I have certain sayings that I like to repeat when the subject comes up. "There's no such thing as a famous translator," is one of them. If you've ever been to the Lost in Translation panel at the San Diego Comic Con, you've probably heard my, "Three things, any two of which will allow you to survive in the manga industry," speech (which wasn't even mine! I stole it from a panel of comic-book editors I attended during the World Con in '84). But one of my favorites has to do with a truth behind translation.

The best translation is always your own translation.

A dirty little secret that the world naturally keeps hidden is that when we read something in English, a novel for example, even though we've read the same book, we didn't have the same experience. We all bring our own assumptions, experiences and prejudices to any novel we read, and what we imagine as we read that novel can be vastly different from person to person. The same is true for manga.

What you read when you get a translation is manga filtered through a mind. If you read manga that I translated, you are getting my interpretation of what the characters are saying and who they are. If you were able to read the manga for yourself in Japanese, it's possible (even likely) that you would get a different interpretation and have that character say the dialog differently in English.

It's one reason why no two translations of the same material are exactly alike.

So if you know Japanese (to any extent) and have read a work before in the original language, then if you read a translation of it, odds are you will have anything from quibbles with the other person's translation to a pull-out-the-pitchforks-and-torches-and-lynch-the-translator attitude. In fact, a while back, a poster on the Anime on DVD forums made it clear that he still hadn't "forgiven" me for an interpretation of Video Girl Ai dialog that I was responsible for in 1998. That's a better part of a decade that someone's been holding a grudge over an interpretation choice.

So here's a piece of advice. If you really want to enjoy a translated work, don't read the original. If you really want to enjoy the original, then avoid the translated version and translate the original for yourself. Your mind works differently than the translator's, and the translation will just make you frustrated.

On the other hand, if you're mining someone else's translation for interesting word choices, that can be a different story -- and I'll get into that in a future column.

Posted by dojosensei at 08:35 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

To give credit where I think it's due, I first heard the phrase spoken by Julie Davis, the brilliant editor of the late, lamented Animerica magazine. It was perfect, so I've stolen the phrase and use it whenever I can.

(Please note that below, I am using "he" as a generic pronoun since the gender-neutral pronoun "per" flopped heavily during the early stages of the feminist movement. Gender neutral language is a pain in generic descriptions such as the one below. I want it established that this is in no way discrimination. I firmly believe that women can be just as stupid as men sometimes.)

A guy goes to Japan, and perhaps lives there for a while. While living there, he discovers something that is popular in Japan but hasn't quite made it in the West yet. The person does some research, learns a little about the discovery, and decides that this might be a good experiment -- a potentially profitable investment -- to make when he gets back to his home country. And since he's done some research, he has decided that he knows everything about the discovery.

When he comes back to the west, he realizes, to his surprise, that other companies have made the discovery before him. But going over their products, he sees details that they've missed. He will do this product RIGHT! He knows what's right because he did that research! Prior performance be damned, he KNOWS what makes the product tick because the way HE'LL do it is how they did it in Japan.

He is the FIRST GAIJIN IN JAPAN!!! He's been there! He knows all!

That's the type of guy who thinks that because he's been over there, he is gifted with perfect knowledge that is greater than the combined knowledge of those around him. This kind of arrogance is reminiscent of The Greatest Translator in the World phase of translating, but it usually happens to entrepreneurs.

Do you remember when TokyoPop first came out as Mixx Entertainment with their MixxZine? They used print fonts rather than the more conventional hand-printing-style fonts because Japan used print fonts. They also had a policy that all of the sound effects should be real words since most onomatopoeia in Japan are used quite frequently in Japanese conversation. That led to sound effects like BLOOOOW for when the wind blew. (Something that caused me no end of amusement while reading manga in the mid-to-late 90s.)

They basically ignored 80 years of U.S. comics history because they thought that changing the font and changing some of the sound effects would make a difference. What they didn't take into account is the thing that makes a difference in manga is the story. Given an equal choice, people would rather have a nice, accurately translated, well proof-read, and competently lettered manga, but really, there is no choice. Only one version of a best-selling manga will ever come out in the U.S., and if it's a good enough story, people will read it no matter how well or poorly it's done. Sailor Moon sold great with sound effects like BLOOOW, and would have sold great no matter how the sound effects were translated.

But those types of ideas are typical for the First Gaijin in Japan syndrome. Basically taking superficial, cosmetic differences, and thinking that they are the cause of the success or failure of a product. The arrogance comes from personal pride in the discovery. The syndrome doesn't stop at manga, it will happen in any of the Japanese originated fields such as flower arranging, martial arts, tea ceremony, Buddhism or Shintoism, etc. Somebody will come back to their home country feeling that they have special knowledge, never realizing that their knowledge hasn't ever really been a secret in the first place.

Posted by dojosensei at 06:47 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

When manga first started to be published, all of my friends who loved manga but didn't know Japanese wanted to be rewriters. It was a way to be a part of it without having to take the years necessary to learn Japanese.

Nowadays I'm not quite sure if they'd be so enthusiastic. Very few people can see what a rewriter does for a manga, and if any of the dialog isn't quite how the reader imagined it, the rewriter is one of the first to be blamed. In other words, the rewriter is the last to be praised for a job well done, and the first to be criticized. Not the best position in the world.

The most vital domain of the rewriter is characterization. If the characters sound like the characters, then the rewriter is doing a good job. If all the characters sound the same, then there's a problem. Apart from the one-or-two-word lines of dialog, English provides a wealth of ways to differentiate a one character's voice from another. Let's take an example and put it into a variety of different voices.

Let's take the line:
I'm going out with friends. Do you want to come along?

Tough Guy:
Me and the guys are goin' out. Comin'?

Child:
I gonna meet up with some friends! You coming too?

Young man:
Some of the guys and I are hitting the bars. You coming with?

Young woman:
A few of us are getting together. Do you think you can come along?

Elderly:
Several of us are going to paint the town. Do you feel like joining in?

Polite:
A few of us had plans to go out. I do hope you can accompany us.

Affected:
Plans are afoot for a group outing. Your presence is requested.

Evil
I am leading my minions out to fulfill my plan! Join us...or die!

Okay, the last one wasn't exactly true to the spirit of the original line, but you get the idea. All of the above sentences mean pretty much the same thing, and the only thing that distinguishes them is vocabulary, and that's the tool of the rewriter/adaptor. It's possible for a manga to use the first, neutral sentence in the translation, but the experience wouldn't be as rich as is could be, and worse, wouldn't be as rich as it was for Japanese readers when they read the original book.

Since rewriters/adaptors are usually the professional writers of the team, they also have to keep their eyes open for foreshadowing, dramatic repetition of words or phrases, comedic repetition, and other tricks of writing so that the book does what the original author wanted it to do.

There are some translators who do both translation and rewrite, and I count myself as one of those. The problem there is that these are two distinct jobs that need two very different skill sets. I was submitting short stories to magazines before I ever tried to learn Japanese, so I had some background in writing that I could bring to translation. Other translators I know learned how to do adaptation while on the job of doing literal translation. But basically a translator/adaptor is one person doing two jobs. Because I can translate and adapt at the same time, it doesn't take me quite as much time as it would take two people, but it takes me longer to do the full job than it does to do a literal.

And there are many rewriters that I respect greatly. I was fortunate enough to edit several manga scripts rewritten by Gerard Jones, and those scripts were just about perfect. Although he didn't know Japanese, Gerard's knack of capturing the voice while keeping the information exactly the same always amazed me. And Fred Burke was a go-to guy when I was at Viz for scripts that involved mysticism. He knew how to capture that tone like few others in the business. I'd list more, but I don't want this to sound like an acknowledgements section.

Although the number of translators who can also be adaptors is growing, it isn't anywhere near enough to cover all of the manga that is being produced, so splitting the duties into the two skill sets makes sense. The rewriters are an extremely valuable asset to translated manga and anime, even though very few people can distinguish what they do.

Posted by dojosensei at 07:14 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

As a prospect, I understood that one would never become famous being a translator, and since I've never really sought out fame, conceptually, that was fine with me. But like most people, I've never actually seen real fame in action.

Then along came Pokemon.

Of course, real fame never actually brushed me personally, even with a juggernaut like Pokemon. There were a few people who foolishly asked me to sign autographs since I had "something to do with it" (I wonder if those autographs actually brought the value of the manga down), but when I said that I was the translator, most people nodded with an uncomfortable smile, then went off looking for someone important to sign their merchandise.

But real fame brushed the manga author, Toshihiro Ono, at the San Diego Comic Con in 1999, and I was right there to witness it.

Ravening hoards. That's the only way to describe it. I guess rumor had gone around that he was the "creator of Pokemon" rather than the author of a manga based on the anime and game. So there were huge numbers of people who wanted him to sign cards from the collectible trading card game, anime tape and DVD boxes, plushies (difficult to sign), T-shirts, and even bootleg material. And it didn't end. Remember that scene from The Mummy when countless people from the town are all stumbling forward chanting "Imhotep, Imhotep..." in never-ending waves? That's my memory of that convention.

Still, most of the ravening hoards were young and enthusiastic about Pokemon, and that makes up for a lot of ravening. But the worst parts of the convention were not the hoards themselves but the hoards' mothers.

We knew that with the popularity of Pokemon, there would be far more people in the signing line than could reasonably receive even a signature let alone a sketch. So we made up some cards on a nice, white, heavy paper stock, photocopied some of his cute Pikachu images on them and asked Mr. Ono to sign them ahead of time. So we had a good-sized stack of them ready at the signing. During the first half hour, we realized that he wouldn't go through many people at all giving them sketches (he wanted perfect sketches for each person), so we informed the line afterwards that it would only be signatures from that point on. Then when it was about 15 minutes until the end of the signing, we informed the still-long line that they would have to make do with a handshake and the pre-signed card.

That's when a few children started crying and more than a few mothers went on the war path. (Especially one who got in only minutes before the line was closed.) I guess they assumed that Mr. Ono was like a bank -- if you get in there before closing, you are entitled to full service. And invoking reality to these people went nowhere. I tried to explain that a man gripping a pen for more than two and a half hours will wear him out a little. He isn't a signing machine. But that argument didn't make any difference to the angry mother of a crying child. In the end, the only thing I could do was be the villain. Direct their anger on me rather than on him. Pretend that my arbitrary rules were the cause of the unfairness of the world, and allow them to vent.

I guess it's the never-ending line of people and the unreasonable expectations that convinced me that a career choice of a great degree of anonymity was the way for me!

Posted by dojosensei at 07:38 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Your editor is your client. Your customer. And it's a good idea to know what an editor does before you go taking up too much of your editor's time with your requests or questions.

Editors in other fields such as fiction or American comics have some say as to the content of the work assigned to them. In manga, obviously, the content is already decided, so what an editor does is to see the manga from the earliest stages of planning all the way through production, even down to quality checking after the book's been printed.

A manga editor, in cooperation with the managing editor, will assign a series to the freelancers (usually literal translation, adaptation, and lettering -- although some of those jobs may be done in house or combined). After it is assigned, the editor works with the licensing division to get materials in from Japan in time to make the publishing date, and turns those materials around to send out to the freelance help. Then the editor monitors deadlines to make sure that production is running smoothly.

The editor monitors the literal translator to make sure that he/she gets the translation in to the adaptor on deadline.

When a script comes in from the adaptor, the editor must go over it line-by-line to be sure that it meets with the publisher's standards, has no typos or other mistakes, includes all of the sound effects and dialog on the page (some of those sound effects are easy to miss), and makes sure that any foreseeable problems are handled before they become a crisis. Then the editor turns the script around and sends it and materials (the manga page images) on to the letterer, and monitors to make sure that the letterer meets his/her deadline.

When the pages come back from the letterer, the editor goes over it again with a proverbial fine-tooth comb to make sure that all dialog is correct and in the correct balloons, all sound effects are touched up as per the publisher's requirements, page numbers match and are on the correct side of the page (a common mistake since each page is handled separately), correct fonts are used, words don't go too close to the edge of the page and are in danger of being cut off, and a few dozen other details.

While the editor was waiting for the lettered pages, he/she was also writing the extra text that goes into every book such as credits, introductions, back-cover text, etc., and sending it to the designer for cover and interior page design. (Sometimes the designer can be a freelancer as well, although it isn't as common since the designer is called on to solve crises, and it's best to have crisis management handled in house.)

Then the editor is responsible for making sure the entire book is sent to the printer on time. Before the mass printing occurs, a test copy is printed and sent to the editor who, once again, checks the pages just as closely as before for errors and places where there may be a misprint. This is the final stage where corrections can be made, so it is essential all mistakes are ironed out at this point. If the editor finds no problems, the "OK" is given to print the copies in the print run.

Finally, a box of printed books comes in, and the editor does a final check to see if anything went wrong between the test print and the actual print.

The editor is in charge of the content of the book, and if there is anything the Japanese licensors don't like about the book, the editor is usually at the center of the controversy. (Right or wrong, one can expect a lot of bowing and apologizing to be involved -- at all levels.)

The editor is also the crisis manager, so a good half of an editor's day is usually trying to work out one problem or another. Since an editor has quite a few books running at once, there is a lot of crisis management to do. Missed deadlines, coordination with video releases or magazine installments, answering marketing's questions and requests, assuring upper management that things are proceeding smoothly, apologizing when they aren't, and just trying to juggle fifteen or so different jobs during the same moment.

Editors are chronically overworked, but they usually aren't the type to feel sorry for themselves since they're working on good material. Most are great fun to work with.

The trick to dealing with editors is to realize just how busy they are, and to make your communication with them short, succinct, and friendly. Although having a company executive on your side is the best job insurance, having an editor who likes you is almost as good.

Posted by dojosensei at 08:09 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

There are movies that I like to quote, like The Stunt Man, and movies I'm not in the habit of quoting like City Slickers. But in this case, the quote (or rather, paraphrase since I don't actually remember the dialog word for word) works so well, I'm forced into it.

Sensei: There's one thing that will get you through your culture shock when you live in Japan.

Novice: What's that, Sensei?

Sensei: I don't know.

Let's back up a bit. I'm assuming that as a Novice/Yellow Belt, you have moved to Japan for more than the minimum three months. That you're in for an extended stay of (perhaps) a year or more. Then you're bound to run into culture shock.

It doesn't happen to everyone. My first translation partner was from a home life that was so suffocating that to her, Japan was freedom. But at some point, most people ask the question, "What the hell am I doing in this weird-ass country!?" Please excuse the stronger-than-normal-for-this-column words, but that is exactly the feeling you get. Or, at least, the feeling I got, and judging from the people around me, I wasn't alone.

The problem was that Japan wasn't built for me. It was built for Japanese people, and I certainly wasn't one of those. And since I was a visitor in the country, I didn't really have a right to complain. Frustration and a feeling that I didn't belong built up, and by the fourth month or so, I was not having fun in Japan. (Neither were any of the other foreigners in my program.)

The way out of it was what Curley was saying in the movie. One Thing. And his answer was the same for this situation also. That the one thing was different for everybody. However, within the differences among everyone, there was a unifying feature.

We all settled on pretty much the same therapy: obsession.

Yes, we still had some seven or eight months to get through in Japan, so for each of us, how to get through those months was to choose a goal and obsessively concentrate on it. For me, it was to self-study. I pretty much gave up on the course work presented by the program, and concentrated on learning how to translate. My roommate, an aboriginal Lappish from Sweden, concentrated on learning about the aboriginal Ainu in Japan. My other suitemates took up goals such as making money or getting a job in Japanese business for after the program was over. We all obsessed.

And it worked. Basically what the obsession provides is a direction. Before, the question was, "What the hell am I doing in this weird-ass country," and the object of obsession provides that answer. Once the answer becomes fixed in your mind, you can start pulling back from the obsession as an all-consuming thing. You still have your goal, and you are still working on it, but you can also live other parts of you life too.

I don't know if this post will help anyone get through culture shock. I have the feeling that you just have to work your own way through it. And since it's such a personal thing, no warnings or solutions will matter one bit when you're actually going through it. But maybe it will help to know that most people go through the same thing, and a large majority of people came out on the other side.

Posted by dojosensei at 08:17 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Another quick reminiscence with a handy point at the end.

I was at the Word Fantasy Convention which is held every year somewhere close to Halloween in various cities around North America. It is (or maybe "was," since this story is from quite a long time back) an interesting convention since the attendance was limited to 750 people which insured that nearly half were professionals. For a person trying to break into the publishing industry, that's an incredibly good ratio of pros to not-yet-pros.

I went with a friend, and we paid a little extra to get into the awards ceremony. We got in a little early and chose an empty table (they were the large-size round tables that sat perhaps 10 people per table). Then a large group came in and sat down at our table. I was surprised to learn that the man sitting next to me was Clive Barker, the famous author of horror fiction, and the group accompanying him were some of the most powerful publishers and editors in the industry. Since it was rather hard to be hold a private conversation, we conversed along with the rest of the table. At one point in during the ceremony, Clive Barker won an award.

It seemed like a perfect opportunity to promote myself and get my foot in the door, but it wasn't. It was that "other door." The one that leads to a brick wall. An interesting experience that will not determine your future, and will just go down as a story you might tell at a social engagement or in a blog. In fact, these moments leading nowhere for your career will greatly outnumber the moments that will lead to a better future for yourself.

Now here's the point: Enjoy them! This isn't all about getting ahead in life. You might have a nice conversation with a professional or with a fellow fan who can turn into a new friend. Don't go approaching every encounter as if it will be the moment you're to be discovered. That just leads to long awkward silences where you stand there grinning in the expectation that your conversation partner will ask if he/she can help you break in, and your conversation partner will be thinking very hard about what excuse he/she can make to get the hell out of there.

The rule is to not expect anything out of such chance encounters. If you react as if bumping into bestselling authors and powerful execs happens to you all of the time, you will find life a lot more enjoyable. If something happens, take advantage of it, but it's more than likely that nothing will, so just relax.

Posted by dojosensei at 07:40 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

or Why Translators Like Kanji

"I want to buy a manga to help me learn my kana. What do you suggest?"

My very first attempt at translating a manga was before I had taken any courses or even picked up any of those Learn Japanese in 10 Minutes a Day books. I had a friend's first-year Japanese textbook, another friend's ancient version of the Green Goddess Dictionary, a photocopied kana chart and a copy of the Japanese cine-manga for Orguss. In the first thirty pages of text, I managed to translate one word balloon! It was useful in that it told me just how much there was to learn before I could actually translate Japanese at any level.

And it taught me my first lesson in the difficulties of Japanese: We don't know where one word ends and the next one begins.

Aside from some early-reader books (for children from about 4 to 7 or 8 years old), all of Japanese runs continuously with one word bumped up to the next. There are no breaks between words such as there are in English and other Western languages.

So if, at an early stage, you start to try to translate Japanese, you start with the first syllable and look it up in the dictionary. If nothing seems to make sense with respect to the pictures, you add on the second syllable and look up the two syllable combination. Then you add on the third syllable, and so on. But you're a novice, so you may find two or three words that actually do make sense, and you don't have enough experience with Japanese to judge yet which one is right.

Yes, it is an awful thing to be an early novice and want to translate Japanese.

Sure every 1st year Japanese student has pondered that it would be so nice if they didn't have to learn all of those kanji -- or even better, if Japan could adopt our alphabet! Wouldn't that be great?

No.

There are so many homophones in Japanese that putting a word like "kankou" (my Green Goddess lists 16 different meanings) in romaji means that we translators would have a very hard time figuring out which meaning it is! But all of those 16 meanings have different kanji when in modern-day written Japanese, so the kanji lead you directly to the correct meaning. Also kanji break up the words in a sentence. Whenever you see a kanji, it signals the start of a new word. (There are exceptions such as the honorific "o" that comes at the start of some words can be in kana with kanji following it, but generally the kanji will start a new word.)

So kanji both work to break up a sentence and pin down the meaning. By your second or third year of Japanese, they'll be a godsend to your understanding of the language. Oh, you'll still hate them -- you have to learn nearly 2000 of them after all -- but you won't wish they didn't exist anymore.

In answer to the top question, you might as well get yourself a children's book where they actually put spaces between the words. It won't help you much since you'll still have a very hard time figuring out what's being said, but it'll help more than a manga will.

Posted by dojosensei at 08:29 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

No matter how much you will want to pick and choose the kind of material that you translate, you will still get assigned a Translation From Hell!! There are all sorts of ways a translation can be handed to you from the burning underworld, but make no mistake, you will receive a translation from hell and you will have to get it in on deadline and with, at least, a forced smile.

My very first TFH was the Inscrutable Author type of TFH which I will get into in a later entry, but in short, it's the translation where the author is trying to build a world (usually a science-fiction world) where the reader is thrust in the middle of a world-gone-crazy and nobody really knows what's going on. The main problem with translating this kind of world is that you are one of those people who doesn't know what's going on.

Of course my next couple of TFH were Research Quagmire translations from hell. These are where you are (usually) sent back in time to an age where little is known of the rituals and customs and magic that makes the world work. A fantasy world based on sketchy history and obscure references in Chinese epic stories. Do you see the problem already? To translate it correctly you have to find and read these sketchy histories and obscure references in Chinese epic stories.

My earliest professional work was a series named Raika which took place in Japan in the 3rd century. It used text from the Kojiki (a collection of Japanese myths including the creation myth, mostly of the gods and what they did) and a small part of the Chinese epic The Romance of the Three Kingdoms named the Gishi-Wajin-Den (which translates out to The Tale of the Gentlemen of Gi and the People of Wa) which is thought to be the very first written record of events in Japan. I got my Kojiki from Kinokuniya (a Japanese bookstore chain in Japan, but also with branches in the U.S.), and I found a copy of an English translation of the Gishi-Wajin-Den in the depths of the local university library.

But so far, the worst TFH I've ever had to deal with was a story by the name of Ankoku Shinwa (The Dark Myth). Sure, it took elements of the Kojiki and the Gishi-Wajin-Den, but it also added Japanese history from the 400s AD, Chinese and Indian Buddhism, Tantric philosophy, and the hardest part of all, Tantric astrology.

I was working with my Japanese translation partner at the time, and even being equipped with (as we used to joke) a walking dictionary doesn't help with a Research Quagmire TFH.

Here's an example. The show centered around three stars that made up a constellation in Tantric astrology that are in some way pivotal to the final events that will either save the world or plunge it into darkness. While doing my research in the library, I found a chart with the original Sanskrit names for the constellations, so I used the Sanskrit terms since the Japanese were simply attempts to put Sanskrit into Japanese characters. However this pivotal three-star constellation didn't seem to correspond with any on the chart. Worse, in the video, they were saying that the constellation was Orion's belt. Tantric astrology, like other astrologies, only concentrated on the stars near the ecliptic (the path of the Sun), and Orion's belt was way off the ecliptic.

In the end, after spending a week in the library looking at every book on Tantric astrology that the university had (a surprisingly good collection), I found a chart with pictures of the stars. It turns out that there was a three-star constellation made up of some low-light stars near Orion's shoulder, and the author had commandeered the name, switched them to the more recognizable stars of Orion's Belt, and based the entire plot on them. (I don't know for sure that he did that. It could be that the author's reference books were wrong.)

In the words of Charlie Brown, Arrrrrrrrrrgg! I spend a week in the library figuring out the author's mistake!

It's times like those when you ask, "How much am I being paid for this job again?

Posted by dojosensei at 08:26 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

I'm going to reminisce for a moment, but there's a point to this, I promise.

I was still in my apprenticeship doing really old-style fan subs (VHS to VHS recordings with my ex-roommate's computer in the middle running a self-programmed subtitling program, and making them only for personal friends -- that's all we had time to make) and really old style scanslations (using a hand scanner and showing them to practically nobody), when my ex-roommate said he was going to Tacoma for a convention. I, somehow, had the money to tag along, so I did.

While there, I had time on my hands at one point, so I went into a panel on women science-fiction authors discussing what it takes to get into and stay in the industry. There was an aspiring author in the audience who basically hijacked the panel asking questions regarding the problems she had breaking into the business, then asking never-ending followup questions before they could turn to other subjects. After this went on for about ten minutes, I got bored and raised my hand to ask a leading question that would get the panel back onto their advertised subject (sorry, I forget the question, but it doesn't really matter).

After the panel was over, one of the panelists, Kathlyn Starbuck (a really nice woman), came over and thanked me for the question, and we struck up a conversation. During it, I mentioned that I was a translator trying to break into the business, and I wondered if she had any advice. She had some suggestions, and we parted cordially -- but it was hours later when she happened on me again, telling me that her husband had a suggestion for me. It turns out her husband was Raymond E. Feist, author of the bestselling Riftwar fantasy series among many other books, and from his membership in SFWA (Science Fiction Writers of America), he knew Toren Smith who had, a year or two before, set up the packaging/translation studio, Studio Proteus. (Mr. Feist is also a really great guy.)

After the convention, I went home and threw into a package one of the fan-sub tapes that I had translated on my own, some scanslated manga pages along with their Japanese equivalents, and a professional-looking cover letter that mentioned that Mr. Feist had referred me, and I shipped the whole thing out to Studio Proteus.

As it turns out, Toren didn't have work for me at the time, but someone who couldn't afford Toren's rates had asked him for suggestions of other, less expensive translators. My package of translated materials was there on Toren's desk at the time, so he suggested me.

Suddenly I was a professional translator working in the business.

Here's the point.

It all happened because I asked a nice question in a completely unrelated panel. That's how people break into the industry. It usually starts out with pure luck, and you being ready to take advantage of that luck. The door leading to professional work opens a crack, and you have to be prepared to go through it. Fortunately for me, I had translated materials that were ready to send, but part of that was me making sure I had it before anything ever happened. I was ready to take advantage of the opportunity if it arose.

It's a fickle door that leads to professional work. Some of the gatekeepers (overworked editors, mostly) are determined to keep it closed so that their lives are made easier, but there are things that open it. It happens rarely, and it may only happen to you once. So be ready to jam your foot into the door even if it opens just a crack.

Posted by dojosensei at 08:16 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

As a novice, I had plenty of friends who both liked manga and anime and were taking the same courses as I was. That's a really good time to partner up and try to figure out what's going on in the stories. You'll run into a lot of snags -- places where you both have no idea what the characters are saying -- but working together toward the same goal is fun, and nobody has any illusions that their opinion is all that much better than other student's.

But when I turned pro, the dynamic was different. As a pro, you must have confidence that you know enough of the language to be able to figure out any Japanese sentence. So when you come up with one interpretation and a translation partner comes up with a different one, and only one translation is going on the paper, and that creates the potential for a problem.

When I was just breaking in, I was a part of a three-person translation group. Two translators and a rewriter. (We also held all sorts of different jobs too, dividing up by personality and aptitude.) But the problem from a translation standpoint was that my translation partner was at almost exactly the same learning level as I was. We went to the same school; took the same classes, had the same Japanese friends (mostly), and even went on the same year-long exchange program to Japan (although not the same year). We were at exactly the same level.

It's that sameness that was the problem. If there was a dispute over the meaning of a line of dialog, the "confidence" factor comes into play, and we would both stay steadfastly convinced that our own translation was the correct one. Fortunately we had the third member of our group as a tie breaker, but he didn't know Japanese, so all he had to go on was story-telling instinct. The process worked well enough that we never got into fights, and we met all of our deadlines (and many of our budgets), but through it all, I always felt that it wasn't quite right. An experienced translator and an inexperienced translator might make a good combination (I never tried it so I don't actually know), but two translators at the same level is an open invitation to an argument.

After a while of this kind of translating, I started doing more and more projects on my own.

Then I had the crash of confidence I mentioned in The Greatest Translator in the World installment. I became suddenly aware that I wasn't quite up to the professional quality that the job needed, and I needed to improve fast! So I enlisted the aid of a Japanese translation partner.

I have to say, this makes a great partnership for a Journeyman/black belt 3rd degree translator. The kind of translator who wants to improve. My partner was a relatively fluent English speaker although she would make mistakes in writing. My Japanese wasn't quite as good as her English, but I had three years or so of professional translation under my belt at the time and could contribute a lot to the partnership. We'd sit side by side. I'd take a first stab at the translation, and she'd correct me if I made any mistakes with the meaning. She was responsible for the Japanese, and I'd be responsible for the English. (And the fact that we spoke Japanese in the office made it good reinforcement for me as a Japanese speaker.) A perfect partnership that would last forever, right? Not quite.

People learn. And by the third year of our partnership we had both learned an awful lot. Her English was to the point where she could do translations on her own. My Japanese had improved to the point where my first stab was right at least 90% of the time, and she would feel that she wasn't contributing. It was a hard thing for me to give up since someone sitting by your side telling you that you're right is an amazing thing for your ego. Also, we were doing the work of, and getting paid as, a single translator. The pay was not good during the partnership. And it was time.

In the eight years or more since that partnership broke up, I haven't felt the need for a translation partner. Although I still want somebody to sit by my side and tell me how right I am. (I wonder if there's a service for that.)

So here's my take on it. Equal partners from the same background should only be experimented with, probably during apprenticeship. It helps a translator to understand just how much of this business is interpretation. I would also recommend a Japanese native speaker/English native speaker partnership for early in the Journeyman stage of development because both can learn greatly from the other (and it saves your reputation at a time when it could be disastrously ruined). But after you've learned the lessons, stand on your own two feet again!!

Posted by dojosensei at 08:57 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Before I dive into the problems of subtitle translations, let's lay a few ground rules out for subtitles.

In my experience, the shortest subtitle should be a 1-syllable, commonly-used word, and it should be on-screen for at least 20 frames (2/3rds of a second). A words like, "Yes," or, "No," or "Wait!" are the kind of words I'm talking about.

The longest subtitle should be about 64 characters (32 on the top line and 32 on the bottom line) and needs about 5-6 seconds to read. The number of characters is variable since in most fonts the widths of characters are different. A "w" is very wide whereas an "i" or "l" is nice and thin and a lot of thin letters will allow for a few extra letters on the line. I personally think that the word "ill" (as opposed to "sick") was a gift from the gods to subtitle translator's everywhere. Still, 32 per line is the standard, and translators should not go over that limit unless they can see the subtitles in front of them.

One of the main goals of subtitle translating is: Although DVDs come equipped with pause buttons, your translation shouldn't force the viewer to use it. The director and editor spend a long time in the editing room trying to perfect the pacing of the show, and the translator shouldn't be the one to ruin it.

So you want to eliminate anything that slows down reading where possible. Characterization trumps this rule, so if there is a short word that the character would not say and a long, hard-to-recognize-quickly word that the character would say, then the long word wins.

But in every other way, pare down the sentence so that it is as short and easy-to-read as possible while containing the same information. (There are exceptions to this last rule. Polite Japanese says a little with a lot of words. Having a short subtitle while the character goes on and on will make the viewer think that something is being left out. In these cases, it's permissible to expand, "Thanks," to something like, "I'd like to express my most sincere gratitude.")

If you are faced with a multiple-subtitle sentence, you should break the subtitle at natural phrase breaks. In other words, try not to break the subtitle between the subject and verb, or between verb and object. Aim for breaking between the main sentence and prepositional phrases or subordinate clauses.

In a nutshell, generally speaking the rules are, short is better than long; simple is better than complicated; and since people tend to read words as a unit rather than letter-by-letter, whenever possible, do not hyphenate.

But there are a lot of sentences where long words appear right in the middle of the sentence, and that's where the translator's trick of inverting the sentence comes in.

Take this sentence:
In the king's problems with insurgency, will many heads roll?

That's 61 characters, so it should fit into a single, two-line subtitle just fine. The problem is that when you break it without hyphenating, you get:
In the king's problems with
insurgency, will many heads roll?

The top line is 27 characters but the bottom line is 33. (We lost a "space" character when we broke the line.) 33 characters is too long, so let's try it the other way.
In the king's problems with insurgency,
will many heads roll?

Now the top line has 39 characters.
In both cases we're still over the limit. So now the trick of inverting the sentence.
Will many heads roll in the
king's problems with insurgency?

And magically, the bottom, longer line drops to 32 characters, and is now within the limit. Of course it doesn't always work, but it's a tool in the bag for subtitle translators.

(The same trick can work in manga where you want to get long words to the middle of the sentence.)

Posted by dojosensei at 08:49 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

One of the technical aspects of translation is the space in which those translations have to be placed.For most anime and manga translations, how much space you have to do the translation is a very important consideration.

Here's my favorite (that is to say, most frustrating) Japanese phrases.

"Da to."

It translates out to "That's what he/she said." Or, "See what he/she said?" In fact, the Japanese phrase can be reduced to "To." It isn't even a long vowel! Now how can a person get a four-word sentence into the space it takes to write a single Japanese kana character?! Or in anime, I'll give odds the director had the person saying, "To," on screen for exactly the 1/3rd of a second that it took to say it, then he cut away some someone else's dialog. No way a four word subtitle could be read in that amount of time.

The reason why that's so frustrating is that there is no good way out. But there are things you can do for longer sentences.

For manga the thing a translator has to remember is that the word balloons are thin, and wherever possible, you need to use short words. That isn't to say that long words are out of the question -- there's always hyphenation -- but hyphenation can lead to misreading, and sometimes the reader has to pause on a balloon to parse out exactly what word is being said. So it's best to avoid long words wherever possible. I've had sentences that looked like hyphen stepladders after they were lettered. For example:
The
forti-
fied
emplace-
ment ap-
pears im-
possible
to sur-
mount.

Hyphens everywhere!!!

Since Japanese balloons are ovals, the middle part will be widest, and it's always easier to fit your big words in the middle. Also if you start your sentence with two or three small words, the reader has a chance to get the rhythm of the sentence, and will be much more able to parse the sentence when the hyphens do come along. For example:
We
can't
over-
run a
position
that's so
well
defend-
ed.

A few hyphens, but they parse much easier, right?

So the rule is: Start a sentence with two or three short words, long words in the middle of a sentence, and if possible end it with short words too.

Subtitles have a different problem, and I'll get into that next entry.

Posted by dojosensei at 08:22 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Okay, I know some of you prospects and novices want to enter the dojo because you know that translating is a good way to become best friends with your favorite mangaka.

What you know is wrong.

What being a translator gets you:

Free books (which usually get pretty dog eared during the translation process), a small paycheck, and (most of the time anyway) credit on a front or back page. As far as contact with the artist goes, if you have a vitally important question, you'd send it to your editor. The editor forwards it to the licensing department. If the licensing department thinks it's an important enough question to bother the artist with, they send it to the Japanese publisher's licensing department. If it passes the Japanese publisher's licensing department, then it gets forwarded to the mangaka's editor. And if the editor decides that the mangaka isn't too far behind on his/her deadlines to consider it, he'll pass the question on to the mangaka. The reply goes backwards through the same channels. Even as Director of Editorial, I've only dared this process three times. A large number of questions will get the Japanese publishers, editors and mangaka to question your (the translator's) qualifications.

Oh, if you're a translator of a certain mangaka's book, then you have the excuse of handing him or her your card during conventions and introducing yourself. I guess that's something.

No, translation is not a good way to meet your favorite mangaka. If that's your ambition, then how about licensing? Licensing people have a certain degree of contact with the mangaka. But if you're not completely fluent in business Japanese, then marketing might be a better "in" to meet them. Certainly upper management of a manga company is best, but that's not quite an entry-level position.

I've met quite a few of the mangaka that I've worked with, but none of it had to do with being a translator -- and everything to do with representing my company (Viz at the time) at conventions. I was Toshihiro Ono's bodyguard, Rumiko Takahashi's chauffeur, the babysitter for Kia Asamiya's daughter, and I got interviews with Chiho Saito and Masakazu Katsura. I doubt any of them remember me. Still, I have to admit, it was fun to meet them. But meeting them is not why I went into translation.

Posted by dojosensei at 07:57 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Every apprentice (and some uninformed journeymen) tries to attach an accent to manga dialog. The inevitable Osaka-dialect speaking character comes along, and the translator doesn't know how to handle it. Nearly all of them try a southern accent, and it just comes out sounding like something out of Pogo or Li'l Abner (I just let everyone know how old I am, didn't I?). "Ahm goin' t' th' waterin' hole…" etc. They usually get over it by the time another human being sees the translation. Sometime they even get over it when they themselves see how bad it is.

Of course the accents I'm talking about are regional accents. Japan has as many regional accents as it has regions. Yes, even Nagoya has an accent -- you don't often hear it, but it's there. The reason that substituting Japanese regional dialects for American (or other English-speaking country's) accents doesn't work is because the moment you hear a regional accent, you think the character is from that region. In other words, if Ukyo of Ranma 1/2 starts speaking like a southern belle (an otherwise reasonable substitution), you'd think she was from the United States southeast. But you know she's a Japanese character, so her using regionally distinct language takes you directly out of the spell of the story. It makes you say, "Hey, that's not right."

But here's how you do it. Class-based dialects are fair game for manga. As long as you don't dip too far into self-parody, you can use dialects that show the level of education or social class. A person in any North American region might say, "Are you messin' with me?" But the use of words will give an approximate class level to the person saying it. A person who wants to display more education might say, "Are you trying to intimidate me?" Or, if the character is a little over-the-top, you might even go as far as, "Is that aggression that I detect?" When a character sports an Osaka accent, it's fine to use the less educated, more everyday words that anyone could use. And when you're translating the evil politician, pull out that thesaurus and make him sound as haughty as you can.

But apprentices and journeymen should remember that even in Japan, it's the villains who are intelligent; the heroes are clever. What's the difference? Intelligence is the quality of displaying your big brain overtly with long words rather than the more common words. Cleverness is talking like a "regular guy" but coming up with great ideas. Even very intelligent readers will side with the clever guy. So when you write hero dialog, don't go too deep into the thesaurus. But when you do a manga with a real over-the-top evil villain, that's your chance to whip out those seven-syllable words that you've always wanted to use!

Posted by dojosensei at 11:40 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

It takes a little while for the Bookscan results to come in, but since I'm not rich enough to subscribe to the entire Bookscan list, I do the next best thing and subscribe to The Book Standard web magazine so that I can get the Bookscan top 15 for comics and graphic novels every week. The top 15 isn't nearly enough for me. When I was Editor-in-Chief at Viz, I used to receive the top 750 comic and graphic novel report. That one was nice! It really told you what was selling, but more importantly, what wasn't.

Still, getting the top 15 isn't so bad considering that some of my titles appear in it. The downside is that you sign an agreement that you will not reveal the information on the chart. I'm cheating just a little and revealing that something I worked on came in pretty high. Let's cheat a little more. A little less than two months ago, Tsubasa debuted on Bookscan at number 1, and stayed on the top 15 chart for a month. This week xxxHolic debuted on the chart at number 5, which is an excellent position for a seinen manga.

Don't get me wrong. I am in no way implying that my translation made it climb up to number 5 on the chart. Nobody buys a book because they like the translator. (Well, my Mom, maybe...) But what I feel like celebrating is that my translations didn't drag the work down! It may seem like a small victory, but for translators, those are the kind of victories that you savor!

Posted by dojosensei at 09:55 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

I noticed on one of the message boards a person asking if the rumors he's heard of a certain manga (not mine, thankfully) being badly translated are true.

Most rumors of a bad translation are false.

First, let me define a bad translation. It's what you first think of when you hear the words "bad translation." That there are major mistakes in the information that is put across. That the information contained within the English words are significantly different than the information contained in the Japanese words. This is not about stilted dialog and not about characterization that doesn't meet your expectations. This is about mistakes. The reason why I say that is when most people hear the words "bad translation" they take from it the idea that the information is wrong -- not simply that one critic disliked the style.

The main problem with taking the "bad translation" judgement at face value is that not even some professional translators can distinguish between an actual mistake and a difference of interpretation. It takes one going through the "Greatest Translator in the World" stage (see the previous entry -- Journeyman/Black Belt 2nd degree) to really give other translators the benefit of the doubt. Before that, even professional translators are so insecure about their own interpretations that they see other interpretations as a attack on their view. That generates an emotional response that causes even some professionals (and nearly all amateurs) to proclaim that any interpretation other than their own is wrong.

Let me see if I can explain the difference between a different interpretation and a mistake. There are two ways to look at differences between your translation and someone else's translation. One would be seeing the other translator making a mistake that you can understand as a mistake. For example mistaking "sore wo shi na" (do that) with "sore wo suru na" (don't do that). That's a mistake -- and a translator can understand how the mistake was made (the original translator mistook one use of "na" for another).

But if someone took the phrase "shikata ga nai," which normally translates out as "there's nothing that can be done," and translated it to "I'm screwed," then it may not be the way I'd translate it, but it has the meaning of not being able to do anything about the situation and is therefore not a mistake. It's a difference in interpretation. It's a "legal" translation, and by whatever unwritten rules of translation I've been able to figure out, it's can't count as a "bad translation." Any translator who has yet to go through the humbling process that ends the "Greatest Translator in the World" phase will probably consider the "I'm screwed" translation as a mistake -- and write a column on the net saying the book is a bad translation. Fans hear it and spread the rumor. And since translation is all about reputation, the translator, who's only fault is to be read by the wrong person, might not get his or her next job.

So until a person has been translating professionally for three or four years, that person is really not qualified to judge whether something is a good translation or not. (And really, by that time translators are so busy with their own work that they don't go around judging other people's translations.) What that means is that very few of the "bad translation" rumors are being spread by people who are qualified to judge.

A mistake is a mistake, and those should never happen in a translation. But they do. The more experience a translator gets, the less mistakes you'll find -- but there still are mistakes. I've been translating for more than 15 years, and some of my translations still contain mistakes (please don't go looking for them). They'll be tiny mistakes and won't affect the way the story plays out, but humans are mistake making machines, and the last time I checked, I'm still very human.

If a translation has enough mistakes to change the tone of the story or change the way a character seems to the reader, then it may be considered a "bad translation," and I'm sure there are bad translations out there, but who is making that judgement? And just how qualified are they to make it?

Posted by dojosensei at 07:33 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Okay, a while back (maybe a year or two), you broke into the industry. One of the anime or manga companies paid you for a translation and after you finished, they gave you more work. Then your work was nationally distributed, and you can go into any mall in the country and find the thing you did on the shelf. You should remember that day fondly because it was the day you turned in your apprentice brown belt and exchanged it for a journeyman's black belt (1st degree).

That was, as I said, one or two years back, and now a new event is upon you! The company you do translations for has just offered you... (wait for it) ...an A-list title!!! Yes, a jury of the most powerful editors in the industry has promoted you to the level of "a great translator" with the duty and responsibility of working on their most sacred titles. (This is subjective reality, obviously. What really happened is the Editor-in-Chief probably went to the managing editor and talked about how this new title needed staff, and was there anybody free? The managing editor, for whatever reason, thought of you, hadn't heard any major complaints about you yet, and suggested that you got your work generally in on time, and that you had an opening in your schedule. With that the Editor-in-Chief replied, "Never heard of 'em, but whatever you want." You wouldn't believe how many assignments got chosen that way. The ones where they assign project based on talent are only for those freelancers who have worked for the company for more than 5 years and still haven't flaked out in some way.) But, as I was saying at the beginning of that digression, you believe that it was their studied approval of your fabulous work that prompted them to bestow on you the honor of this important A-list title.

And with that, your head gets larger than the world it exists in. Yes, you know the right translation! You can argue with translators who have five times the experience you have because you are an A-list translator! You know that the sound effect the other guy translated wasn't SLISS but SLITCH! You know that the character Itou-san cannot possibly be spelled Itoh-san no matter that it says Itoh on his shirt in the story. It's just wrong! You have stepped up to become the GREATEST TRANSLATOR IN THE WORLD! All of your translations are right. Every other person's translation has mistakes that you would never have made!

Okay, as you may have guessed, I was in this mindset for a little while, and worse, I've had to deal with people in this mindset. One of my early editors -- a frustrated translator turned editor -- would send me a list of what he considered "mistakes" in my translation (nearly all of them were interpretation choices, but he was convinced they were mistakes). Another I went up to at a convention to shake hands with him because he was working on an anime version of a work I had did previously, and his attitude was that I had "ruined" the work by naming the character in a way he didn't like. (The "Itoh" example above was based on this guy.) I was a little surprised that a courtesy handshake would result in a criticism of my translation. Still I calmly tried to explain what went into the decision-making process, but he would hear none of it. He told me that maybe some people (meaning me) didn't care about the work, but he certainly did. I wasn't surprised to learn that the anime was his first big professional translation.

I'm sure that eventually just surviving in the industry will bring translators to the other side of this period, but for me, it was one distinct moment in time. I was assigned a project that was way over my head. I watched the anime and couldn't follow it (lots of political jargon). At the same time, I was dressed down by a client for turning in a work with a couple of obvious mistakes. I had seen names of minor characters and used a name dictionary to find probable pronunciations for them. It turned out that they were historical names (which matched with the theme of the work), and I should have done research on them. So my self confidence crashed, and I went looking for a Japanese translation partner to help me out. That was the best move I ever made. It also got me to my 3rd degree black belt where you start to learn when you "don't know what the Japanese means." Knowing that you don't know is one of the most valuable skills for a translator, and it has to be learned the hard way.

Well, this entry went on longer than I expected, but... Nobody's reading this blog yet anyway.

Posted by dojosensei at 12:49 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)