Hello, friends.

Hello, friends. My name is Thaao (or Mustachious) and I am currently working on translating Pocket Monsters Special.

Why?

Well, mostly just because it's a fun practice for me. My Japanese is pretty rusty these days, so this is a good way to get back into it. Also, the scanlation I found of this myself was really... not great. So I felt like I could try to do the series a bit more justice. There's probably even more translations out there, and probably some better than mine. Plus the comic has been officially released in English, as well! So this whole project is a little redundant, but I'm having fun and that's what matters.

My goal is to create a natural-sounding script that's true to the feeling of the original source work. I don't have any intention of making it sound "edgy" or "mature" by making the kids say curses and stuff like that, either, but as the themes do get pretty dark at times, I'll probably stick to a PG-13 style of dialogue.

I'm not really much of an image editor, so I'm basically just replacing what's in speech bubbles as that's all I really have the knowledge (and patience) to do. I have no team, so it's just me, so there may be some errors in there as I don't have anyone to QC for me. Again, that's fine by me as this is just a project for fun.

I'm currently working on Chapter 2 and I still need to work out where I will host everything when I am done. Maybe I'll just upload a torrent to nyaa and call it a day. But it will be some time before I even finish the first book, anyway! I seem to be able to complete a chapter a day or so, and the first book has 14 chapters... so if I am really diligent (which I am not!) I should finish in a couple weeks. So give me like a month.

I hope that anyone who finds their way here can use my translation as a way to enjoy Pocket Monsters Special in a new way, or maybe even for the first time.

For now, if you want a preview of what is to come, I've thrown the first chapter up on rapidshare:

https://rapidshare.io/1UY7/v1ch1.7z

Chapter 2!

Chapter 2 is up!

https://rapidshare.io/1UZj/v1ch2.7z

I'll do translation notes in a bit.

PokeSpe Chapter 1 tranlsation notes and download link

Firstly I just want to say that when I was first editing I was doing it a really stupid way and positioning each line of text separately with copy/paste. So you'll see some wonky-looking text in the first several pages. Please forgive me. I'm too lazy to go back and redo them lol. It's really not too bad, though.



Pokemon Special Chapter 1 download link

Page 6

• I've decided to use the Japanese names for the Pokemon. If you want to read the English names, you can just read the English version, or another scanlation. I'm using the official GameFreak romanizations for the names, as found on serebii.net. I've heard of other groups translating the names to be more accurate to their puns (like "Needorino" since it's like "Needle") but honestly not only do those look stupid to me, but they are names, which have official spellings. I mean, some of the official spellings look stupid, too, but at least they're official.


• I have no idea why the girl says the Nidorino is drying off. Maybe she means this is his chance...? I thought about putting something else, but I couldn't think of anything, so here we are.

Page 8

• OK, this is a controversial one. While I do quite like the localization of 博士 into "Professor," it doesn't really make that much sense, and I'm trying to be a little more faithful to the source in how some stuff like this comes across. To be fair, they're not actually professors, but more of research scientists, which I think "Doctor" fits better. Plus "Doctor" is a really common translation of 博士 and probably the idea that a Japanese reader/player would have when hearing the name (not "Professor"). So I wanted to preserve that experience.


• I went with Ookido because I didn't want to put the little bar thing above the O, even though I think "Okido" looks better. If you're wondering, I think it's supposed to be a name that sounds like it references a large tree (hence the official localization of "Oak" which also mimics the sound of it a bit).

Page 10

• There are many acceptable translations for 幻, including the word "legendary," which is used in Sailor Moon, for example. But since the beginning, Pokemon in Japan has used different words for different kinds of legendaries, and the Pokemon like Mew and Celebi have their own word, so to keep it distinct, I'm going to use "mythical" which is not only slightly more accurate in literal meaning, but also the official word that was eventually adopted into the official game localization.

Page 16

• I really struggled to come up with what Green should say here. The whole "If one ... doomed to fail." line sounds so melodramatic and scripted, but that's kinda how it was originally. In the end, I don't think it sounds very natural, so please forgive me on that one.

PokeSpe Chapter 2 translation notes and download link

Pokemon Special chapter 2 download link

Page 24

• I started referring to Fushigidane as "he" here, then later switched over to calling him "it," which was bad form on my part. But at the same time, Red always calls him "he" and Ookido always calls him "it," so it's kind of consistent...??

Page 31

• I used "technique" for 技 instead of "move," which was probably a bad idea in hindsight. I might be inconsistent and switch over to "move" later, but I'm just used to the word "technique" from playing SaGa games and my instinct went straight there. Or maybe I'll keep up my trend of ~being different uwu~ and keep using the word "technique." Either one works, honestly, but "technique" takes up so much space and these speech bubbles are so tiny...


• Red just says "........" in the original Japanese panel here, but I made him say "Hmmm..." as the "sound effect" behind him is him saying "Hmmmm" and that doesn't really come across in the translation as well.

Page 32

• Another controversial decision! I don't like the name "Pokedex" and a more literal translation for 図鑑 is "field guide" or even "picture book," the term "encyclopedia" gets thrown around but it's a little off -- "field guide" is much more accurate. But calling it the "Pokemon Field Guide" sounds dumb to me. So I decided to just stick with "zukan." I did the same when I translated parts of The Legendary Starfy 2, so it doesn't feel that foreign to me anyway. Plus "encyclopedia" is a HUGE word for these tiny text spaces. "Zukan" is a neat little 5 characters.

PokeSpe Chapter 3 translation notes and download link

Pokemon Special chapter 3 download link

I don't really have any particular notes on this one. I did get take a little creative liberty with Green to make him sound rough. His manner of talking is direct and he's very rude, but sometimes it doesn't really come off with a literal translation. So stuff like "Sorry, I guess." and "How stupid..." are a little different from the exact script (he says "Don't think poorly of me." and "What extravagance." lol) but conveys the feeling you get from the original script more, I think.