Is it "possible" to translate Homestuck ?

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Sunday, November 16th, 2025, 3:41 PM β€” 14 days ago

So, my first contact with Homestuck was back in 2011/2012. I was wandering in Deviantart to look for cool anime fanarts, until I came across an amazing group cosplay of multicolored characters, among whom were grey skinned characters with orange horns. When I finally discovered the series where they were from, I instantly wanted to start reading it. Back then, I barely understood english, so I immediatly sought for a french translation.. which I found fairly easily !

The (fan) translation was pretty rough but mostly decent for the time ! (Even though I still struggled to understand what's going on lmao) But during this first reading, so many things were literally impossible for me to understand, especially as a non-native english speaker. And the fact that this translation was very literal did not help at all (either the overuse of swears, which may work in english but not in french, and some expressions).

Few years later, probably around 2015, I tried to read Homestuck in english and it was worst. It's not that many things were literally impossible for me to understand, it's that everything was absolutely incomprehensible. The characters spoke strangely and with weird words. The jokes completely went over my head. It was extremely frustrating.

10 years later, I am currently reading Homestuck for the third time, and this time, I can truly enjoy it ! (my english level is finally decent lol) But I have come to the conclusion that Homestuck is inaccessible if you don't understand english.


But now I'm wondering, is it possible to translate Homestuck in a way that captures the very essence of the webcomics' writing style and identity ? Not only through the way the characters' talk, but also in a way that allows all the international readers to actually understand (most of) the jokes and references ? Idk, it's probably extremely naive, and maybe the answer is extremely easy, but with the possible incoming series, it's not impossible that we'll see a wave of official Homestuck translations for the first time.


I think Homestuck would be hard to translate. Long and hard (lol). But probably not impossible ? Idk, I'm just throwing it out there for discussion *eyes emoji*


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Topic: Is it "possible" to translate Homestuck ?