Ubunchu! The Ubuntu Manga is now in English
Download all Chapters of Ubunchu here: http://www.ubuntu.net/.
A few weeks ago I mention a few artworks which I had found on my travels of the internet.
One of those things was Ubunchu, a Japanese Manga comic of 3 school students in a system-admin club who are getting into Ubuntu.
Thanks to the author Hiroshi Seo, two ubuntu-jp LoCo members (Fumihito Yoshida and Hajime Mizuno) and myself. We got the rights to translate the comic into English, got the script translated and re-edited each image page, replacing the Japanese with English.
Update: Chapter 02 is here.
Update: Chapter 03 is here.
* Editing Note: I was helped by inkscape and I bound this pdf by using the same book making script I’ve posted to before. I used the original psd files, converted them into xcfs, followed by editing it for Left to Right and patching up the Japanese action word spaces.
Update: Thanks to Craig Huffstetler and C-quel for helping out with lots of editing points. Grammar and Spellings corrected and Rev 08 uploaded.
Tags: manga, ubunchu, Ubuntu
Its adorable! Great Job.
Great job! How should I do to translate it into another languages?
Well I can make a pot file that you can use to make a translation, but then we need some tools I think to make the pdf work afterwards.
I read so much manga I had a hard time reading it left to right instead of right to left. Thanks for posting this!
I wonder why CC:by-nc.
Translations should use the same license? (Not being by-nc-sa, I’m not sure).
The original license was CC-BY-NC, so the translations can be CC-BY_SA if you need them to be, I think the resulting pdf would be CC-BY-NC-SA though.
It would be great to use a license according to the Free Cultural Works definition: http://freedomdefined.org/Definition
Anyway, if the original author doesn’t like the idea, it would probably be better to leave the license he has chosen.
I believe the licence is in agreement with the original publisher in Japan. I’m just happy it’s Creative Commons at all. At least it allows translations and derivative works.
This is fantastic, thanks for doing this. Ubuntu Manga, hey what’s the Japanese term for that
By the way there’s a spelling error in the second speech bubble of the first frame.
“Is is very popular with ……” should read;
“It is very popular with …….”
Thanks again.
You’re right
Will read it : )
Hope there will be an easy way to subscribe to all the issues that are translated into english.
Cheers!
nice Job! spread the word ubuntu…
Dread Knight: Subscribe to my blog, that should do it. It’s such hard work to do these, that I’d be surprised if it wasn’t up here.
… I’m considering re-doing this.
Good effort, but I think it was a mistake to flip it, for one…
“With the users” set the tone for it…
That said, I’m a huge geek, fan of comics of all kinds since I can remember; and I’ve been studying Japanese for 10 years… with comics… (I’m so sick of comic book stereotypes, both Japanese and American).
Translating jokes is something I pride myself on…
I think there may be one more typo on page 10, bottom left panel. ‘ceased up’ probably should be ’seized up’, implying stopped or crashed. ‘locked up’ would be another possibility.
But, since I have no idea what the actual Japanese was, and couldn’t read it if I could see it, I might be completely wrong.
In any case, great job. Very entertaining.
Your welcome to, but don’t forget, this isn’t supposed to be traditional, it’s supposed to be accessible. Although you’d probably be able to translate it better than our 4 man pass the potato effort.
Flipping them was pretty much required.
Reversing is usually a mistake. Anyone who knows what a manga is reads right to left.
Your going to have to come up with more evidence then just “Anyone who knows”
Anyone who knows what the earth was, knew it was flat. I call bullshit.
Hahah nicely done!
Lettering comics with regular text fonts is not very pretty. Blambot.com has a guide on good lettering as well as some fonts which are not Free, but can be used without cost on non-commercial works.
Any suggestions jp? Whatever I use has to be licensed in a manner that allows redistribution. So most of those fonts won’t do.
“We finally got the rights to translate the comic into English”
Look, I made a manga about a free operating system. Enjoy my copyright.
I don’t think I even understand what you mean Linus. Are you being sarcastic?
The license for free fonts does not prevent redistributing works using them as far as I can see. But then again I am not a lawyer, your mileage may vary and all that jazz.
I think that there is a comic font or two packaged in Ubuntu’s Universe, but I have never looked into this myself.
Great work! Next time don’t bother reversing the direction – it is a ton of work with minimal benefit. People that read manga know to read right-to-left, for others just insert a how-to-read-manga page in the beginning, so they are more educated in the culture they are partaking.
Thanks for the advice, but I don’t think I will take it. I’d rather see people learn Japanese than learn to read Right to Left in English.
Although if your translating into Arabic, maybe it’d be better that way round.
Great Work! Ubuntu + Shoujo = Ubunchu!!!
This really could be a success here in Brazil, with a great Otaku comunity and also a great Free Software/Open Source comunity.
I just waiting for the pot files to start a Brazilian Portuguese Translation! \O/
You can download the tar.bz2 file which contains the pot file… I don’t have a way to recombine it yet, but it should be possible.
http://divajutta.com/doctormo/ubunchu/ubunchu-episode-01.tar.bz2
The comic presents a rather weird reality.
(but I guess that’s the appeal of it? :/)
Thanks… I don’t know, but I think SVG treat TEXT as TEXT. If so, we just need to open it on some SVG editor (Inkscape) and edit it manually
I think Fábio is right. Also, I would like to know where can I get title’s fonts. Since “Ubunchu” seems to be a wrong japanese pronunciation of Ubuntu, there’s a Galician wrong pronunciation too (Ubuntú), which I think could be the Galician translation for the title.
By the way, is there a way to contact with the original author? An email? And does he know English?
Thanks.
Hey gallaecio,
The title is “Ubunchu” it’s not a phonetic mis-translation from English to Japanese, it’s Ubuntu modified into a cute word because that is what the Mac advocate keeps on calling it. So if you translate it into something else, keep the title as Ubunchu.
Look for this pdf in my deviant art page, there is a link there to the artist.
Good job, thanks.
I think there is another typo on page 2, though. It says:
“Isn’t it Ubuntu not Ubuntu?”
which should probably be:
“Isn’t it Ubuntu not Ubunchu?”
Hi, I am a member of the Ubuntu Forum in Greece and we are considering translating Ubunchu into Greek.
I have sent an e-mail to the author (Hiroshi Sheo) and awaitng for his response/permission.
In the meantime any help would be greatly appreciated, especially regarding artwork (you mentioned something about pot files, which I am not quite sure what those are)
Cheers,
Angel
Hello All.
My name is Seotch (Hiroshi Seo), the author of the manga above.
I’m really happy to see my (and now ours) manga has been translated into English. Thanks to doctormo,Fumihito and Hajime for their efforts of the translation.
As to the CC license, BY and NC are required by the original publisher. And I wanted to left anything other than that to the readers & users.
So you can change your translations to any license including CC-BY-NS-SA
But I’m now still wondering which is the best way for the user’s convinience. So the coming sequel of this manga could be made public with another license (possibly CC-BY-NS-SA).
Anyway, I also thank you for your interest in our “Ubunchu!”
I hope you enjoy it!
Downloading and reading!
Great job!
I’d like to join everyone in congratulating you for the nice job, but the fact of the matter is that this translation is not good enough. Let’s look at some examples from the first page alone:
[ Lots of examples of where LaC thought the translation was wrong ]
As you can see, in some instances you simply got the meaning wrong; in others, you changed the tone in a way that detracts from the dynamism of the situation. In other words, the translation should be redone.
To the people who want to translate this comic into other languages: translating from the original is always the best way, but if you’re going to translate from English, I recommend that you wait for a more accurate version to work with.
Seotchさん、この英訳はあんまり正確ではないことに気付かなかったんですか？英語がうまそうですし。
LaC: Did you wake on the wrong side of the bed today? Your post is grumpy and far too arrogantly critical.
Seotch has already gone through the translation and changed the parts where he felt the meaning and “dynamism” was different or wrong. Thank you for your creative input, Mr bike shed painter. but I’m going to need much more specific scrutiny than just a list of differences.
I really liked your blog! Keep the articles coming I am going to pass your site to others.
Great work!! Thanks for your efforts!
……no words…
I don’t mind flipping it right to left (still reading down, of course!)? If you need it “flipped” — manga reading style. Just let me know.
Sorry for missing the two mistakes cited above. I was an English major after all and have a B.A. to prove the effort. To my defense, it was 10 – 15 minutes IRC style back-and-forth checking.
Next time we do something like this we SHALL collaborate! Indian style. In a café. Or perhaps just more effort on my behalf. That will be fine, and fun, for me. Or maybe we can go to Locke-ober and that will be fun for chu. He he.
But yes, on the flipping note, I don’t mind doing it if you’ll grant me the honour? I had quite a few manga friends in university.
There is a good friend on deviant-art who is making a more traditional manga, with hopefully some better translations. see here:
http://comments.deviantart.com/1/117909231/1025761819
We’ll fix what ever we can in this version.
Can i translate in itlian?
Of course, I would love for you to do that. Then I could put up more than one language version.
Awsome men, keep the good work, I really love it
You might be interested in this document: http://www.blambot.com/grammar.shtml
Here are suggestions for 2 minor changes in your ep. 1 PDF.
p. 7: commandline (add space between “command” and “line”)
p. 8: Do you any normal games? (add “have” or “own” between “you” and “any”)
First, thanks for translating this. I’m always on the lookout for esoteric (ubergeeky) manga like this and don’t have easy access to Japanese raws or time to translate myself. (My Japanese is very weak.)
On the flipping argument, I was about halfway through before I realized that the reason the timing on so many comments seemed wrong was because the manga had been flipped. I read a lot of translated manga, all of which has read right to left since the late 1990s. The checkboxes on page 6 tipped me off. The checks are backward.
On the “accessibility” argument, I’m trying to think of an American manga publisher that flips anymore and can’t. Viz did back in the old days, but not anymore. They just say, “reads right to left.” Doesn’t seem to have hurt the market. Given my problem, maybe you need a “reads left to right” warning.
Flipping also creates more work for you because you have to unflip the screen images (like the Ubuntu logo).
But, I’m not going to call you evil or stupid because of the flip. Your translation, your choice.
hi there, i don’t find the souce for translate your english one. thanks