Negima Notes
Manga Notes
Del Rey translation errors, technical goofs, and adaptation oddities
(I'm not going to bother noting all the Southern Master/Thousand Master errors, the fact that they can't decide whether to leave the spells in Latin or translate the Japanese translation of the latin into English, or that they can't decide how to deal with the various uses of brother/sister. A couple of points I only picked up on after reading Staxy's reviews on AoD, so thanks.)
Volume 1
- Chapter 1
-- Page 10-11
--- It's like.. Magic Roundabout time. Adaptation is one thing, but these pages seem to have been completely made up and innuendo added that is not apparent (to me at any rate) in the original text.
-- Page 25
--- Panel 4: "Shizuna has been kept abreast of the situation." Way to labour the joke there.. and what happened to honourifics?
--- Panel 6: "Can I... have a cookie?" How they got this from "Ah. Hai..." I don't know.
-- Page 42
--- Panel 2: "She's chucking rocks" What? Since when were erasers made of stone?
--- Panel 7: Again with the rocks. Why?
-- Page 51
--- Panel 1: "Ancient beings far and near..." Poetic and all but.. where the heck did that come from?
-- Page 57
--- Panel 7: "Dry up Kakizaki" OK, that so does not sound like Nodoka, who's actually saying something like "That's not it, and I'm not a bookstore!".
- Chapter 2
-- Page 87
--- Panel 5: "Negi" Yue is actually calling to Nodoka.
-- Page 88
--- Panel 5: "Raster Maskil" Later volumes use "Rastel Maskil".
-- Page 97
--- Panel 1: "I could never hate you". Err.. wrong person, not a speech bubble, made up line.. this is supposed to be Negi thinking something like "She's saying one thing but doing another".
--- Panel 2: "Focus Chi". Hello? This is Asuna here, not Fei Kuu.
Volume 2
- Chapter 11
-- Page 94
--- Panel 7: "I'm very proud, Granddaughter." Yue is not Konoemon's Granddaughter.
--- Panel 8: "Nodoka Miyagaki". Should be Miyazaki
-- Page 96
--- Panel 4: "Headmaster-Sensei". Keeping honourifics is admirable and all, but..
- Chapter 12
-- Page 98
--- SFX: "Windows Theme". She's using an Mac, note the power button on the keyboard and the OS Classic startup screen.
- Chapter 13
-- Page 133
--- Panel 1: "More of a dango than a flower". Poor translation of the fairly well known phrase "hana yori dango", better translation would be "prefers food to flowers".
- Chapter 14
-- Page 150
--- Panel 2: "you had a kid brother about my age". The impression I get is that her brother was actually stillborn, so perhaps this should be "..who would be my age"
.
- Chapter 15
-- Page 156
--- Panel 3: Something is broken here, but I'm not sure quite what.
-- Page 162
--- Panel 3: "my grandfather swore he'd turn me into a weasel". The image behind says "ermine". I rather expect it's not his Grandfather either, or that he even has one.
Volume 3
- Chapter 16
-- Page 4
--- Panel 2: "another exiting year with you". Can't very well be another year can it, since he's not been there one yet.
--- Panel 5: "Oh yeah. No fooling around." Why is Asuna responding to something Negi thought?
-- Page 12
--- Panel 2: "With her chest? No way". Something went wrong here, but I can be bothered to work out what.
--- Panel 2: "sister-chan". I know I said I wouldn't comment on these but.. leaving it as "onee-chan" works ok. "Sis" would work ok if you wanted to translate it. Doing it half-and-half like this doesn't.
-- Page 20
--- Panel 2: "my reflection". Actually the spell "reflexio", hence the furigana being katakana.
- Chapter 18
-- Page 48
--- Panel 8: "What is this? A bath?". Well known misprint, this dialog is duplicated from panel 4 on the next page. Asuna is actually saying "Huh? Negi?".
- Chapter 19
-- Page 60
--- Panel 1: "In the mountains of Wales, England". The Japanese word "Igirisu" can refer to both England or the whole of Britain, the same is not true of the word "England" in English. Note to all Americans out there: Wales is in Britain. It is not, however, in England (which is next door). While a similar line was used as a joke in the Doctor Who story "Delta and the Bannermen", coming from anyone else it can be considered somewhat of an insult.
--- Panel 6: "Practe beginus". In the Lexicon of this volume this is correctly romanized as "practe bigi nar", as given in the Japanese manga. Even if they don't bother checking the notes, 「ビギ・ナル」 (bigi naru) isn't anywhere close to "beginus".
- Chapter 22
-- Page 135
--- Panel 3: "Ack! I'm in school! I'm in hell". Goodness knows what they were thinking here, or indeed with the rest of the panel, as this is again the wrong person and an essentially made up line. This should be the infamous "Infernus Scholasticus" spell being spoken by Nagi, and since it is referred to often enough in later chapters and in the back of this very book the fact that is missing entirely from the text is ridiculous.
Volume 5
- Chapter 38
-- Page 69
--- Panel 4: "April 24th, Wednesday". The Japanese text reads Thurday, and this actually correlates with the 2003 calendar. Repeated again in panel 6 and on the next page.
Volume 8
- Chapter 64
-- Page 30
--- Panel 4: "practibigi・naru". As previously mentioned, the correct romanization of 「プラクテ・ビギ・ナル」 as stated in the volume 3 Lexicon is "practe bigi nar". Bizzarely, they've kept the kana dot thingy in the English.