Slayers - Volume 17 - Chapter SS

Bonus Translator/Editor Chat!

[Meg/ED]

Welcome to the rather unexpected beginning of part 3!

[Liz/TL]

We certainly started translating this series at just the right time, didn’t we?

[Meg/ED]

We did. And what a wild ride it’s been. This is a remarkable time for Slayers since, as we mentioned last time, the series is back after a break of almost two decades—but volume 17 is all that’s out so far of part 3. Meaning that, like everyone else, we’re waiting with bated breath to see what happens next.

[Liz/TL]

Bated breath and, if I might be honest, mild terror in my case—this is an author who likes his mystery reveals and callbacks, and this book came off pretty strongly as scene-setting for mysteries to come.

[Meg/ED]

It’s true! We no longer have the privilege of reading ahead.

[Liz/TL]

Yeah. It’s easy to say “just translate it faithfully,” and that’s obviously what we try to do, but English and Japanese are such different languages that if you don’t know a bit of foreshadowing is there it can be easy to steamroll it accidentally.

For instance, the scenes where Ran describes how the Dragon Lord spell works, or where it came from, or what her homeland is like... As I’m translating, I’m trying really carefully to pore over those lines and look for things that could be hiding ambiguities or double meanings, to keep the phrasing in those lines similar. But at the same time, we have to make sure her dialogue sounds natural and, more importantly, funny, because she’s a comedic character too. If I knew where the story was going I would know what to play up and what doesn’t matter so much, but doing it sight unseen is quite nerve-racking.

Not to mention the stuff with the outer world having its own linguistic distinctions. That stuff could be leading up to pretty much anything in the future, and there’d be no way to anticipate it. 

[Meg/ED]

Absolutely. I’m really glad you’ve mentioned this, because these novels should be effortless to read—but so, so much goes into making that happen. I can’t begin to tell you how many hours I’ve ruminated over seemingly simple word choices. And it’s one thing under normal circumstances, but we’re in a whole new world in this volume!

(Are we really just south of the barrier? Did we go back in time? Are we in space?! We just don’t know yet!)

[Liz/TL]

Yeah, we still know very little about the outer world. By the end of the volume it feels to me like most of the differences we see between the inner and outer lands could just be the result of the presence of the hostile Neosfeed faction, but it sorta takes the whole book to unravel that (if that even is the main factor). Personally I spent most of my initial read through speculating about what sorts of things we might see in this new setting, trying to figure out what it is about this world that might be different from the Slayers world as we know it.

[Meg/ED]

Ran is a big question for me too. That whole conversation about being suspicious is either going to be the biggest red herring in the history of this series or the biggest “I told you so” in the history of this series—and I’m on the fence about which.

[Liz/TL]

I’m extremely suspicious of Ran! Lina dismisses her self-accusation based on her belief at the time that “the enemy” is the Luzilte soldiers. But then it turns out those aren’t their main pursuers... and Lina never revisits the hypothesis after learning about Neosfeed. Which is the kind of unreliable narrator mistake that novel-Lina makes a fair amount! Also, Ran laughs like a villain! So that’s my tinfoil hat theory right now. Granted, I’m not sure if Kanzaka would try to pull, “main group member is a secret villain” twice in a row. She could also be a tweener, or exactly what she seems.

[Meg/ED]

I honestly can’t wait to find out. I spent a long time combing through the text for clues I might have missed, and I think just enough information has been withheld to make a call. But I’m sure we’ll look back on some part of this book after a couple of volumes and go, “Ah, so that was the critical detail!”

Or maybe I’m wrong and Kanzaka will pull the rug out from under us in an all-new way. Part 3 has taken some unusual turns already.

[Liz/TL]

When you think about it, we don’t even have our fourth party member—if we’re even getting a fourth party member.

[Meg/ED]

To come clean, I’m still hurting about Luke and Mileena, so I was actually hoping for a little more healing time with just Lina and Gourry. But I think Kanzaka knew readers might be feeling that way, so Ran being such a question mark is a fun twist

[Liz/TL]

I’m glad we got a whole chapter of just them, at least. From a pacing perspective it’s interesting that we don’t meet Ran right away. A full quarter of the book is just Lina and Gourry getting settled in in their new... home?

[Meg/ED]

The first chapter of this book has to be one of my favorite in the whole series. I laughed so hard at Nast, the poor bastard.

[Liz/TL]

Poor, evil bastard. He’s just trying to do his job!

[Meg/ED]

Did he really screw them over on purpose? Or was it just some kind of cosmic mix-up? So many questions...

[Liz/TL]

True. Lina clearly thinks it was intentional, but if there’s one thing we’ve learned from these books it’s that we can’t assume we know things just because Lina feels sure about them.

[Meg/ED]

She’s got a great intuition and a great head on her shoulders but she has, in fact, been wrong before.

[Liz/TL]

Lina being an unreliable narrator is definitely another thing that makes translating sight unseen a bit nerve-wracking. Plus, the mysterious nature of just about everything else in the story right now.

[Meg/ED]

There is a lot new and frightening for us here, but there’s also a lot that was just downright delightful to work on. I have to confess one of my favorite gags in the whole book was the bas(s) stop.

[Liz/TL]

I’m glad that joke came across. In case it’s not clear, the Japanese reading of the English words “bus” and “bass” are homophones. When Lina first brings up the map you’re supposed to think “bus stop?!” and assume the outer world has some kind of modern-day technology, but then it turns out they’re just fish... It’s a tricky pun to work around in translation, but I think we got a little bit of a fig leaf from the fact that Lina’s struggling to read their alphabet.

[Meg/ED]

It’s a fun joke for an even funner ride. The bass ferry is something I’d love to see animated. The whole thing is just an off-the-wall piece of world-building that is both amusing and helps cement the idea that we’re not in Kansas anymore.

[Liz/TL]

It’s very cute, and I like that it leads to a callback to the walking, talking fish of Lina’s world. They were a pretty common running joke in the anime but we sadly didn’t see too much of them in the novels.

[Meg/ED]

Speaking of fishy callbacks, I don’t think we’ve seen the “bite-at-every-cast” (proper name pending) spell since volume 1.

[Liz/TL]

Oh, yeah! Plus a little extra explanation of its origins. On that topic, we also got a couple fun “realism tangents” like explaining why it would be hard to get a world map, or concerns about not poisoning yourself while living off the land in an unknown part of the world. I like the genuine sense in this volume that Lina’s doing her best to remain confident and competent in the middle of a genuinely unknown and pretty hostile place.

[Meg/ED]

She’s melancholy in a way that we’ve never really seen before for moments of this volume, but she’s plucky enough to pick herself up—even if it’s with Gourry’s help. Or maybe even for Gourry’s sake this time. It’s very endearing.

[Liz/TL]

Yeah, it makes me excited (despite also being terrified) to see what kind of moods and modes could be coming up. Even though we moved through the earlier novels very quickly, they also all had quite different tones from each other.

[Meg/ED]

Without a doubt. Slayers has always been a fun push and pull between the silly and the serious, and it’s kept that up so artfully that I’m dying to know where we go from here. Maybe it’s too sappy to sign off this way since this is the last volume we have our hands on (FOR NOW!), but this truly has been a wonderful and wild ride. For everyone out there who’s waiting for volume 18, believe us when we say we’re right there with you.

[Liz/TL]

Yeah, for the moment there’s no sign of volume 18 coming out any time soon, so who knows when we’ll meet again? Hopefully not too far in the future!

[Meg/ED]

Here’s to the long road [home] ahead of us!