The Translation of Haruhi Suzumiya (Novel Translation Thread)

[dkellis]

Originally Posted by PastPrime

I had a thought.

Spoiler:

We have seen SB's group try to kill someone who was required for her future and Mikuru big used Kyon to save him. What would she do if SB's group tried to save someone who's death was required for her future.

Another thought sparked from this:

Spoiler:

It's unlikely that Kyon would just meekly go along with something as weighty as murder without a very good reason. Which would suggest that for cases like this, it may be likely that the time travellers have a different procedure, rather than rely on a high school student.

In fact, it's kind of odd that various important events essential for the future are left in the hands of a normal person, who doesn't even have any real obligation to carry them out. I wonder what the backup plans look like.

[PastPrime]

Originally Posted by dkellis

Another thought sparked from this:

Spoiler:

It's unlikely that Kyon would just meekly go along with something as weighty as murder without a very good reason. Which would suggest that for cases like this, it may be likely that the time travellers have a different procedure, rather than rely on a high school student.

In fact, it's kind of odd that various important events essential for the future are left in the hands of a normal person, who doesn't even have any real obligation to carry them out. I wonder what the backup plans look like.

Spoiler:

It is possible that their backup plan sits in the corner of the clubroom reading. Which brings up another point. Yuki said that it might be possible for her entity and the other universal entity to comunicate through human speach. I wonder if, at some point, a representative of the other entity will show up and, along with Yuki, allow the two entities to communicate. And I don't really see anything that would prevent the members of the other group from getting close to Haruhi. What could the other SOS members do if she brought in the kidnapper and announced that they had a new member.

[Mirrinus]

Although, is it just me, or does Haruhi have absolutely no interest in recruiting new members anymore?

Spoiler:

She still hasn't tried to recruit Tsuruya as a full-time member yet. Granted, Tsuruya doesn't really want to be a full member just yet, but she hasn't told Haruhi about it. Come on, if Haruhi really was interested in recruiting, she should have picked Tsuruya long ago (I'm pretty certain she's not normal >.>). Or at least, she'd recruit another from among the countless other aliens/espers/time travelers running around her school, like Emiri Kimidori or another member of class I-9.

[myopius]

The way I see it, Haruhi "had" to recruit certain people--Kyon just because he's important to her, Yuki since she was already there, Mikuru as the mascot, Itsuki as the mysterious transfer student. They were appealing and at the time she had a need to attract people to the club. After that, however, I think she just has the idea that people should volunteer to join, and/or isn't the mindset of thinking "this is a person who should join" plus hasn't seen many more people who qualify as that.

Spoiler for Volume 7 (Intrigues):

The "anti-SOS" won't exist in the sense that it would be like an evil brigade, it will just consist of new characters from various factions that are being introduced in furtherment of Tanigawa's incredible plots. I can't imagine there could ever be an equivalent of Kyon--as I see it, the characters will probably always just Kyon, his unknowing friends and the unknowing Haruhi, and his fellow SOS Brigade conspirators and all their troublesome conspiracies.
From Editor in Chief (up to where it's translated now, at 75%):

Spoiler:

We see another of the Organization's fellow conspirators in the Student Council President, and Natago's alien coworker in the Student Council Secretary who we had a glimpse of way back when. It's not just about the Sneering Bastard and the Evil Organization girl.

Same with how Mori, the butler and the two brothers from the Organization played a major role in chapter 6 of Intrigues. The story's plot is branching out from just the SOS Brigade + Kyon's sister & friends + Tsuruya-as-just-an-unusual-senpai + Asahana-san (big) + time-traveling and sliding around to resolve various paranormal occurrences, into a story involving various characters and plots and unexpected twists that convey a much more heavy sense than "here we go again" (in fact, the typical "let's be concerned about Haruhi" storylines are not just less present arbitrarily, it's justified as Haruhi having "stabilized"). It's a general shift in the story, which allows us to focus on various characters, not just Haruhi (who is being developed a lot in recent chapters I've noticed, even if the major plot focus appears to be some other characters like Yuki or Mikuru) and their problems and allow both them and Kyon to mature in the face of different and difficult situations in a serious manner, rather than centering around creating a specific set of villains in a certain manner. That's IMO.

[Mirrinus]

That's a good point. When was the last time chronologically that Haruhi even did something major using her powers?

Spoiler:

The events of volume 2??? Wow, that feels like ages ago...

Disappearance was not caused by Haruhi. Snow Mountain was done by an outside force. Nothing terribly supernatural occurs in volumes 7 or 8 as of yet, at least none that can be attributed to Haruhi. Also, the last definite mention of closed space forming, according to Itsuki, was what, Boredom?

[myopius]

Yeah, that's definitely noteworthy... putting it in perspective,

Spoiler for Intrigues and all previous volumes:

Haruhi was detected to be at the center of a timequake, or an explosion of new data, and people were provided with and made aware of esper powers that existed to destroy the closed space created by her melancholy and the presence of one another, three years back. (At this time, she also made the decision that she would try to live a unique life so that her life would not be just another carbon copied existence.) Since then she has periodically created closed space from her melancholy which threatens to destroy the world, which Itsuki and his fellows have dealt with. It's also believed that since then her repressed subconscious desires have been able to affect the fabric of reality.

In other words, aside from the major events that took place 3 years back, since then up until she met Kyon her powers had just as far as we know consisted of what Itsuki instinctively knew them to be. Perhaps there had been some instances where they had observed her affecting the world, or maybe the espers just knew it instinctively and it wasn't verified until she (they assumed) formed the SOS Brigade to "find aliens, time travellers and espers and play with them"

However, from when she started her adventures with Kyon, her powers related to "closed space" were verified by her behavior up to and in the crisis where the world was almost completely destroy (last chapter of Melancholy), and after that the baseball tournament incident verified there were times she could still become so emotional that closed space would threaten the world (if Itsuki told the truth). Then, her powers of unconscious / repressed desires to affect reality were present in Endless Eight and the film incident, where in both cases she keenly desired an impossible situation so much it came to be (and troubled everyone...).

Since those initial incidents, which were related to scenarios that came to pass from the Haruhi's SOS Brigade Chief's whims, Haruhi has, in Itsuki's words, "changed" (or was it "changing"?). Charmed at First Sight LOVER, Day of Saggitarius, Where Did The Cat Go (as far as I've read), the Melancholy of Asahina Mikuru and the Disappearance weren't directly related to her (as a person), but Live a Live, Snow Mountain Syndrome and the Intrigues have revealed a lot about her character, I'd say.

Through these adventures I'd say she had plenty of opportunity to overreact and create a mess for the others to clean up, but, for instance in the the Intrigues, her "melancholy" was instead a matter of how she should present the chocolates to Kyon. Haruhi still picks the more unique path possible, but she tends to have more control over her subconscious emotions--this is what Itsuki considers a sign she may one day become any ordinary girl, I'd guess.

Haruhi's a complex person, but from what I can tell she just has to be kept from severe melancholy, which may create closed space to harm the world, and severe exuberance/carelessness, which causes her to affect reality subconsciously. She's seemed to stabilize, to come to some realization maybe, in her experiences, but it's not very obvious at first since she seems just as insane on the surface. IMO, her realization may just be that her friendship and the crazy experiences she has with her brigade members are enough to make her life enjoyable and enjoyably unique, so she doesn't need the supernatural--hence why she wanted to search for treasure just so she could have fun picnicking with friends and delivering chocolates, rather than requiring the presence of the treasure (which she in fact blatantly missed, despite it being actually there).

[Nemo_N]

I don't know if someone has brought this up, but the SOS dan site reflects changes related to Vol. 7.

Spoiler for Volume 7:

-The near bottom links (in japanese, with a 2 and a 3 at the begining) show the "plans" for White Day, and the "Mikuru's belated Valentine's Chocolate Draw" announcement.

-In the member section, Mikuru now appears as Vice-Vice-Chief.

-Kyon's and Itsuki's have links to images of the girls chocolates, but they are "gone".

-There is a hidden message in Kyon's section by Haruhi (highlight all to read), but I can't translate it properly. So do Taniguchi and Tsuruya.

-Another hidden link in Yuki's section, seems to have a message (I think is Mikuru's (Big) final note, but can't be sure)

-Arakawa, Mori and the Tamaru brothers section has "thank you" messages

I'm not sure if I'm missing something...

[GyroidFanatic]

Originally Posted by Nemo_N

Spoiler for Volume 7:

-Another hidden link in Yuki's section, seems to have a message (I think is Mikuru's (Big) final note, but can't be sure)

It is. You can change the file name to see the rest.

[myopius]

Shiratoriryuuko owned "Where did the Cat Go?" this week (it's complete, from 64% to 100%). http://baka-tsuki.net/project/index....uzumiya_Haruhi

Now all that's left are the two chapters of Volume 8, at 75% and 43% ... At this rate, everything may be completed by the time Volume 9 comes out (or not--they're doing this in their free time and will translate what they want when they want, of course).

[dkellis]

Spoiler for Minor Mikuru quote:

"That one is the one at two, and this is the one at three. The cat arrived at between two to three... or was it two thirty? Umm... mew mew."

Hee. So cute.

[quigonkenny]

Originally Posted by myopius

Shiratoriryuuko owned "Where did the Cat Go?" this week (it's complete, from 64% to 100%). http://baka-tsuki.net/project/index....uzumiya_Haruhi

Now all that's left are the two chapters of Volume 8, at 75% and 43% ... At this rate, everything may be completed by the time Volume 9 comes out (or not--they're doing this in their free time and will translate what they want when they want, of course).

That would be absolutely awesome, as those translators who understand Japanese would be able to jump right on it. Of course, I know a lot (if not most) of the translators translate from the Chinese translations, so there may still be some delay. Hopefully not a lot.

Maybe they can get A.F.K.'s Strato to help out on it, since he can translate Japanese and his translation site doesn't seem to be up anymore anyway.

[myopius]

It'd indeed be awesome (of course, like you said, it could be unreasonable, so we're not able to raise our expectation). I'll probably be having to avoid the massive spoilers (with a novel title like that, there will be, won't there?) until it's translated, since right now I hang out on IRC / visit sites where there are plenty of those. Oh, Strato's site is still up, since I last took a look yesterday--it's just had some technical difficulties.

[Ascaloth]

Originally Posted by Kyon

It looks like if I don't think of something, SOS Brigade will spawn an overseas division sooner or later. I hope that the situation then won't become totally uncontrollable- I say this to myself, in the depths of my ears, with my deficient language skills.

Too late, Kyon-kun.

[quigonkenny]

Originally Posted by Ascaloth

Too late, Kyon-kun.

Thought the exact same thing when I read that, and I'm sure the irony wasn't wasted on Bandai or KadoUSA, either.

[FatPianoBoy]

Originally Posted by quigonkenny

Thought the exact same thing when I read that, and I'm sure the irony wasn't wasted on Bandai or KadoUSA, either.

Or, y'know... maybe that's where they got the idea from

[ordnance11]

Spoiler:

I wonder is Koizumi an aficionado of Agatha Christie's work? Because the question of the murder mystery: When is a cat not there? When there are two of them! Straight out of Miss Marple!

I think I know a couple of the reasons why Haruhi has not recruited Tsuruya-san as a member of the SOS brigade. Tsuruya-san is Haruhi's equal. Remember, in Haruhi's world there can be only one.

[FatPianoBoy]

Originally Posted by ordnance11

Spoiler:

I think I know a couple of the reasons why Haruhi has not recruited Tsuruya-san as a member of the SOS brigade. Tsuruya-san is Haruhi's equal. Remember, in Haruhi's world there can be only one.

Spoiler:

I don't know about that, as Nagato would have detected that by now assuming you meant 'equal' in the way I understood it.
I've been thinking since Snow Mountain Syndrome that Tsuruya is actually that slider Kyon's been on the lookout for

[quigonkenny]

Originally Posted by FatPianoBoy

Spoiler:

I don't know about that, as Nagato would have detected that by now assuming you meant 'equal' in the way I understood it.
I've been thinking since Snow Mountain Syndrome that Tsuruya is actually that slider Kyon's been on the lookout for

Spoiler:

I think by "Haruhi's equal," ordnance11 means she's got a similar demeanor, and is a little..."off" like Haruhi is, not that she's got any l337 p0w3rzz.

As for her being a slider, I'm just not feeling it. There's too much tying her to this dimension, what with the strong ties to her ancestor and all, and complete lack of any kind of hints at her prospective supernaturality during Vol 7. Maybe if it was when she was really young or something, I could maybe see it, but I think as far as she knows at least, she's just the deceptively perceptive "cheery senpai." I personally don't think we're going to ever encounter a "slider" throughout the series. Rather, Kyon became a slider during the course of the series (Vol 4).

[PastPrime]

I was thinking about the Universal Cosmic Entity and a possibility came to me.

Spoiler for possible:

Yuki's Universal Data Entity is at an evolutionary dead end. All they did until Haruhi appeared was observe and, with the exception of creating Yuki and the other interfaces who function as broadband connections to this world, that is all they still do. What if the Universal Cosmic Entity, when they reached an evolutionary dead end, was not content to just observe and started experimenting to find a way around it. They could be resposible for human life and Haruhi could be the culmination of their experimentation and reasearch. If that was the case then they would probably have a back door built into the human mind that they could access to get data and exert some control. It wouldn't be a high speed connection, but billions of slow speed connections in parallel could transfer a lot of data. And, while they probably wouldn't activate the backdoor in the SOS Dan members for fear of affecting the experiment, they might very well activate it in people close to them, like Tsuruyu and Kyon's little sister.

[Archaic]

Originally Posted by quigonkenny

Spoiler:

I personally don't think we're going to ever encounter a "slider" throughout the series. Rather, Kyon became a slider during the course of the series (Vol 4).

Spoiler:

There's a slider in volume 9, apparently.