Translated and edited by Imari of 7 Beers Ago
7beersago.wordpress.com

This is a weird story. Picked because I was having an amputee fetish afternoon, it turns into this weird, sad, NTR but not thing. Also Japan, can we have a little talk about how comfort women wasn't taking it far enough and you had to lop their arms and legs off and suspend them in chains while they're raped?

I mean, good job, keep it up. ;)

first of all, the kanji DO NOT translate to COMFORT WOMAN at all
secondly, you dont have an amputee fetish

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Heh, that was great.........our main girl, doing her bit to keep the troop's morale (way) up, good for her :D

Super nice, thanks for all the effort and sharing :)

Last edited on 23 December 2019, 22:55 UTC.

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What happened at the end? Did she hallucinate Alec or was he actually there?

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Agreed with kswong98 here. The title is more like "Tragic Love of a Meat Pot". And even then, "tragic love" is still a little liberal, as hiren is more literally "blighted love" or "disappointed love", but those both sound a little weird in English.

If the title was "Tragic Love of a Comfort Woman", the Japanese would be more like 慰安婦の悲恋, as "Comfort Woman" is "ianfu", not "nikutsubo". So, this worries me even before going into reading it, as whether it's just flat-out wrong, or liberties have been taken, the accuracy of the translation is still highly debateable.

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@kswong @theamdrag

First - No, the kanji don't translate directly to Comfort Woman. I didn't originally start out translating it that way. But "meat pot" isn't exactly a term that has any weight to it in English, and given the setting and themes of the story "comfort woman" seemed to me like it better conveyed the sense of disempowerment and how they were treated as objects. "Meat pot" sounds more like what you'd use to make a stew, and really doesn't have the sexual connotations in English that it might have in Japanese. Hence me hunting for and finding something more appropriate when I wasn't happy with how daft it sounded.

Translation isn't just about the literal meaning of the words in isolation, it's about also conveying the context and making it not sound so pants-on-head retarded that it breaks the reader's immersion. You may disagree (and you wouldn't be the first), but I'm a fan of translating to try and best convey the author's (presumed) intended emotions rather than just acting as a dictionary. If you want the dictionary definition of words, Google Translate exists. My role is to try and bring it all together so that it makes sense as a story in English and doesn't read like a spastic 12 year old that ate a thesaurus.

As far as accuracy, there's a discussion to be had about that. This isn't a technical document or scientific paper, so strict accuracy at the sacrifice of all else isn't required. At times it will be possible for the translator to make a choice between strictly adhering to the original text or deviating to include something that conveys a similar meaning in the target language/culture. Example, English (mostly) doesn't have strict hierarchical naming conventions like Japanese does, chan/san/sama/etc. You can shoehorn them in, but it sounds daft and usually requires the reader to have a working knowledge of the Japanese terms, or you can use the techniques that English has for conveying status and hierarchy which is word choice and abbreviations. You don't ask the Queen "do ya wanna go down the boozer an' get a drink, love?"

I'm not perfect and I certainly make mistakes in translation. My Japanese is OK but not amazing. But this isn't one of them, this is a choice made to enhance the flow and readability of the story while still conveying an appropriate sense of sexual slavery and objectification.

Second - Thanks for your deep insight into my personal sexuality.

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all i can say is that op have very high sense of moral value that he thinks even human rights is important in fictions
which then affected his translation :'(

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For what i understand at the end. Seems like the message was abandoned somewhere close to the camp. That may Imply Alec may have received it and just threw it away. This may explain the reason why the girl was turned into a "Nikubenki" being a noble. Maybe she was sold out by her own Fiance.
At the end we see her abandoned on the snow and very probably dead (probably she Died soon after meeting her fiance again). I mean, look at all those stabs on her belly and nails almost everywhere.

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@theamdrag

I'm sorry mate, if you're adding Japanese honorifics onto your English translations you're not fully translating the work. It's interesting that you say that you're doing translation classes, because they have a very clear position on this: You do not leave some text in the source language just because it's hard to translate into target. Yes, sometimes leaving them in place and expecting the reader to know what it means is the lesser of two evils, but that shouldn't really be the default position, right? It's like translator's notes; sometimes they're necessary to have something make sense but it seems like the last option when nothing else will do.

I guess it can depend to some extent the audience that you're targeting. If you're posting translations here, I suppose there's a reasonable assumption that your readers will know about honorifics. Personally, I don't like to make that assumption as I'd like it to be readable by anyone not familiar with Japanese, but it's a fair choice. My position may be influenced by the fact that I've also worked on non-H stuff which is far more likely to be read by people who aren't as into Japanese culture as the average EH/EX reader.

Sorry if the explanation part seemed like it was talking down to you, that was more directed at kswong rather than yourself as you clearly have some knowledge and attempted to explain your position instead of simply stating WRONG. I know that there are different schools of thought on this, but usually it doesn't get quite this aggressive. "Meatbag", "meathole", and "meat toilet" are all fine choices that someone might choose to use. I chose to go further afield, and obviously it hasn't come across right to a significant proportion of the audience.

Still, I'd never have learned that without trying it, ya know? It's hard to get better if you don't try new things and find out what works and what doesn't. Unfortunately, on the internet it seems to come with a side helping of people not just providing constructive criticism, but telling you that you're both wrong and don't feel the way that you do.

I think y'all are trying too hard to get deep into my head and paint me as some sort of SJW. You know, one that constantly translates stories with rape and violence. I like these stories, and while I can use terms like "objectification" to recognise that it's part of what's going on in the story, I also think that it's hot. There's nothing wrong with describing what's happening in a story accurately, and it's not my fault if aggressive feminists also tend to misuse that language.

My original comment about comfort women in the description was supposed to be dark humour, and I assumed that most people would be on the same page as we're all enjoying a story about a women having her limbs chopped off so that she can be raped 24/7. This isn't reddit. We're all here enjoying sexy stories about raping women, and so maybe we can put aside the jabs at what fetishes other people do or don't have? I used the word fetish originally, you'll notice, kswong said "you don't have that fetish" and so I told them off for assuming that they knew how my sexuality (ie. the group of feelings and emotions that define how I approach sex) better than I do. Yeah, I'm gonna punch back at people assuming BS about me. Should I not?

Avoid my stuff if you wish. I thought your stuff seemed pretty good, obviously it's not how I would have translated it but that's the beauty of translation. It's not copying from a dictionary, it's an art in itself. I'm of the opinion that everyone can have a go, and while not all translations are of the same quality, there are also many ways to translate the same thing that are not wrong but are just due to different choices on the part of the translator. Too many translators don't even bother to examine their own assumptions, and while you might not agree with mine at least you've put thought into how you want your translation to appear.

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Ok, that was a lot more measured of a response. Yes, the one aimed at both me and kswong did seem like talking down, which is why I was irritated in my response. It sounds like the difference is coming down to localization vs translation. I try to avoid localization if at all possible, as I do strictly hentai translations so far (again, it was a mixture of lack of time and anything that interested me was already being done by faster people, haha), and it's pretty safe to assume that the majority of hentai readers do at least know basic honorifics. The reason for this is some honorifics translate easy, while others do not. -sama is a good example, as it does have a clear English definition in being a respected figure, usually an elder, but that's hard to convey in English text, and even trying to use respectable language is difficult in English, since the majority of our language has few seniority indicators. You got your Mr/Mrs and sir/madam, but really... a lot of the time, sir/madam would just be more jarring, and Mr/Mrs is more tied to -san.

It's my belief that even if you have to change stuff while translating, you still need to keep the main essence of what was already written. That's why personally, while "meat pot" would sound slightly awkward, "meatbag" would fit it well, as it keeps the point she's just a slab of meat, and that she's just a container for spunk basically. "Meathole" would be acceptable, but would definitely be more stylistic and less true to the author's choice of words. But for English purposes, no one outside of English majors (like myself) would really even notice a difference with those two. I would however avoid "meat toilet", as toilet adds additional connotations to it. Here, she's used more like an onahole than a waste disposal receptacle, whereas usually "meat toilet" is a bit more... dirty, I guess, and does have its own word in "nikubenki".

I think my biggest issue here in the choice of "comfort woman" is you wanted it to be more 'readable', but honestly, there's fewer and fewer people nowadays that would understand the connotations behind "comfort woman". Many would just think prostitute, but it's more degrading and involuntary than that. Plus, as stated before, I don't think words should be swapped around freely, especially if there's a pre-existing phrase for what you swap to and the creator didn't use it.

Thank you for the compliment as well. I intend to get back into translating once back in the States in 5 months (commutes, time with a host family, and schoolwork sap all my free time), and also have got some of the physical versions of some stuff I'd like to translate, which will be a fun experience translating from the physical source. I only said I'd avoid your stuff because of the (now understood as misdirected) preachy attitude and possible SJW-ness of your response. And yeah, I actually do know SJWs into this sort of stuff... hence why I didn't put it past you to be one with the way your response was worded.

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this is a very wholesome comment section

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Have to agree with Phacteria : what a comment section!

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be a human，plz

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Wow, I saw these people talking about translation seriously under a doujinshi of limbless onahole.

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Cant we all just be happy that we got a Christmas present in the form of a nice story about a girl having bad luck and becoming a portable onahole?

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Thanks a lot, got a nice lesson than a normal masturb
ᐕ)⁾⁾

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Stop fucking cutting off limbs in my rape porn. Who the fuck draws this? It's not an onahole fetish, it's just disgusting.

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