Here comes Usotsuki Lily chapter 14, with the start of volume 3! This was a very...interesting chapter to translate, mainly because, unlike before, Kojirou has a lot of speaking parts. He has a unique way of speaking that is likened to how samurai speak, and if you've watched or read
Rurouni Kenshin or some other samurai work, you'll probably be familiar with some of them at least.
In the past, Kojirou's speech was translated using archaic English words like "thou" or "thee", but this time around, it was time to standardize Kojirou's way of speaking so as to better express some of the nuances of his speech. Kojirou has three patterns he uses:
- "de gozaru": This is a more polite form of "desu", roughly meaning "it is". It is translated as "that it is", or something similar to that, and says it at the end of almost all of his sentences, so it can get kind of annoying, but you get an idea how polite he's being.
- "Sessha": He uses this pronoun to refer to himself, roughly meaning "this unworthy one" or "this humble one". It is translated as "this one", and this too is repeated a lot.
- "Ze yo": This is basically a short affirmation, and can be translated as "yeah" or "yep". He almost never says this, and carries less nuance, so it's not as important (or annoying) as the first two.
Usotsuki Lily ch. 14:
Mediafire,
Megaupload
Edit: Thought this might come up, but forgot to make a note. Page 14 has two white thought bubbles, but this is correct. The bottom of the page, where they say they can't think of anything, implies this.
