This was a correct translation since in the original her phrase is invalid too. Added "use", though, to avoid confusion with a translation error.
Akane reassured her, being glimpsed through vegetation ahead.
Nuh-huh. This is my quirk and I am keeping it. I have a habit of using a queer made-up word or two per stoty.
The original "monstrolik" is gleefully invalid. The correct merger of "monstr" and "krolyk" should be "monstrokrolyk".
In my older original-fiction story, the non-human main cast uses incorrect plural form for "human" ("cheloveki" is kind of like "humanses")
but that train is their lifeline
Correction: that
locomotive is their lifeline, and they do indeed have a spare in one of these grottoes at all times. Any other cars are expendable and replaceable, and the train can do without any one of them. They really need
one autocannon to kill a wyrm. Having four is a safety regulation for an extremely rare event of being zerg-rushed from all directions at once when standing still for emergency repairs. Plus, this oasis is a part of a network. It can survive long term on its own but would fall into decline if the connection is broken. They do have a reasonable stock for cases when mob activity peaks interrupting traffic. The other oases do have a stock of "instant noodles" for such cases. They also can just request an another train from where there are many. Non-edible, easy to decontaminate assets like train cars, rails or aluminum beams could be safely stored in fenced off sections of wasteland where boss encounter probability is close to zero. That locomotive is very reliable, in 99% cases it fails from battle damage by boss-level mobs. But that level of random encounters is rare. So it's not uncommon for the locomotive or cars to serve for decades with only regular maintenance. Everything broken gets towed to a remote base for repairs, or scraped in place if it is damaged too badly. But more probably a badly battle damaged car would be simply pushed off track and abandoned. Later it will either be pushed further away to not provide cover for mobs near the track and stay there forever kind of like camel bones along a caravan route, or cut up for scrap. Whichever is more economic.
then no one would be considered expendable.
They do have an active lifespan of ~200 years thanks to the magic of life. That old lady is like 300+. The child allowance is a queue of open slots that gets open positions when someone dies or moves to another oasis, so... There's really a lot of drama and intrigue under the surface, but our heroes will barely glimple it.
This sociely ir really a weird mix of Wild West and a rigidly planned economy, a frontier of individualists who adopted a military communism for government. I won't delve into details as it is in fact sketchy.
[Is a bit amusing that Akane boggles at snails.
Well, learning the fun fact when you are
eating it...
Although the town could not boast any size to tell of — this concerned the size of its houses as well — it felt very cozy.
[this phrase is a bit awkward
The scale of the town was modest, its buildings modestly sized as well. But still it felt very cozy.
[good choice using the verb plop
The original is kind of "smack self [against the ground]", so I was thoroughly browsing all variants provided by the dictionary, unsatisfied, until I remembered "to plop".
what the punchline is too!”
Not to self: research the word "too" and its uses.
This way to start paragraphs gets really repetitive.
25 total, 14 starting phrases. Owie
Corrected replacing every other one with something else.
Why wouldn't Ranma just yell "Is Ahta here?!"
[scratches head in confusion] But she was asking who of them is him, knowing that he should be one of them. Why should she be asking if he is there? [looks at the original: "кто здесь Ата?", literally "who here Ata?"] Err, probably her phrase in reality was "Ata dare da?" [scratches head again].
Will use your version, it seems a serious adaptation is required. Must sound natural.
That's why short phrases suffer the most in translation and why double translation usually totals them.
Special alien guests traveling with cabbage?
Even highly esteemed bosses travel with cabbage
There is no such thing as dedicated passenger transport, due to irregularity.
Doing what?
Then their guide has been dragged away by the other guy who couldn't handle hauling the boxes alone. The girls were left to themselves until the departure
, watching train being made up and loaded. Ranma noticed an oddity at the very end of the platform where it joined the warehouse wall while departing from the cliff face a little due to running at small angle to it. There was a kind of a large roundish shallow recess in the retaining wall, with three gates in it and one in the brick wall of the warehouse in the very corner where it abutted the retaining wall. What was peculiar that the platform obscured these gates blocking their wings from even opening. Was it retractable, then?The loaders shooing the girls away for getting in their way, the latter went to the car two they would be traveling in.
Like the others it resembled a rectangular with rib stiffeners running along it sides. Ranma was sure it's smaller than they use on the railroads of her homeland, both narrower and much shorter,
barely six meters long. Looking under the platform she saw it for herself that it only had four wheels. The edges were sharp, the roof was flat, not a trace of windows. The door was almost the third of the length, the slides on which it rolled aside were the only prominent features. In the center of the door there was a handwheel.
It only took about twenty minutes make the train up and fill it to the brim. Along the way,[...]
But finally the great mystery has been revealed demonstrating how much tricks they have to use to save a little more of the precious land: first, the entire train, including the second air defense platform and the two cisterns, have been dragged back using a winch so that
much of it disappeared inside the warehouse. Then, the platform
proved to really be retractable. A sizable portion of it rose like a drawbridge obscuring further view and access to the warehouse. Ranma ran and leaned around it. There was an unnoticed before switch and a big circular platform with a length of track on it.
The formerly blocked gates were surrounding it in semi-circle. One opened releasing the locomotive from a cavern that was dug into the slope. It crawled out to the circular platform which then slowly turned until its rails matched the other end of the switch. Creaking
on the sharp turn and belching steam from under its wheels, the
six-wheeled locomotive crawled out onto the main track in front of the train. Then it pulled backwards[...]
Why is it still doing this for just her? It doesn't continue to be funny.
My bad
The pigtailed girl snorted. “Saotome Ranma.”
Only after offering her name did she turn towards him and cast a warning glare at the guy. “Just to[...]
How old is Ahta supposed to be?
“What I wanted to say,” Ahta continued as he stood up in agitation to sit side to side with Ranma, to the left of her: the benches were exactly for three persons each, “is that I am really a girl. Age
eight plus, a surveyor with
service record of one and eight hundred--”
He had said more but Akane interrupted the droning translation:
“Wait a minute! Did it translate correct? Are you really eight years old?”
“What is 'years'?” Ahta replied in confusion. “This does feel like some sort of rubbish or outdated word. I am eight hundred and twenty three decades days old.”
“Year is-- Oh.” Akane felt really sheepish. Of course. No solar system, nothing for Earth to orbit around, no seasons. “It's a unit of time, 365 days and one fourth. This makes you...” She paused dividing mentally, “22 years old.”
“What a weird non-metric unit. So, anyways. As I was saying, seven decades ago I stepped into such a stupid curse, and now I am stuck in this,” he gestured along his body, “unnatural form until a specific counterspell is developed. I'm slaving away everywhere I can to work my chance off. But the Awesome Old Hag does have awesome connections, including the ones with those who could develop such a counterspell but don't want to because it's resource intensive.”
Seven decades? Akane thought. Right. He means seventy days, not years.Wait... it's only been three days?
Yup. The vast majority of the plot takes only four days tops.
Akane should say something here,
Akane frowned lifting one brow. Something was {i}definitely{/i} not right here.
She made to speak then changed her mind. No, it couldn't be, she was being silly.Shouldn't Ranma be at least seventeen by this point?
Kind of breaks the SM canon (if there is anything left to break there, feh) that they should all be in the first year of high school. That corresponds to 16. I'd better assume that Ranma and Akane were really 15+ at the start of the manga.
And Ahta is nowhere smooth enough
Two reasons. I dont want this to bloat further and he/she sensed that the client is ready so he/she went straight for the kill.
Either he's not supposed to have a suave bone
Shows me learning English from FFnet, heh.
"Do you ever imagine yourself in the arms of a man?"
Unfortunately, I am unable to change this further and Ahta is still somewhat girly in his mind. So, I hope this works:
Have you ever been held in the arms of a pretty guy?”
Joke was more about someone older going after a younger. It is only like five years.
Anyways,
“What?” Ahta jumped to his feet and away from the panicking Ranma. “A {i}husband{/i}?
Already connected by the sacred bond of marriage at such a young age?” he exclaimed in shock.
Most other corrections applied. Thank you!
You will see it as soon as my translating muscle gets some rest.
No, no, no, something more like.
Seems a whole lot simpler if they have the locomotive go onto a really small side track that features a turntable while the rest of the train is pulled inside. The locomotive is spun around, goes back on the main track, then hooks up with the train again. Sort of a half [url]wye.[/url]
