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Your favorite manga shows up at the comics dealer every few weeks with
a bright color cover and carefully worded dialogue. Before it reaches your
hands, it starts like this blue-colored proof copy of Neon Genesis Evangelion.
But, well before it gets to this stage, the manga has to be translated
into English - more properly, translated into "American" so U.S. audiences
can understand the story and its nuances. |
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The manga translators and re-writers who appeared at A-Kon 9 on Friday
said their job is difficult. They have to take something from a foreign
language and make it understandable - and acceptable - for an audience
half a world away. That job does not mean creating a word-for-word, literal
translation, according to Doug Dlin of Antarctic Press. "I tend to be a
little too wordy and exact. I can make it seem like real English, but it
doesn't flow like natural English." Getting the nuances of Japanese into
English form can be maddening. In Ippongi Bang's Change Commander Goku,
one
character spoke in old-fashioned Japanese slang. Dlin fretted for a long
time before he decided to use old American slang in that character's speech.
Then Bang dropped the gimmick - but Dlin kept it in the translated version. |
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C.B. Cebulski (pictured) of Central Park Media, a newcomer in translated
manga, said it's hard to make the characters' speech patterns seem different
in a manga such as Legend of Lennear, with a number of similiar females.
The interpreter needs to have a solid command of English so he knows how
to give characters unique "voices." It's even harder when the translator
doesn't know what the original Japanese script means - something that,
according to Elin Winkler of Radio Comix, happens more often than most
fans realize. The Battle Binder Plus manga she handled at her previous
Antarctic job seemed nonsensical because that's the way the original was,
according to Winkler. "Battle Binder Plus made me want to rip my
hair out," she said. "Kuni (Kimura) said `This book is about nothing.'" |
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Carl Horn, editor of the Evangelion series, said Shirow Masamune's
manga are infamous for the difficulty of translating them. Often phrases
don't make any sense and Shirow doesn't know what they mean, either, Horn
said. The other half of the translation job - retouching and flipping -
can be unnerving as well. Since manga are read in the opposite direction
as English-language publications, most translated manga are "flipped" and
printed as a mirror image. That means retouching hundreds of details such
as control panel readouts and signs. |
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The most frustrating part of the job is converting sound effects from
Japanese to English. American publishers get manga art in its original
size - which, like American Comics art, is far larger than the forms seen
in print. Those pages can be scanned and converted in a computer program
such as Photoshop. Still, removing Japanese pictograms and drawing their
English counterpoint is a time-consuming task; Cebulski said it takes three
years for an artist to become proficient at retouching. Viz has tried publishing
some manga unflipped, but they have to provide directions for readers unfamiliar
with
right-to-left compositions. |
