When I was told even a professional translator found a cipher manga impossible to translate, I had to get in on the action.

(Spoilers for Cipher Academy up to chapter 11 ahead!)

Cipher Academy is definitely a difficult manga to tackle, for any translator. I mean, it’s by Nisio Isin, he of Katanagatari and the Death Note light novel Another Note! Plus, it’s a manga which contains puzzles designed for a Japanese audience.

Professor Aria’s One Point Lessons:

Those works I listed inspired me at different points in my life (since the latter was one of the first light novels I read, if not the first light novel I read, while you can find out about the former here), which probably explains where my penchant for deciphering language jokes comes from. Plus, I have done a bit of training with cracking codes while I was still aiming to be a cybersecurity expert some years back…although from that, I already know I suck…

However, that last sentence is critical – as a translator of manga, you generally assume your audience knows a bunch of things required to operate in the English-speaking world, but not the equivalent in Japanese. For example, the Morse code food ticket machine in chapter 2 is easy enough because the Morse code operates the way it’s understood elsewhere in the world – I found the second option to be “udon” fast enough, through a combination of referring to a list of Morse code and process of elimination (noting the cover page had English letters, it’s likely the answer would be separated U/D/O/N, as it would in English, and not U/DO/N, like it would in Japanese).

On the other hand, the code with the Japanese Industrial Standards in the first chapter is nigh-impossible to explain, because even I didn’t know about such a standard until the code was explained. (Between you and me, I learn what I need on an as-needed basis, and this was not something I might have ever needed in my life.)

The title of Cipher Academy also loses something in translation – the Japanese name is Angou Gakuen no Iroha. Angou Gakuen is “Cipher Academy”, sure, but Iroha either refers to…well, Iroha (which is a very girly name, hence the entire twist about Iroha being a boy)…or “the fundamentals of something”.

If you’ll allow me to go all translation studies on you, there is this concept called equivalence, which comes in a spectrum of sorts – dynamic equivalence (“translating” the meaning so the intended audience reaction is the same – in short, the essence of localisation) is on one end, while formal equivalence (“translating the meaning”, as it would normally be understood) is on the other. Cipher Academy – or rather, Kumar Sivasubramanian (the Shonen Jump translator whose Cipher Academy translation I’m basing this post off, and the translation you probably read too) – is using formal equivalence as a strategy a lot here. The codes won’t make sense otherwise to an audience that (most likely) reads a translation precisely because they don’t understand Japanese to a fluent level and not to study translation techniques like I do…Even if you didn’t read Kumar’s translation by any chance, it’s likely the translator would go for explaining the joke (probably in the margins where Kogoe wasn’t giving her own input), rather than substitute it. However, as explained with the A Void example in the manga, if you’re given enough time to plot an entire poem out, it hypothetically would be possible to translate through dynamic equivalence.

…I almost had checkmate (against a professional translation team, no less!) there, but then we run into another problem – this puzzle, and the nature of its kana constraints, affects the plot. Substituting everything might leave a gaping plot hole, even if someone crafted several perfect English-based lipograms around names of Shonen Jump manga, and that’s why it’s better to explain it as it is. (On top of that, in chapter 11, not only was Kumar bested by the plot relevance of the self-intro crosswords, the poor editor who localised all the crosswords was too. Nisio Isin = 2, English Shonen Jump team = 0.)

In short, the puzzle isn’t untranslatable like the Screen Rant article says (if it really were untranslatable, Kumar would’ve given up with the crosswords!). It’s just the entire nature of the kana system – thus, emphasising its difference to English – keeps working against Kumar and that’s why he’s waving the white flag as of chapter 13.

Professor Aria’s One Point Lessons:

Kyora’s company is Kick Attack Planning (katakana)…but that’s assigned to 踏襲図. If you think of these kanji as being within Japanese verbs, the first character is 踏む (can be translated as “to step on” or “to trample on”), the second is 襲う (can be translated as “to attack”) and the third is 図る (can be translated to “to plan”). 踏襲 is also a phrase, meaning “following/sticking to (a former plan etc.)” and the last character can also be translated to “diagram”.

Tayu’s name also seems a little fishy…but it turns out her first name is almost an anagram of her last name when using kana (YU/U/GA/TA TA/YU/U), plus with the exception of the “gata”, her name is made by spamming 夕 (the kanji for “ta” is 2 夕s and likewise, the kanji for “yuu” is 1).

Incidentally, I worry about Iroha’s love life, since, among other things, he’s been confessed to, been rejected and his type is Suzan Antonko. Can’t say that out loud, though.