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INTEREST: I'm in Love with the Villainess Author Responds to Alterations in English-Language Release


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Sakagami Tomoyo



Joined: 06 Dec 2008
Posts: 940
Location: Melbourne, VIC, Australia
PostPosted: Fri Mar 19, 2021 8:46 pm Reply with quote
Daizo wrote:
The big problem here is that this is not the first, nor the second, but the third time in a short period that they've been caught silently altering light novels in a significant manner. At this point it's pretty clear that this is a systemic issue. It is extremely unlikely at this point that this issue would stop at just three cases. Yet all of Seven Seas' communication regarding their "new editing policies" and "revising books" has been purely reactive in nature so far, which gives the impression that they'll only go back to revise things if they actually get caught.

Fair points, but publishing tends not to have a very short turnaround time on things, so it's not especially damning that further such problems would come up not long after the first was made public and they'd resolved to do better. Regarding what they'll go back and revise and how proactive/reactive they're being, I expect it's considerably harder and more time consuming to go back and identify all edits that shouldn't have been made than you might think, especially while continuing to go about the business of licensing, translating, editing and publishing more books.

Fair enough that this further diminishes people's faith in the company and their ability/willingness to translate things properly. I don't think total boycott of them forevermore is really called for, but the true test of that will be how faithful they are in their translations a year or two down the line. If this kind of thing happens with books that began the translation/editing process after these resolutions to do better, then they absolutely can't be trusted. But for the time being, I'll give them some benefit of the doubt.
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^__^v



Joined: 01 Nov 2010
Posts: 48
PostPosted: Fri Mar 19, 2021 8:48 pm Reply with quote
Seven Sea released statement still isn't reassuring, and the response feels automated/copy and pasted. "We'll be revising the eBook within the next few weeks to add the cut portions back into the book, and the revision will also be reflected in all future printings of the paperback" after getting caught the third time. Are there other titles that are also affected, but unreported? Whose to say the company won't do such altered/removed/censored edits again in the (near) future? It doesn't give me confidence to support a company that has a habit of providing incomplete products. Not only that the company didn't provide a reason why such edits were made in the first place.

Last edited by ^__^v on Fri Mar 19, 2021 9:46 pm; edited 9 times in total
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Cardcaptor Takato



Joined: 27 Jan 2018
Posts: 4784
PostPosted: Fri Mar 19, 2021 8:56 pm Reply with quote
Companies tend to mainly look at the raw numbers and not people posting rants on social media or anime message boards about it. As far as we know thus far it's only been these three titles that have had translation issues. Seven Seas also has an entire manga division which to the best of my knowledge hasn't had any of these translation or censorship issues that don't deserve to be punished because of the mistakes of these three titles. There are also other more productive options to cause a change in the company's policy like starting an email writing campaign professionally expressing your disappointment with their recent practices and respectfully demanding to see a change made. But if you force the entire company to go under because of three titles that had these issues in them that's a lot of translators that will be out of a job that likely had nothing to do with these editorial decisions made by the higher ups and also a ton of light novel and manga titles that might forever remain in licensing limbo. Okazu's site has a good run down on how best to address this translation issue. https://okazu.yuricon.com/2021/03/19/im-in-love-with-the-villainess-translation-controversy-what-does-it-mean-for-readers/
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Seagloom



Joined: 04 Nov 2017
Posts: 276
PostPosted: Fri Mar 19, 2021 9:26 pm Reply with quote
Someone wrote earlier in this thread that the manga version of this title was similarly edited. It wouldn't surprise me if this editing policy extends to their licensed manga too. That said, I don't often buy manga from them to begin with so that's a nonissue for me.

To me boycotting isn't about forcing them out of business, hoping to enact change, or taking an idealistic stand. The PR pledges they already made are likely as far as they will go to rectify this situation for the time being. I just don't see the point of spending money on a potentially substandard product when I can just import the original instead.

We also don't know if these three titles are the only affected series. That being the case, I'm going to make the best decision to suit my own needs.
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Sakagami Tomoyo



Joined: 06 Dec 2008
Posts: 940
Location: Melbourne, VIC, Australia
PostPosted: Fri Mar 19, 2021 9:33 pm Reply with quote
Seagloom wrote:
Someone wrote earlier in this thread that the manga version of this title was similarly edited.

What they said is that the line was partially excluded from the manga. It's not clear if that was a decision made in the Japanese to English translation or in the novel to manga adaptation.
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Seagloom



Joined: 04 Nov 2017
Posts: 276
PostPosted: Fri Mar 19, 2021 9:44 pm Reply with quote
^Fair enough.
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lossthief
ANN Reviewer


Joined: 14 Dec 2012
Posts: 1380
PostPosted: Fri Mar 19, 2021 9:58 pm Reply with quote
Sakagami Tomoyo wrote:
Seagloom wrote:
Someone wrote earlier in this thread that the manga version of this title was similarly edited.

What they said is that the line was partially excluded from the manga. It's not clear if that was a decision made in the Japanese to English translation or in the novel to manga adaptation.


To my knowledge, the manga has yet to be officially released in English (Seven Seas announced they'd licensed the manga version just last month) so presumably they read either the Japanese version or a nonofficial release.

Either way it would be a LOT harder to pull off a change like this in a manga. Where any dialogue or monologue, internal or otherwise, is delivered through speech and thought bubbles, editing out large swaths of content requires either cutting entire pages of sequential art or totally altering the content of the translation, both of which is a lot more immediately noticeable than what's happened here.

As for the change itself, without trying to speculate on the motivation behind this change, all I can say is that it's a bad move and a plain example of bad editorial decision making by whoever is behind it. If the fan translation of the cut paragraphs is accurate, it seems like a pretty pivotal bit of information that both informs Rae's outward personality and gives valuable context to her own motivations. Cutting it makes the character both shallower and less likeable, even if you want to ignore how it's very obviously purposeful commentary. I really can't think of a good reason to remove this - even if there was some requirement to cut down page length, surely there were other scenes or passages that would be more expendable.
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Florete



Joined: 21 Jan 2018
Posts: 363
PostPosted: Fri Mar 19, 2021 10:01 pm Reply with quote
Seagloom wrote:
Someone wrote earlier in this thread that the manga version of this title was similarly edited.

The manga hasn't been published in English yet. The license for it was only announced last month.
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El Hermano



Joined: 24 Feb 2019
Posts: 450
Location: Texas
PostPosted: Fri Mar 19, 2021 10:05 pm Reply with quote
Seagloom wrote:
To me boycotting isn't about forcing them out of business, hoping to enact change, or taking an idealistic stand. The PR pledges they already made are likely as far as they will go to rectify this situation for the time being. I just don't see the point of spending money on a potentially substandard product when I can just import the original instead.


That's the most reasonable approach. People don't boycott because they think they can take down some giant corporation and run them out of business. They boycott because they don't like the product. Why pay for an inferior product? Companies can do whatever they want with a license, it doesn't really matter at the end of the day. It just means more money for people to spend elsewhere besides official English releases.
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John the Dark Lord



Joined: 19 Jun 2020
Posts: 231
PostPosted: Fri Mar 19, 2021 10:17 pm Reply with quote
lossthief wrote:
Either way it would be a LOT harder to pull off a change like this in a manga. Where any dialogue or monologue, internal or otherwise, is delivered through speech and thought bubbles, editing out large swaths of content requires either cutting entire pages of sequential art or totally altering the content of the translation, both of which is a lot more immediately noticeable than what's happened here.


Someone already answered my comment pointing out the change in the manga was likely just because it's difficult to put entire monologues and narrations from a novel in a manga.

Now, in regards to Rei's character development let me reiterate: what they removed in the manga was the reference to real life gay entertainers that intentionally act like gay stereotypes. But unlike what happened with Seven Seas, the other important bit, about how Rei acts that way as a defense mechanism, was kept in.
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Tanteikingdomkey



Joined: 03 Sep 2008
Posts: 2345
PostPosted: Sat Mar 20, 2021 12:21 am Reply with quote
Did we ever find out what type of content in classroom of the elite was removed.

Jobless reincarnation had content referencing rape removed, while this one had references to LGBT issues removed.

Could it really be as simple as Seven seas trying to sanitize content that is aimed at an older (teen to adult) audience?
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Yuri is Life



Joined: 20 Mar 2021
Posts: 9
PostPosted: Sat Mar 20, 2021 3:32 am Reply with quote
I have been putting up with that kind of shit from Seven Seas for a long time. And I highly doubt that their apology statement mean what it said. Boycotting won't definitely make a lot of translators goes out of their jobs. As far as I know, LN/Manga translators work with more than ONE company. They have messed up a lot of series I love and this time is going too far. I still don't get why those yuri bloggers are STILL soft on Seven Seas even after all this shit.
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Electric Wooloo



Joined: 19 Aug 2020
Posts: 307
PostPosted: Sat Mar 20, 2021 4:22 am Reply with quote
"A long time"

Can you please point out any other editorial changes Seven Seas has made besides the 3 already mentioned then?
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Yuri is Life



Joined: 20 Mar 2021
Posts: 9
PostPosted: Sat Mar 20, 2021 6:07 am Reply with quote
Electric Wooloo wrote:

Can you please point out any other editorial changes Seven Seas has made besides the 3 already mentioned then?

I don't know whether it is editorial changes or not but there are serval series. As far as the series I have read from series from Seven Seas goes...
Bloom into You(removed some important dialogs)
Adachi and Shimamura (also removed some dialogs)
Roll Over and Die (this one can be either TL or editorial change or both since they mistook a character gender)
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marshmallowpie



Joined: 22 Sep 2009
Posts: 300
Location: Nova Scotia, Canada
PostPosted: Sat Mar 20, 2021 7:27 am Reply with quote
Isn't a passage like this what translation notes are for? I have no interest in this series, since I'm pretty much an isekai hater and just making it gay isn't gonna change that (plus there's so much yuri in English now, I have to be picky) but if I knew the series dealt with these things in a more realistic way, like Seagloom mentioned, I would have been more interested.

Erica's statement of "It may have been Seven Seas who deleted the scene – which frankly makes no sense to me" is just straight up weird. How does it make no sense? It's the third time something was taken out, in three different series, with three completely different types of removed content. I also don't see why Erica thinks it's such an awful thing that fans contacted the original author over this, especially if the author does sometimes tweet in English. The author has a right to know what's being done with their work, don't they?
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