My immediate plan for translations

My complete Kakuriyo no Yadomeshi collection (incl. the Gaiden)

Don’t panic. I’m not abandoning the ship! 

No way. I love the Kakuriyo novel so much that I wish I’m paid to work on the translations, so that I can dedicate my time to fully translate the volumes in earnest. But I have no required skills nor certificates for that, hence what I can do is just this fan-translating…

But because an Utsushiyo girl has her own real-world deadlines, I need to prioritise on chapters. Take Vol 7 Chapter 3 for instance. I have yet to translate that chapter, but it has 53 pages, and most of them are (just) food-talk. Well, there’s a context in that (see below), but I’m too impatient to translate 53 pages of food talk. I love eating, but not so much translating 50+ pages of food stuff. 

Hence, due to my Utsushiyo schedules and the length and context of some chapters, I will just have to summarise some chapters. I am still committed to bring the context of each volumes, thus it entails summarising and also translating the chapters. It’s just there’s a trade-off between context and available time. And because I will be quite busy this February onwards, my translation speed will be reduced. Normally, I would be able to transcribe 3-4 original pages in a night. If a chapter has 20 pages (that’s a short chapter!), I should be able to finish transcribing the chapter in a week’s time. I usually will need to add two nights to translate those pages, hence in total, I can finish a chapter of 20 original pages in less than 10 days. However, I’m afraid that this February onwards I may only be able to do one chapter every fortnight… 

However, there are some crucial chapters beyond Vol 7 that I’d like to translate. In view of my reduced speed, I think it’s important that I spoil you guys and translate those crucial chapters asap, while I still have my speed, and while I have your attention. Once I translate those chapters and I gain more readers, I hope that the momentum is enough to keep the saga going, even if I only do fortnightly updates. Of course, you are free not to read the jump-translated chapters. It's just, I don't want to make you wait until late this year just to get to the end of Volume 7, let alone reaching the moment when we finally can read Ōdanna's thoughts in his own words...(Vol 8 Epilogue).

(but please check weekly, just in case magic happens and I can keep translating while doing my Utsushiyo works)

Therefore, do take a look at the line-up translation plan of mine below. Taking everything into account, here’s what I’ll publish in the next few weeks months in chronological order:

1. Vol 5 Intermission 2: Raijū and Ōdanna (translation)

2. Vol 7 Ch 3: Summary of the 53 pages chapter (just so that I don’t leave the audience hanging about what happened next… which basically is about Aoi winning the heart of the King’s grandson through her cooking) 

3. Vol 8 Epilogue: Ōgondōji and Ōdanna (translation)

4. Vol 9 Prologue: Ōdanna narrating about Aoi’s dad and Shiro (translation)

5. Vol 9 Ch 1: Ōdanna finally meeting Aoi again (translation)

6. Vol 9 Ch 2: Aoi cooks Ōdanna meals for the first time in a long time (translation) (Part 1 and Part 2)

7. Vol 9 Intermission: Ōdanna (it finally tells us about the context of the Promised Marriage)

8. Vol 9 Ch 6: Aoi's last bento for Ōdanna (translation)

9. Vol 9 Ch 7: How Aoi found out about Ōdanna's real name (translation)

10. Vol 9 Epilogue: On Aoi deciding to rescue Ōdanna-sama and the Tenjin-ya core crew tag along with her (translation)

11. Vol 10 Ch 5: Aoi & co free Ōdanna from the dungeon  (translation - duh!)

12. Back to Vol 3 Chapter 4 (translation, not just summary)

13. Vol 3 Chapter 5 (summary)

etc.

Even though I will be jumping chapters, it won’t affect the fact that the chapters that I will be jump-translating are not going to tell the whole stories. There are so many other questions to answer, e.g. how would the Tenjin-ya crew react the first time they learned that Ōdanna was a jyaki? How did they decide to still be loyal to him? How did Raijū manage to unmask Ōdanna? How exactly will our couple win back the King’s support?

I don’t have the answers to those questions. For me, the only way to answer them is to go through each chapter and find out what it is about. Ergo, translations or summaries.

Thus, I am certain fans will still read the rest of the translations and summaries, even after the jump-translations.