When you're about to translate dialog, there are many things that can prepare you for it. You can do some acting, improv, write your own stories, listen closely to others for differences in accent or word choice, read a lot, and probably many, many others.

Nothing prepares you to translate sound effects (SFX). Really. Nobody starts out prepared for this part of the task, not even long-time comic-book people (when you start from the blank slate of your own story, then any sound effect you come up with is correct, but in translation, you can get it wrong). The only thing you can do is get creative and dive in.

But that doesn't mean you can't develop a vocabulary of your own for sound effects. It can come from yourself or you can steal from others. I do a lot of both. But when it comes to those fight scenes and the effects are almost as big as the action, that's when it's time to break out the multiple consonants and come up with the original stuff.

The nice thing about English as opposed to Japanese is that we can use multiple consonants without having to stick vowels in the middle. That makes our roman letters somewhat more expressive than the Japanese characters. Use that. Write out a sound effect that sounds to you what the action would actually sound like. I can't tell you what to write since that's between you and your brain, but my advice on these SFX is don't be shy.

Below are some sound effects that I use. These are all personal choices, and if you don't think they sound like what they're representing, come up with (or steal) a sound that you do like.

ZUKIN = ZHAAN
Zukin is the sound for pain. To me, pain sounds like Zhaan. I don't know why, it just does. So I use it in my translations.

DOKI DOKI = B-BMP B-BMP
Doki-doki is the sound of a heart beat. This is used all over any manga with a romantic element. I used to be married to ba-dump as a standard SFX for this sound (see early Video Girl Ai manga), but I stole b-bmp from Gerard Jones after a while of seeing how it worked in manga I edited. It takes up less space (which is nice for the letterers) and conveys the sound as well or better.

NIKO NIKO, NIKKORI, HE-N = GRIN GRIN, SMILE, or HEHN
Niko-niko and the others are the sounds for smiles. In comedic moments the English Grin-grin or Smile can work in manga although I generally try not to use real English words for sound effects (I have plenty of exceptions). Hehn was another steal from Gerard Jones' SFX vocabulary since it works so well with a villainous smile.

ZAWA ZAWA = CHATTER CHATTER
For years I made up dialog to go into the background to represent the chatter going on, then it struck me that the word chatter sounded very much like an onomatopoeia in itself. I always felt a little odd about adding actual phrasing with meaning for background chatter since it wasn't in the Japanese, so when I hit upon the idea of chatter-chatter, it not only saved time, it came out even closer to the Japanese. When the chatter is subdued I use murmur-murmur. But I still have a problem with anybody but grade-school-age kids saying Wai-wai. I still haven't figured out the best translation for that situation.

SHIIIIIIIIN = HUSSSSSSH
This is the famous sound of silence that is found in manga. I, again, stole this translation from Gerard Jones since it works very well, especially when it is an uncomfortable silence.

PEKO PEKO = NOD NOD
Peko-peko is the sound of bowing, and in this situation as well, I found that using the English word works very well for the situation. I will sometimes use bow-bow, but I'm hesitant to use it since the old-time sound for a dog was bow-wow.

DO DO DO, GO GO GO = DM DM DM, GM GM GM
This was a quick substitution for very loud sounds such as a roaring river, racing engine, earthquake, and many others. Like Zhaan, I don't know if you would think that these sound like the original sound, but they do to me.

DOON = DOOM
Doon or Don is the sound of a dramatic entrance. With the English sound effect, not only do we get the use of image of the dramatic entrance to help out the effect, but the English sound effect is very close to the Japanese, and doom is also a synonym for fate!

In the next installment, I'll include more tips for usage and more of my standard effects.