Release

Translating this was quite the adventure.

So, full disclosure: My early translations leaned very heavily into MTL since I barely knew the Japanese language at the time. However, by the time I started work on translating Chizome no Hana, I integrated a dictionary (ichi.moe) into my workflow whenever I encountered something MTL couldn't understand. That way, I could look over the words and connect the dots myself. Over time, I saw more and more things MTL would mess up, so I leaned on the dictionary more heavily. I believe this is at least part of the reason as to why I've decided to mostly keep the honorifics in my translations now.

Since the start of this year, I've put a big focus on learning the Japanese language. While I can only speak basic sentences, I've noticed some good gains from my reading and listening capability. I've also expanded the dictionaries I use to Renshuu, Jisho, and Wiktionary. What I particularly like about Renshuu is that it lets you take quizzes on the vocab, and the vocab definitions sometimes come with visual aids. I've also taken to using Bunpro for understanding Japanese grammar - the way the Japanese conjugate verbs and adjectives is pretty cool.

Anyway, I recently discovered that VNDB has marked my translations over there as MTL. According to their rules, partially using MTL is enough to qualify a translation as MTL, so their determination is technically correct. However, I do want to keep the manual translation flag for this translation onward, so I've decided to reorganize my workflow around abandoning MTL completely. I believe my Japanese skills have advanced enough to allow me to make a manual translation that is at least competitive with MTL, though I'll have to keep my grammar reference and dictionary apps firmly in hand.

I initially considered making a manually translated edition and an edited MTL edition, but I changed my mind. I noticed the edited MTL version was making too many translation mistakes, so I switched to using manual only. However, I was still dead set on making 2 translations, so I based the difference around the informality of the English used instead.

Hence, the creation of the Standard and YT Editions. I hope you enjoy the translation!