[JP][WN][PDF] Omake no Tensei-sha

[Ted Crilly]

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I'm curious, what do you think of this translation: https://galaxytranslations97.com/manga/the-reincarnated-extra/ ?@ curlyplanet - Good question that. I noticed it a while back but haven't had chance to read it properly so I can't offer any firm opinion on it yet. And an opinion that would be as dumb & irrelevant as anyone else who only has a token understanding of Japanese at best. But based on reading a few select chapters, my D&I opinion is...

I have definite concerns about the insane pace at which chapters are being posted. This person has so far released 207 chapters in 3 weeks, and even for edited MTL, which it is, that's still an improbable pace given how long the chapters of this novel are. A good MTL edit takes time, and even compared to the release rates for good MTL editing groups, 10 chapters a day is clearly abnormal. Heck that's even abnormal for the pure trash MTL editors like kuro-kun. Plus this new MTL editor has been releasing chapters for two other novels during this period as well, and that sort of release rate usually means there's some automation going on, and "automating" the translation process is often just another way of saying "producing some shit".

But then GalaxyTL are probably the biggest group these days, meaning they might have access to all sort of tools. And when it comes down to it the final product is what ultimately matters, and an experienced MTL editor using the best available tools, and with no real life job getting in the way of things, might well be able to churn out 10 chapters of decently edited MTL across three novels per day. Even if one or more of the novels have long chapters.

And from the select few chapters I've read it is readable. I think it's a bit rough and awkwardly worded in places, and probably too many places, but it is readable. And even though it reads a lot worse than the unedited ChapGPT (c92-118), it's undoubtedly more trustworthy because the unedited ChaptGPT skipped huge chunks of the source entirely, and regularly abridged the shit out of the details and descriptions. More readable only means better if what you're reading is a full translation of the source. If it not then it doesn't matter how readable it is, it's worthless. So I think you can probably read it with confidence, unlike the ChatGPT. I think it's probably the same standard as all but one of the other MTL edits this novel has seen (c58-91, which was the best of the MTL editors to date). Although I really haven't read enough chapters to have any conviction in that latter statement.

But it's impossible not to notice and mention the giant fucking elephant sized fucking elephant in the fucking room. "Extra-sama". What possessed them to change Omake-same to Extra-sama I don't know, but it's terrible, and in the context of its usage in this story it's one of those words you should use the romaji for. Which is exactly what the only translator this novel has seen did (c1-30). It's only one thing, but this one thing definitely put a huge dent in my confidence of this person's ability to produce a good MTL edit of this novel because I can't help but see it as an indication of how much they care about this novel, and with it how much they care about putting time and effort into doing a good MTL edit of it. It's not just one thing, though. It's one thing on top of the insane speed that points towards automation, and that doesn't promote any confidence either.


Anyways, enough of my D&I opinion, and regarding me posting more volumes using this new offering for those who might ask. Not sure yet, but I probably will.

A mass fucking word replace can fucking take fucking care of the giant fucking elephant, and from the little I've read of it this MTL edit is no worse than some of the other MTL edits I've already used in the volumes I've posted. Plus if I want to keep reading this novel than I'll have to clean it up for myself anyway. So unless I drop it due to my opinion doing a sudden 180, another translation unexpectedly appears, it gets licensed by a Japanese publisher, or I miraculously find a ton of free time and motivation to continue with my own excruciatingly slow MTL edit, then I'll be using it to make a pdf for myself. And if I do that then I don't see why I wouldn't post it here as well like I did before.

Not sure on the when, though. I burnt out on reading a few weeks back so need the reading bug to return first. Which it will, just not sure when.

[curlyplanet]

Thank you for your feedback

It's actually a friend's translation, but I wanted an honest opinion so I didn't say it. For the past year and a half I've been concentrating on fully automatic translation of WNs, especially with the latest LLMs to make MTLs more readable, but enough about me:

The translator, Goldkoron, advised me to read this series a year ago and I liked it a lot, he then decided to translate the series in view of the numerous translations which were pretty bad and not with much consistency between the different translations.

I've had many experiences with the different LLMs and Claude 3 (What Goldkoron uses) is undeniably the best. My friend and I really like this Webnovel and Gold edits the chapters and is very careful to have the vocabulary words specific to the series, as for the choice of Extra, it was really quite a hard decision, honestly I find that both choices are equal.

He does everything to get the best translation possible, although he's rather new to editing, but I really think the translation is very good, even if I'm biased.

[Ted Crilly]

@ curlyplanet - The number of different translators, and the inconsistency it's caused, has certainly been a problem with this novel so far. So at least in that regard it's good to have a single translation on offer from chapter 1.

Although I find it hard to believe your friend "does everything to get the best translation possible" because it's a very bold claim, plus it's mutually exclusive with daily mass chapter releases. This novel has long chapters, and I know from having MTL edited some myself, and when I've been doing "everything to get the best translation", meaning putting every single line through multiple translation tools, each chapter will take several hours to get the "best (MTL edited) translation possible". So there's literally not enough hours in the day to get 10 chapters done to that standard. Maybe "best translation possible given the time constraints of keeping to an insane release schedule", but "best (MTL edited) translation possible", sorry, I'll have to press X to doubt on that claim.

"Best (MTL edited) translation possible" for a novel with chapters this long means 5+ hours per chapter, and certainly not relying on a single translation tool, or assuming it's providing the best translation on offer at all times. As some will certainly be better than others in deriving the most accurate translation from any given passage of text. And then it's the editor's job to ensure consistency across the variety of outputs with their editing skills, and using their knowledge of the story and the author's writing style, which the translation tool will have no knowledge or understanding of. But if you're only using a single tool throughout, and if you don't know any Japanese, then where does your quality control come in? What are you doing to check the translated output? How do you know the AI didn't derp out and get something wrong? You unquestionably have more knowledge and experience with LLMs and AIs than I do, given mine is fairly limited to say the least. But if you say that Claude 3, or any AI or translation tool for that matter, is incapable of making even one single translation mistake. And a mistake that no other translation tool on offer could detect and highlight, then I'd be pressing the X button so hard I'd likely break it.

And as for the Extra vs Omake. Just consider how that'd look when writing it in 3rd person, so without the sama honorific.

"Emi sat on the floor, chomping on a snake, while Omake considered their next course of action".
"Emi sat on the floor, chomping on a snake, while Extra considered their next course of action".

Extra-sama might seem okay, but once you remove the honorific it has some problems. It's your friends choice of course, and nothing to do with me. But to me, I can't see any angle from which Extra is to be preferred over Omake. And it's not a hard decision either.

[Ozmadeus99]

Its ok for me as long as its 70% accurate and readable, the rest I can just dechiper the true meaning. On that note your friend's translation is still passable, at least for me. Although at least you should spend a little bit of time to tidy up the pages and one think I don't like is calling Omake-sama to Extra-sama, yeah I know its the same but Omake still sound like a real name

[Ted Crilly]

Wonder if my concerns above had anything to do with the recent editor's message? And that person thinking that if I am worried about the speed and its effect on the quality, then others likely are as well.



Slowing down is good if it means checking Claude 3's translation with other tools to find any errors, and slowing down will give the impression that more time and effort is being put into quality controlling each chapter, but whether or not it actually will is another matter entirely. Of course it could be exactly for the reason stated, and it's just a coincidence it's appeared so soon after my above posts. This could have been posted any time over the past month, though, but it's appeared a day or two later. Hell of a coincidence that.

And after reflecting on my short conversation above, and learning that this new translation is probably unedited Claude 3, I now have even less confidence in it than I did before it. Which wasn't a great deal to begin with due to the speed and the multiple simultaneous translations this editor is doing. So guess I might be back to plan R now and relying on my own crippled snail paced MTL edit to read this novel. As right now that seems to be the only option to ensure that what I'm reading is an MTL edit that has had proper human involvement, and from someone who cares about the story enough not to make stupid changes like replacing Omake with Extra. Which you only do if you don't care about the story, and only care about obeying what your AI master decided to do.

Emi-chan you really are a cursed child. In your world, the world you got transported to, and in this real world as well. Cursed to never be picked up by a publisher, and cursed to never find an actual translator to tell your story. Damn it Emi-chan, can you stop being so cursed for just 5 minutes. Please!

[curlyplanet]

It's complicated to create an account on this site, so I'm posting his message here :

Hi! I am the current translator of this series from Galaxy Translations. I am happy there are others who are as enthusiastic about this series as I am. There's a lot to unpack here in this thread so I thought I would address each thing one by one.

Before going into my translation, I do want to say that the previous inconsistency of translators was simply... not good. The very first translator and the 4th translator (58-91) put the most effort though.

Originally I was going to continue the translation for the 5th translator but after I took a closer look at his translated chapters I was appalled by how much content was skipped and how careless he was. This is a reason I posted on Galaxy Translations instead of Luminary Novels (the owner of Luminary was doing those chapters after 91). It looks like Ted already noticed that many of the chapters were extremely abridged/shortened, one notable example is chapter 99 had only about 40% of the word count it should have been, A LOT was skipped.

Now to talk about my translation. I am machine translating with AI but that doesn't mean I am doing things blindly. I studied Japanese for a couple years and I know enough that I can read web novels slowly as long as I look up words I don't know. I have previously read オマケの転生者 up to chapter 351 before I burned out on it for a little while, so I had some foreknowledge of the story before going into my translation.

Another thing, I am literally and factually autistic, when things become my hyperfocus I spend a massive amount of time and care on it. For the past couple months I have been dedicating 8-10 hours a day to translating because I do not currently have a job.

Regarding the "giant fucking elephant sized fucking elephant in the fucking room" decision to translate オマケ(omake) to "Extra". I decided this because the author has a theme going where multiple times in the story Emi herself has also been referred to as an "omake" and I felt like I either needed to remind the readers several times with TL notes that "omake" means bonus or extra and not just a name, or just translate it entirely to a word like "Extra". If you think about it from the context of a native Japanese reader, omake does not sound like a name either. One can argue that お負け being changed to katakana オマケ makes it look more like a name in Japanese. However, I think capitalizing the E in Extra has a similar effect of making it look more like a name.
I am also not entirely satisfied with this solution and I have racked my brain multiple times over whether I should reverse that decision and change it all to "Omake", but I feel like it's working comfortably in the context already and I have kind of gotten used to it. Anyone is welcome to mass word replace "Extra" to "Omake" if they want to though, it's entirely just a translator decision that I went with here.

Another weird translation decision people might nitpick is that I am preserving Japanese honorifics a lot of the time like "sama, chan, san, kun" etc. That's just another personal decision where I am comfortable with the original honorifics and I feel it makes the story awkward a lot of the time when I try to force English words on a Japanese cultural thing.

Anyway, regarding the speed of my translation, as I already mentioned I have read this story once before so that helps me significantly to begin with. My translation workflow is I feed the raw Japanese chapter into both an AI model and google translate. Afterwards I cross check the AI's translation with google translate to ensure word count is within a tolerable range. I then compare both versions (AI and google translate) as I read the whole chapter and edit as I go. Whenever something seems off in the AI's translation, I then look at the raw Japanese and the google translate version and make decisions based on that. A lot of things I am correcting are stuff like onomatopoeia and name spellings.

Regarding name consistency. I have an extensive list of named characters, locations, creature names, etc which I use both for my own reference and I feed it into the AI to ensure names are consistent throughout all the chapters. This author has a habit of mentioning something in passing only once then over 100 chapters later mention the name again which I have run into multiple times and avoided an inconsistency in naming. Some notable examples are country names like Kingdom of Teenidys, Rayvlake Kingdom, Drogg company, Rassharn company, etc. (I know I say etc a lot.)

When I first started translating, I used chatgpt-4 with the paid subscription and with that I could keep up to 2-3 chapters back in context, and I fed it only parts of the chapters at a time to avoid any content getting skipped or condensed which can be extremely annoying with chatgpt. I think somewhere in the chapter 50s I switched to Claude 3 which was an enormous improvement as I could keep up to 20+ chapters back in context and it can translate entire chapters in a single message without condensing content most of the time. Of course as mentioned I am still crosschecking with google translate for every new chapter and checking the original Japanese for each confusing or awkward sentence.

While trying to minimize spoilers, Arc 10 of the story (chapters 144-164) involves a lot of the exact same descriptions and exact same dialogue appearing multiple times which I spent some effort ensuring was all consistent between chapters, however Claude 3 did catch most of it itself and I only had to double check its work.

For the paragraph separation, I am using the original separation from the source which can be awkward at times but I was deciding to respect the author's writing style. As for the line spacing itself... I really did not respect the wildly inconsistent line spacing and honestly thought it was some kind of website glitch so I purge it all before translating each chapter then separate the scene change gaps with "* * *" The original Japanese uses "◇　◇　◇" gaps which I am planning to mass replace back to later, I just went with the asterisks because it was more convenient for faster translating.

Another translation decision I made early on was skipping most of the miscellaneous author's notes at end of chapters if they didn't have any useful information and were just silly comments. I started including those in later chapters but I am still skipping the "I will post another chapter later today" type of messages.

I am not guaranteeing my translation is the best thing that can possibly be. That kind of work would go to a proper professional translator. But it's my commitment for the translation to be at least 99% accurate. As for the point that there is no way Claude 3 and other AIs can't make mistakes. Sure they make plenty of mistakes, but I am confident I catch most of them because I proofread everything. I think I want to revisit the earliest chapters at some point with a retranslation to improve formatting consistency with more recent chapters, but I still think they are way more accurate currently than the previous translations.

Readability and formatting is admittedly not the best and I would love it if anyone wanted to volunteer to edit chapters to improve this. I think it's mainly that original line spacing gaps from the author. Still I think my translation is better than the original translators or 90% of MTL translators in general as I have seen some horrific lack-of-care in the fan translating scene over these past few months. I am sure there are some mistakes scattered around but I am constantly editing past chapters when I do fix them.

If anyone has suggestions for improvements for my chapters going forward I am open to any advice. I am new to fan translating myself and only started doing it in January. I wrote all of this because I wanted to stress that I am REALLY passionate about this series and it's one of my favorite Japanese novels. I am spending $40/month out of my own pocket to use the best AI model (Claude 3 Opus 200k) for each chapter lately.

My rapid rate of translation is not because I am lazily automating anything but because I am highly enthusiastic about spreading a translation so that more people can properly experience and appreciate this story. I still feel awful that many people who read the previous translations will never have known how much content was skipped or how mistranslated some impactful scenes were like the master's final words in chapter 39. I even ensured some minor things like Emi's final words to Kamasse were the same which most MTL translators would have never caught.

[goldvyrn]

It took a few days but it looks like my account is finally verified. The above message is mine ^

If anyone has any questions about my translation let me know.

[Ozmadeus99]

Thanks for your translation https://galaxytranslations97.com/manga/the-reincarnated-extra/

Do you have any plan to create the pdf & epub? 12 arcs of 200+ chapters can be split into four parts or four volumes. Some of the arcs are actually very short and can be combined into one volume mixing with arcs with long chapters

[goldvyrn]

I don't have any experience with making .epubs, but I put together some volumes into PDFs. I couldn't decide on a good split for 4 volumes so I went with 3 volumes: Arcs 1-5 (V1), 6-9 (V2) and 10-12 (V3). These PDFs would be as of this current date though, I still make small changes or fixes every once in awhile to older chapters.

[Ozmadeus99]

Nice! Thanks for the upload

[Arcene]

I've made epubs for myself, I've included all the AI art I can find, and I've replaced Extra and Extra-sama with Omake-sama, let me know if I screwed anything up. V1-5 is too big so its here for now:

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https://mega.nz/file/O94HmQ5Y#L-lTbhQ9Y9pEmsz9JsnAyBIvVHwrnrzWPHqtI8JpJ4E
V13 might have some issues, I'll upload an improved version later

[goldvyrn]

Not sure why my first attempt at this comment didn't show up.

You might run into a few awkward points when replacing things to Omake-sama, notably these lines I remember:

Chapter 5
[
...After a moment of thought, "The Vessel" cheerfully burst out with a name.
"...Then, please call me 'Extra.'"
Eh? Is such a casual name really okay!?
"Ufufu, if you were to name me, 'Extra' is quite fitting. I am 'The Vessel,' a god's container created and then forgotten. You are the 'Reincarnated Extra' who will journey through reincarnation with me! Please take care of me for the long haul!"
Eeeeh?! It feels like I'm being treated as an extra too!?
]
EDIT: I just decided to update that sentence to [Eh? Does a name like that even fit!?]

Chapter 133
[
Author's note: Emi has appeared too, so the cast of characters is now assembled!
Well, strictly speaking, the cast was already assembled with just the hero's party and Deogandai.
Emi is simply an extra.
Truly, she is "The Reincarnated Extra."
]

As for the AI art, I had some fun trying to get them as accurate as possible to the descriptions in the novel, would love to work with a real artist to get things even more accurate. I worked with a real artist for the first one that I used as the cover for the novel, they helped me fix/redraw a whole bunch of issues in the original image. Not sure which arc to do next for making more.

[Arcene]

Yeah, I made them for myself, and I am too used to 'Omake-sama', I was actually in favour of the 'Extra' name change, since I think of Omake as meaning 'bonus' which has more positive connotations than it seemingly should.

I liked that joke in chapter 5, I left the word 'extra' in the places where it's lowercase (I think), please don't change things on our account, it just turned out a bit jarring for me so I did the replace since the files were ultimately for me. When I do an eventual reread I probably will keep it as Extra-sama.

Really enjoyed the AI art, hope you post more.

Hyped for Arc 14, this is one I'm looking forward to based on the chapter titles - that's one loose end I've been waiting for.

[Ted Crilly]

@ goldvyrn - Many thanks for the extensive explanation. It certainly clears up a lot of the questions and reservations I had about your translation because, and from admittedly only reading select chapters and not reading it in full, on the surface it had a lot of signs of being just another mass produced AI translation. The like of which several groups are now whacking out endlessly every day to populate their paywall models, GalaxyTL being one of them. And tbh the comments your friend left didn't do much in providing reassurance. The opposite if anything.

But your post has definitely done the job of providing that reassurance, particularly the part about how you're checking it because that was probably my biggest concern due to having read enough of the mass produced AI translations floating around to know they can, and do, screw things up. Such as the problems we both noticed with that ChatGPT translation, where it screwed up badly. So they can't be trusted to translate to the extent of there being no needed to check their output. Your explanation for why/how you are releasing chapters so quickly is just as helpful as well, given that fast isn't synonymous with quality for a reason.

We can agree to disagree on choice of Omake/Extra, although it's good to know it was a decision you made after giving it some thought, rather than only using Extra because the AI did. And honorifics will always get a thumbs up from me. I never like seeing the translations that remove them.

And totally get you with the author's line spacing because "honestly thought it was some kind of website glitch" was one of my first thoughts as well when trying to come up with an explanation for it. But after trying to remain faithful to it when I made my source file I started to understand what the author was aiming for, and as I posted about earlier in this thread he often uses it to simulate a long pause for dramatic effect. Which I actually think works well, providing you scroll read it and not page flip. But it's a pain to reproduce it faithfully while also trying to use some judgement in terms of reining in some of the author's more excessive spacing, which can be well over the top. And from your perspective of posting the translations if you did retain it then readers, and unaware the source is the author, would start thinking the GalaxyTL website was glitched.


One question I do have about something I noticed in one of the select few chapters I read. Why did you go with Baron Sarar? I can't recall seeing any MTL or AI give Sarar, with most giving Salah and less so Salar. And the original editor went for Salah, and it being the translator who put the most effort in out of the original collection this novel had. As you know choosing between Rs and Ls when translating Japanese can be tough, and while Baron Sarar might be okay, Sara Sarar doesn't seem like a good outcome, and not when compared to Sara Salah or Sara Salar.

[goldvyrn]

Regarding the Sarar thing, it's really just another thing I rolled with. Sarar and Salah, Sarah, Saraa all sound awkward in any case. But I agree Sarar might not be the best choice. I am thinking of changing it to either Salar or Salah. I feel like Salah doesn't feel right though because there's no other indication of Arabic style names elsewhere in that arc.

It's hard to know what name the author is going for sometimes. Even in most recent chapter I am dealing with weird names like カッピテットロン (Kappitetron).

EDIT: Chapters updated to 'Salar' now.