Volume 1: Chapter 1
NOTE: Incomplete translations are marked as “teaser.” Complete translations aren’t. If I feel like it, I’ll further the translation. If I don’t, I won’t. Hence, “whimsical.” Stuff may be dropped or continued, or both, or alternately, at any second without notice.
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Ladies and Gentlemen,
I hereby announce the partial translation of Zaru Soba (The Cute One) volume 1 which is (probably) totally legal since it’s a free trial version available here.
It covers roundabout 40 (?) pages of the actual novel and is apparently an award-winning work. Namely it won some rookie writer compet.i.tion held by Media Factory! Those are the bad DMCA guys, by the way. But this trial version’s freely available and all, right? Right?! Anyway, this time you’ll get the ill.u.s.trations too (since they’re freely available, right?!).
I’m planning to translate the whole trial version unless it turns out to be utterly boring, or hard, or both. The cover art looks cute (it’s got cute in its name too!) and since I was planning to read it and it’s a free trial version and all, I thought I’d let everyone in on the fun.
If you want to, you can make project pages for this on the respective sites, but please relink here. Thanks!
I’ll refresh this post and repost it every five translated pages or so. I’ll probably spam twitter like this and I’m terribly sorry ’bout that, but&h.e.l.lip; I’ll do it anyway.
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EDIT: Now that I translated it all, I know what the “(Cute)” that had been added to “Zaru Soba” was supposed to mean exactly. I made little sense in English and the author’s englishified version didn’t make sense either (alas, the j.a.paneses English stuff seldom does). Hence it’s now “(The Cute One)” which is used to tell verb, dish, and her apart. I’m also tempted to write noodles with a capital “N” to signal it being a different race but I’m still reluctant. We’ll see.