Google Translates My Favourite Manga

Inspired by this bookish post by Reader Voracious and the previous one by Fictionally Sam.

Bloghopping can sometimes take you into territory you think you’d never get to…and that’s why we’re here. The aim of the game is to translate a synopsis into a non-English language and then back into English, and because manga was Japanese in the first place, let’s make that “non-English language” Japanese, let’s make the titles the localised English ones if we have them (e.g. Shigatsu wa Kimi no Uso will be Your Lie in April), let’s make the “favourite manga” the ones I have on my AniList account as of this post (you’ll find out what those are once you read the post…or the tags, but that’s only for spoiler-lovers) and let’s make the synopses AniList ones.

(By the way, Animanga Spellbook, with or without “The”, translates perfectly.)

Your Lie in April

Piano genius Arima osei dominated the competition, all the children’s musicians knew his name. However, after his mother who was also his instructor passed away, he had a spiritual breakdown while playing with a recital. Even after two years, Kosei does not touch the piano, it is looking at the world in monotone, without seeing talent and color. One day I was satisfied with living his life with his best friend Tsubake, until the girl changed everything. Kaori Miyazono is a freely abstract beautiful and free violinist whose style reflects her personality. Kaori helps Kosei return to the world of music and shows that unlike the structurally stiff style Kosei has become familiar with, it should be free to break the mold.

I was nominated for the 2012 Manga Taisho Prize.

One Punch Man

In this new action comedy everything about a young man named Saita screams “AVERAGE” from his lifelong expression to his bald head, and his impressive build. The problem is to hit a nest within it with a single blow each time a promising candidate is found To solve the problem Saitama can find a villain strong enough to challenge myself Do you? Hilarious ROMP as he searches for new bad guys to challenge!

Clover

Kazuhiko is young, but already deeply injured Baroque retro futurist black soldier agent – she was withdrawn from retirement alone to escort Sue, a mysterious wife to the destination she knows alone. Susa and Kazuhiko have never met. . . Still she knows him and her only human touch has grown since the age of 4, two distant voices: her elderly “grandmother” general guard and Kazuhiko’s dead girl, Olha That. And Sue is what she is and the clover leaf project acknowledged her what she was – the highest confidential of the army and the most dangerous person in the world, always kept in the cage I came.

Fushigi Yuugi / Genbu Okinawa

Takako Okuda is an ambitious girl who lives in the Taisho Period. She must be strong – Oosugi, one of the most beloved men she has ever been married. Her mother is eventually sick. And her father, Einosuke, was not at home for more than a year. When Einosuke finally came back it was with Chinese graffiti notes that seemed to be more important to him than his wife ‘s death. Furiously, Takiko steals by breaking the finished translation “the universe of the four gods” and tearing it apart, but the moment she opens it, she is surrounded by light … and this How did the legend of Genbu Shrine maiden started?

+ Anima

Presence that has power like animals walks among humans in this different universe. These mysterious mutants, + anima are avoided by society. Especially the four banishment – a boy with power like Crow, Crow. Husky, fishboy. Senri, bears + anima. And a girl named Nana exercises the power of the bat – looking for someone like yourself while trying to gain acceptance in someone or something else in a cruel world.

Bungo Stray Dogs

Mr. Atsushi Nakajima was kicked out of the orphanage, but now he has no place to go and no food. While he is standing beside the river, he rescues a man who is trying to kill suicide whilst on the brink of hunger. That man is Osamu Dazai, he and his partner Kunikida are members of a very special detective office. They have supernatural powers and are dealing with incidents that are dangerous for police and military. By the time Atsushi came to the area, they are keeping track of recently emerging tigers in the area. Tiger seems to be related to Atsushi, it is obvious that the future of Atsushi involves more Dazai and remaining detectives by the time the case is resolved!

Angelic Layer

In the future, the world’s most popular game is Angelic Layer. Athletes must raise their own “angels” (or fighting dolls) to compete in tournaments. Misaki Suzuhara, please enter genius of the 6th grade angel’s layer. Her speed type angel, Hikaru, many people think that Misaki is the chance to win the championship. She will get a lot of help in the process, but the way to victory, especially for young people like Misaki, will not be an easy way.

Noragami

Yato is a minor god and its dream is that many believers worship him and pray to him. Unfortunately, he does not even have a single shrine devoted to him, so his dream is far from realized. To make matters worse, the only partner who had to help him solve the problem of the people just stopped working.

His pious existence and luck may change when he stumble over Iki Hiyori and save her life. She is also struggling quite a bit because she is stuck with him till her problem is resolved. Together with Hiyori and his new partner weapon Yukine, Yato will do everything he can do to get him a fame, recognition and perhaps one shrine devoted to him.

Black-nosed cadaver delivery service

Your body is their job! Five young students, three men, and two girls at Buddhist University have few voices calling for work skills in Tokyo today. But for everything in the university to which they were told, you know, channeling, dowsing, ESP – will never give them a direct line to corpses. Reborn.

5 form the Kurosagi corpse delivery service: regardless of suicide, murder, accident, or disease, they carry your body everywhere where it needs to go to release your soul!

Book Girl

Inoue Kiba, the protagonist of the story, seemingly ordinary high school second grader. His high school life besides an implicit event two years ago can be summarized as usual. However, due to the incident, he never swore to write it again.

This continued until the literary council president, a third-grader female student Amano Toshiko, a beautiful girl who likes to eat literature work entered the literature department. Now he was ordered to write her snack every day after school.

The novel series of literary girls is the point of view of Inoue Konobe.

Orange

One day, Mr. Naka Takamiya will receive a letter written after ten years. As Naho reads, the letter recites the exact occurrence of the day. And it includes the incorporation of freshmen into her class named Naruse Kaku.

After ten years Naho has repeatedly stated that she regrets a lot and she wants to correct them by verifying that Naho from the past can make the right decision – especially with respect to Kakeru . More shocking is that she discovered that Kakeru was not with them after ten years. Future Nacho asks her to watch him carefully.

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Some interesting things:

• Changing the capitalisation on Orange doesn’t change the translation. Nor does changing Plus Anima to +Anima and vice versa.
• Google Translate used to be infamous for not getting things right…not as much as Babelfish, but still pretty darn infamous! So to see only names and subjects mostly get Babelfished is…good in some ways (the learning of AI, for instance), but bad for others (my current goal, which is to make you laugh with these mangled synopses). I noticed certain names (such as “Yato”) were left in English when I converted them to Japanese and then certain phrases that the translator didn’t know how to handle (such as “fish boy” in the +Anima synopsis, LOL) became katakana, possibly to preserve the reading, if not the meaning of the word/s.
• I guess because these synopses are widely available on websites, they’re easier to parse within Google – which probably helps Google Translate to some degree…?
• My favourite is probably the +Anima one because of how mangled it got.
• I know, I know…Bungaku Shoujo isn’t a manga, but it’s classified as one using the AniList system. That’s why it’s there.
• It seems the more casual the tone, the more terrible the translation gets (which is more likely to not only make me laugh, but remind me of those Babelfish translations as well).

So if you want to try this out with your favourite anime, manga, books or whatever, please do go ahead! I’d be more than happy to see how far we’ve come from the days of Babelfish.