Hand-typed translation on the cheap, preferably free?

July 19, 2007 6:41 AM

I need a free or absurdly inexpensive English translation of a Japanese message board post page. It's a skosh long, but might make for a good exercise? All of the automatic web translators turn it into a grammar trainwreck.

There was a recent "Sexy 8 Beat" concert by Morning Musume. I found, on good faith, a transcript of one section of the concert (where one of the members was graduating out of it, and the remaining members were saying their farewells). Anyone feeling benevolent?

Link .. post is No.38, the 2nd reply down. All of the free automatic translators don't make any sense, and even give the names of the speakers literal translations =P

posted by vanoakenfold to writing & language (7 comments total)

Just a suggestion in case nobody comes through: Try asking at Morning Musume fansites, LiveJournal communities, etc. Asking people who self-identify as fans would probably up the odds of getting a free fanslation.
posted by No-sword at 6:50 AM on July 19, 2007

Have tried a few MoMusu message boards who actually make subtitles for TVrips already, but they don't really do requests =P
posted by vanoakenfold at 7:03 AM on July 19, 2007

Here's something that might help: Download the Rikaichan plug-in for Firefox... toggle it on and you can hover over each word in order to get the general idea, skipping the names and such to make a clearer understanding.

I tried it just now (because I don't read kanji), and got results that were not too bad to puzzle out:

(Speaker 1): Youchan, congratulations on your graduation! (Presents flowers.) The members one by one will make comments, please listen.

(Speaker 2): Yes!

(Speaker 3): Yes, good luck [Name]-san... (crying noises)

(Speaker 2): Eh?! (She is surprised about the crying)

(Speaker 3): Yes, congratulations on your graduation!

(Speaker 2): Thank you.

(Speaker 3): Because I entered the group at the same time...

...etc. If you don't know Japanese, the main thing to look for is the verb at the end of the sentence.

And you can then see above that dydecker called you a perverted old man.
posted by xo at 11:14 AM on July 19, 2007

Have you tried this translations request forum at Jpopsuki? It's a forum for a tracker that I use from time to time, and I know there are some Morning Musume fans on there. Give it a try—I'm sure someone would be willing to help you out.
posted by armage at 12:16 PM on July 19, 2007

armage: I'll give it a shot =D

xo: I've got 2 ffox plugins that do essentially that (including that one) but I kept getting dictionary errors =P

dydecker: no comment ;P
posted by vanoakenfold at 1:05 PM on July 19, 2007

lol. i thought i would get my first ever undeleted snark in ask metafilter if i wrote it in japanese.

For what it's worth, i would translate it for you, but it's a bit long and I'm quite busy... good luck - the rikai software is v. useful.
posted by dydecker at 6:17 PM on July 19, 2007

One last thing... if you haven't already, keep an eye on the fan-cams for that show on YouTube... lots of times someone will request translations within the credits and someone else informally provides them.
posted by xo at 12:52 PM on July 20, 2007