of those who live on the hearts of men![edit]
I stole “...of men” from Commie.
...my poor hopeful chest.[edit]
Literally “my chest of the day after tomorrow,” but this is an idiom meaning “my chest which is heading for completely wrong goals” ― like instead of studying hard in middle school, her chest spent the time playing basketball with the goal of getting into the major leagues, and when it turned out not to have such a great talent for basketball after all, it felt like it had wasted three years. For example.
...the hairstyle of heaven.[edit]
Stolen from [P]. There’s a pun (hairstyle = kamigata = godstyle) that I can’t translate well. I mean, I could write something like “prayerstyle,” but come on, these are Drag Guildy’s dying words. I’d consider stealing Commie’s “The Holy Twinity,” though (at least I think that’s what they were going for)
