Translation review: [Hadena-Asenshi] Accel World 01 (preair)

Does it count as a bad omen if my first translation review is from the notorious Hadena? Let’s see what did they do with the Accel World preair. Only the first half of it though (the “episode 1”) – I’ll reserve episode 2 for use with another team’s release.

 

In the very first two sentences there are so many things that could be phrased better, so many commas misplaced and even mistaken word usage that I gave up. I’ll just leave the editing fuckups to an editor to point out.

No. There is no “cellphone” and the two things mentioned are one and the same. 携帯 (keitai) in everyday usage mostly refers to mobile phones (携帯電話 keitai-denwa), but in this context it just means “portable” or “personal”. This is a mistake like translating “brain-cells” as “brain-phones” just because you heard that people talk about their “cell numbers”. The Neuro Linker is a personal quantum terminal. Also see that wonderful consistency? Two lines, following each other.

I’d translate yakisoba, but that’s just my preference in localizing, I wouldn’t call keeping it a mistake.

Surprisingly, they managed to get this pun with Engrish right.

She’s already looking there. That’s why they are screaming in excitement. Translation note: Kuroyuki-hime (黒雪姫) means Snow Black. Snow White is 白雪姫 (shirayukihime).

Who calls “disconnecting” “coming down”?

Not their mail addresses, but the mails they’d sent him.

Well placed pun, liberal phrasing.

This line is not wrong, but it’s way more liberally phrased than the episode in general that it feels wrong.

I don’t know what they heard here, but translating “hiding” (隠れる kakureru) as “pretending” is just not right.

Post-apocalyptic, not explosive.

Conclusion: Avoid

Nowhere as bad as I expected it to be and some of the lines were exceptionally well done, but there’s so much on the negative side that I’d still advise to avoid it. There are many mistranslations, the phrasing is very awkward (I’m sure editors are going to point this out), and the timing gets in the way of the script all too often, making it much harder to understand.

This entry was posted by Vale.

2 thoughts on “Translation review: [Hadena-Asenshi] Accel World 01 (preair)

  1. “This is your final, last chance”
    That part really got me, it was grammatically correct, and not to mention hilarious

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