Nice to see episode 4 at last, I'd started to give up hope of seeing any more of this series!

The scene in the restaurant was pure comedy gold!

And is it me, or did Shinji come across as a complete wuss? Always apologising.

The thing is that he reminds me of a friend of mine. Their personalities seem to match perfectly. Just the kind of guy to accidentally spill hot steaming coffee over you (which I lost count of -_-).
Honestly, I expected him to break up with Hiro because I thought he doesn't feel "up to par" with her.

@tun--considering that we are working on this project together, we have never spoken once. Thanks for all your hard work. m(_ _)m

And I was giggling madly at episode 5 too. Definitely my favorite episode so far.

Sub of ep 5 is out I see. Now I know what I'll be doing this evening. Thank you very much and keep on subbing one of the best shows of 2006! :)

I'd love to watch it, but the tracker says my one-week-old version of Azureus (2.5.0.4) is banned! I sent a note to Arienai through their web page. I hope they fix this soon.

one week old, eh? lemme check it out (if I can...)

Edit: That's quite strange... The client ban list only includes Azureus 2.0 and 2.1... Anything more recent should be fine. Do you have your client set up to report itself as an old version or something?

Edit 2: Yes, I removed the bans for Azureus 2.0 and 2.1.... the numbers of people actually using those clients must be around zero by now, I doubt it'll be a problem. Perhaps it's a bug in the new Azureus version where it is reporting the wrong version number?

I don't know whether you did something, Quarkboy, but it's working now.

I am running the stock Azureus from SourceForge, but I made one change to my configuration before retrying. I recently tried installing the SpeedScheduler plugin for Azureus (that lets you control your upload/download speeds by time of day), but it would not install correctly. When I was banned, the nonfunctional plugin was still in my configuration. I removed it and restarted Azureus and connected to the tracker. Perhaps it was something weird about that plugin, or maybe you fixed the problem?

BTW, I've been meaning for a while to thank you for your informative contributions to the Noein thread! It's been a few decades now since I took physics, though as a teenager I was quite interested in quantum theory. Just recently, I read another reference to Copenhagen vs. many-worlds theories which you might find amusing!

Episode six's translation will be completed tomorrow folks, so don't worry, you won't be waiting long.

(And seven should be finished by Monday, if a certain someone keeps to her word...)

But reading the latest chapter in this week's "Morning" did wonders for my motivation! It got really juicy!

--and I can't wait to see reactions to episode 5!!

Episode 05 was pure love - a very different episode compared to the rest.

I feel that the movement of the episode was what made it stand out more compared to the already four episodes that i've seen. Still loving it all in a whole, though i really wouldn't mind another episode like this - so ordering the DVD's. & i really wouldn't mind having a chance to read 54. :3

I'm really in-need to track down the manga - a Hataraki Man manga avatar is needed for me~

& seriously, i love Sugawara, he's the type of character that you need at every workplace.

I can't do anything without you, so thanks to you as well. ;)

Episode 5 is great and I am so glad Arienai are working still on this project.

You know, the goal described on that piece of paper was almost surprisingly modest for Hiroko. :heh:
The fangirl outbursts of Nagisa made me think a bit what would I do if I had a chance to be the editor of my favourite author. I hope I wouldn't behave so silly. ;)
And Hiroko sure got lucky Natsume-sensei did not get offended by her bluntness.

Thanks to Arienai for still doing Hataraki Man. It's a very good and enjoyable show, and luckily it doesn't leave us hanging every week, or I'd die from sheer impatience alone.

Anyways, I'd like to ask where are the insert songs for 4 and 5 from? Sounds like Spitz or Suga Shikao to me.

Can someone (mippa?) tell me what happened in the bar scene in episode 5? What turned off the guys who were stalking Hiro and her friend? I assume from the use of quotation marks in the sub that the words "mature" and "train" probably had another (sexual?) context. Did those guys infer some sort of lesbian relationship between the two women, some kind of S&M thing, or something else similarly unpalatable to them?

Oh, and rather than another post, let me add to this one that, Guys in their fifties are definitely not "geezers." This isn't a comment about the translators (what a great job Arienai is doing, BTW), more a comment about the mindset that Hiro and others in her generation seem to share. Ask me again about this when I'm 80; maybe at that age I'll be more willing to accept being termed a geezer (though I hope not).

I'd also like to know what the title JIDAI means, if anything. We now know that it's a men's magazine, though I suppose the cover art would have suggested that, but what kind of men's magazine? It's also a bit surprising to me that the magazine's cover and binding suggests it's read from "front" to "back" (in Western terms) unlike books and manga. The scene where the magazine is next to Nagisa's copy of Natsume's book makes this especially clear.

As the person who ended up doing the final "cut" of that scene, let me tell you it was extremely hard to translate well. Essentially the men mistook Hiro and her friend's discussion on taking care of Natsume-sensei's new work for them "training" their men. Yes, it definitely was supposed to have an S&M connotation (at least that's the innuendo I went for). There's more social subcontext too that seems appropriate to comment on. When 2 pretty girls are chatting at a bar, it could definitely be that they are trolling the scene for a couple of guys like the two in the background. But when they overhear the girls speaking in such a position of authority (taking care of something, being in charge, etc...), they realize that they are career women and not the image of the classical japanese woman who is subservient. You can also interpret it as Hiro and her friend purposefully projecting that image to make sure they don't get any unwanted advances.

Yeah, although it should be pointed out that "oyaji" is not as harsh as "geezer" sounds in english. It's a word that doesn't really have a social equivalent in english, and "geezer" does convey approximately the right tone of condescension. "Old man" is too neutral and not as accurate on the age range. "Pops" works well in some contexts, but it only can be used in a more familial role (or diners :) ). It's just a hard thing to do naturally, I'm afraid.

According to my dictionary, JIDAI could be written two different ways in Kanji (commonly):
時代: Period, epoch, era
次代: the next era

So, an appropriate translation of the title would be something like "The Times".

As an aside, the concept of "Weekly JIDAI" could use some explanation maybe. A lot of magazines in Japan have both monthly and weekly editions. Lots of manga magazines work this way too (like weekly JUMP and the monthly JUMP). In fact, during the shot in the opening scrolling by a bunch of magazines (most of which are send-ups of actual Japanese magazines), there's a cover of "monthly JIDAI", which implies that there's a second monthly version of JIDAI too...

As for the content of JIDAI itself, I think it's something like a comination of "Time" and "US weekly". Celebrity news (including celebrity sports players), fad diets, fashion spreads, serialized novels, investigative journalism, sex tips, etc...

I would have been translating the plethora of text on the magazine covers that are shown everywhere, but it's quite irrelavent to the show itself and would just end up defacing the animation prohibitively. I might posts some photoshopped screen shots after episode 11 or something for a lark. They tend to be things like "35 reasons to dump him! When to know to let him loose!" or "The new skin treatment that's sweeping the nation!" or "Giant breasts are in! How best to show of that bust!" (I'm not kidding about that last one... if I'm remembering correctly). Anyway, it's pointless magazine cover drivel :).

As for the reading direction, that just means that the japanese text is printed horizontally instead of vertically. Many newspapers are printed this way an it's getting more and more common for publications to switch to the western style. Manga is a whole different issue, though, as it's a lot harder to switch your direction of thinking for art than just text.

I thought there was a lot more going on in this scene than "met the ear" of this gaijin.

I didn't take offense; my reaction was meant more in jest than anything else. I understand that other languages often include words with no real equivalent in English.

Are these the subjects on the JIDAI covers, or on the other magazines? These don't sound like the topics that a magazine that supposedly appeals primarily to men would cover.

Thanks so much for these informative comments, Quarkboy! I recall another comment earlier in this thread about the difficulty of translating some of the material in this show. Every time one of you talks about your work on this show, I'm impressed with your dedication to the content.

Well, there's a mix, and those are the ones I remember :). I'm not too sure myself, actually. Many of the cover titles seem to be directed towards women. About 50%, maybe... I haven't really counted. I believe it's one of those things where some of the articles might be "for women" sometimes, but due to the photo-spreads it attracts a primarily male readership. There are also titles about the hottest new stars and other kind of things, so...

Just a heads up that episode 6 has completed translation and should be out this next week. <3

Does Hiro ever smile?

I just scanned all five subbed episodes of Hataraki Man in an attempt to find a good shot of Hiro smiling for my avatar. The best I could come up with is the teeny smile that appears in the cell phone picture (she's talking to Shinji). I didn't really see anything that might be called a grin, much less a full-blown smile.

One of the prettiest shots of Hiro is around 9:00 in episode four when she looks out her window, and we see her reflection in the glass. Not smiling there, though, either.

Aha, page 96 of volume 2, a smile! (scanning through manga is easier then scanning through anime!).

It corresponds to 3:46 in episode 9, although the smile in the anime is a lot more subtle than the one in the manga. It's right after Hiro's friend does a self-mamogram in the gym locker room. (I'm not kidding).

Hmm, I found 1 or two other "smiles", but they're all nervous grins (i.e. come with sweat drops).