A few of my mates have been working on Kimetsu no Yaiba over at Kaleido-Flax, and asked me for some feedback. Needless to say, I took the opportunity to nitpick at every little thing I could find.

This is a very literal translation. It’s not wrong—in fact, it’s about as right as you can get—but it’s very awkward to read. The exact number of acres he’ll plow doesn’t matter; the point is that he’s desperate to stay alive, so he’ll do whatever work he is asked to.

“I’ll plow as many acres as you want!”

This one is a bit too stiff as well. It’s stuck too close to the Japanese so the line isn’t as punchy as it should be.

“Wake me up from this nightmare!”

The Japanese for this line is ambiguous. In a vacuum, the singular and plural form of “hand” would be equally correct. But you should never translate in a vacuum. Only one of his hands is hurt.

“Take a look at your hand.”

The original line is quite vague, and there was too much focus on the words themselves rather than the context. The meaning is kind of lost as a result. He’s not confused about why; it’s an exclamation that he’s shocked that he’s so useless.

“What the hell is going on?”

It’s quite common to have trailing sentences in Japanese. It’s not in English. Even though the last word is not explicitly stated, there is no room for ambiguity. If you can be sure then it’s always better to be explicit.

“You have the potential!”

The word for “drop” in Japanese also includes the act of landing, but that’s not what “drop” means in English. Again, too stuck on the words and not enough focus on the context.

“He’s gonna land on his head and die.”

Again, way too stuck in the Japanese sentence structure and grammar. The line is basically just Japanese written with English words.

“Oh, I get it…”

Similar to before, this one is too word-for-word. As an exclamation, it should be a much more impactful line.

“He’s only got one attack!”

The wording is pretty poor here. The nuance is lost when you say “I can only perform one”, because it sounds like he’s mastered it and can do it at will. In actuality, the line is more about drilling in the fact that he’s struggled so much and yet only just managed to do one of the moves.

Also, for the record, Thunder Breathing has six forms. That’s also a mistranslation.

“Since I’ve only ever been able to perform one of the six Thunder Breathing forms.”

Repetition is another thing that comes up a lot in Japanese that can be very awkward in English. Granted, it’s used here for effect, but it can be done a lot more naturally.

The last clause about “anything you don’t need” is also pretty redundant. It’s specified in the original line, but there’s no need to stick with it because it sounds a lot more awkward in English than it does in Japanese.

“You strike it over and over to get rid of all of the impurities.”

Believe in what? Again, although it isn’t explicitly stated, you have to be able to infer and make the call to get a line that makes sense.

“Believe in yourself!”

This seems like a case of trying too hard to use literary devices. While “without fail” does mean “certainly”, there’s a time and place for everything. In the current line, it just looks out of place.

“You will surely be rewarded!”

“Thing” is an awfully crass word to use to refer to one of the sacred sword techniques, passed down from master to pupil. Just because it’s vague in Japanese doesn’t mean it has to be in English, because the nuances are completely different.

“Hone that one move to perfection!”

I visibly flinched at how literal this line was. No one speaks like this.

“Who do you think you are, calling him ‘Gramps’?”

This is way too literal as well. It’s very awkward to use “hope” like that in a sentence.

Also, the current wording completely changes the meaning of the line. It sounds like no one has any expectations of him because he has no parents. Needless to say, that’s not the case.

“I have no parents, so there’s no one around to expect anything of me.”

Again, literal. All insect-inflicted injuries are referred to with the same word, but we have a number of them in English depending on the situation. “Pierce” is not one of them.

“Sting him! Inject him with more venom!”

Once again, very literal. You don’t slice a person (or demon spider, I guess) with a sword. That being said, specifying whatever flavour of “slash” isn’t exactly preferable either, because that’s not what you’d say as an exclamation of shock in English.

“Did he get me?”

If only there was a word for arms and legs. At least, that’s what I would have said on any other line. In this case, the line isn’t about his arms and legs specifically being numbed, it’s about his entire body being in capitated. The line drags on too much as it is.

“By a guy who can barely move?”

This one is also a mistranslation. He’s telling himself to dream, not declaring that he is dreaming.

“Just dream…”

These two are a actually one sentence in the Japanese. There’s a keyframe in between so I can see why you’d want to split, but you just end up with two lines that both sound worse. I’d just keep it together.

“Stay away from my family!”

That’s more or less all I came up with after one quick pass while I was watching the episode. I’m sure I could nitpick a whole bunch of editing choices, but these were the main ones.

The majority of the issues came about due to sticking too close to the original Japanese wording. This is pretty easy to fix, though. Of course, it comes with experience, but be bold. Make the changes that you want to see in the world.

All that being said, it wasn’t a terrible episode. It’s a step up from the original CR and I’ve seen much worse, but don’t get complacent. There’s still plenty of room for improvement, as I’m sure you can see. The encoding was good though :^)