Comparing Official and Fan Translation of Neologisms in The Irregular at Magic High School

This study examined the translation of neologisms in the fan and official translations of the first book of the The Irregular at Magic High School light novel series. It aimed to examine whether the choices of translation strategies differed between the two as well as how the word type and choice of translation strategy affected the end result. Additionally, it compared the results to trends in manga fan translation. The study was performed by reading the first four chapters of the original novel and writing down each unique neologism as well as its corresponding translations. Then, each case was categorized by word type and translation strategy. The study found that both translations had similar distributions of translation strategies, though the fan translation contained more omissions and mistranslations. Furthermore, depending on the type of word, different strategies were employed. For example, neologisms of non-Japanese origin were often transferred to English whereas Japanese compound words were often literally translated. In contrast, Japanese abbreviations caused difficulty and required a wide array of strategies to translate. Lastly, the study found some similarities and some dissimilarities to manga translation