i physically cannot be normal so i translated the one omake with kobeni's sister to toki pona
click read more for a sitelen pona version, english translation, and translator's notes!
i mostly wanted to test typesetting sitelen pona! i think this is my first time doing this? i've used sitelen pona a little bit on a previous comic translation, but only for a couple things since it was so hard to format in csp. gimp makes it so easy!
translation:
[today these sweet sisters are by the water!]
sister: hey, hey, i want to eat. we should eat at the restaurant (food building)
kobeni: we can't. that place costs a lot of money. but everything's fine! i brought riceballs (see TN) ah! Denji and Power! they're bad-powerful. but they can (might) have money! we'll all eat. those two will pay!
sister: ah! is that okay?!
denji: ah? food? i've been killing and eating the fish!
sister: ah...
power: uh... did you steal the rice from me? give me it.
kobeni: ah?!
(weirdness and lies defeated them!)
...end
translator's notes:
first i just want to mention the riceballs thing. i translated this quite unspecifically in toki pona. i translated it as "pan sike" / "circular grain". pan most commonly means bread or rice, so there's lots of foods she potentially brought along!
i'm a lone "o" user until the end of time o7
uh. bad-powerful. as in, powerful in a bad way!
i made very small changes to the dialogue in the sitelen pona version. i can't be bothered telling you so why don't you learn toki pona and sitelen pona already and see for yourself? oops that sounded aggressive
it's 5am i hope there are no mistakes
time to talk about names! woohoo! first we have Denji as jan Tensi which featured in my last translation, but i hadn't come up with his sitelen pona yet! if you're unfamiliar, which you probably are, in sitelen pona we write our names as a combination of existing glyphs inside a cartouche. this is a really fun way to add some personality to your name and really make it your own! (for instance, my name features the glyph for sleep, because i'm a sleepy motherfucker) for Tensi i used tenpo, soweli and insa. tenpo means time. it has no specific relation to denji but i thought it was kinda nice. soweli means animal, and insa means inside. are you catching on yet? these two glyphs are separated from tenpo, and together say something like "inner animal", isn't that fun?
separating this point so it doesn't look like i'm blabbing on too long. i'm quite proud of Power's name, because it's... ridiculous. naturally in this universe, she named herself after the toki pona word for power, wawa. to write this name you could of course just put the word wawa in a cartouche (with two dots to indicate you pronounce the whole word) but that's not powerful enough! so her name is written with TWO, count em TWO wawa glyphs! (with one dot each to indicate you pronounce the first syllable) wawa mute a!
by the way, why is kobeni so devious in this? did she get possessed by the theft devil? :/
kalama ni li musi a! tan ni la mi ante e ona tawa toki pona
sina ken kalama uta e ni:
oni ale
ona li seme
kalama li pona
la pilin ike ala
tawa musi
luka suli
lon ale pimeja
la kalama anpa
lon li moli ala
meli li mije pona
unpa! mi wile a
o pini e utala
kute pi kalama ni
sijelo la o musi
ilo li jo e mute
jan ale o tawa!
alright so im pretty sure the overlap between ai fans and toki pona speakers is nonexistent but this is who i am and i cant help it
i was replaying neurotic inception for stuff for my au and i just played a little bit afterwards and for some reason when i did this particular interaction with shoma i began translating their dialogue to toki pona and repeating it back. so i decided to ss the log and edit my translation
og dialogue, direct translation and translator notes below the cut!
direct translation of tp version:
give sweet
i came to have (took) the sweet from my clothes. i gave it to shoma.
shoma: sweet...?
mizuki: yes.
shoma: because what?
mizuki: because...
mizuki: this day (sun-time) is love day, yes?
shoma: ...
shoma: that's strange...
mizuki: hm?
shoma: i think this: in a finished time (the past) you gave the same sweet
mizuki: i gave...?
shoma: yes.
mizuki that's weird. i don't know....
shoma: in the context of (something) possible, it is the strange thing of deja vu?
mizuki: ...
shoma: in the context of (something) different, you're good...
ok, that was REALLY direct. moreso than i usually do. i wanted a more direct correlation between the way the tp sentences are structured and the english translation, which makes it sound very... awkward. and weird. lol. i tried to translate "la" technically except for in "tenpo pini la" because i didn't want to adapt them too far away from the toki pona
anyways lastly, translator notes:
i used a lot of question marks in this translation without question structures. this is because i don't deem these sentences to be proper questions, and more statements or sort of involuntary utterances that are said out of surprise or confusion. this is just a personal categorisation of when to use question structures :)
also adding onto that, i choose to say "lon?" sometimes. idk if other people do this but i like it to ask for affirmations
i chose not to tokiponise the word "valentines" and instead describe it as what it is, a day for love!
mizuki says "mi pana...?" as a sort of echo of what shoma said. i don't think I've encountered this kind of thing before in other people's toki pona, the "i did?". so i chose to do it this way. partly because i think it makes sense and partly inspired by the answer structure which.... i don't use. but when you repeat a certain word from someone's question to answer
deja vu stumped me for a moment but i decided to translate it in this way. deja vu is just a name for a phenomenon, i don't know what it means and i know most english natives probably don't either. so i ported it as a name for a "strange thing" and decided not to tokiponise it, just because.
"ante la" - idk if this is really a thing i just found it on wiktionary and it was the only thing i could find and i mean. it seems to make sense. so why not?
ok if you actually read all this i love you thank you sina pona a <3
alright hellooo!!!! this is my first published translation in 2024 i guess!
of course i'm marketing this towards english speakers since i'm not sure if there actually is a part of the csm fandom that speaks toki pona... i hope you'll stick around to see something a little fun and different!
so if you don't know what toki pona is, allow me to explain! ☝️🤓 toki pona is a conlang created by Sonja Lang where the main draw of it is that it has less than 200 words! it sounds like it may be tricky to speak with so few words, but it's surprisingly easy and very fun! i always recommend it to anyone who has a bit of time on their hands and wants to try something new.
here i was mostly trying out gimp for comic translations, and so i translated the first 10 pages of chapter 120! i chose this because... it's silly! also fun fact, the start of this chapter was one of the things that pushed me to read chainsaw man!
ok that's enough preface rambling, let's get on with it!
i think typically the first page should be full sized if it has to, but nayuta peace sign is just so cute..!
alright, if you wanna feel like you're on a date with asa then keep reading to find an english translation and translator's notes! if not... feel free to leave, i hope you eat something nice today! (omekapo!)
semi-literal translation:
yoru: woof! woof! woof!!
nayuta: HAHAHAHAHAHA!!
yoru: woof woof! wooof!!
denji: Nayuta! what did you do?!
nayuta: i turned her into an animal.
denji: why?!?!
nayuta: because she [kissed] my thing! (here she basically says that yoru interacted with nayuta's thing using her mouth. it's a very vague statement)
denji: i'm not your thing! turn her into a human now!!
nayuta: want food! can't! (technically she says "food desire! no ability!") nuh uh!
denji: ah?! i'll make food. when you eat turn her into a human!!
nayuta: 'kay!
denji: eat and turn her into a human. i'm not joking.
nayuta: hey! this is my food! bad! bad!!
nayuta: hey... do you really want her humanity? (sounds very weird in english but i'm not sure a better way to put it)
denji: what?
nayuta: Denji. every woman tries to kill you, right? why is this animal different?
denji: why...? i have a feeling.
nayuta: hmmmm.... good. (this is being used as an affirmation similar to "alright" or "very well then") you won't die. okay. i'll turn her into a human.
nayuta: but, two things. if they're not good to you, then she'll be an animal forever.
denji: what are they?!
nayuta: number one. i can eat ice cream (cold sweet) all the time.
denji: i want (it) too.
nayuta: number two.
nayuta: don't be nice to her.
denji: are you joking?!
nayuta: uh, i'm (being) real. this is the best. she's bad to my nose.
denji: your nose?
denji: is she like a wet animal?
nayuta: weirdo, wet animals are good! anyways, don't be nice to her! i'll change her knowledge... so that to her you didn't come (today)!
denji: you'll what?! then she'll hate me!
nayuta: not important. you won't talk to her.
denji: ahhh...
denji: you're number one, nayuta...
tadaaaa! there we have it! now time for some translator notes, of which there are actually not a ton.
toki pona is surprisingly difficult to adapt for different kinds of characters. due to having no register, it's hard to make characters seem more punky or polite than normal, and to distinguish between adult and child characters. here particularly we have the issue that, while Nayuta is a child, she's also super smart! so making grammatical mistakes doesn't really seem in line for her character. the main action i took was doubling up "la" with her. this isn't incorrect, but there are more optimal ways to say things to avoid ambiguity. i thought that perhaps a kid wouldn't think ahead with their words as much as an adult would, and may end up with this quirk in their speech.
related to the last note, one possible way of making a character seem younger or less proper is having them use nimisin ("unofficial" community made words). it's a fun idea, but it's kinda inaccessible and also... i don't really know nimisin! guess i'm not hip enough >_<
the name Nayuta luckily fits with toki pona phonetics (with the y changed to a j)! Denji doesn't quite, so i opted for Tensi. this is the most direct tokiponisation of his name. it sounds a bit like tenshi! (angel in japanese)
just a little something. i went with humans being "jan" and devils "monsuta" (hybrids and fiends may be jan monsuta and monsuta jan respectively, or they could have nimisin) so.. why are these two using jan? well for Denji that's an easier question, as he is basically human-first and also had the name before he became a hybrid. (also there's no need to be so descriptive with a headnoun) as for Nayuta, she uses jan because she's sort of undercover. depending on the circumstances, or when referring to her with her real name (like saying Control Devil in english) she would be monsuta. some devils who gave themself a name use jan, while others such as Power use monsuta (because why would she call herself a human when devils are clearly superior?!)
suwi lete or lete suwi? that is the question. here i decided to go with suwi lete because i think the most appealing aspect to Nayuta is likely the sweetness!
i hope this was at least somewhat enjoyable! i wonder what i'll find to translate next >w> thank you so much for reading if you did! sina lukin la mi pilin pona a!
