[Progressive manga] Scherzo of Deep Night - Chapter 018

Since the Scherzo movie is coming to my country (about time!) next week, I want to finish up our Scherzo releases for the occasion. Which means, we have a second release this week! I hope to release the final chapter next week, if all goes well. Also, this chapter featured Kibaou, so I went a bit wild with his speech... I admit that it's probably going to be hard to read, but he can be hard to read in Japanese without knowledge of his dialect, so...

Chapter 18 covers Kirito's confrontation with the ALS after the boss battle.

I hope you enjoy the release. If you have any suggestions/requests for what to work on, feel free to leave a comment or contact us through Twitter/Discord/Email.

Finally, a standard thank you to all of those who contributed to the SAO Scans project for helping us get the raws.

-Gsimenas

Credits

Raws: SAO Scans
Translation: Gsimenas
Editing: Gsimenas
Redrawing: Nguyen Milk
Typesetting: Nguyen Milk
Quality Assurance: Mttblue2

Scherzo of Deep Night - Chapter 18

Links for the translation files:

• PDF
• Zip Download

Chapter 017

Index

Chapter 019

Translation (choice/nuance) comments:

• Page 02: On the Flag of Valor's property window, the words "Equipment", "Flag of Valor", "Required Player Level", "MaxHP", "Attack", "Bonus Status", and "CT" were written in English in the original text.
• Page 02: "CT" - I presume this acronym is short for "cooldown timer"
• Page 02: The word "beta" was written as the Greek letter β in the original text.
• Page 04: The Japanese word for "be angry" is "怒る" (okoru), so it shares the first three letters with Okotan's name. We used furigana to show the Japanese version of to word so that Kirito's train of thought would be more obivous in English. Kotatsu are low Japanese tables with heaters under the quilt; Japanese frequently add the prefix o- to certain words, so you'd get o-kotatsu, which again shares the first letters with Okotan's name.
• Page 05: "O… oh no, I wouldn't... say for sure that I wasn't going to do so" (い…いやそういうわけでも…あるようなないような) - in the original text, Kirito was about to say "it's not like that", but since he actually was planning to do just that, he tried obfuscating things by using an ambiguous phrase. The phrase he used when he corrected himself was akin to saying "maybe yes, maybe no", so I had to come up with a way to achieve the same obfuscating effect in English and ended up employing a double negative to make things convoluted enough to approximate the intended ambiguity of the answer.
• Page 05: "if you please", Kirito used the more polite お願いします (onegaishimasu), rather than his usual casual 頼む (tanomu), so I made his line fancier in the translation.
• Page 06, 08: "S'ry" - Kirito used several words for apologising in this chapter, so I needed variety. I used "S'rry" for すまん (suman).
• Page 07: A "hachigane" (鉢金) is a forehead band with armour for protection worn by shinobi and samurai. Just imagine Naruto and his headband for reference.
• Page 07: "Hokkaiikura" (北海いくら) literally means "Hokkaido salmon roe".
• Page 07: "we're hauling ass for some grub, pronto" (速攻メシにしようぜ) - Kirito used multiple slang words in this sentence. 速攻 (sokkou) literally means "fast/swift attack", but it's used in slang to mean "right away"; I was thinking of using "raid", but it would imply stealing, so I opted for "hauling ass, pronto" for the slanginess. メシ (meshi) is guy slang for "food", so I went with "grub".
• Page 07+: Kibaou speaks in a distinct Kansai dialect. So much so that you can easily tell that he's the speaker in the novel simply from the kind of grammar and words he uses. I took inspiration from Scottish English with some twists of my own to create my own version of Kibaouspeech in English. So, just imagine Kibaou speaking with a Scottish accent.
• Page 12: "elitist snobs" - the original phrase was "エリート面した奴ら" (erīto dzura shita yatsura), which would literally mean something like "those blokes with elitist mugs". The word "elitist" was in katakanised English in the novel, while I decided to change "mug" (vulgar word for face) to "snob" to carry the intended meaning of an insult while making the sentence less unwieldy in English.
• Page 12+: Joe speaks in a very coarse manner, so I tried making his speech more informal and slangy.
• Page 12: "Beta-Tester" - the phrase was marked with boutens (dots next to kanji used to emphasise a word or phrase), so we bolded it to account for this nuance.

Adaptation notes:

• Page 1 content was glossed over in narration in the novel.
• Page 2 second bubble Kirito's dialogue example with the ALS and DKB is different from the novel's version. In the novel, Kirito's what-if scenario was "if ALS later merged into DKB, they would no longer be able to use the flag", rather than "if the ALS put their name on the flag, no one else will be able to use it".
• In the novel, Kirito heard Asuna's footsteps while she was still climbing down the stairs, rather than noticing her presence only when she was right next to him.
• Asuna and Kirito chatted for five more minutes before ALS's scout party arrived in the novel.
• The novel referenced Melonmask, Hokaiikura and Schinkenspeck by their weapons, rather than wardrobe articles.
• Various dialogue trimming, monologue skipping.