So Tokyopop has apparently...

[lebateleur]

...licensed Silver Diamond. I knew there was a reason I'd spontaneously started weeping blood earlier today.

(Seriously, Tokyopop's translations are gawdawful bad¹. And if there is any mangaka whose work deserves to be translated with a fine-toothed comb, it is that of (my future wife!) Sugiura Shiho.)

Thank god I can read Japanese.

これで以上です。

¹I can give an explanation as to why, if anyone is interested.

Comments

[absenceofmind.livejournal.com]

i am quite curious, and my japanese is definitely not good but probably sufficient for me to make out what you might use in an explanation? <3

love to hear intelligent meta from you, always.

[lebateleur.livejournal.com]

Here you go then. The short answer is that to keep costs down, Tokyopop pays well below standard rates for their translators. This means that they get people who don't have a good grasp of English, don't have a good grasp of Japanese, don't give a shit, or a combination of any of the above. At any rate, their translators are only obligated to produce literal, word-for-word translations. Think stuff along the lines of "Lie! One's zampakuto is miss!"

To correct this, they hire editors to "localise" the (cough) translations into fluid, understandable English. Only problem here is that the localisers need have no familiarity with Japan's language or culture, or even the series being translated. They just have to rewrite the crap they receive so that it makes some modicum of sense in English...even if it doesn't bear much--or any--relation to what was originally said the Japanese original. I have had the misfortune to encounter one of these translations and gave up after about six hours, when I realised I was retranslating the damn thing myself.

This treatment sucks for any series, but it is going to be an unqualified DISASTER in regard to Silver Diamond, because Sugiura's characterisations are so multifaceted, and it's that aspect (as well as clever puns and wordplay) that makes her writing so good. Her characters all speak, act, and interact in nuanced, individual manners, and that is all going to be lost on translators who lack the skill to portray this, and editors with no ability to understand what's missing from the "translations" they're working from.

HTH.

[fragilistikal.livejournal.com]

I think there was a campaign on the TokyoPop website that probably contributed....

But yeah, it's gonna be hard to do a coherent translation of the nuanced names and wordplay....

[lebateleur.livejournal.com]

And that's assuming that the translators working on the series even know what the fuck they're doing...

[fragilistikal.livejournal.com]

Yikes, I didn't know they were that bad.

[lebateleur.livejournal.com]

Yup, which is why I've evinced such shock whenever I come across translations (June and whoever published those manhwa I reviewed back when) that not only make grammatical sense, but also seem to accurately reflect what the original said. I've come to realise that my negative views toward transes probably have a lot more to do with Tokyopop being the biggest game in town then the fact that they just inherently suck. 毎日は発見。