A Question About Kara no Kyoukai Translations

[MrSakal]

I intend to read Kara no Kyoukai novels these days but I heard some things about translation that got me confused about it. Some say that Endless Boundaries' translation is pretty good whereas some say that it is bad, that the translator added parts arbitrarily and made it into a fan fiction. On the other hand, I've heard that the novel has different editions. It occurred to me that this much of a difference between these two translations may have been caused of the possibility that the author had rehashed the text. I can't think of another explanation to this. Why would a translator add text arbitrarily? So, I'm curious; what do you think about Baka-Tsuki and Endless Boundaries translations?

[Seika]

So far as the Japanese speakers on these boards have said, Baka-Tsuki is a lot like any other BT translation of the time (and now, for all I know). It has a certain number of errors, tends toward literality, and in general doesn't have much of a sense of style.

cokesakto's translation, on the other hand, has a style, but it is definitively not related to Nasu's. Further, yes, it has either excised significant points or decided to go off on tangents entirely of its own creation. While I also understand it to have fewer unintentional errors, they do continue to appear, and in some cases seem to have been copied from the Baka-Tsuki version.

Here is a sample discussion from one of our better-known Japanese-readers:

Er,

- Ouji lets the fairies loose
- Azaka sprints right at her, dodging them easily
- Azaka feints a body blow but her hand goes around Ouji's body and hits 'something' at her back
- Azolto
- everything behind her bursts into flames, the 'something' burns down

That's pretty much all I'm seeing. The whole thing ends in barely a page.

Er,
- Azaka feints a body blow but her hand goes around Ouji's body and hits 'something' at her back
- everything behind her bursts into flames, the 'something' burns down


That's pretty much all I'm seeing. The whole thing ends in barely a page.

The parts in bold are missing in cokesakto's version. He really was just winging this at times.

You've convinced me to actually look up this bit and see how he did it.

I have to say, I honestly thought the thing with cokesakto was people being fussier than usual, but now I see the error of my ways. That was... wow. I mean, great rewrite, but...