Translations commissioned by Noyma
RAW: https://e-hentai.org/g/3223961/7f1e35630f/

delightfully cheeky Kayoko

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Ever since the raw was posted, I've been both looking forward to and worrying about seeing this one translated. Kayoko the gentle, caring predator. She keenly watches her Sensei's hesitations. Whenever he considers escape routes, Kayoko steps forward and blocks them off. She knows he's gentle, she knows he won't push past her. She puts her empathy to use to make Sensei truly submit to her, heart and soul. It's terrific. He never stood a chance. But the whole thing is very subtle, and sometimes comes down to wordplay. That can be hard to carry across when translating.

This translation... It's alright, really solid in some areas, iffy in others, but never actually bad. You also put a lot of care into the editing, leveling things out, and generally improving the scan over the raw. I appreciate all the work you put into this. But I'm also a bit sad because we lost out on some of what makes this doujinshi so terrific.

Let's get into it a bit. This isn't meant to be a comprehensive review that points out everything that could be fixed up or anything like that. It's more a handful of deep dives into a handful of examples, explaining how fixing some small translation issues changed the feel of the entire work.

I'll start with a simple example. On page 25, Sensei's says "ちょっと休憩させて......" It's translated here as "We should take a break. Okay-?" This isn't a bad translation, exactly, but Sensei's actually saying something closer to "Let me have a break." It subtly changes the scene: In English, it feels like Kayoko is sex hungry and doesn't want a break. In Japanese, it's a little more sinister. Kayoko won't let Sensei take a break, even after he asks. Why is this? There are a couple of interpretations. One is that Kayoko is sooo sex hungry, she doesn't care what Sensei thinks. However, I don't think that's it. She's very attentive to Sensei. Kayoko knows he still has plenty of energy, even if he doesn't realize it. And she's not some cutesy girl being unintentionally seductive—she knows exactly where to push to break down those walls, make him lose control, and keep on ravishing her. That's why Sensei gets so aggressive on the next page. And that fits in with the broader story too—it's not a story of Kayoko fulfilling her lust, it's a story of Kayoko getting Sensei to submit to her, fully and completely, until his mind is filled with nothing but her. (Which gets to the chuudoku part of the title.) This isn't the only case where we miss out on Kayoko the empathetic and caring predator, but it is one of the biggest.

Okay, now let's look at pages 11 and 12 for a slightly different case. I think this is a good example of where this translation is both solid and where it falls short. The English dialogue transitions from Sensei saying "They're visible" to Kayoko eventually saying "I'm showing them. Showing them to you." You took the care to get the meaning across, plus you even changed the structure a bit in a positive way. It's a key scene, so having Kayoko emphasizing her words with repetition, and especially ending it with the "to you" part, really drives it home. Sure, that dialogue's different in the Japanese version, but you translated the much more important thing: the emotion. Kudos for this, it's easy to get overly focused on giving a more literal translation.

That said, there is still a weakness here. In the Japanese version, Kayoko's still saying she's showing him, but she's also directly turning Sensei's words back on to him by turning his phrase from "見えてる" to "見せてる". We can't do anything as succinct and effective (English just doesn't work that way), but maybe we can retain a bit of it. For the translation, a simple, one word tweak will help a lot: changing Sensei's translated phrase from "They're visible" to "They're showing." After that, Kayoko can twist the word 'showing' back on Sensei: "They're not showing. I'm showing them. Showing them to you.'" You could even take this and tweak it a bit more: "It's not 'they're showing'. It's 'I'm showing them'. Showing you, Seeensei." I tried to bring the sentence structure closer to the original while also keeping the nice repetition. Again, none of these work as well as it did in Japanese, but it lets English-only readers see how Kayoko is turning both Sensei's words and his intentions back on him.

Final one I'll briefly mention is the title, which is honestly really hard to fix up nicely. The translation here, "For Pats and Kisses", gets across the なでなでちゅー part of it nicely, but it's a shame to miss out on the entire last part of the title, the ちゅーどく. I think Kayoko's addicted to Sensei, but there's also that sense of poisoning him with desire, another meaning to 中毒 that gets the mood across. But what's the right word to use? 'Intoxicating'? Which could lead to a title like 'Intoxicating Pats and Kisses'? 'Your Intoxicating Caress'? I don't know. This one's really hard. Titles suck to translate. I wish I could offer more here.

Anyway, again this isn't meant to be super comprehensive, more just a deep dive into a few issues. There are a number of little things like what I've listed, mostly minor translation errors that end up changing the mood. I think fixing this kind of stuff would take this decent, sometimes flawed, sometimes solid translation and turn it into an all-around great one.

Thanks again for translating this.

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@AlephFish
Thanks for the great amount of feedback! I really appreciate. I'd say I rarely get these, but I legitimately don't think I've ever actually gotten one before. I really appreciate the compliments on the editing and the few libierties I took with the dialogue.
Kayoko's interpretation as herself being addicted to sensei hadn't crossed my mind, only the real surface level that she's somewhat coy and playful but not overbearing, tugging at him to make a move. Perhaps many dialogue choices would've been different if I had. I'll be completely honest, my knowledge on Blue Archive is superficial at best, having had to google up names and terms at most. Maybe a deeper understanding would've made for a better end result.
The thought of どく as poison did cross my mind at first, but as I saw no Kanji I brushed it off as a coincidence, as "For pats and kisses" seemed good enough of a title at the time.
I don't mean to take any of your time but if you'd like to get in contact to change the translation for the better, I'd be more than happy to do so. My contact info is on the credits page.

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