http://matt-thorn.com/wordpress/?p=407

http://www.sarahpin.com/2009/11/30/matt-thorn-is-harsh/

You may be choosing right. Both these guys do some serious hair splitting on translations.

Let’s leave the European publishers and translation practices out of this please? They may have left a deep psychological impact on you, but they don’t really bear on a conversation about CMX and the broader English-language translated-manga industry. Nor would they be relevant to most of the readers of this blog.

Okay, that said… What year are you taking about here? GTO predated Ten-ten. That was circa 2002, right? Is that when you met the translators you mentioned? Of the non-fan translators you met, how many are still in the business now? In 2004, when I went from Viz back to freelance translating, the rates would have been tempting to non-fan translators. Since then, the rates have plunged. My guess is that any non-fan translators have either turned into fans (the only reason to stay in the industry) or gotten out. I’m on the verge of being pushed out myself by the low rates and lack of business.

When you say, “People are just getting tired of dealing with late and amateurish translations with arbitrary censorship , when they can get the real deal done well by dedicated and loving fans in scans.” You are stating that fan translations are better than professional translations. In that case, it’s only fair to compare them on the same level and discover that, on the whole, professional translations are more accurate that fan translations (also, on the whole — no cherry picking here). Now if you expect zero errors from any translation, pro or amateur, then you are expecting too much. Even aside from the differences in interpretation, it is nearly impossible to obtain a 100% accurate translation. Translators are human and make human errors, and translation is an interpretive craft — a far cry from science. So accept that there will be errors, and also accept that professionals make fewer of them than amateurs.

About Marvel, again I have no idea what is going on in Europe. I can’t speak to that.

“Be it online and on paper (or for animes) , many of us just wanted quickly released chapters and volumes from the original publishers themselves , instead of subcontracting to firms that wont care as much as they do.”

What makes you think that the original publishers care more than the subcontractors? Is that opinion nearly a decade out of date also? Viz is directly owned and controlled by two of the top-three original publishers. And Kodansha simply used subcontractor’s translations for their releases so far. I’m not trying to say that the original publishers don’t care, simply that the American licensees care just as much. In fact, they care just as much about their translations as the fans do. It’s simply that their priorities are not your priorities. And your priorities are not necessarily the “fan community’s priorities. When you poll the fan community, you will find that everybody’s priorities are all over the map. There are very few consensus points on what makes a good translation and what doesn’t, and those few consensus points have been adopted by just about all the current manga publishers. (Again, I’m talking today’s world. Not the world of even half a decade ago.)

So the censored and dubified arguments are outdated (with relation to the American industry). It may be costly, but far less costly than it was a decade ago (how many things can you say that about?) You can expect argumentative rebuttals in the face of argumentative demands. And NONE of that has anything to do with the huge stampede of people away from legal venues and toward illegal downloading. The word “Free” has everything to do with it — no matter how much the creators’ rights are trampled by it.

If you had advocated buying the Japanese tankobon as much as you advocated illegal and harmful downloads, we wouldn’t be having this discussion.

“Hardly the truth … quite a few i’ve met werent at all into the medium , and treated it as a normal job .. with the universal and common mistake (aside from plain erroneous translations , wich are common too) , that is often the roots of evil for games/anime/manga translation”

Who? Which professional manga translators have you met who are not into manga?

I knew you’d try going through the little windows i’ve left there …
But FYI i’m actually in direct support of the manga industry … why ?
Because i’ve dealt away with “middle management” a long time ago , after being tired of buy various editions of some manga (the worst being the japanese > english > various european languages translation , and yes but to this day it still happens) , sullied with translations errors . And i’ve actually been tired of it for more than a decade of european publications , on tops of the us ones .

How ? I buy the original japanese manga (since i happen to know and pratice quite a bit of the language) … yet not pretending to be a master yet , i use the help of scans .

But feel free to as expected just call people thieves and freeloaders .

“Because every professional manga/anime translator was first a fan translator (most were scanslations or fansub translators).”

Hardly the truth … quite a few i’ve met werent at all into the medium , and treated it as a normal job .. with the universal and common mistake (aside from plain erroneous translations , wich are common too) , that is often the roots of evil for games/anime/manga translation :

that exagerated need to translate and adapt everything , to dumb it down for an audience .

Between the midst of a huge chunk of translators , GTO who would have been striped of any pop culture , and cultural references , and injected with western equivalents , like we’ve seen with other titles .
Thankfully , the versions i’ve seen felt , of their own admission , the need to compete with scanlations , and instead did a simple and great job of translation the text and the story … explaining the obscure references via glossary and lexicons .

it would have been insulting and patronizing to do otherwise , and assume that people are too dumb to seek for references , or might not be culturally informed enough to get it .

Of course amateurs makes errors too , hell amidst the underbelly of anime and manga fans , we often have a laugh at the expense of contextual errors , grammar mistakes , simply bad translations , babelfish/google translations .

We always do , but when the same criterias are applied to the professional world … aie .

hell even if both were somehow tied , ther eis still the one issue that one side is , at the end of the day , still paid for it .

My comment about Marvel ? it was about translation too . I’ve decades of mediocre foreign marvel stuff ,with the “great” highlight of it being overpriced and late , and without extra …

Wich again applies to both world …
when the translations takes obviously extra times , extra costs , and isnt really better … and you’ve got online alternatives that Both the manga and comics publishers refused for so long to embrace , it’s obvious that piracy will win .

Be it online and on paper (or for animes) , many of us just wanted quickly released chapters and volumes from the original publishers themselves , instead of subcontracting to firms that wont care as much as they do .

Instead we had for so long censored , dumbified , costly and late versions of stuff we love , and with condescending rebutals (cmx for tenten , among others , cn network for their awful job on anime , etc etc ) . It’s no wonder not everyone would remain honest .

That may have been true with the licensing of several titles that were deserving of wider recognization. But there was NO interaction between the publisher & the fans that let us know that. Not to mention that most of the titles they had were deemed subpar simply because they were from CMX. It got to be so that I could detect whether a random Manga volume on the shelf was a Viz, TokyoPop or CMX title just by looking at the cover alone. Most of the time, my guesses were right on.

However, this shakeup may turn out to be a silver lining. Chances are people may be wanting to snatch up several titles before they’re no longer available, leading to the first INCREASE in sales in years. Not to mention that if they decide to let their licenses lapse, other companies could snap up certain titles deserving of a wider audience. One that comes to mind is Chikyu Misaki. Just look at how Yotsuba burned up the charts once it switched from ADV to Yen Press.

Of course, that would require a Manga company willing to take the risk of publishing Old-School Shojo Mangas such as Swan & From Erotica with Love. Maybe Fantagraphics could take them? They’re going to publish some Moto Hagio Manga later this fall, & Dirk Deppey expressed some dismay at their discontinuance.

“If you only buy 1 or 2 manga titles, you wouldn’t feel the hurt but too many of the titles were coming out every 2 or 3 months. When Ranma 1/2 (from Viz) switched from the monthly comic format to the TPB-only format in 2003, readers went from spending $8.85 every 3 months to spending $9.95 every 3 months. Yes, there was generally twice as much material in the TPBs . . . ”

This is perhaps the most nonsensical argument here. Sorry. I’ll let pass the assertion that fan translations are possibly providing advertising and training for future pro translators, but this argument that getting more releases for less money per page is bad because someone can’t control his or her own spending is just silly. We want an entire series to be available ASAP. That’s a good thing, not a bad thing. Nothing keeps you from holding back and reading at your own pace.

You seem to have a rather common narrative in mind that, in fact, has nothing to do with reality. The fact is that amateur translations contain far more mistakes than professional translations. Do you know how I know? Because every professional manga/anime translator was first a fan translator (most were scanslations or fansub translators). So the vast majority of professional have as much “love” as the amateurs but have more experience than the vast majority of amateurs, and in translation, experience means fewer mistakes. However the scanslation/fansub supporters constantly point out faults and perceived faults (not all “translation mistakes” are actually mistakes — just differences in interpretation) while glossing over the glaring errors of the amateurs. They cherry pick the best of the amateur offerings while ignoring the worst, and pounce on professional product for any perceived slight because it helps them feel better about themselves.

But the reason I know that every professional translator loves what they do is because industry weeds out anyone who doesn’t love manga and anime enough to sacrifice for it. They do that by simply paying some of the lowest rates in the entire translation industry. If one isn’t a fan, one will find far more lucrative ways of exploiting one’s bilingual skills than doing translation in this industry, like, for example, translating business letters. I’ve also met a large number of professional manga/anime translators, and I haven’t met one who isn’t a big fan of the media. Not one.

And the part of the narrative that is always left out by illegal uploaded translation supporters is the fact that the creators get no benefit from their activity. You can rehash the old tired arguments, but they don’t bear out in reality. There are more manga readers and anime viewers than ever, and the industry is contracting both here and in Japan. When there are more customers and less things bought, even the recession isn’t to blame.

Where did Marvel enter into this? They haven’t touched manga since the late 80s?

As I see it, you’re not tired of “middle management” unless your “exhaustion” has lasted half a decade. You want your manga when you want it (whether it’s possible in a legal manner or not) at the price you want it (free?), and if you don’t get it, you’ll step on creators rights and just take it illegally. You’re killing what you love, but I’m sure you’ve made up excuses and rationalizations to protect your pride from that reality.

Tenjho tenge is just one case of mishapes among gazillions from pretty much every publishing house . And from everyone , incuding the article’s author’s admission , DC wasnt that much involved into making CMX a success and marketed brand .

Again people are tired of buying product that are clearly inferior to amateur work . Hell its make one wonders who’s the amateur and who is the pro .

It is a bit the same in europe with comics … we finally got tired of paying more for sloppy translation for stuff between 2 years to 6 months .

Every year people ask Marvel to propose a non abusive way to deliver digital comics , and instead we get scraps , just so they would protect retailers monopoly .

Again we are tired of dealing with midle management and extra people at an extra cost … both are medium that are delivery weekly , so they need to be priced and accessible accordingly

Like said above , it’s karma for what they did to Tenjho tenge .

As for tokyopop , they didnt just flooded the market … they tried to con people into buying fake mangas done in-house at an horrible and amateurish level .
It’s no wonder they got wiped

Good riddance.