Suki nante Iwantoite

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Nice story, held back by poor English translation

Suki nante Iwantoite has a good premise, and executes it fairly well. I like that it's about adults, and not another high school story. It explores interesting themes related to orientation, Trade, and the uncertainty of gay relationships. Unfortunately, Yaoi-Sekai's English translation is pretty weak. Visually, it looks professional., but the English translation itself is maybe a little better than you might get from Google Translate. Sometimes it can make it a little tough to understand what's going on, and a lot of times, it leaves the reader with the impression that you have a vague idea of ... what the characters are talking about, but any nuance that might have been there in Japanese is most likely lost.

Yaoi-Sekai always puts a notice on their translations asking users "Please don't re-translate", which seems to suggest that they know that their translations are lacking. It probably comes across as entitled to whine about the quality of the free service they provided that made it possible for me to read this at all, but my point in this review is that I don't think I would recommend that other English readers spend their time on this translation. The most interesting part of this story is what the characters are thinking and feeling about each other, and this translation makes that difficult (at best) for the reader. The spelling errors can be overlooked, but "vague' feels like the best word to describe the writing as a whole.

Exchanges like:
"No, what's with 'normally'... I mean, it's not like that..."
"Eh...? Somehow..."
"He's harsh...?"
give you a foggy impression of what's happening, but the inadequacy of the writing leaves you feeling like you're missing out. A professional translation of this would be great, but I do not recommend Yaoi-Sekai's, unless writing is not important to you.