What’s in a Title: Haganai

[活動記録４：ギャルゲエの世界にようこそ]

活動（かつどう）

This word means “activity”. From what I’ve gleaned from Persona 4 and this manga, this is what they usually call club activities in school. So I’ll tweak the translation to go with that same feel. So, “Club activity” it is.

記録（きろく）

You might recognize the first kanji from Rei’s Journal segment. It can mean “record” or “history” while the second kanji can mean “record” or “transcript”. There are a few meanings and since we know that this discusses activities in a club, we can translate this as “record”. 

Minutes seems too stiff for a club involving what looks like a character is about to play a video game. 

Put this with 活動 and we get “Club Activity Record”.

ギャルゲエ

This is a loan word meaning. ギャル just means gal. There are two things that come to mind with this word and Japan. One is the fashion style where girls tan their skin, dye their hair, etc. There are also different types which you can find more info on here.

The other is gal games, a dating sim with a cast of beautiful women.

 Since the next word seems to be some variation of game, it is safe to say this word means “Gal Game” or “Gal Games”. It is also known as a Bishoujo Game.

On another note, I found it weird that they wrote this way when it is usually written as ギャルゲー instead. Perhaps the ー can be interchangeably used with エ to lengthen out the ゲ in this word.

の

Just a possessive particle in this context. So with Gal Game we get “of Gal Game” or “Gal Game’s” depending on the next word and considering how it flows.

世界（せかい）

This word simply means “world”. Put with what we have so far we get “Club Activity Record #4: World of Gal Games”

に

Looking at where the context of this title is going, it is safe to say this is a destination particle “to”, in this context. 

ようこそ

And lastly, this simply means “welcome”. 

So our translation is “Club Activity Record #4: Welcome to the World of Gal Games”.

Unfortunately, I don’t have a copy of the official translation. I’m only reading the Japanese version. Surprisingly, the English version does not list the contents like they do in the Japanese version. I’m only seeing this on the same page:

It would be rough trying to make the English titles vertical. I do wonder if they could have lined the numbers up (instead spelling out volume #. I wonder what happened when they got into the 10s? Ah I see they just grouped the number in one circle.) sideways then given the titles. Hmm… oh well. 

According to the wiki the official English title is “The Wonderful World of Bishoujo Games”.

So not off the mark. Perhaps I should put a creative flair to these translations as well but I think it’s best I don’t stray too far so things don’t get lost in translation. Especially since this is supposed to be an exercise on my part and a learning moment for others.

I finally started reading the manga. Since I am nowhere near the level of reading a light novel, this manga has been a fun read. Plus unlike the light novels, these were released in English and are complete. I remember when I was reading fan translations of the light novels a few years ago since no one picked up this series. After reading a few volumes, I noticed they never translated the final light novel. So now that I know some Japanese, I can read this in the manga form. But wait, why did I choose the Japanese version over the English version? A few reasons:

1. It’s cheaper.
   • English: One volume costs $9.52 on bookwalker ($8 or above on Amazon) 
   • Japanese: Bookwalker has them at  ￥５９７(around $6) on volume 1 – 18 and ￥７１５ for the last two volumes.
2. Learning experience.
   • Would be fun to see how the manga is written in both languages but due to reason 1, I’ll refrain from that.
   • Get to gain more vocabulary and test how much of the language I know.
3. No longer reading manga in dub format is pretty fun.
   • Ever voice your characters in your head when you’re reading something? Yeah. I’m that type of person. So, now I get the full experience of RAW anime viewers instead of depending on English.
   • Still want to read English manga though. Using the dubbed voices for the characters in the Yu-Gi-Oh manga has been so much fun.