Week 2 of 📚 本好きの下剋上 / 책벌레의 하극상 🪱

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I’ve finished this weeks reading as well! Like @eefara, I’ve had trouble reading anything this last week due to work. I read first in Japanese, then started to go back and read the English as well, but I really just don’t enjoy reading this translation. After getting to the sentence

「いつか絶対に『下剋上』してやる」

“One day, I’m gonna (ascend) out of here.”

I decided life is too short to read things that make me feel upset :upside_down_face: So from now on I’ll probably just continue the reread in JP, maybe listening to the audiobook for some parts too.

RE: That sentence and the English title of the series

I’ve always thought “Ascendance of a Bookworm” was a bad title for this series, and now it’s forcing the translator to write dumb sentences like this to preserve the reference to the title. “Ascendance” and “下剋上” really aren’t the same thing, and you have to do some mental gymnastics to interpret the English title with the same meaning as the Japanese one.

Now I don’t have a better translation of 下剋上 to offer; instead I think you’d be better off changing to a different title that works better in English. For example, the French title of the series is “La petite faiseuse de livres,” meaning just “The little book maker,” which I think is a much better title overall. It does a good job describing the series and doesn’t sound really weird in the process.

As for this weeks reading, I don’t think I have much to comment on. Some good foreshadowing at the start of chapter 4 though.

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so, I didn’t realize that the audiobook put multiple chapters into 1 audio chapter and I accidentally already finished next weeks reading. :sweat_smile:

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You are always welcome to post questions to aid understanding. We seem to have readers of all levels this time around. :+1:t2:

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Oh no. They actually put parentheses in there? :scream: That’s not what those JP quotes equate to. :scream:

I have to say, maybe Athakaspen’s just cherry-picking particularly bad examples or something, but I’m surprised I haven’t heard any complaints from the English bookworm community over stilted translations. (Based off of the evidence of four whole chapters, granted; maybe it gets better.) Even if they don’t know the original JP, a lot of these examples Atha’s been giving just don’t sound like well-written English sometimes. Also granted, I guess, I don’t really hang out in that community to hear complaints anyway… I guess what I’m just trying to say is that I’m sad the translator/editor didn’t have the time/ability/etc fix stuff like this.

I actually kind of think the English title is pretty decent for what it is. Ascendance and 下剋上 aren’t exactly 1:1 for meaning, but there’s not going to any non-awkward way to translate 下剋上 in any near-literal way.

The French title sounds a tad generic to me; not bad, per se, but very unassuming. What does the Korean title translate to?

Nice, you caught up fast! :+1:

There’s no problem with that! Echoing Biblio, feel free to ask questions on vocab/grammar/whatever, even super nitty-gritty ones or questions you may be afraid are too “basic”. Or even general stuff, like, “where does it say how she isekai’d” so you can hone in on key sentences to focus your study there.

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tbf, I feel like the “I read Japanese lightnovels in English” community is used to bad translations. At least way back when I was still reading Japanese stuff in translation, it was pretty bad but you stuck with it for the story.

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Pretty much the same as the Japanese:

책벌레 = bookworm (lit. “book bug”)
의 = の
하극상 (hanja: 下剋上)

Lots of complaints about the quality of the Korean translations, though. :sweat_smile:

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Really? From you in particular or the community in general?

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From Korean readers. The top reviews on Ridibooks are all critical of the translation, the main issues being:

  • a huge amount of typos / lack of proofreading
  • strange (slang/obsolete/obscure) word choices and phrases being translated literally - one reviewer said they’d rather read AI translations since it would choose more natural/suitable Korean :laughing:

Most give 5* for the story, 1* for the translation.

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Once some Korean book clubs come into existence, we need to read a Japanese translation alongside a KR book and talk about the awful translation then. XD

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One of the first Japanese books ( ねこの学校 1 水晶どうくつの秘密 | L23) I read happened to be a Korean translation. (I just picked it up because it was about cats… it took me a while to figure out it was written by a Korean. :rofl: ) I didn’t notice anything but at that level I wouldn’t have been able to anyways. :smiling_face_with_tear:

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I do appreciate that. I’ve not asked questions because I think I’d be asking too many, like most sentences would be asked about at this stage :sweat_smile: so I’m just listening and trying to recognise what I can of it. I’ll re-read it at a later date but I feel my understanding is too low at this stage. I might ask questions further down the line once I re-read it though. :slightly_smiling_face:

I did know it would be a bit of a stretch for me but underestimated how much of one so I’m just enjoying what I can, occasionally joining in the conversation and seeing how much I get out of it that way. It’ll be another gauge for how much I’ve improved further down the line but I do like the premise of it and I don’t mind the audiobook. I’ve also been slowly ordering the other books and audiobooks so I have to read it at some point :joy:

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To be fair, I am picking out the worst examples to share. Most paragraphs are generally fine aside from the tone/prose feeling weird to me.

Parentheses are what they use to represent Myne saying Japanese words, a choice I also don’t care for but at least it’s consistent and was explained earlier. (Maybe they thought square brackets would feel too digital? And quotes might get confusing since it’s already inside dialogue quotes.)

Interesting! Makes sense they’d use that word directly if it exists in Korean as well. The simplified and traditional Chinese titles also use it (爱书的下克上 and 小書痴的下剋上 respectively, I think).

I think my problem with ‘ascend’ vs. 下剋上 (other than the physical and spiritual meanings of ascend leading to misreadings) is that ascend feels less hands-on, whereas 下剋上 is about the struggle itself. I feel like ascend also has a kind of egotistical nuance of becoming better than (and ignoring) what you’ve left behind, which definitely doesn’t mesh with this series’ ideas.

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If you continue reading the series, please let us know if you still feel this way later. :eyes:

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I was about to say something like that :speak_no_evil:

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Hi everyone, I’ll be reading along with this book club too! I just noticed the club yesterday, so I read chapters 1 and 2 yesterday and then 3 and 4 today, so now I’m caught up. I’ve seen the anime, but it’s cool to read all the extra little details and thoughts that the anime skipped.

Some vocab I didn’t know, but I’m reading the digital version, so it was easy enough to look up. The grammar isn’t too complicated. I’m prepping for the N2 so this book is good reading comprehension practice.

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Finished this week’s reading! :laughing:

A couple of questions:

  1. What’s the difference between 台所, キッチン, and 炊事場?

  2. At the end of the chapter, Myne thinks:

……あ、もしかして、天才フラグが立ったんじゃない？ 十で神童、十五で才子、二十過ぎればただの人って感じになりそうだけど。

I’m guessing this is a phrase in Japanese, but is she implying that she was only able to work out the number system due to her knowledge from her previous life, and so Myne isn’t a genius, because as an adult, Urano was unremarkable?

And just some general thoughts:

Although Urano was obviously obsessed with reading, it just occurred to me that now that she’s Myne, it might not just be that she’s seeking comfort in a familiar habit - perhaps she’s seeking out books for information that she wouldn’t be able to obtain any other way without arousing suspicion. After all, realising that she’s in a new world, with the limited knowledge and memories of a child, it’s no surprise she’d want to find out as much as possible about what her new life will be like.

She has attempted to glean information from observation and exploration (though thwarted at every turn!). Asking others is a bit more precarious - Tuuli wouldn’t know much more than Myne, and her parents might not be the best source for anything other than the simplest observations (points “What’s that?"); they could brush her off, oversimplify or gloss over things because she’s a child (assuming they know the answers to her questions - she can’t judge their level of education, after all), but her curiosity may also cause them concern if she seems (suddenly) wise beyond her years.

Considering the vaguely Mediaeval European setting, I could easily imagine suspicion turning into fear, and people accusing her of being “devil-possessed” or a witch, leading to her unfortunate demise… Not that I’m expecting such things from this story! :rofl: But in a new world, you can’t be too careful - we see a little of this when Myne refrains from commenting on religion.

It’ll be interesting to see Myne’s journey considering where she’s starting from. From what we’ve learned so far, her family is ordinary, with no particular wealth or influence, and she herself is very young, with limited knowledge and resources. This world seems to have gender roles (Tuuli nursing Myne, the mother washing dishes and going to market, the father being a soldier), which may throw up more barriers if she wants to pursue an education. And then there’s the religion, which we haven’t learned anything about except for the fact it exists, but which could also introduce unexpected obstacles… :thinking:

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I’m almost done with this week’s reading (I read quite a bit today - I have to say, the pace is a bit fast for me but I’m doing my best to keep up!), but so far I’m enjoying it quite a bit, in particular chapter 4. I’ve read a lot of isekai manga/manwha so far, but never really a light novel, and I’m finding it really interesting and refreshing to see how the scenery is described by Myne - it’s as if I were discovering the new world together with her. Looking forward to next week as well.

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I’m guessing this is a phrase in Japanese, but is she implying that she was only able to work out the number system due to her knowledge from her previous life, and so Myne isn’t a genius, because as an adult, Urano was unremarkable?

The bit where she says フラグが立った was a bit of a reference to video games where certain options set you on a path for certain endings. In this case, picking up the numbers put her on a path for being perceived as the child prodigy, which would eventually progress into being perceived as being the “gifted kid”, and then eventually just a regular person(which is something that happens a lot irl too, as the initial advantage tapers off leading into adulthood).

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No guarantee for accuracy, but my understanding:

台所 = your normal, everyday private household kitchen
キッチン = can be used instead of 台所 and always for a restaurant kitchen
炊事場 = older term for 台所, giving the sense of a large kitchen meant to cook meals for a lot of people; nowadays it’s used for outdoor kitchens on camping sites, etc.

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I don’t think this scene gets much time in the anime, but in the manga it’s clearly a duvet/comforter:

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