mi tu li pali ala #789 - jan wawa
Full transcript
Page 1
Panel 1:
A woman with short spiky hair, jan Aki, is walking down the street.
Panel 2:
jan Aki: "seme?"
Panel 3:
The panel shows a second person, jan Mamolu a tired looking person with glasses wearing sweatpants and a sweatshirt, walking down down the street while whistling.
jan Aki: "ona li..."
Panel 4:
jan Aki: "a a"
Panel 5:
jan Aki sneaks up behind jan Mamolu.
Panel 6:
jan Aki whacks jan Mamolu on the head with a stick. The SFX read "pakala palisa".
jan Mamolu: "a!"
Panel 7:
jan Aki: "seme? pilin mi la sina awen ala tan ni"
Panel 8:
jan Aki, laughing boisterously: "mi ken ala sona e sina. sina nasa mute a!"
Panel 9:
jan Aki smiles: "tomo mi li lon ni. sina o moku e telo kasi."
Panel 10:
The panel shows the face of a new woman, likely jan Aki's mom. She has white hair and a large circular-ish dark scar over her right eye. It is roughly the size of a quarter of her face.
jan Aki's mom: "n? nasa a"
Panel 11:
The panel now shows the whole room. All 3 people are at the entrance of the jan Aki's house.
jan Aki's mom: "jan Aki li kama e mije."
jan Mamolu: "mi kama"
Panel 12:
jan Aki's mom: "sina pona? meli mi li pakala e sina anu seme?"
Panel 13:
jan Mamolu and jan Aki look at each other, straight faced.
Page 2
Panel 1:
jan Mamolu: "ona li pakala"
jan Mamolu is leaning forward, while jan Aki has her foot on jan Mamolu, gesturing at kicking him.
jan Aki: "o pini e toki lon ala"
jan Aki's mom, mad: "jan Aki!"
Panel 2:
The scene now shows a cup of tea.
jan Mamolu: "mama sina..."
Panel 3:
The camera has pulled out, showing that jan Aki and jan Mamolu are in some sort of room for serving guests. They're sitting around a table with tea.
jan Mamolu, continuing: "ona li wawa anu seme?"
jan Aki: "seme?"
Panel 4:
jan Aki: "pala ona li tan tenpo pi jan lili ona. ni li tan utala ala"
Panel 5:
jan Mamolu, sipping his tea: "ni la, ni li lon mute. pilin mi la pakala ni li ike suli tawa sina"
Panel 6:
jan Mamolu: "taso, ona li toki tawa mi la ona li lukin tawa oko mi"
Panel 7:
The panel shows jan Aki, with a stern expression, as if she's judging jan Mamolu's words about her mom.
jan Mamolu: "ona li kama lon ijo ike mute. nasin ni li wawa kin anu seme. ni li pona tawa mi"
Panel 8:
jan Aki's stern expression has slanted upwards a bit.
jan Aki: "n"
Panel 9:
jan Aki burts out laughing: "a a a!"
jan Mamolu: "seme?"
Panel 10:
jan Aki: "sina sona pona e ni"
Panel 11:
jan Aki: "mama mi li wawa nanpa wan lon tomo mi"
The panel shows jan Aki's mom and dad standing next to each other. jan Aki's dad is a gruff and buff man with a head of spiky hair and multiple scars on his face. The type you would get from fights.
They're talking in scribbly handwriting that would be reserved for asides.
jan Aki's dad: "mama. moku."
jan Aki's mom: "o awen. ni li tenpo 4"
I've done yet another chapter of Hatarakanai Futari! This one is my third! (You can see all my previous translations here.) My previous chapter was also uploaded today, but was actually finished a little under a month ago. This one I think has really shown how I've refined the workflow. I was able to finish this over the course of one full 24 hour day. It was a long day of work, I think I worked about 12 hours to finish it, but that's still so much faster than the previous chapter! It's also a bit higher effort than the previous chapter. I did some light redrawing on the sound effects so they'd fit better in the space. It was surprisingly easy! I guess that's an upside of matching my handwriting to the art style of the manga.
I think this chapter really made me wish that toki pona had some sort of syllabery or something. While Aki's name was easily able to be done in toki pona, her younger sister, Yuki, will not. There's actually no toki pona words with a "ju" sound at the start! If there was a syllabery I would be able to easily spell her name with only two characters! It would also make sound effects easier. It's been super annoying to literalize all the sound effects. A head scratch is not a "luka luka" sound to me. It's just a sound! However, I remain steadfastly committed to never using sitelen lasina in these, so I guess sitelen pona SFX and names are my only option until people adopt something.
I've also grown a bit frustrated with the tally system. I like the dot system more, where each dot represents one morae of a word (it'd break words down like so: a-we-n), which I think fits more naturally with how people would try to read a name from sitelen pona, which is by syllable. I feel like a tally representing one letter adds more mental overhead. You have to imagine the word in your head in sitelen lasina, and then count each letter, then apply that back to sitelen pona! that's so much work! However, the dot system takes up much more space than the tally system, and I'm super space constrained for names. They're so big!
This chapter is really good! It's another deeper chapter, and it features Mamoru, who is one of my favorite characters! Yuki/Aki's mom is also a really good character, who I wish got more screentime in the manga. This chapter is a prerequisite for me to get to a chapter I really want to do. However, to get to it, I'd still need to do some more chapters about Yuki/Aki's dad. I'd also want to do some more shorter joke chapters, just to show that this manga isn't just nonstop serious moments. I think it'd end up a bit disappointing if you check out the manga only to see that it's primarily gags and only occasionally deeper moments. Anyways I really like the message of this chapter. I like the focus on forms of strength that aren't physical, and I'm a huge sucker for when you have a family of very physically strong people, and the non-physically strong mom is considered the strongest person in the house. Good moms are great.
