The New Year

Hello, Again

It’s been quite a long time since I’ve updated this blog post. The year 2019 is gone, and it’s been an absolute shitshow of a year for the site (which was set up in February). It was not a very good start for the site, but at least I was able to continuously warn you all to not set high expectations.

Ignoring all that, the year 2020 has arrived, and I’m typing this up several days early. Hopefully this blog post will coincide with the first release of a translation for Shakugan no Shana Volume 0. (lol it didn’t happen)

Of course, I have some new announcements for the three people who visit this site.

Future Translations

I’m going to still take things slow this year. I’ll try to release Shakugan no Shana Volume 0 (not) by the time I put this post up, but I’ll look towards re-translating and editing the old Baka-Tsuki releases of Shakugan no Shana Volumes 3, 4, 7, 8, 16, and 22.

Volume 4 was only partially translated at Baka Tsuki, with Chapter 4 being left out (bruh) so I’ll make sure to do that/delay it till 2021. I have no idea if Volume 8’s translation left out anything, but at least Volume 22 is intact.

I’ll continue to hunt down other Baka Tsuki releases, as there are partial translations (like just one chapter/interlude) for Volumes 5, 6, 10, 17, and 20.

I’ve also gotten my hands on Ito Noizi’s GU-RE-N, which had the short story Reshuffle which inspired the anime OVA. I’ll get to scanning, OCRing, and translating that nice story some day, probably in 2021 or 2022 (I’m serious).

Best of luck to me.

New Year, New Technologies

I now have access to all of the Shakugan no Shana novels in text format (excluding the extra released in 2017, which is still in scan format, more on that later), meaning I can put my OCR tools to rest (for the time being).

I have recently discovered and have begun using the OmegaT translation tool. It’s not a machine translator, but it allows me to keep track of which English translation corresponds to which Japanese text, making it easier for me to pick up where I left off or skip parts that are hard to translate and let me come back to it later.

The OmegaT translation tool does have third-party machine translation integration, which I’ve taken advantage of. I’m currently using IBM Watson and MyMemory as my primary translation services, with Amazon Translate, Systran, and DeepL/Linguee as my secondary translation services. And of course, when things get really confusing, I use Jisho to sort things out.

Shakugan No Shana Amphitheater

Shakugan no Shana Amphitheater was a short story published in the Dengeki Bunko Magazine in 2017, set 2 years after the creation and Xanadu and published on the 15th anniversary of the start of the series (also being 5 years after the series ended). It was never adapted into anime and serves as the final epilogue to the series.

While I do, have pictures (note: not scans), they aren’t in an easy-to-OCR format. Meaning I have to actually write/draw out the Kanji (as I don’t know how to type Japanese on a keyboard) which will take FOREVER.

If anyone is interested in helping speed up this tediously slow process by helping write out the Kanji (or even better, actually knowing how to type Japanese), do reach out! This will be on the back burner for a very long time (like get started in 2025 long time) due to my procrastination, life work (college, research, etc), and other priorities.

Conclusion

Terrible starting year for translations. Hope to do better, keep expectations low. New tech, more work.

From the Poor Man,

HAVE A HAPPY NEW YEAR!