Okay, Sensei isn't thinking too fast this morning, so I'm going to go to an old fallback story that frequent visitors of the annual Lost in Translation panel at San Diego Comic-Con hear just about every year. This year, surprisingly, it wasn't from me, but a slightly modified version from Jake Forbes. That's okay because the story isn't mine anyway. I heard it at a panel from a comic-book editor back in 1984 about what you need to have to stay working in comics. It also works the manga industry.

There are three things, any two of which will allow you to keep working as a manga translator.

Being on time. (Always meeting your deadlines.)

Being a genius. (Having work that's obviously above the rank-and-file.)

Being a nice person. (You're someone the people like to work with.)

This is, of course, after you've broken in already, and it assumes that you are basically competent in your job.

You don't need all three, but you do need two of the three.

If you are on time and a nice person, then you may not get the best jobs, but you will always have work because people want to work with you. Just being a nice guy isn't enough though. Being late will put your editors off.

If you are a genius, you need one of the other two. If you are a genius and on time, it doesn't matter what your personality is like. Editors recognize talent, and they will put up with a lot of attitude if you can get good work in on time.

Similarly, if you are a genius and the editors like to work with you, then they are willing to put up with missed deadlines because they like you and your work. This is one of the few instances where an editor is willing to overlook missed deadlines. In nearly every other case, deadlines are the freelance killer.

In practice, even the genius/nice guy combination (but missing deadlines) has a limit. If the freelancer flakes out and misses deadlines by months, the freelancer will get fired no matter how brilliant and beloved the person may be. Books have to come out -- especially in manga where the date of publication is usually written into the contracts. But a week or two off of the deadline will be overlooked.

But in translation, there aren't that many obvious geniuses. Most of translation is craft. In other words, most of translation is changing uninspired Japanese dialog into uninspired English dialog. (I reserve the word "inspired" for really penetrating text, but most scripts are normal, everyday text, and that's the way it should be. In every story, even fantasy stories, it starts in normal, everyday life and ventures into the fantastic. People in fantasy worlds still worry about family, food, aching muscles, romantic involvements, everything that makes up the reader's life as well. This text doesn't have to be inspired, and the translation doesn't have to be especially beautifully worded, in fact, it would be a mistranslation if it were. So it is no insult to think of translation as a craft that touches art every now and again. Okay, enough digression.) So because most of it is uninspired text, it will be difficult for even the most experienced editor to see genius through that. Eventually they can (when inspired text needs to be translated), but it isn't an easy thing to see.

So we translators have to rely on the other two aspects. Be on time and be an easy person to work with. It's all that we can control anyway, and the best way for you to keep working after you've managed to break into the industry.

Posted by dojosensei at 08:53 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

I've encountered opinions on the manga and anime message boards crying, "Bad translation," when a Japanese curse word is not translated for an English curse word. That isn't true. From a practical, professional, and philosophical standpoint, one should be very wary about using offensive language in manga and anime translations.

Here's the philosophical backing to my assertion.
There are no Japanese curse words so bad you can't say them on television. In other words, there are no words in Japanese that are so offensive that people would complain to networks, publishers, sponsors, etc. The Japanese aren't offended by their expletives. Americans are. Big difference, especially in pop-culture translations.

Here's the practical point for translators.
Your publisher will set standards for the strength of language you can use. If you try to break their rules, you may not get hired again. (Not only that, but they'll change the translation anyway.)

So generally the problem isn't one of mistranslation, but one of personal word choice. If a translator is faced with a word like kuso, and if "Sh*t," or, "Damn," is too strong for the age group the publisher is shooting for, the translator doesn't have to resort to hokey curse substitutions such as, "Darn." There are actually a wide variety of powerful words that can be substituted -- all it takes is imagination.

"Dammit," can sometimes be used instead of, "Damn," since it carries a lighter tone. "Crap," can sometimes be used depending on the publisher. "Oh, hell," is good for looming-danger expletives. A lighter-touch expletive for that situation and for disappointment expletive circumstances is, "Oh, man!"

I've found that with the right character, "You cretin," can work as a yarô substitution when "You bastard," isn't allowed. Others, depending on situation and character (and publisher) are, "You ass," "You philistine," "You pig," or if you have room, "You stinking pile of trash," or "You festering sore!" (There are other powerful garbage- and illness-based insults available.) There is also the option of not-quite saying the curse word, such as in, "Son of a--!"

For nameru-na!-style exclamations, "Cut the crap," (again, if the publisher/distributor allows the word crap) is one way to go. Other completely safe versions are, "Don't give me that," or, "Shovel it someplace else!" (Space can be a problem with these, but your imagination may come up with words or phrases I haven't though of.)

The point is that a lot of translators get stuck in their personal vocabulary. A good jog for the imagination are Monty Python skits such as the "abuse" portion of the argument-clinic sketch and the end of the abattoir-as-a-block-of-flats sketch. Neither of those use actual swear words (if I remember right), but some of the word choices they do use are pretty devastating. I'd love to use, "Malodorous," in a translation some time, but I haven't found the right situation yet.

Of course, when a translation calls for it, such as when one is working on a mature-rated title set in the mean streets, going the other way and using the nastiest language available to you is probably the way to go. One doesn't get that opportunity very often though.

Posted by dojosensei at 08:47 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Most mangaka use humor to certain degrees. These come in many different forms from the extremely translator friendly forms to the one style of joke that every translator dreads, the pun.

Visual humor is the most translator-friendly form there is. If a character goes all chibi (tiny body and big head), grows cat-style ears, and does something cute, then there is no translation necessary. The visuals take care of it. Slapstick comedy is also visual and needs no translator help.

Hyper-dramatic humor only needs the translator to fit dialog to the images. If a normally mild-mannered character suddenly gets flame in his eyes, clenches his fist, and makes a profoundly over-the-top declaration, it's your duty as translator to make sure the English is as over-the-top as it is in Japanese. That's when you dust off words like "shall," or "must," and if you can fit it in, phrases like "rue the day."

Surprise-style humor is the type one sees quite a lot in School Rumble where a situation is built only to be turned on its ear when you turn the page. In these, the author is trying to set up an expectation which you as the translator must try to foster. For example in School Rumble Volume 2 on page 131, the author is trying to set up the expectation that the main character Tenma will recognize the male main character Harima. (Of course on the first panel of page 132, she mistakes him for something completely different.) The trick for the translator is to play the previous page straight, as if she did recognize Harima, without betraying the joke. Usually a translation with a light touch will accomplish this. Then go as over-the-top as necessary when the pay-off happens.

And then there's puns.

There have been puns in my translation career for which I've found and equivalent English word that has both meanings that the Japanese had. Every time I pat myself on the back so hard the red welts didn't heal for months. I was very proud of them. But most of the time a translator has only two options: joke substitution or choosing the meaning that moves the story along and abandoning humor. The decision is made a little tougher since most vocal hard-core fans want the second option in all cases.

When one meaning of the pun is a part of the thing that moves the story along, then going with the meaning that works for the plot is an option, but if the manga is written so that a joke is necessary in the spot and no similar word exists in English, then substituting a joke may be all that the translator can do.

As an example, also from School Rumble Volume 2 (page 43 for those keeping score), there is a point where Harima, egged on by his cousin, tries to confess his love for Tenma. The Japanese original uses the word kimi which means "you," but Tenma mistakes the word for a different kimi which means "yellow." The whole short scene is based on a pun, and if there is no equivalent pun, the scene will fall apart. I substituted a pun which played on the idea that saying "attractive you" would sound like "attractive view," and crossed my fingers that nobody would complain. (I think I got away with it mostly because I can use the translator's notes section in the back of Del Rey books to explain it.)

Most jokes are as fun for the translator as they are for the reader. But puns are a translator's bane. Still, getting a pun right is usually a translator's greatest victory.

Posted by dojosensei at 09:38 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

The Words, Words, Words Translation From Hell takes time. The Research Quagmire TFH takes effort to go out and find what the whole thing is about, but there is only one thing that can help you with a Mad World TFH, a Japanese friend who has at least a touch of science-fiction otaku in him/her.

Blade Runner is a Mad World. Adam Warren's (and before that, Adam Warren and Toren Smith's) Dirty Pair comics were Mad World stories (good ones too). The Mad World comes from taking our world and expanding on the trends nowadays to make them absurd in order to point out how absurd the trends are today. But the problem becomes: to exaggerate them, the author throws in technology and concepts that, while they may have a basis in the real world, are way over-the-top science fiction ideas.

Masters of Mad World manga and anime that I've worked on are people like Masamune Shirow, Mamoru Oshii, and most recently, Hajime Ueda. (My exposure to Masamune Shirow was in a test translation I had to take for Toren Smith early in my career. The other two, I worked on for pay -- the Patlabor movies for Manga Entertainment and the recently released Q-ko-chan for Del Rey.)

Such a translation usually includes details from the real world that you would never think to look up otherwise. Patlabor had technology for draining Tokyo Bay that had to be deciphered (in Patlabor I's case, I didn't even have a script to work with). In Q-ko-chan, there were odd references to fascist government practices. These normally fall into the Research Quagmire TFH zone, but since they are combined with science fiction words, they also work as part of what takes up all of your time doing a Mad World TFH.

So Q-ko-chan turned out to be two different manga from a translation standpoint. The story that centered around the children which was rather straight forward, and the portion that centered around the military which was as confusing as Ueda-sensei could make it.

The way to get through such a translation is to first do a first pass translation and mark up the places where you don't understand what's going on. (In many of the military scenes, the marks filled up the pages.) Then do a second pass trying to glean from context what the puzzling parts are. The third stage is to contact your Japanese friends and see what their impressions are of the scene. Usually they will be completely baffled by it too, and will not want to help for fear of giving you a wrong interpretation. But they're your only hope, so you can't let them off the hook. All you're looking for from them is their impression as the target audience of what's going on. Get their impression and use it.

But also remember that such books are usually more revealing on second or third readings. Information at the back of the book may help decipher baffling dialog at the beginning. Your Japanese friends won't have the time to read the book two or three times, so that's when you will have to bring your knowledge to the forefront and sometimes override your friend's impressions.

Mad World manga are multi-layered puzzles -- some of which have answers and others which don't. All you can do is write the best translation you can and have your best shot ready at deadline time. My most recent, the first volume of Q-ko-chan should be on the shelves now, so you can see for yourself how well I did. If you understand everything that's going on in it, then maybe I did a too good a job figuring it out...

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

I've been translating manga pretty much constantly since 1991. Right after a year-or-two stint with the fly-by-night company Sun Comics, I parlayed being a published translator into a similarly short stint doing manga and miscellaneous translations for Tokuma Shoten USA which ended in 1994 or 1995 time frame. The next manga I had my name on was in 1998. What was in the middle? Um... Comics that didn't have my name on them.

Most people think that translating porn comics is easy work. That isn't quite true. Sure, the translator doesn't have to dig very far into the dictionary to come up with the dialog. The mangaka know that they aren't supposed to challenge the mind all that much. They're busy challenging...other parts of the anatomy.

Quite honestly, the difficulty with porn is the sound effects and varying repetitive exclamations. As the one writing the words, you will feel a need to give some variety to the sounds that are being made, but really, how many different sounds are there during certain acts? And coming up with the sounds...there are other things that a translator likes to translate more than that.

The first one I translated was three or four people who all wanted to be there and had a good time during the events of the manga. But soon, I was asked to do some series that amounted to being nothing more than rape-rescue fantasy -- but the rescue comes too late. I've been called a prude, but I really don't mind porn where all participants are there voluntarily. But when rape or cruelty became the main factor of the story, I found myself dreading going to the computer to translate the book.

And eventually, that dread lead to the end of the stint. I'd put my anime work before the manga, and all of my manga scripts were beginning to come in late. I'd only do the manga when I absolutely had to do it. At one point I realized just how my attitude was making me deliver less-than-professional work, and I wrote to the publisher saying that I'd like to be taken off of the books. And the publisher, probably thoroughly annoyed with my constantly late performance, quickly agreed.

If anyone is shocked at my doing porn, (or on the other hand, if anyone is fantasizing about getting free, on-the-job porn) please remember that translating porn is not the same as reading it. The focus of attention is on everything other than the images. (There's no need to translate the images.) The translator's focus is on dialog; it's on sound effects; it's on just about everything other than the reason people buy the books.

Posted by dojosensei at 08:07 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

As I mentioned in the Prospect's page, when you start out as a translator (and even well into your career), there isn't enough money in translation to pay the rent. I was living in a very inexpensive town (Tucson, AZ), and I could only barely make it at the rate I was paid. And after 2002 when the model for manga publishing changed from releasing pamphlet comics first and graphic novels later over to an all-graphic-novel strategy, the rates for translators went down.

So when you start out, translation will be your side business. You won't be able to quit your day job. Still, if you love manga and anime, this may not be such a bad arrangement.

Once you have started freelance work, your taxes will become more difficult to manage. Sorry, that's just the way it is. But here's the good thing, you will wind up paying less taxes as a translator with a day job. Here's how to do this thing right.

-- Your day job should be able to pay for 100 percent of your gas, car payments, insurance, health care, and any non-anime/manga-related hobbies, and at least 90 percent of rent and utilities.

-- Your day job shouldn't be creative since translation is creative and you don't want to come to your translations drained.

-- Your day job should not require much in the way of overtime.

If most of the above is taken care of, here's the strategy. You should have a room devoted to your home office, and the percentage of space that room takes up in your apartment/house should be charged to your translation business for rent and utilities. Your future video equipment should show anime most of the day and be considered a part of your business. Your anime hobby is now research material. Your vacations should be taken at anime/manga/comic conventions (they usually choose cities with lots of attractions).

And here's the biggest part of the strategy: while you have a day job, your translation business should be run at a loss for as many years as the IRS allows it to be. (When I was following this strategy, the IRS required your business to have a profit one year in every five.)

Getting a break on taxes isn't that wonderful a thing since you still have to pay out the money. But if you were going to get that plasma TV anyway, isn't it better that you don't have to pay taxes on the money you used to buy it? If you were going to visit family in Los Angeles, couldn't you schedule it for somewhere around the 4th of July when Anime Expo is running? And if you're a holic of xxxHolic, wouldn't it be better to not pay taxes on the money you spend on the series?

When (and if) you go full time into translation, you won't be able to follow this strategy anymore since you will be paying your rent, utilities, car expenses, etc. with your translation pay, so you will have to run at a profit from the business standpoint. Day jobs withhold tax money, but with translation, you will have to pay taxes out of you own pocket (as it were).

Oh, and do find a system for keeping receipts that works for you. I've had years where my "system" consisted of Spring Cleaning my apartment on April 14th so that I can find those receipts that slid under the couch -- and I don't recommend it.

Posted by dojosensei at 06:38 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)

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)