Veranda of Madoka Volume 3+Extras [Complete]

 

We leave you today with the links to the bonus pages and color chapter of the tank release of Volume 3 as well as a link to the complete compiled Volume 3, thus closing one more cycle. A long one that I'm not even 100% sure when it started...

I started working on Veranda long before I knew Japanese, and when things got dire I had to actually learn the language so this little series wouldn't be abandoned in the void. I'm aware there are things that could be translated better, but I know in my heart I tried my best, and I wasn't alone so I'm confident we can say goodbye to the meguca family with some degree of confidence that their story will be told.

And now, some words from our resident cumbia fan:

Hello everyone, buenos días a todos, this is the strange and often obnoxious "other" authorial voice of this blog.

This is the last chapter of Veranda. SGT has been working on Veranda in some capacity since long before I joined, possibly even before I knew Japanese(?) if our dear leader's memory as to the exact year can be trusted. This says more about our abysmally slow pace of translation (at least 8 years for 3 volumes) than the magnitude of the work, but it was nevertheless a long chapter in SGT's history. I was never the biggest fan of Veranda (sorry), but I mainly helped out of a sense of obligation to make sure the chapters didn't go out with any grievous translation errors or poor phrasing. I'm still not entirely satisfied with the state of the translation, but I doubt we'll be back for a round 2 (3 if we count the earlier chapters we already redid once). Complaints aside, it was still a nice thing to have worked on. It's hard not to attached to a series after working on it for so long. But now this chapter is over. I was reading The Allure of Nezahualcoyotl -- Pre-Hispanic History, Religion, and Nahua Poetics by Jongsoo Lee and came across this frankly hilarious passage from Fray Juan de Torquemada's colonial era chronicle of Nahua history (more on this book in our next blog post, and why the picture of Nezahualcoyotl Torquemada paints is not to be taken totally at face value), presented here in the author's English translation for those of our readers who cannot read Castillian, few though they may be:

After having eaten, he [Nezahualcoyotl] ordered his singers to come to celebrate the beginning and ending of the feast; and, as he was a man of good prudence and much and deep consideration and seeing so many kings, nobles, and valiant captains together, he wanted all the attendees to understand that the things of this life end and to be moved by this consideration so that they would use them like the census. And he ordered his singers to sing a song that he himself had composed and began like this: xochitl mamani in huehuetitlan, etc., which means: “among the trees and junipers, there are fresh and fragrant flowers,” and continuing ahead, it says that although for some time they are fresh and bright, they become ripe, they wither, and dry up. He went on to say that all the attendees would die and would not reign again; and that all their grandeur would have an end, and that their treasures would be possessed by others; and that they would not enjoy this again after leaving it. And those who had begun to eat with pleasure finished the feast with tears, hearing the words of the song and seeing that what he said was true.

We all have that one friend who just has to ruin the boys' night out. SGT is by no means dead now that Veranda is over, and we have at least one other big project in the works, but until then, I leave you with another poem from Nezahualcoyotl. Think on it and keep it in mind, dear Veranda reader.

We only rise from sleep,
We come only to dream,
it is not true, it is not true,
that we come on earth to live.
As an herb in springtime,
so is our nature.
Our hearts give birth, make sprout,
the flowers of our flesh.
Some open their corollas,
then they become dry. (Cantares 1985:f.14v, in León-Portilla
1992b:153)

Thanks to Candy as well for her help with the coloring pages! And as cumbia fan said, we already have a new project underway so the ride is far from over. It's not from Kirara Magica, but I think you will like it... or probably hate it. 

And now, it's time we say goodbye to Veranda. See ya and thanks for the memories!

 

 

MF

 

Extra pages

 

Veranda of Madoka 32 [FINAL]

 And here it is, the final chapter of Veranda... 

I don't really know how to feel. I've been working on this series for years, and now that it's finally done I guess I'm trying to avoid letting the sinking feeling of the passage of time get to me. 

At least I want to personally thank everyone that helped us get this series translated. From the earlier days of begging for translations in forums to the recent, very much appreciated, helping hands in increasing the quality of both the translation as well as the color pages (that so dearly needed an expert).

However, it's not the end-end of the series yet. We still have a bonus color chapter from the tank version that will go up soon together with the complete file for Volume 3, so it's not yet time to say goodbye to this meguca family.

So, enjoy the final (not final-final) chapter of Veranda of Madoka!

 

MF

Veranda of Madoka 31

Sorry for the delays, but finally chapter 31 is out!

Now for real, next chapter is the last one of the series but the volume release had a bonus color chapter, so it's not yet time to say goodbye.

We also have some things planned for our next project, we'll reveal more details at a later date. So for now, enjoy the chapter!

 

 

MF

Veranda of Madoka 30

 A new chapter is finally out! Better slow and steady than never, r-right?

This is the second to last chapter of the series, meaning that next one is the final chapter of Veranda. There's a bonus color chapter with the tank release, so once we do the full volume release it will be included there so look forward to it!

EDIT: Err, I miscounted and there's still 2 more chapters left, oopsie.

 

 

MF

Veranda of Madoka 29

KAITEN HAS A RELEASE... err, window! Hopefully we'll finish Veranda before it comes out, so please enjoy this new chapter.

 

MF

Veranda of Madoka 28

 And we come back with a new chapter! Not much to say this time because it's late so, enjoy!

EDIT: Fixed an oopsie in page 1, new links below.

 

MF

(Jam Kingdom) Requiem For Rebellion COMPLETE

 So, it's been a few months hasn't it? We had to put Veranda on hold for a bit as we had this work become a priority, so we redirected all our efforts to it.

Requiem from Rebellion is an original doujin by author Jam Ouji. It's been completed since 2018 and available on the author's Pixiv since 2018 (can't link it because... reasons).

As our esteemed translator mentions below, TFO originally worked on chapter 1 of this saga. However we decided to redo it for consistency and also do the remaining 3 chapters so this can finally be available online. Now Requiem for Rebellion is complete! 

TRIGGER WANING: This work contains scenes of GORE

MF

I leave you with a few words from our translator for this one, please enjoy both.

Hello again, buenos días a todos, it's your boy una estrella una luz tenue back at it again and worse than ever before, here with another release for you all. A few months ago it was revealed to me in a vision, in a dream, the existence of a most peculiar book, John Asher Dunn's A Tsimshian Proto-Indo-European Comparative Lexicon. The history of macrofamilies proposed for the indigenous languages of the Americas based on the most tenuous of evidence is a rich one indeed, but this one was on a completely different level. I immediately knew I needed to possess this book. Amazingly it was even for sale on amazon (only the second strangest amazon find I've come across in recent years, the first being both volumes of the Simoun novelization). It's apparently printed on demand by amazon based on the print date on my copy, so perhaps not that strange after all. In any case, my copy arrived and unfortunately friends, I don't think our boy John has convinced me we'll need to update the Indo-European family tree any time soon.

As one might expect from these kinds of proposals, no reconstruction of a proto-language is attempted, no systematic sound correspondences are given, the semantic links between proposed cognates are basically on the level of folk etymologies, and no attempt at explaining the vast grammatical difference between Tsimshianic and IE is given. Even the Altaic mandem at least had some kind of vague typological similarities to lend plausibility to their proposal. There are some "sound correspondences" given, which consist of a kind of many to many mapping between PIE phonemes and some sort of proposed pan-Tsimshianic phonological inventory? This brings us to our first problem: Dunn's comparative Tsimshian(ic) forms consist entirely of words from modern day Tsimshianic languages, mostly Coast Tsimshian, the language with which he is most familiar, and no attempt is made to reconstruct a proto-Tsimshianic or even proto-Maritime-Tsimshianic etymon with which to compare to the PIE etymons (Marie-Lucie Tarpent would cry if she saw this book). Although Dunn acknowledge the other Tsimshianic languages and sometimes provides forms in his comparative entries for comparison from them, the headwords and the forms used to compare with PIE are invariably from Coast Tsimshianic, and many entries lack forms in any other Tsimshianic languages. This is especially problematic as Coast Tsimshian in particular is known to be somewhat more innovative than the Interior languages (Nisgha'a and Gitxsan) especially with respect to its consonants, a fact which Dunn seems to acknowledge as well given the wide array of "Tsimshian" consonants which can apparently correspond to a given PIE consonant.

Dunn is also noncommittal about the exact reconstruction of PIE he bases his comparisons off of, citing reconstructed etymons from both Julius Pokorny and Calvert Watkins, which is kinda disappointing considering he could have gone with some version of the glottalic theory involving ejectives which would if nothing else provide neat, phonologically plausible correspondences with the Tsimshianic glottalized obstruent series. Instead, the glottalized series including resonants are seemingly not even acknowledged as phonemic by Dunn, with the Tsimshianic side of the many to many correspondence containing only the plain series. The glottalized series seem to be considered either non-phonemic or entirely transparently derivable from sequences of plain consonants and the glottal stop. While glottalization in Tsimshianic languages is in many cases somewhat "mobile" and transparently derived from a sequence of a plain consonant and glottal stop, and plain consonants do regularly alternate with their glottalized counterparts in parts of the morphology (e.g. deglottalization of C2 in Nisgha'a full reduplicative plural formation) the glottalized series are clearly synchronically phonemic in all modern Tsimshianic languages and can likely be reconstructed for proto-Tsimshianic (Tarpent, 1977). Worse yet and in typical fashion, Dunn doesn't even follow through with this non-phonemic analysis of the glottal series, and in most cases of headwords containing glottalized consonants, the requisite glottal stop from which the glottal feature is supposed to be derived seems to simply appear out of thin air.

There's also no real systematic attempt at linking the PIE and Tsimshianic vowel inventories at all, although Dunn does vaguely propose that the PIE laryngeal series colors surrounding vowels and directs the reader to a paper published only 2 years before his passing in which he purports to outline the correspondences in more detail. Why he chose to leave this information out of a literal book length attempt to prove his theory baffles me.

Anyway, that's all for the main update of this post. Honestly a huge travesty that this book is so easily available on the internet and not so much more serious scholarship like Paul Kroeber's certified hood classic The Salish Language Family: Reconstructing Syntax which remains out of print to this day (if anyone reading this happens to have a copy (what are you doing here?), please hit me up in the comments, I will pay good money for this book). With the serious business out of the way, we also have a new release for you: Jam Ouji's Requiem for Rebellion. This release includes all four chapters. While the first chapter has already been translated, we decided to retranslate it from scratch both for consistency and because the first translation by our friends over at TFO was a retranslation of a Chinese translatiion.

Hope you enjoy it!

 See you next time!

Veranda of Madoka 27

New chapter out, yay! Next chapters might be delayed a bit because of personal things that got worse than expected... but the goal is to finish volume 3 before the end of the year so... gotta give it our best!

 

 MF

Veranda of Madoka 26

 After dealing with some personal stuff, we're back with more. Chapter 26 is out!

As it's tradition, thanks to Cumbia del alma and Candy for their help!

 

MF