![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
( If you're honestly a friend, who cares about me, as opposed to one of the people who reads this LJ just because they like my writing and/or think I'm funny, read here. If not, just read the rest. )
Regarding Planet Ladder:
Tokyopop is really fucking stupid. I just got the opportunity to look over the American release of Planet Ladder 6, and it's not that they got most of the ideas wrong -- on the contrary, the basic format seems largely the same, and simplified in places from my more accurate translation to something that sounds natural. However, consider the following:
Take (a foreigner) addresses Seeu (a prince) with this line: "You aren't alone. As long as you live on, Asu will remain."
In the Tokyopop version, he says: "You not alone, my son. Long as you alive, Asu survive." [SIC]. They actually REPEAT this verbless atrocity on the next page as well.
This volume also marked their acknowledgment that it's a bit difficult to follow a conversation in English when the majority of the page is speech bubbles; you can't know who's saying what. It's easy in the Japanese. There are different pronouns; some people add certain kinds of sentence endings; there are levels of politeness to be observed. But when you translate it to English, everything sounds the same. So the problem is -- how do you make distinctions between characters?
In this volume they decided to customize font. Kaguya has a lower-case kiddy sort of font; Kura's speech is permanently in bold; Bambi has a lower-case no-nonsense businesslike font; Seeu's is stylized, almost calligraphic. While this is annoying at times, I think it's a really good idea overall, pretty smooth too. But here's the catch:
I don't think the people who translate it are the people who put the font in.
So the people who are doing the "typesetting" don't know who's speaking what. They just get lines of text, separated where the different bubbles should be, and have to guess who says it. This sounds like something maybe Seeu says in response to Kura, so I'll assume it's him and put it in his font, even though in actuality it's Kura saying it and Seeu is silent. What was intended to be a reading aid actually just winds up increasing the inaccuracy, thanks to the miracles of, I dunno, bureaucracy?
Final note: They use "Gaviela" for Gavies-as-female -- only to call him "Gabriella" two pages later, because apparently their editors have a mental handicap that causes them to be unable to form short-term memories. They also, in the beginning of the volume, call him Gaviella.
Does nobody actually edit these damn things? Or even read them? Heck, you could have a ten-year-old read them in her spare time and point out some of the more embarrassing errors.
Regarding Planet Ladder:
Tokyopop is really fucking stupid. I just got the opportunity to look over the American release of Planet Ladder 6, and it's not that they got most of the ideas wrong -- on the contrary, the basic format seems largely the same, and simplified in places from my more accurate translation to something that sounds natural. However, consider the following:
Take (a foreigner) addresses Seeu (a prince) with this line: "You aren't alone. As long as you live on, Asu will remain."
In the Tokyopop version, he says: "You not alone, my son. Long as you alive, Asu survive." [SIC]. They actually REPEAT this verbless atrocity on the next page as well.
This volume also marked their acknowledgment that it's a bit difficult to follow a conversation in English when the majority of the page is speech bubbles; you can't know who's saying what. It's easy in the Japanese. There are different pronouns; some people add certain kinds of sentence endings; there are levels of politeness to be observed. But when you translate it to English, everything sounds the same. So the problem is -- how do you make distinctions between characters?
In this volume they decided to customize font. Kaguya has a lower-case kiddy sort of font; Kura's speech is permanently in bold; Bambi has a lower-case no-nonsense businesslike font; Seeu's is stylized, almost calligraphic. While this is annoying at times, I think it's a really good idea overall, pretty smooth too. But here's the catch:
I don't think the people who translate it are the people who put the font in.
So the people who are doing the "typesetting" don't know who's speaking what. They just get lines of text, separated where the different bubbles should be, and have to guess who says it. This sounds like something maybe Seeu says in response to Kura, so I'll assume it's him and put it in his font, even though in actuality it's Kura saying it and Seeu is silent. What was intended to be a reading aid actually just winds up increasing the inaccuracy, thanks to the miracles of, I dunno, bureaucracy?
Final note: They use "Gaviela" for Gavies-as-female -- only to call him "Gabriella" two pages later, because apparently their editors have a mental handicap that causes them to be unable to form short-term memories. They also, in the beginning of the volume, call him Gaviella.
Does nobody actually edit these damn things? Or even read them? Heck, you could have a ten-year-old read them in her spare time and point out some of the more embarrassing errors.
