I just had a realization… (after all those years!) but it’s a minor spoiler for next week, so I need to just remember to talk about it then.
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Ok, so about halfway through chapter 1! It’s going well so far and I’m enjoying … albeit a lot of vocabulary lookups, but thats alright.
Some grammar questions for our korean friends … if anyone wants to chime in!
Question 1 (pg 17, top)
when she’s waking up without glasses
꽤 열이 높은지 시야에 물기가 어리어 일그러져 보였다
Man, where to start with this one! I will break it down to three sub questions 
-
열이 높은지 - I want to say this means “perhaps because of the high fever”… but I have no idea of the grammar to get there. I know that ~지도 몰라서 could possible mean that? Is that implied or something?
-
물기 = tears? Crying?
-
the second part is also confusing, but I have no idea what ‘어리어’ is doing. 일그러져 보였다 = “seemed to distort” from what I gather
Final translation: Perhaps because of my high fever, for my vision, the tears seemed to distort (it younger??)
Heck, I have no clue…
Question 2 (pg 20, bottom)
when she’s feeling some kinda way for this new girl she just met
왜 마음 언저리에서 그녀를 향한 그리움마저 이는 걸까.
- How exactly is 이는 working here? simply as a being verb? I marked it in the translation below as “is it”. I know 걸까 is just a way of stating/asking self referential question. 마저 I think is similar to 까지 right?
Final Translation: “why is it to the extent of feeling towards this girl from the edge of my spirit/heart”.
Any help is greatly appreciated, but no obligation 
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This is how I interpreted it, feel free to correct:
-은/는지: A connective ending used to indicate an ambiguous reason or judgment about the following statement.
물기 is moisture, 어리어 = 어리다 (to collect) + 어 (connective ending) = eyes watering
“Maybe due to my high fever, my eyes were watery and it seemed to distort my vision”
I think this is 잇다: to continue
“Why does my heart keep longing for her?”
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Thanks!! That makes so much more sense
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I can try and explain but please bear with me since I’m not awesome at explaining grammar. 
Question 1
That’s pretty close! This -ㄴ지 grammar construct is for uncertainty or for when you’re making a guess for why something is the case.
It’s “moisture”. If you break it down into 한자 based on your Japanese knowledge, it can help you understand intuitively: 水 + 気
어리다 can mean “to be filled with”, so the wetness/moisture from her high fever filled her vision and made it look distorted.
@bibliothecary already called it out but I think the 이는 is 잇다. 
마저 can be used interchangeably with 까지 and expresses inclusion (but often, like in this case, with a negative overall nuance)!
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Awesome, thank you both.
I’ve obviously seen 는지 a lot, but I’m not sure if i’ve ever seen it just hanging on it’s own like that without a verb right after. Makes sense though. Learned a few new things!
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More Korean grammar stuff about ㄴ지
Grammar!
It pops up a lot so you’ll remember it in no time. It’s just denoting something you’re questioning.
A really easy example would be: 뭐가 있는지 궁금해요.
I’m curious what’s there. 뭐가 있다 is what you’re unsure about, hence 있는지!
There is also ㄴ 지 (with a space) for expressing the length of time since you started an action that’s still going, like:
한국에서 산 지 2년 됐어요.
It’s been 2 years since I started living in Korea (The ‘since’ is implied in the construction).
It’s really different in meaning but they both look similar so watch out!! 
Now back to our regularly scheduled programming!
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ㅋㅋ yep! i actually know that… I use it all the time! But it’s literally always with 모르다/알다 or some other verb… and that’s how it was taught to me too. Just didn’t know this nuance! Also, can’t forget 지 as a sentence ender, 맞지?
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Urano reminds me a bit of myself when I was a kid. I held books open inside the little cubby in my school desk and secretly read during class. Then I went home and read all afternoon. Mom told me to go outside and play - I took my book outside. I had to be told not to read while walking, not to read under the table while we were having dinner, and not to hide in a corner and read at parties. I stayed up and read under the covers with a flashlight. I slowed down towards the end of high school and then barely read anything for fun in college, but thanks to Natively I am rediscovering the love of books through Japanese novels and manga
I don’t know if I was obsessed with books as much as I was obsessed with reading, though. I liked exploring new worlds through reading, but I wouldn’t have wanted to hide books from the sunlight. I think the best way to read books is curled up in a cozy chair next to a window - natural light just makes reading so much nicer.
Also, this is random, but I thought it was interesting that Urano is reincarnated as a young child and not as a baby. I guess I’ve just never thought about it before, but it makes me wonder how that works. Who was Myne before Urano became her? Did she exist? Or did Urano’s reincarnated self just come with a premade backstory and memories? I’m not familiar with isekai, so this is a new concept for me
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Same. I remember reading cereal boxes intently at breakfast because I wasn’t allowed books at the table but my eyes just desperately needed to be reading something, anything. 
Now that you mention it, I’ve become more precious with physical books as I’ve become older - young me would think nothing of dog-earing pages and breaking book spines… How violent!
Regarding your last point, I’d love to hear from people who read a lot of isekai - what happens to all the poor souls who are the victims of body-snatching? Do they in turn take control of someone else’s body? Or is it just never addressed? It doesn’t seem fair to just be kicked out of your own body like that! 
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My current headcanon from the total of two chapters we’ve read is that the previous Myne died from her fever, leaving her body free for Urano’s soul to switch into. I have no evidence other than “that would be interesting”. 
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It depends a lot on the isekai, in my experience. Some address it, many ignore. A few theories I’ve seen are that the original person died/was killed and the transmigrators soul then inhabited the ‘empty’ body (this one is often seen), sometimes the souls trade places (so Myne would have gone to Urano’s body), sometimes the soul still remains inside the body, and there’s a case of 2 souls in a same body. I do believe that here it’s probably the first case, as eefara said.
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I finished this week’s reading and even though it’s a re-read for me, I had a great time reading! It’s a great fit for my current Korean level and Myne’s… book obsession is really infectious and makes me want to read (or keep reading) too.
Reading through, I had sympathy for Myne especially during the part where Urano/Myne regains previous Myne’s memories and feels disoriented and confused. If you get isekai’d into a child’s body and all you have is their abstract memories and small vocabulary, that’s a huge shock and basically a handicap for starting your life in that world out. 
At least she is positive about things though, and fueled by her desire to read. You just have to admire someone who has drive.
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I thought this was a really great plot device too to set up a believable situation where both Myne and the reader can have the world and complex subjects explained to them, as well as getting past the old “they don’t speak Japanese here! But now I just magically speak the language!” you occasionally come across. Plus Myne has a built-in excuse for why she’s babbling nonsense words; being five or six or however old she is will do that for you.
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I wish I had this excuse when speaking any foreign language I’ve ever learned for the first time and trying to be understood.
I do really love that as a plot device though and agree that it creates not only an avenue for the reader to explore the world alongside Myne, but also a chance to identify with her and her struggles, and become more invested in her story from the very beginning (especially after getting a small taste of her life as Urano in the prologue).
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Aah why is the spoiler tag not working??? I’ll delete the spoilery bit while I figure out where I went wrong…
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I’ve done the reading for this week! Like I mentioned in the main thread, I read in both Japanese and English to try comparing the two. I don’t know if I’ll keep doing this every week though…
Basically, I don’t love the English translation. It’s mostly accurate but it just feels lifeless, and has the kind of unnatural word choice I’d expect to see in online fanfiction, not a published novel. It’s hard to describe but I’ll try to give some examples. (also it uses the word “definitely” at least 5 times in the first chapter alone.)
some examples
Page 9:
仕方なさそうな溜息が降ってきて、ぐいっと強引に腕を引かれた麗乃は眉根を寄せる。
An exasperated sigh drifted into her ears and she felt someone pull on her arm, a little hard. Her brows furrowed.
This clearly translates each piece of the original text directly, but it sounds a bit odd. There’s also a different subject for each verb which makes it feel wordy.
Taking some liberty and explicitly using Shuu as the subject would make it sound better imo:
Shuu let out an exasperated sigh and quickly grabbed her arm to pull her closer. Urano simply frowned in annoyance.
one more, page 15:
それと同時にふと脳裏に浮かべたのは、私が死んだことで泣くお母さんの姿だ。もう二度と会えないお母さんはきっと怒っているはずだ。「だから、本の数を減らせって何度も何度も言ったのに！」と、泣いて怒っているに違いない。
My mind drifted to thoughts of how my mother must have cried after learning of my death. She, the mother I’d never meet again, would definitely be mad. I could say with confidence that at some point she’d screamed, “How many times did I tell you to get rid of some of those books?!”
This is supposed to be a moment where we feel Urano’s regret and guilt, but the English doesn’t have that kind of emotion to it at all. If anything it sounds deliberately emotionless, like she’s almost making fun of how her mother would react.
Here’s my attempt at translating some more of that emotion:
[previous paragraph about Urano’s mother crying in happiness at Urano getting a job]
I suddenly wondered if she was crying now too after finding out what happened to me. I realized I’d never see her again to know for sure, but she must have been so upset. In my head I could hear her voice, sobbing “How many times did I tell you to get rid of some of these books?!”
Aside from my personal complaints with the tone, I found two (or maybe one and a half?) small mistranslations as well.
mistranslations
[P10] 幼馴染で麗乃の家と同じ母子家庭のため、昔から兄弟のように育ってきた
As they were childhood friends and went to the same daycare, they’d been raised like siblings practically since birth.
Somehow 母子家庭, single-mother household, got turned into “the same daycare.”
[P14] あの揺れならば、せいぜい震度は三か四だ。
That earthquake was at best a 3 or 4 on the Richter scale.
I’m counting this as a half because it’s not really a language thing but 震度 ≠ Richter scale.
There’s also some good bits though!
translations I liked
[P14]
「間違いなく……死んだ、んだよね？」
多分、死んだのだろう。
“I… I definitely died, right?”
Signs pointed to yes.
[P15]
「本、ないし……死に際に変な夢でも見てるってこと……かな？」
“I don’t see any books… Maybe this is just a nightmare? A death nightmare?”
I tried to get my sister hooked on the series with me awhile ago (I’m actually borrowing her English copy of volume 1) but she said she couldn’t really get into it, citing that it “reads like a web novel.” Given the fact that Bookworm literally was a webnovel, that’s a fair criticism, but after reading the English myself I think the translation might have had more to do with that impression.
Or maybe my non-native Japanese level is making me biased towards the JP version because it feels more exciting! Who knows XD
ANYWAY, as for the story itself, I had forgotten about the dynamic between Urano and Shuu in the prologue and thought it was interesting. Myne mentions in the first chapter that she’d taken lots of modern conveniences for granted in her past life, but seeing how she took relationships with her family and friends for granted too is good characterization I never caught before. Also like @Mara said I appreciate how Myne is able to use her own unhealthy obsession with books to control her emotions as well, so she can compartmentalize and focus on taking action her new environment.
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@Athakaspen I was having issues with the spoiler tag for some reason, but having read your post, I don’t need to bother trying to salvage what I was writing because you perfectly captured what bugged me in the English version!
That bit you quoted was one of the moments where I was most annoyed with Myne. It felt like her mother’s grief was a big joke to her. I bailed after three chapters.
But I don’t feel the same irritation at Myne in the Korean version. TBH I just assumed that was because I’m blind to small nuances and variations in tone in Korean. But maybe if the Korean translation is closer to the Japanese version, the tone is a bit different?
Anyway, I didn’t have an issue with anything Myne did, really, just the way she talked. (Well, to be fair, it’s probably annoying for Shu to babysit her while they walk, but that’s a relatively minor issue.) And she really does show a lot of courage after she gets transported to her new life!
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To add to what other have said, there’s more options:
- reincarnated from the start, but only remembered one’s past life due to some shock (physical or otherwise), such as hitting your head hard or seeing yourself for the first time in a mirror.
- similar, but somewhat different, the previous life’s memory acts like a split personality
(here, the text sounds like what @eefara is describing)
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Wow, thank you for that awesome breakdown of translation choices @Athakaspen! I love seeing this kind of stuff!
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