Hi! It’s me! Lily!!!

The Japanese translation is pretty good!  I went back (when I had time, I’ve been so busy lately) and spot-checked the translations, and they’re ok!  But they’re not great.  I will need to make a primer for Japanese people NOT using Google Translate, and that will be hard!!!

My Japanese isn’t that good yet!!!

Anyway, there are several issues.  The first is with tone.  Japanese people know this, but Japanese has a bunch of different types of politeness in language, and Google Translate seems to mostly choose the polite language (keigo).  You know, ~masu, desu, etc.  This is okay in many cases, but it’s not really suitable when I’m relaying conversations with my friends.  So…  I’m probably going to have to go back and painstakingly fix each one.

Ewwww!!!!

But the other, bigger problem, is that there are certain nuances of language it just cannot pick up, and I may have to go back and actually shudder change some stuff.  For example, I called Ai, Yuuko, Mariko, and Minami the “aidols”.  This is because they are Ai’s friends, and all named after famous idols.  It’s a pun.  But Google Translate doesn’t know what to do with this, because the Japanese word for idol is “aidoru”.  So “aidol” and “idol” are indistinguishable.  (And Japanese people, please read the English version if you want to understand what I mean, because it will probably even make this very confusing.)  It translates everything as “aidoru” – “idol” OR “aidol”.  AWW.

So I actually will have to either clear that up by changing all “aidols” to “aidol four” (as I originally named them), or… something else.

But who has time for that??? AWWW.

Translation is hard, especially when you’re trying to wrangle a ridiculous AI that’s about as intelligent and helpful as a toddler.

(I asked the “Texan Tinkerer” guy about AI, and that’s what he told me.  He said that he uses it at work, and sometimes he spends more time cleaning up after it than it saved.  And it’s like a toddler in that when it gets quiet that’s when the toilet starts getting filled with legos.  I won’t lie, I laughed way too hard at that).

So…  Enjoy the translations, but they’re not great.  I will need to do a lot of fixing.  When I get time.  When I get lots of time…

Anyway…  not too much to update.  Golden week was fun!!!

Love you all!!!