The Man Who Came Back From Hell

After the destruction of the planets Gyuma and Lassetz, the remnants of Gyuma’s army continued their activities, despite Princess Aurora’s prayers for peace. Prince Gaima, son of King Gyuma, was surprised to hear the news of the destruction of his planet. It seems that a man named Kugo defeated his father and destroyed his homeland. Prince Gaima, proud to be the strongest cyborg warrior in the Gilara system, vows to take revenge on the Cosmos, Kugo and his friends!

You can download the torrent file from Anidex or Anirena, or get direct links from AnimeTosho.

Translation Thoughts

This is the first episode of the Prince Gaima arc, which goes up to episode 56. This is also the last arc of the series; after this it’s just episodic stories (or fillers if you will) until they reach the Great Planet on episode 64, the last episode of Starzinger I.

Prince Gaima is King Gyuma’s son who was in the Zeta star system, but he returned to this home planet after the whole Zeta star system exploded because of the weakening of the galaxy’s energy. He didn’t know that both his father and his planet were gone.

At 1:57 Kugo says:

うるさいんだよなもう人がせっかくいい気持ちで眠ってるってのに
Urusai nda yo na mou hito ga sekkaku ii kimochi de nemutteru tte no ni
It’s noisy even though there are people sleeping peacefully

The direct translation shows a little more of Kugo’s sarcasm than the line I used. I just felt it didn’t sound right, so I changed it a little bit. It’s funny to me how, after this line, Hakka asks the same question to Jogo, but quieter this time.

I struggled a little bit with the line at 2:14:

ボスは死んだんだよそんな生き残りたいしたことはないよ
Bosu wa shinda nda yo sonna ikinokori taishita koto wa nai yo
The boss is dead, they are not a big deal, surviving like that

What Kugo is trying to say here is that since the boss is dead, what kind of life could they have? How can they survive like that? It’s not much of a survival.

Hakka says at 5:34:

あれが本当の一人相撲だぜ
Are ga hontou no hitori sumou da ze
That’s real one-man sumo wrestling

I’m pretty sure you’ve heard about sumo, the national Japanese sport. The joke here is that the army destroyed itself, and it looked like a one-man fight.

Fight! Warriors of Love

The end was approaching for the planet Lassetz as it was affected by the planet Gyuma explosion. Bellamis stayed on the planet to mourn Queen Lassetz. She saw in the Queen the image of her late mother. Soon after, the planet Lassetz explodes, and Bellamis is lost in the explosion. In the end, Kugo and the others were unable to save the people of Lassetz. As they make their way to the Great Planet, overcome with sorrow, they discover a spaceship that has been completely destroyed by a monster attack. It seems to be the work of an invisible monster.

You can download the torrent file from Anidex or Anirena, or get direct links from AnimeTosho.

Translation Thoughts

This is the last episode of the Gyuma – Lassetz arc. Or maybe the last episode was the previous one, and this is a filler? I’m not sure, but all I know is that a new arc starts with the next episode.

Even though both Gyuma and Lassetz were bad people, Lassetz was way worse. But even so, she had a better burial than Gyuma’s. At 7:15 Bellamis says:

安らかに眠ってください
Yasuraka ni nemutte kudasai
Rest in peace

If you didn’t know how to say rest in peace in Japanese, well, now you do!

When Hakka is looking at the destroyed ships, he says at 12:09:

みんなぶっ壊されてるじゃねーか
Minna bukkowasareteru ja nee ka
They have all been destroyed, haven’t they?

The verb ぶっ壊すbukkowasu means “to destroy; to crush; to wreck”. After that, he says:

こいつはすごい奴にやられたようだぜ
Koitsu wa sugoi yatsu ni yarareta youda ze
These guys seem to have been hit by an amazing guy

I changed this to “whoever did this has some serious chops” to fit Hakka’s way of talking. I have mentioned before that Princess Aurora talks like royalty (she is royalty), Jogo talks like an academic, and both Kugo and Hakka talk more in a colloquial, less educated way, with Hakka being a little worse than Kugo. But make no mistake, all of them have good hearts!

I admit I don’t do this very often, but I try to. It’s not that I don’t want to; it’s that I don’t know how to say the same thing in many different ways to categorize people’s statuses. A professional translator has the experience to come up with different colloquial or polite ways to give accurate personalities to different characters.

The conversation at 19:00 was the part that took me the longest to translate from this episode. It starts with Jogo saying:

操縦して戦うことはできないがぺリスコープなら操作できる
Soujuu shite tatakau koto wa dekinai ga PERISUKOUPU nara sousa dekiru
I can’t control it to fight, but I can control the periscope.

He doesn’t say exactly what he can’t control, but it’s obvious he’s talking about the Starcopper. Since Jogo hurt his hand, he cannot pilot it, much less fight. But he can be static somewhere using the periscope, and that’s what they do.

A little bit further, Kugo says:

その指示を受けて攻撃すればいいんだな
Sono shiji o ukete kougeki sureba ii nda na
So all I have to do is follow those instructions and attack?

And Hakka says:

どうしてクーゴは追わないんだ、2人で行けばいいじゃないかよ
Doushite KUUGO wa owanai nda, futari de ikeba ii janai ka yo
Why should only Kugo be followed (by Jogo)? Shouldn’t we go together?

In this context, “we” means Kugo and Hakka. The problem here is that somebody has to stay with Aurora, and since Jogo hurt his hand, he’s supposed to stay while his hand is being automatically repaired by the automatic tissue repair mechanism all cyborgs have. Their skin auto-heals. Just the skin, though. You should remember when Kugo hurt his arm really bad and Aurora had to fix it.

Jogo answers:

ぺリースコープでにきは追えない。 出撃するのは一機だ
PERISUKOUPU de ni ki wa oenai. Shutsugeki suru no wa ikkida
I can’t follow two (persons) with the periscope. Only one (of you) will go out.

It’s clear he can only follow one of them and tell them when a monster is near and where it is coming from. Also, somebody should stay with Aurora.

The Last Day of the Demon King Army

Queen Lassetz, who finally has Princess Aurora in her possession, sets her body as part of a supercomputer in an attempt to monopolize the Galaxy Energy. At that moment, Gyuma’s army, having learned of Lassetz’s betrayal, attacked. The battle between the two armies ensues, and the space wall collapses. Kugo takes advantage of the opportunity and manages to rescue Princess Aurora, but an enraged Lassetz sends his Neo-Robot after her. How will Kugo fight against such a powerful enemy that even the Astro Pole can’t hurt it?

You can download the torrent file from Anidex or Anirena, or get direct links from AnimeTosho.

Translations Thoughts

Just one more episode for the King Gyuma – Queen Lassetz arc to end, but this is the episode that defines it all!

At 3:20 Hakka says:

クーゴ、 何もたもたしてるんだよ
Kuugo, nani motamota shiterunda yo
Kugo, why are you being so slow?

We already discussed もたもた motamota in episode 44! It means slow or inefficient.

At 15:23 Queen Lassetz is already desperate and says her most famous quote ever:

形ある者はすべて破壊しろ
Katachi aru mono wa subete hakai shiro
Destroy everything that has a form!

性ある者はすべて殺すのだ
Sei aru mono wa subete korosu no da
Kill anything that has a life!

In the final moments of Queen Lassetz, she mistakes Bellamis for King Gyuma, and asks him if he ever realized she was betraying him. At the end she lost her mind. That’s why Princess Aurora says:

キティ博士がおっしゃってました心をなくしてしまった人たちは結局誤った道を歩むしかないと
KITI-hakase ga osshattemashita kokoro o nakushite shimatta hito-tachi wa kekkyoku ayamatta michi o ayumu shika naito
Professor Kitty said that those who have lost their minds will eventually have to go down the wrong path.

I guess she started to lose her mind when she became obsessed with capturing Aurora and taking all the Galaxy Energy for herself. It’s a sad end for both Gyuma and Lassetz.

At 22:34 Kugo says:

ベラミスよ、今こそ目覚めてくれ
Bellamis, ima koso mezamete kure
Bellamis, now is the time to wake up

目覚めて mezamete from the verb 目覚める mezameru can mean either wake up literally or wake up in the sense of becoming aware of something, just like in English. Another translation would be “now is the time to open your eyes”, with the same meaning.

The Conspiracy of Queen Lassetz

At last, King Gyuma led his entire fleet in an all-out attack on the Cosmos. In order to protect Princess Aurora, Kugo and the cyborgs unite their hearts to fight back, but they are gradually pushed into a difficult situation by the overwhelming numbers. If nothing is done, the lives of Kugo and the others will be in danger. Princess Aurora demands King Gyuma to stop the attack in exchange for her own life. Kugo, who knows this, hides the Princess on planet Right-Left to hide her from the enemies, but Bellamis is waiting there for her. The Princess is taken to the planet Lassetz by Bellamis!

You can download the torrent file from Anidex or Anirena, or get direct links from AnimeTosho.

Translation Thoughts

Even though I knew King Gyuma was a bad person, his love for Queen Lassetz was true, and I couldn’t help feeling bad for him when I watched this episode. Unrequited love, nonetheless.

Following Starzinger’s tradition, the planet that is divided in two and has a right side and a left side is called the ライトーレフト RAITO-REFUTO (Right-Left) planet.

At 2:33 King Gyuma says:

奴ら抜け抜けとこのギュマ星に近づいてきよって
Yatsura nukenuke to kono GYUMA-sei ni chikadzuite ki yotte
They are getting closer to this planet Gyuma however they want

The onomatopoeia 抜け抜けnukenuke means “however one wishes”, “freely”, “impudently”. What King Gyuma means here is that they are getting through the Gilara system impudently. How dare they!

At 5:15 Jogo says:

だがその言葉私の熱き胸の中に大切にしまっておきますよ
Daga sono kotoba watashi no atsuki mune no naka ni taisetsu ni shimatte okimasu yo
But I’ll keep those words close to my passionate heart

He says 熱き atsuki that comes from 熱い atsui which is an adjective that means “hot”, but when it’s used for feelings instead of things, it means passionate or ardent.

At 10:13 King Gyuma says:

逃がしてやろうそれでお前が命を絶たぬというならその条件飲んでもよい
Nigashite yarou sore de omae ga inochi wa tatanu to iu nara sono jouken nonde mo yoi
I’ll let them escape, and if you don’t take your own life, I’ll accept your terms.

You can see if you watch the episode that I changed that line a little bit because I thought it was redundant since the terms are, in fact, that King Gyuma let the cyborgs escape.

This is the most famous quote from this episode, and it’s always mentioned on any website that discusses this episode in particular:

無茶っていうのはクーゴさんから教えられたことのひとつです
Mucha tte iu no wa kuugo-san kara oshierareta koto no hitotsu desu
Recklessness is one of the things Kugo-san taught me.

You can also translate 無茶 mucha as “being unreasonable” and the line would say “Being unreasonable is one of the things I learned from Kugo-san”. It’s fine either way.

The Attack of King Gyuma

The Cosmos is pinned down by King Gyuma and warps to escape, but it bounces back against the space wall, and now it’s stuck. When King Gyuma confronts Kugo and the others, he demands that they surrender the Princess. When Kugo and the others refuse, Gyuma’s forces fire a Sonic Blaster at them. Lassetz lets the Cosmo escapes in the nick of time, fearing that King Gyuma will take the Princess away from her. But then Queen Lassetz has an evil plan for the Cosmos, as it tries to flee desperately!

You can download the torrent file from Anidex or Anirena, or get direct links from AnimeTosho.

Translation Thoughts

We’re getting close to the end of the King Gyuma/Queen Lassetz arc.

This episode took me a long time to translate. After each version, I watched it, and I felt that there were still some lines that didn’t really express what the characters were trying to say. So I changed them over and over. I watched this episode so many times during QA that I think I now know the dialogue by heart. But I’m happy with the final product.

Murdoch is not really a lieutenant. King Gyuma calls him 副官 fukkan at 3:55, which is more like an adjutant to some officer. I believe it’s like a “deputy captain” in this context, and would act as captain in the absence of the actual captain. I thought the real rank was kind of boring, so I chose the rank just below captain, which is lieutenant.

Jogo says to King Gyuma at 8:18:

男の価値はその死に様よ
Otoko no kachi wa sono shinizama yo
A man’s worth is in the way he dies

Hakka tells Jogo that was a cool thing to say. Really? It makes no sense to me. At the very least, I do not agree with it. I changed the translation a little bit to try to make it “cooler”, but it’s still weird. But that’s exactly what Jogo says, so I pretty much left that line like that.

Here’s an interesting Japanese expression. Murdoch says at 14:39:

ベラミスめの鼻をあかしてやるんだ
Beramisu-me no hana o akashite yaru nda
I’m going to flatten Bellamis’ nose

Even though that is the literal translation, this is actually an expression that means “I’m going to triumph over that person”. Murdoch doesn’t really mean to punch Bellamis in the nose.

When Murdoch gives the order to fight the laser cannon, he says at 15:54

全開発射
Senkai hassha
Whirling fire

I was between “whirling fire”, “turning fire”, “circling fire”, and “rotation fire”, but I couldn’t come up with a translation that I thought sounded good. Some of you might think those translations are actually better than the one I used (“fire to all directions”). Sometimes I waste so much time on a line like that one, which isn’t really very important. I don’t know why I do it.

At 17:34 Murdoch says:

戦わぬ時は打て
Tatakawanu toki wa ute

Without context, that line can be translated as “When you don’t fight, shoot” which is honestly total nonsense. But he’s actually quoting King Gyuma since he says “These are King Gyuma’s orders” immediately after. Now, with this context, the translation changes to “When she’s not fighting (anymore), shoot her”.

King Gyuma’s intentions are clear: if Bellamis stops obeying, Murdoch has to kill her.

I didn’t translate it as a quote, but as real Murdoch words: “If you won’t fight, I’ll shoot you”. I could’ve used something like “If she disobeys, shoot her” with quotes, since immediately Murdoch says that those were the orders from King Gyuma. That would’ve been fine too.

In true Starzinger style, the mechanical horse that resembles the Trojan Horse that the Greeks used during the Trojan War is called none other than “Trojan”. Who would’ve thought?

Confrontation! Cyborg Warriors

The Cosmos is approaching the planets Gyuma and Lassetz. King Gyuma, seeing that he can no longer leave the situation to his subordinates, decides to launch an attack himself. Kugo and the others take the initiative, discovering and destroying Gyuma’s outpost. Bellamis sets off an anti-matter bomb to lure out the Cosmos that has fled to an asteroid. However, a spaceship of refugees crash-lands on the asteroid. Kugo and Bellamis suspend the battle and try to rescue the spaceship, which is buried in rubble by the explosion.

You can download the torrent file from Anidex or Anirena, or get direct links from AnimeTosho.

Translation Thoughts

I believe this is the episode where Kugo starts falling for Bellamis, and that’s bad news for him.

At 5:48 Queen Lassetz says:

オーロラ姫のお土産をお待ち申しております
Ourora-hime no omiyage o omachi moushite orimasu
We’ll be waiting for the gift of the Princess Aurora

She literally says that Princess Aurora is a gift, and she’s looking forward to that gift. The direct translation sounds like Aurora will return to Lassetz bearing gifts. Since it might be kind of ambiguous in English, I changed it to “We await the return of Princess Aurora” since Aurora has been captured and brought there several times before (and always rescued). Another good line might’ve been “We await King Gyuma’s return with Aurora” or something along those lines.

I think this is one of the episodes where Hakka has a lot of dialogue. As I’ve said before, I struggle a lot translating him, especially when he’s being funny or telling jokes.

Princess Aurora says one of the funniest lines she has ever said when she tells Hakka at 15:54:

私どこまでもなって言いましたかしら
Watashi dokomademo natte iimashita kashira
I don’t think I said I’d follow you anywhere.

Also, in this episode, Hakka teaches us some Japanese insults that maybe you have never heard before:

のろま
Noroma
Slowpoke

あほんだら
Ahondara
Airhead

すっとこどっこい
Suttokodokkoi
Idiot

And Princess Aurora react to those at 8:46 like this:

ハッカさんはずいぶんお口が悪いですね
Hakka-san wa zuibun o kuchi ga warui desu ne
Hakka-san, you have a very foul mouth, don’t you?

Sad Foreign Legion

Angered by Bellamis’ insubordination, Queen Lassetz orders Kilmes from her Special Forces team to cause magnetic turbulence by radiating an asteroid cluster with a magnetic beam. A base on the planet Adaba catches sight of the Cosmos, but it is suddenly attacked by Kilmes, who is supposed to be an ally, and is wiped out. Kugo and his team go to the rescue and find the corpse of Silus, a girl from the Foreign Legion, and he’s outraged at the cruelty of the attack. Bellamis, convinced by Queen Lassetz that it was Kugo who wiped out the entire base, challenges Kugo to a one-on-one duel!

You can download the torrent file from Anidex or Anirena, or get direct links from AnimeTosho.

Translation Thoughts

This episode is about xenophobia. The Foreign Legion is an army where all its soldiers are foreigners. That means they weren’t born on either planet Lassetz or Gyuma. Queen Lassetz, who is becoming darker every day, shows that she doesn’t care if she sacrifices foreigners in order to get what she wants. She tried it before in the previous episode on planet Lovely.

There is an interesting conversation between Queen Lassetz and King Gyuma, where Queen Lassetz is plotting to force a fight between Bellamis and Kugo. At 3:05, King Gyuma says:

しかし勝ったらますますつけ上がり負けたら兵士たちの繊維が失われる危険があるぞ
Shikashi kattara masumasu tsukeagari maketara heishi-tachi no sen’i ga ushinawareru kiken ga aru zo
If she wins, she’ll gain more and more, if she loses, you risk losing the will of your soldiers

That’s the direct translation, mind you. But it’s clear what he means: If Bellamis defeats Kugo, she will definitely earn more power in the military, and if she loses, her soldiers will lose hope.

You can see the use of the onomatopoeia ますます masumasu, which means things are gradually changing. Depending on the direction of the change, it can mean either “more and more” or “less and less”.

Then, Queen Lassetz answers:

この勝負は相打ちさせます
Kono shoubu wa aiuchi sasemasu
I’ll make it a tie

Now that’s one of the direct translations of that sentence. The noun 相打ちaiuchi means “draw”, “tie”, or, funnily enough, “simultaneous striking one another”. You can translate this in several ways, like “I’ll call this match”, “This match will go against each other”, etc. But Queen Lassetz’s idea is that they both lose, by killing them both while they fight. So that’s what I used in the episode.

It took me more time than I thought to translate the following line:

前方にちょっとしたエネルギーを持ったぐんせいたいがあるぞ
Zenpou ni chotto shita ENERUGII o motta gunseitai ga aru zo

The problem is ぐんせいたい gunseitai, which I deliberated wrote it in hiragana. Is it 軍整体 like an army? Or 軍生態 like some kind of biological weapon?

Eventually I realized Jugo meant to say 群星体 which means “clusters of planets”. Now, these are very small planets, so I used asteroids instead.

Since this is a children’s show and 群星体 gunseitai is a fairly complex word, they try to explain it to the viewers. That’s why Hakka immediately asks what it is. I like how Hakka pronounces the word very slowly, so the kids can catch it properly.

A Lullaby Resonating on the Battlefield

Queen Lassetz learns that the Cosmos is approaching the planet Gamagin and orders it to attack using the monster Gamagin. Belamis objects that it will involve the nearby planet Lovely, but Lassetz dismisses it. Planet Lovely becomes a battlefield, and Princess Aurora rescues a boy there who has fallen ill. In order to save the boy, they must obtain a jewel on the planet Eisner. Kugo leaves Planet Lovely and rushes to Planet Eisner. Queen Lassetz learns of this and orders an all-out attack on Planet Lovely!

You can download the torrent file from Anidex or Anirena, or get direct links from AnimeTosho.

Translation Thoughts

The kid in this episode is actually named Cute. His real name is キュート KYUUTO which totally means Cute. I’m sorry, but even though I can imagine that’s a cool name for a Japanese kid, it’s a terrible English name. So I was between Keith and Kurt, but ultimately I decided to go with the latter. If you’re a purist, just keep in mind that the kid’s name is Cute.

I’ve got a funny story about why we need to change those Japanese names sometimes. There’s an SUV in Japan from Mitsubishi called パジェロ PAJERO. When they brought that SUV to North and South America, they had to change the name because “pajero” means “masturbator” in several Spanish-speaking countries. They chose several different ones, depending on the country. In my home country, it was called Montero, which means something like mountaineer, I don’t know.

Cute is not as bad as pajero, but it’s still bad, so I really had to change it.

The insert song of this episode is called 星の子守歌 Hoshi no komori-uta “Lullaby of the Stars”, and is performed by 増山江威子 Masuyama Eiko which is the seiyuu of Professor Kitty. I’m not a lyricist, so the translation doesn’t really sound like a song. I guess a professional translator would’ve written a song based on the Japanese lyrics. Also, there’re a lot of bangs and explosions during the song, so I’m not 100% sure of the lyrics, and I couldn’t find another version online I could listen to without the background noise. The lyrics don’t really add anything to the story anyway.

At 3:19 Queen Lassetz says:

諄い
Kudoi!
You’re being repetitive!

Queen Lassetz here is tired of Bellamis insisting they should not fight near Planet Lovely because there are innocent people there working for them, producing the food they eat in the Gilara star system.

The Red Desert Oath

The Cosmos approaches the center of the Gilara star system. King Gyuma, impatient, gives strict orders to capture Princess Aurora and eliminate Kugo and his friends by any means necessary. Bellamis receives the order and leads both Gyuma Corps and Lassetz Corps in an all-out attack. Kugo and the cyborgs try to get the Princess to safety, and are lured into a red desert planet without knowing it’s a trap. Queen Lassetz has transformed countless desert plants into monsters and is ready to use plasma radiation to kill Kugo and the others!

You can download the torrent file from Anidex or Anirena, or get direct links from AnimeTosho.

Translation Thoughts

Manga artist Leiji Matsumoto passed away last week, on February 13th. He was 85 years old. Not only was he the creator of SF Saiyuki Starzinger, but he was also the author of several other important anime like Space Pirate Captain Harlock, Galaxy Express 999, and its spin-offs Queen Emeraldas and Queen Millennia. Matsumoto collaborated as well on Space Battleship Yamato, which was a big hit and helped promote his career. He’s also famous for the creation of several Daft Punk videos. Rest in peace, Matsumoto-san, and thank you for everything! Thanks to Stratolily as well for letting us know.

松本さん、ご冥福をお祈りします。
Matsumoto-san, gomeifuku o oinorishimasu
Rest in peace, Matsumoto-san

Sometimes I like to point out what the lesson or message of an episode is. Since this is a children’s show, every episode usually tries to teach us something. In this episode, the cyborgs work together to overcome the obstacles, saying phrases like:

3人力を合わせればどんな苦しいことだって乗り切れるよ
3-Jin chikara o awasereba donna kurushii koto datte norikireru yo
If the three of us work together, we can get through anything that comes our way!

友情は武器よりも強しだよ
Yuujou wa buki yori mo tsuyoshida yo
Friendship is stronger than weapons!

Let’s take a look at this line Kugo says at 7:42:

お前のことだからいつものようにもたもたもたもたしてると思ったぜ
Omae no koto dakara itsumo no you ni motamota motamota shiteru to omotta ze
I thought you were struggling like you always do

The actual direct translation would be like “I thought you would be very slow as you always are” or something along those lines. The word もたもた motamota is another onomatopoeia that means being slow, inefficient, or behind schedule. I used “struggle” instead of “be very slow” because the actual onomatopoeia means something between slow and inefficient, and “struggle” works better, which might mean a little bit of both.

At 14:08 Hakka says:

何が只のつぶつぶだよ
Nani ga tada no tsubutsubu da yo
What’s with they were just ordinary particles?

The direct translation sounds horrible, so I changed it to “Are these just ordinary particles!?”. Another good line would’ve been “Weren’t these supposed to be ordinary particles!?”, but it was longer, and Hakka speaks fast, so there’s not much time for the viewer to read it. Sometimes you can’t use the best lines you come up with because there’s not enough time to read them!

You can see that Hakka uses the onomatopoeia つぶつぶ tsubutsubu instead of saying 粒子 ryuushi like Jogo said before when they first encounter the nebula. Both words can mean grains, particles, bumps, lumps, and things like that.

Shoot the Princess with Love

The Cosmos caught a rescue signal and headed for the planet Zyclo, the source of the transmission. However, the people seeking help were nowhere to be found. In fact, this was Bellamis’ plan to use the Princess’s compassionate nature to draw her away from the cyborgs. While Kugo and the others are fighting the monster Dragonfly that has appeared, the Princess is captured and taken away. Will her precious Galaxy Energy be misused for the sake of the Planet Lassetz? An anguished Jogo points the muzzle of his gun at the capsule carrying the Princess!

You can download the torrent file from Anidex or Anirena, or get direct links from AnimeTosho.

Translation Thoughts

If I had no job or life at all, it would take me exactly two days of 8-hour work each to translate an episode. The first day would be the actual translation. That’s the “fun” day. The second day is the “annoying day”, which consists of grammar and spelling checking, rewatching the episode completely to see if the translation makes sense and to change little things to make the story clearer, writing the new entry on this blog, and finally uploading the episode to Anidex, Anirena, Tokyo Tokoshan and Anime Tosho. The guys at Nyaa never wanted to create an account for me, and that’s why I don’t upload my episodes there.

So here’s the process in detail:

It’s faster to transcribe the whole episode to Japanese and then translate it to English than to translate from Japanese to English line by line. This is especially important because of the context. If you do it line by line, you’ll lose some of that context and some of the lines won’t make sense to the story.

Since we are in the AI age, I use an OpenAI software called Whisper to transcribe and time an episode. Specifically, I use Whisper.cpp, since it is faster. This will create a Video Text Tracks (VTT) file with the timed transcription of the episode. Of course, there will be many incorrect lines, incomplete lines, or merged lines between two different characters that the software mistook for one character and one line. Whisper really saves me at least half the time I would take to transcribe the whole episode, because even though there are always a lot of wrong lines and wrong things like names of characters, monsters, places or attacks, it does a really good job. Since I’m using it, the whole process takes a lot less time.

Using the NJStar Japanese Word Processor, I correct all of Whisper’s errors and mistakes. I prefer that to installing a Japanese IDE on my OS, because, honestly, I don’t write in Japanese that much.

Whisper can also translate the lines, but I just use it to transcribe. I know some groups are translating episodes entirely using AI, like AT-X translated Isekai Ojisan and released how they did it. People hated that translation, though. But I think in a few years, AI will translate everything, and translators won’t be needed anymore. Who knows?

Now it’s time to translate. I load the VTT file into Subtitle Edit. With this software, I can translate line by line and fix the timings that Whisper generated. It’s very simple to use. There’s an online version too.

After everything is translated, I use QuillBot for grammar and spelling checks. Then I create the episode using MKVToolNix and watch it from my basement couch on my Google TV using Kodi.