Episode 1233: The Young Cat Finds Himself Worried
Translator Notes:
The title of this episode is quite loosely translated. The exact title is Nayameru Waka-Neko, or “Young Cat Who Is Able to Be Worried”, but that sounded... very strange when rendered directly in English. I figured that the main point of the title is that the cat is surprised to be worried, or is not expected to be worried, so I did my best to come up with an alternate title that more naturally conveyed that idea in English.
Another point I should mention is that Japanese and English often have quite different ways of rendering the same sound effect, which often presents a bit of a conundrum regarding how to best translate vocalized sound effects. English typically renders a cat’s voice as “meow”, whereas Japanese typically renders it as “nya”. So, when you’re localizing something from Japanese and you come across a “nya”, do you literally write it like that, or do you turn it into its English counterpart? The Granblue Fantasy localization team has opted to go down the latter path, so I followed suit.
“Catness level” is my translation of the made-up word 猫度 (likely pronounced neko-do), which literally means “cat degree” (”degree” as in the extent to which something exhibits or possesses a quality).
One final point: the “purrhaps so” cat pun in the last panel is one I made up completely on my own. The Japanese contained the pun phrase nyaruhodo, which is a portmanteau between nya (as above) and naruhodo, which roughly translates as, “Oh, I see.” Given that this is just a throwaway joke that combines cat-talk with an acknowledgement of what Mewmew said, I came up with my own pun to replace that.
