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!