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― pretends to know what i'm doing ok
JJK CHEAT SHEET
poorly cobbled. consume w/ a bag of salt please.
CURSE: they use this pretty flagrantly for beings like Rika and even Yuuji as Sukuna's vessel, but offhand I'd often associated it mostly in context of things like "Yasohachi Bridge Curse"
CURSED SPIRIT [jurei]: ex: Jougo. Bodies of cursed spirits are made of Cursed Energy [juryoku]. In the case of self-healing, that shaves off their juryoku and a headshot can kill it re: Toudou's reading of the Hanami encounter in the Kyoto Goodwill Event (KGE). Mahito believes much like "humans", Cursed Spirits have natural instincts. (NS)
CURSE USER: example would obviously be Getou Suguru ― mind the word usage 'surrendered' for the Cursed Spirits he ingests (?), versus, say, Megumi's Shikigami being 'exorcised' before he can use them...... (partially NS)
CURSED ENERGY [juryoku]: emotion sensitive (can be a trigger or a hindrance from seeing how to completely/fully/most effectively use it). CAN BE traced/tacked. Can be hidden. Higher/Elite grade Sorcerers' energy flow is hard to keep tabs on. In a different way, Yuuji's LACK of cursed energy circa KGE made it hard to read him according to Toudou. When fighting Sukuna, Megumi is told to "put more Curse" into it, which I'm taking as not 'Curse' but 'Cursed Energy' but it's kind of unclear. (partially NS)
CURSED TECHNIQUE [jutsushiki]: on possession of cursed technique: the KIND of technique one will be able to use is decided by birth, not the innate capability to use cursed technique itself. (NS)
CURSED SPEECH: "The term Fushiguro uses that official release translated as “the spirit of words” here (and then put as “words with spirit” in ch. 53…) is not just any word, but kotodama (言霊), which refers to “the Japanese belief that mystical powers dwell in words and names. (…) The notion of kotodama presupposes that sounds can magically affect objects, and that ritual word usages can influence our environment, body, mind, and soul.” (From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kotodama)" (NS)
CURSED CORPSE [jugai]: "is a nonliving object that has been endowed with a curse, allowing it to gain self-control. They can appear naturally as hostile creatures, but more often used as dolls and puppets for sorcerers." (WIKI) examples: Panda. however, "“a cursed corpse born possessing emotions” as opposed to the eng version which is “sentient and capable of having emotions” which to me is quite different bc it suggests they must be learned/imbued….anyway ALSO RE PANDA: ⇒ “Panda is an ‘unexpectedly transmuting cursed corpse’. Panda is not a panda!” (NS)
(INNATE) DOMAIN -
an area created in the user's mind that can be manifested using cursed energy. They are normally realized utilizing Domain Expansion, a barrier technique that manifests the domain by constructing an area that traps the user's target inside. (WIKI) RE INCOMPLETE Domains like the detention center, there is this tidbit on the yasohachi bridge: "The main point is that it’s just impossible to use a proper, fully realised domain expansion for such a long time (since it uses tons of cursed energy, see part II, Gojou’s explanation in ch. 15." re: that, Megumi's actual line: "⇒ “Continuing to unfold [expand] a domain endowed with a cursed technique on and on for such a long time is impossible. So this barrier must be an incomplete domain like the one at the juvenile detention centre. This time it turned out to be lucky for me” " (NS)
DOMAIN EXPANSION -
"Using cursed energy you construct an innate domain with a cursed technique added on (bestowed/given) [the official translation not incorrect but not as clear]" (NS) ALSO: "1. When using a (properly realised) domain expansion, your endowed (ADDED-ON) technique gains the effect of hitting 100% of the time*.
2. Domain expansion doesn’t automatically make an endowed technique fatal.
3. IF your technique is fatal though, now it’s a fatal technique that will hit the enemy for sure. * There are ways to counter that effect as explained by Gojou in ch. 15." (NS)
JUJUTSU TECH/ TECHNICAL COLLEGE -
"⇒ “Curses tend to gather at paranormal spots, the same as it’s for schools. So Jujutsu Tech affiliated personnel patrols them regularly” They simplified some of the world-building here. Emphasis mine. Also I’ll be switching from “Jujutsu High” to “Jujutsu Tech” (maybe even “technical college” and “college” sometimes) from now on! I tried to stick to “Jujutsu High” but it sounds kinda juvenile and strictly speaking, it’s not a high school but a technical college anyway. (NS)"
DEATH PAINTING -
PLACEMENT HERE? MAYBE NOTES?
ANGER -
Referred to by Toudou as something that can be a trigger or an inhibitor. Take this to mean also other emotions but going with the literal example.
BODY AND SOUL -
ENG Translation when Toudou talks to Itadori is 'Body, Mind, and Soul' but it's "with our whole body and soul".
HIDDEN INVENTORY = HARBOURING JADE -
ENG Chapter title was clearly chosen to sound cool and not reflect the real meaning lol anyways: "The Hidden Inventory arc is named 懐玉 ("harbouring jade"), referring to a person possessing great talent. The chapters about Geto's downward spiral are named 玉折 ("the jade breaks"), referring to the premature death of a virtuous individual." (MH)
GOOD VERSUS KIND -
"[Fushiguro about Tsumiki]
“She was the kindest person. There was no reason to think otherwise. She was someone who deserved to be happy. But Tsumiki was cursed”
⇒ “She was a good person, no sliver of doubt about it. A person who deserved happiness more than anyone else. And yet Tsumiki got cursed”
I guess being kind does mean someone’s a good person but they’re not interchangeable."(NS)
BROAD STROKE:
reading through all the translations arc by arc as they come (2/10 up through the death painting arc!!!, rest tbd) on (NS) is the better way to digest the material here that is 90-95% taken from that so i can reference things and nuances without going back to the tumblr every single time. but this cheat sheet is by no means honestly very useful even if you've found your way here, without the big picture of what it's all surrounded by, the supporting images included in the original posts, and so on. i tried to make it coherent anyway for MY sake because my memory is shit but a piecemeal thing will always be piecemeal and why waste time here when you can just go to their blog. (MH) has a whole thread of translations and word specifics as their pinned tweet, many of which i found informative. and though i've only sourced a couple things from them on this cheat sheet, that is largely because the character analysis/observations made by bettering certain translations were already character conclusions i'd drawn even from the more mediocre translation of the official. likewise, i think anyone going to either of these shouldn't go to them as PURE corrections because as badly shammed as some people feel various characters got in the translations of the manga (official) including say, megumi, after reading the more accurate translations i found that my reading of him was not wrong, and felt kind of validated??? so i feel anyone who Close Reads will maybe come away thinking that they have a better understanding of the world building and the IMPORTANCE of language, but not necessarily find that the character is as off as perhaps the author feels, which isn't surprising, considering many of us are 'give me one line and i'll run with it' types.....rp and all.....
CURSED WOMBS:
[The history of how cursed wombs came to be] ”[In the beginning of the Meiji era] there was a girl with special genetic makeup who bore a cursed-spirit child" Actually “with an idiosyncrasy that allowed her to get pregnant with the child of a cursed spirit”! Imo an important distinction since it’s not certain whether her first child that gets discussed here was born prematurely or not and the following pregnancies were all aborted. (NS)
“A child born of mixed blood - both cursed spirit and human.”
Skipped “grotesque child” at the end.
“It was a mysterious pregnancy. She would be ostracized by family and friends.” ⇒ "Starting from a pregnancy she had no recollection of, [followed by] the oppression from her kith and kin, it made her go insane”
This latter part of this section is filled to the brim with complicated language so I’m not entirely sure but I think this might’ve been the intended meaning of the line. The official translators were probably struggling with the vocabulary too, so they cut out some stuff entirely, to be precise - the go insane part. It’s the bit I’m not certain about myself but I scoured Japanese dictionaries and that’s the meaning that seemed to be the best fit among the options. Anyway, to reiterate - the bit about the pregnancy actually says that the girl herself didn’t even know (couldn’t remember) how it came to be. The part about the relatives doesn’t mention friends, it’s actually a set phrase that means “one’s relatives by blood and marriage (in blood and law); one’s kith and kin” - I went here with the latter since it’s shorter and fits the overall vibe of the line. (NS)
“She would hold the corpse of the child and flee to a temple in the mountains. The temple was run by jujutsu sorcerers. However, her luck had run out.“
⇒ “(…) However, this was when her luck run out”
Other than the nuance in the last line, this isn’t mistranslated but the whole section just flowed differently in the original and felt less disjointed. Also! One of the scanlations I’ve seen had it misspelled as “Noshitori” but the evil sorcerer’s name is actually “Kamo Noritoshi” (and yes, it’s the same as the young Kamo but the “toshi” is written with different characters). (NS)
"The child born from a cursed spirit and human would become a prisoner of intellectual curiosity”
⇒ “His [Kamo Noritoshi’s] intellectual curiosity would be taken captive by children born between a cursed spirit and a human”
Very much the other way around. It’s very clear in the original that the subject of the sentence was Kamo’s intellectual curiosity and not the child. (NS)
“Death painting wombs: numbers 1-3. Cursed objects worthy of special grade.”
Closer to: “Cursed objects powerful enough to be classified as special grade” “Did cursed energy originate from a mother’s hatred? No…”
It’s specified here as “did their cursed energy” instead (emphasis mine), and the question is actually left unanswered………………………………………………… So yeah, congrats on getting rid of this very intended ambiguity. It’s something like “or was it maybe–” (NS)
[About cursed wombs] “For 150 years, with only the notion of one another’s existence, they would survive, sealed away”
⇒ “For 150 years, they endured the seal, relying only on one another’s existence”
The notion” just doesn’t capture the sentiment of the line at all, which imo is most likely the follow-up to the narrator’s musings about the origin of the death painting’s immense cursed energy. (See above.) (NS)
megumi specific:
[In reply to Toudou’s question about his taste in women/men]
“As long as a person is compassionate, then I don’t need anything else”.
I actually like how the official release tackled it because it’s such an ambiguous/broad/outright baffling phrase in the original. What they translated as “compassionate” is actually 人間性, which basically means “human nature”. The whole phrase would be something like “as long as there’s unbudging human nature to that person, I won’t ask for anything more”. Moreover, the word in question is the same as in the philosophical concept of “human nature” understood as “fundamental dispositions and characteristics—including ways of thinking, feeling, and acting—that humans are said to have naturally”. (Quoting after Wikipedia, this is very much not my field haha. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_nature) As some Japanese articles further extrapolate it as “possessing the quality of thoughtfulness/consideration/compassion”, imo the translation the official release went with is a nice way to sum it up. On the other hand it was such an intriguing phrase, I had to scratch the itch. (NS) --- [Fushiguro about Tsumiki]
“She was the kindest person. There was no reason to think otherwise. She was someone who deserved to be happy. But Tsumiki was cursed”
⇒ “She was a good person, no sliver of doubt about it. A person who deserved happiness more than anyone else. And yet Tsumiki got cursed”
I guess being kind does mean someone’s a good person but they’re not interchangeable.
Lastly, another important #jjk specific terminology gets introduced here. Fushiguro uses 善人 (zennin) for “good person” and 善人 (akunin) for “bad person” (also scoundrel, villain, wrongdoer etc.). The former especially is a pretty formal term and usually, a more casual & common phrasing that also means "a good guy/person” (いい奴) would get used instead. Both terms also appear during Yuuji’s conversation with Nanamin in the aftermath of Junpei’s incident where they touched on what “proper/correct death” means and Nanami spoke about 善人 and 悪人 and how most people are neither. (NS)
reading through all the translations arc by arc as they come (2/10 up through the death painting arc!!!, rest tbd) on (NS) is the better way to digest the material here that is 90-95% taken from that so i can reference things and nuances without going back to the tumblr every single time. but this cheat sheet is by no means honestly very useful even if you've found your way here, without the big picture of what it's all surrounded by, the supporting images included in the original posts, and so on. i tried to make it coherent anyway for MY sake because my memory is shit but a piecemeal thing will always be piecemeal and why waste time here when you can just go to their blog. (MH) has a whole thread of translations and word specifics as their pinned tweet, many of which i found informative. and though i've only sourced a couple things from them on this cheat sheet, that is largely because the character analysis/observations made by bettering certain translations were already character conclusions i'd drawn even from the more mediocre translation of the official. likewise, i think anyone going to either of these shouldn't go to them as PURE corrections because as badly shammed as some people feel various characters got in the translations of the manga (official) including say, megumi, after reading the more accurate translations i found that my reading of him was not wrong, and felt kind of validated??? so i feel anyone who Close Reads will maybe come away thinking that they have a better understanding of the world building and the IMPORTANCE of language, but not necessarily find that the character is as off as perhaps the author feels, which isn't surprising, considering many of us are 'give me one line and i'll run with it' types.....rp and all.....
CURSED WOMBS:
[The history of how cursed wombs came to be] ”[In the beginning of the Meiji era] there was a girl with special genetic makeup who bore a cursed-spirit child" Actually “with an idiosyncrasy that allowed her to get pregnant with the child of a cursed spirit”! Imo an important distinction since it’s not certain whether her first child that gets discussed here was born prematurely or not and the following pregnancies were all aborted. (NS)
“A child born of mixed blood - both cursed spirit and human.”
Skipped “grotesque child” at the end.
“It was a mysterious pregnancy. She would be ostracized by family and friends.” ⇒ "Starting from a pregnancy she had no recollection of, [followed by] the oppression from her kith and kin, it made her go insane”
This latter part of this section is filled to the brim with complicated language so I’m not entirely sure but I think this might’ve been the intended meaning of the line. The official translators were probably struggling with the vocabulary too, so they cut out some stuff entirely, to be precise - the go insane part. It’s the bit I’m not certain about myself but I scoured Japanese dictionaries and that’s the meaning that seemed to be the best fit among the options. Anyway, to reiterate - the bit about the pregnancy actually says that the girl herself didn’t even know (couldn’t remember) how it came to be. The part about the relatives doesn’t mention friends, it’s actually a set phrase that means “one’s relatives by blood and marriage (in blood and law); one’s kith and kin” - I went here with the latter since it’s shorter and fits the overall vibe of the line. (NS)
“She would hold the corpse of the child and flee to a temple in the mountains. The temple was run by jujutsu sorcerers. However, her luck had run out.“
⇒ “(…) However, this was when her luck run out”
Other than the nuance in the last line, this isn’t mistranslated but the whole section just flowed differently in the original and felt less disjointed. Also! One of the scanlations I’ve seen had it misspelled as “Noshitori” but the evil sorcerer’s name is actually “Kamo Noritoshi” (and yes, it’s the same as the young Kamo but the “toshi” is written with different characters). (NS)
"The child born from a cursed spirit and human would become a prisoner of intellectual curiosity”
⇒ “His [Kamo Noritoshi’s] intellectual curiosity would be taken captive by children born between a cursed spirit and a human”
Very much the other way around. It’s very clear in the original that the subject of the sentence was Kamo’s intellectual curiosity and not the child. (NS)
“Death painting wombs: numbers 1-3. Cursed objects worthy of special grade.”
Closer to: “Cursed objects powerful enough to be classified as special grade” “Did cursed energy originate from a mother’s hatred? No…”
It’s specified here as “did their cursed energy” instead (emphasis mine), and the question is actually left unanswered………………………………………………… So yeah, congrats on getting rid of this very intended ambiguity. It’s something like “or was it maybe–” (NS)
[About cursed wombs] “For 150 years, with only the notion of one another’s existence, they would survive, sealed away”
⇒ “For 150 years, they endured the seal, relying only on one another’s existence”
The notion” just doesn’t capture the sentiment of the line at all, which imo is most likely the follow-up to the narrator’s musings about the origin of the death painting’s immense cursed energy. (See above.) (NS)
megumi specific:
[In reply to Toudou’s question about his taste in women/men]
“As long as a person is compassionate, then I don’t need anything else”.
I actually like how the official release tackled it because it’s such an ambiguous/broad/outright baffling phrase in the original. What they translated as “compassionate” is actually 人間性, which basically means “human nature”. The whole phrase would be something like “as long as there’s unbudging human nature to that person, I won’t ask for anything more”. Moreover, the word in question is the same as in the philosophical concept of “human nature” understood as “fundamental dispositions and characteristics—including ways of thinking, feeling, and acting—that humans are said to have naturally”. (Quoting after Wikipedia, this is very much not my field haha. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_nature) As some Japanese articles further extrapolate it as “possessing the quality of thoughtfulness/consideration/compassion”, imo the translation the official release went with is a nice way to sum it up. On the other hand it was such an intriguing phrase, I had to scratch the itch. (NS) --- [Fushiguro about Tsumiki]
“She was the kindest person. There was no reason to think otherwise. She was someone who deserved to be happy. But Tsumiki was cursed”
⇒ “She was a good person, no sliver of doubt about it. A person who deserved happiness more than anyone else. And yet Tsumiki got cursed”
I guess being kind does mean someone’s a good person but they’re not interchangeable.
Lastly, another important #jjk specific terminology gets introduced here. Fushiguro uses 善人 (zennin) for “good person” and 善人 (akunin) for “bad person” (also scoundrel, villain, wrongdoer etc.). The former especially is a pretty formal term and usually, a more casual & common phrasing that also means "a good guy/person” (いい奴) would get used instead. Both terms also appear during Yuuji’s conversation with Nanamin in the aftermath of Junpei’s incident where they touched on what “proper/correct death” means and Nanami spoke about 善人 and 悪人 and how most people are neither. (NS)