Dakara Miyoko desu ch65-66 (end)

DL
84/365

That's all folks. Get your tissues ready, because things are going to get a little emotional.

I also wrote down my thoughts about the series in general, so if you're interested in a long-winded self-centered essay, you can check it out after the jump, haha.

When I decided to translate this series, I was only looking for a series with short chapters so that I could make daily releases more easily. While I at least knew who Munko was (mostly through Raika Days), I didn't even read ahead before I started translating Miyoko, so it turned out to be a very pleasant surprise.

That being said, actually translating it wasn’t as easy as I expected. Every single chapter seemed to throw in some new cultural reference that I had to wrestle with, and since I was translating day to day (and always doing the typesetting at the same time as the translation), my style was all over the place. Sometimes I’d localize things, sometimes I’d put a translation note, sometimes I would leave things as is and hope that the readers either already knew something or would look it up. The use of oneesan was a particularly troublesome point that I didn’t deal with very well, because kids would call Miyoko that to mean “young lady older than me,” rather than older sister. In third person “lady” was good enough (if a little brusque), but in first person (like the “Dear Oneesan” line in the jellyfish chapter, which was the first appearance) I had to acquiesce. While I struggled a lot, I can definitely say that translating this series helped me improve as a translator, and I haven’t even mentioned how much my cleaning and typesetting improved.

This series also holds a lot of significance for me because it's the first "long" scanlation project that I've ever finished. The idea of doing daily releases for a whole year came about because I had spent a majority of last year doing almost no translation, and basically just wasting my free time on nothing of value. Completing an entire series all by myself feels like such an accomplishment, and I'm proud that I was able to learn a lot and improve my skills in the process. The fact that so many people enjoyed the series (probably even more than I did) is the cherry on top.

Finally, I’d like to thank everyone who read the series, and to everyone who made comments on the blog and on MangaDex and other aggregate sites. While I’m currently translating for my own personal enrichment, I’ll admit that I followed the reactions to the series pretty closely, and the positive comments would cheer me up whenever I was feeling down or lacking motivation. I’ll be translating more of Munko’s works in the future, so I hope that you will continue to follow along as the year goes on. While Miyoko’s story ends here, I guarantee that this isn’t the last you’ll be seeing of her: as long as Munko is writing manga about Hanamaru Town, she’ll be sure to show up in the occasional cameo and crossover.