Forum - View topicPossible translation errors in manga
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kona-chan_advocate
Posts: 19 Location: somewhere in the United States |
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Has anyone here ever noticed anything in manga that don't seem like it's translated right?
For example: I recently started reading my Negima! manga and I noticed that somewhere between volume 5 and 6, Fei Ku's way of speaking changes from fluent to...not so fluent. I mean it's not like I'm complaining or anything. It's just something I noticed. |
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littlegreenwolf
 Posts: 4796 Location: Seattle, WA |
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Yeah, but only when I really know the Japanese version pretty well. Way back before ADV bought a ton of manga a bunch of friends and I scanlated the first couple chapters of Tactics by Sakura Kinoshita. We happily awaited ADV's release and were rather disappointed with their translations (not even going to mention the actual typesetting/page crops). Of course we were basing this off the translation my friend did, but they didn't even really bother with keeping with the original Japanese mythos found in Tactics. Calling all monsters/yokai a goblin does NOT equal a proper English equivalent, especially since the series does nothing but go into various types of monsters found in Japanese mythology. Goblin does not equal Tengu, as well as pose as an english substitute for Kitsune.
When Tokyopop took over after ADV manga died they thankfully made the corrections. |
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Jaymie
Posts: 915 |
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Yes, I notice that in almost every volume of Tokyopop manga. Tons of spelling errors, names translated wrong, Americanizations, etc.
Though Viz has done it a couple of times in D.Gray-man. One time they called Lavi "Rabi", and they frequently called Lenalee "Linali" before they stabilized their translation. |
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Dorcas_Aurelia
 Posts: 5344 Location: Philly |
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That's not so much an error as a shift in the attempt to translate a particular speech mannerism from Japanese to English. Ku Fei tends to add "aru" or "arune" to most of her sentences, which isn't really appropriate in most cases, and I think I've heard it's somewhat archaic as well. In the early volumes, Del Rey pretty much ignored it, until they decided they'd try having her speak broken English to convey the difficulty she had with the foreign language, mildly justified in that she's one of the Baka Rangers as well as attempting a second language. |
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zawa113
 Posts: 7393 |
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Banana Fish actually had quite a few problems with this. Now, the first 7 volumes all got re-prints, they're pretty much all ok, but in the 1st ed for vol 3, they labeled a character's name wrong in the pics they put at the beginning of books to help you remember who's who.
But there were quite a few more problems that that, Someone forgot to check for typos and a few easy to spell/correct with spell check words got horribly messed up (one word had a random space in the middle of it). I encountered at least three spelling mistakes, which isn't bad for 19 volumes except that they were so easy to ignore! It wasn't character name issues, it was just not hitting the spell check issues! |
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LKK
 Posts: 426 Location: Virginia, USA |
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Del Rey's translation of Ghost Hunt has some problems. In one scene (during the Bloody Labryinth arc), Lin argues with Naru who wants to attempt a dangerous task. Lin asks Naru if his parents would approve of him taking the risk because Naru is one of 17 children. What Lin really asked is if Naru's parents would approve of him taking the risk because Naru is 17 years old. In other words, did his parents think he was old enough to take the risk as opposed to the implication that Naru's parents wouldn't care because they had 16 other children to care about, not just him. Trust me, Naru is not one of 17 siblings. Fans of the series got a good laugh out of that mistranslation.
A more serious translation error occurred earlier in Ghost Hunt during the arc about the curse at Yasuhara's school. The scene near the end where Naru apologized to Mai was written so that readers were left with the impression that Naru was angry and insulting Mai instead of apologizing to her. What confused me and several others was that Del Rey's dialogue was at odds with the pictures. It wasn't until a friend who has read the novels and the manga in the original Japanese told me the real way the scene was written that I understood why the art disagreed with the text. My friend's translation of that scene was later confirmed by the anime which showed the scene happening as my friend had said. Naru apologized to Mai. He didn't insult her or argue with her as Del Rey indicated. Last edited by LKK on Tue Sep 22, 2009 10:51 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Veers
 Posts: 1197 Location: Texas |
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The point of translation is to convey the message of the content to someone who does not know the original language. Often a perfectly faithful and literal translation is difficult (or impossible) without sounding very awkward and/or including lots of notes (I do like notes though).
The target audience of many scanslators is people who can read/half-read the raws or are at least familiar enough with manga (or anime or Japanese langauge) to recognize (and understand the significance of) certain reoccurring Japanese words/phrases/honorifics, and as such these words are incorporated, the puns can be explained, etc. This kind of translation can also be split into two subgroups: translators who are not very experienced who have an easier time doing a more literal translation (where I fall), and translators who are experienced and could do a creative and accurate localization, but chose not to due to their target audience. The target audience of many professional translators is determined by the editor, but by in large their goal is to make their translation accessible to a general English-speaking audience. Sure, major things like name changes or other plot/relatoinship-bending changes are poor practice, but Americanization of humor, dropping of honorifics, and use of near-match words (Tengu/Goblin or Shinigami/Death God, for example, even though there is "more to it than that" in regards to the original Japanese term), are pretty forgivable in my opinion. Something to keep in mind. |
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littlegreenwolf
Posts: 4796 Location: Seattle, WA |
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If it was just Tengu they were calling goblin I would have been ok with it, but EVERYTHING was a goblin with ADV's translation, completely loosing the classes of supernatural beings the manga originally had. When the main basis of the manga is hunting various types of supernatural beings from Japanese mythology you're missing a lot of the plot. It was a stupid move, especially when they had a page in the back of the manga to explain some terms to those not familar with such as Udon, Ramen, name translations, and then they go and throw in Tanuki. It didn't make sense to me to keep Tanuki untranslated and totally convert everything else to Goblin. Nothing wrong with learning a bit of culture, especially when there are no English equivalents. Goblins in Western mythos, as supernatural as they may be, are not the same thing as Tengu.
Shinigami = Death God/Reaper, those equivalents make sense to me. Tengu = goblin, no. The appeal of Sakura Kinoshita's manga is the mythos she blends into her stories. Tactics was completely butchered by ADV, but for some reason ADV got the culture references/translations right when it concerned Western mythos with Mythical Detective Loki, the other Sakura Kinoshita manga they picked up. To me translating a Tengu as a goblin would be the equivalent of translating the Roman goddess Diana as just plain old "Roman Moon Goddess". Thankfully in Loki they kept it to Diana. Not everyone will know who Diana is right off the back, but if you don't know you can look it up. God forbid someone actually learns something from reading a manga. |
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Veers
Posts: 1197 Location: Texas |
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Which kinda reminds me; I recently re-read all my Great Teacher Onizuka manga (Tokyopop's version), only this time I had a pencil and dictionary in hand because in the years since I first read GTO I have learned a lot about the Japanese language. I haven't read the original so I don't know how accurate the translation is... judging from my own interpretations of some of the un-translated (or, at times, translated but not edited-out) text, there are a lot of English lines in GTO that don't match what's being said in Japanese. But you know what? It doesn't really bother me; it's such an enjoyable story I don't sit there worrying about where things might have been changed a bit. And that's what both creator and translator aim for. (That said, I didn't realize how bad the editing was in many places in that manga... downright sloppy in many places.) |
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One Vorlon
Posts: 34 |
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There's a scene* in xxxHolic where the protagonist asks "I suppose the wages for that are coming out of my salary". However, in context, it would make a lot more sense as "I suppose the price for that is coming out of my salary".
*I believe its when Watanuki is recovering after the "lonely woman in the park" story |
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