Cross Cultural Dyslexia

I've been working my way through Lone Wolf & Cub for the past couple of weeks. I'm about a third of the way through now, and I have some observations about manga in general which won't really fit "What Comics Have You Read Today?" When Dark Horse first started reprinting the series, I made a comparison of the first volume (v1) to the first issue of the First Comics series (#1). I determined that Dark Horse's was the better translation, but I didn't go beyond the first volume/issue. 

Lately I've become increasingly curious about the First Comics series, but the box it's in was extremely difficult to get to, and I've been restricted as to how much weight I can lift due to a recent surgery. I spent a few hours over the course of the last few days, however, moving one box at a time and lifting with my legs, and now I'm ready to make some initial comparisons. Some will be specific to the two translations of Lone Wolf & Cub, others will be more general. 

Dark Horse v1 comprises nine stories; First Comics #1 only two. In fact, First Comics skipped the first eight stories entirely. Beyond that, First Comics reprinted most of the stories, mostly in order. (So far, my comparison has gone through issue #26 of 45.) Some stories they skipped, others they presented out of order. 

TRANSLATION OF WORDS:

A page-to-page comparison reveals some interesting differences in dialogue and narration, but the easiest examples to cite are the differences in the titles. Some changes are minor, others change the context of the story somewhat. In the list below, I will list Dark Horse titles first.

"Tragic O-Sue" - "Pitiful Osue"

"The Virgin and the Whore" - "Maiden, Harlot"

"Close Quarters" - "Dead End"

"Unfaithful Retainers" - "Lawless Samurai"

"Hunger Town" - "The Town Where Hunger Lives"

"Dragnet" - "The Homeless Hunt"

"Cloud Dragon, Wind Tiger" - "Dragon Tiger, Cloud Wind" 

"The Frozen Crane" - "Tale of the Winter Crane"

TRANSLATION OF ART:

As you known, English is read left to right, Japanese right to left. Both Dark Horse's and First Comics' translations are presented in Western style, which means the panels must be reordered somewhat. Sometimes the process affects the storytelling, other times it is less obvious. the first time it really came to my attention, decades ago, was while reading an "Americanized" translation of Speed Racer. 

Imagine three successive panels of a car driving into the distance, the car getting smaller as it gets farther away. In the original Japanese version, the panels were on the right-hand page and the car moved right to left. But in the American, the panels were on the left-hand page with their order reversed (3-2-1 instead of 1-2-3, in other words), to be read left to right, but the car in the panel was still moving right to left, creating a cognitive disconnect. In order to preserve the illusion of a car moving away, the panels should have been "flipped" as well.

Both translations of Lone Wolf & Cub rearranged the panels to be read left-to-right, but the main thing I noticed about the First Comics version in a side-by-side comparison is this: all the art had been flipped! Consistently, a sword held in the right hand in Dark Horse's version would be held in the left in First's; a character standing on one side of the panel in one version would be standing on the other; and so on. 

Frankly, neither one of these choices serves the art well; the panels just don't flow as Goseki Kojima intended. The solution is as simple as it is obvious: reprint Japanese comics to be read right-to-left. It's not that difficult to get used to. In point of fact, most American reprints of Japanese manga these days are intended to be read "back-to-front." It sure would have made the presentation of Lone Wolf & Cub that much nicer. 

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  • Most manga I read nowadays will have a message at the end of the volume warning the reader to start at the other end.

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  • A daughter of one of Gayle's cousins is 1/4 Japanese, and interested in the culture, including manga, but doesn't speak Japanese. She has since grown and is a commercial artist. In the interest of promoting comics, for a time I was buying and giving her TPBs of the series Vampire Princess Miyu produced by Studio Ironcat. These TPBs were not reorganized. The art was as originally drawn, panels right to left, read from the back. The only thing different was replacing the Japanese characters with English. IIRC, the word balloons and captions tended to be tall and skinny. I don't remember if they added the English words at 90 degrees or how they handled it. She enjoyed them. Unfortunately, the publication stopped mid-way, I gather because Studio Ironcat had a lot of problems.

  • As someone who consumes a lot of anime with subtitles, this doesn't surprise me. There's a lot of discin the anime community about inaccurate translations, much of which boils down to linguistic and cultural uses of English vs. Japanese.

    There are a number of Japanese words and phrases that either don't translate at all or translate poorly without understanding the cultural backgebehond them (I can recall an anime where a girl was described frequently as "unfortunate" when it would likely translate to "girl who works and tries hard but is clumsy and unlucky").

    Also, different translators will do their best to interpret the language in a way that gets across the idea in the way that seems to make the most sense for their audiences. Consider the example above of "Tragical O-Sue" against "Pitiful Osue". They mean the same thing more or less, but there are slightly different connotations in English.

    Translation is an inexact science. I'm sure there are Japanese fans of English comics who go through the same frustrations. 

  • I remember that when they translated the anime movie Princess Mononoke was to be dubbed into English they used a two-step process. First they used regular translators (who couldn't write stories). Then Neil Gaiman wrote the script from the translation.

    A friend whose native language is French once told be that works by Alexandre Dumas, for example, just aren't the same translated. Just because someone can translate a document doesn't mean they have writing talent.

  • Many manga that I read have Notes sections at the back, explaining various cultural and linguistic references, occasionally even detailing jokes that defied translation.

  • I have completed my surface analysis of the Dark Horse series in comparison to the first Comics one, and believe me, I could fill the page with such differences as those I posted yesterday. But just think: those are just the titles. Imagine the differences that must surely exist in the dialogue and narration. Of the two, I tend to trust the Dark Horse translation more. First Comics' presentation was the first American presentation of Japanese manga that I am aware of (predating Epic's Akira by a year). Unfortunately, First Comics went bankrupt long before the 9000 page epic, a true graphic novel, was complete. Dark Horse took more care in the presentation, not only presenting the story in its entirety, but also at the size intended by the artist. 

    I have heard that the Japanese tend to romanticize the samurai of Feudal Japan in much the same way Americans romanticize the cowboy of the Old West. I have also heard that Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima took great pains to present an accurate depiction of that historical period. I don't see why both of those statements can't be true. 

    Here are some stats. Darks Horse's LW&C comprises 142 chapters in 28 volumes. First Comics presented 47 of those stories (in 45 issues), mostly in order, starting with the ninth and ending with the seventieth. They skipped the first eight, 14 of the ones between nine and 70, and the last 72. I can't blame a company for going out of business, but First reprinted only about 32% of the story. 

  • "Translation is an inexact science"

    When it's done well, it can be wonderful.  One of my favourite examples is in the English translation of the Asterix books by Goscinny and Uderzo.  Obelix's dog is called Idéfix in the original French.  English translations give him the name Dogmatix, which is not only a more-or-less direct translation of his French name, but is also a pun.  Sheer brilliance on the part of the translator!

  • I always assume that translations lose a lot in wordplay, rhythm, alliteration, rhymes, puns, etc. 

  • That article "Lone Wolf & Cub in Film" part one appeared in Dark Horse v10 and part two in v27. Part one covered the first movie, and part two the third through sixth. (Oddly, no explanation was give as to why the second movie was skipped.) This is just what I wanted to know in order to determine which of the movies it was "safe" to watch. Actually, in many respects, the movies are quite different from the manga in that they're aimed at audiences with a short (i.e., two hour) attention span. In the list below, I have included the Dark Horse volume number of the source stories. I have not independently verified this information. also, I'm not certain that this is, in fact, the proper order of the films.

    1. Sword of Vengeance

    "The White Path Between the Rivers" (v3)

    "Baby Cart on the River Styx" (v1)

    "Wings to the Bird, Fangs to the Beast" (v1)

    2. Baby Cart at the River Styx

    ????

    3. Baby Cart  to Hades

    ""The Virgin & the Whore" (v3)

    "Wandering Samurai" (v9)

    4. Baby Cart in Peril

    "Performer" (v4)

    "Parting Frost" (v4)

    "The Infinite Path" (v8)

    5. Baby Cart in the Land of Demons

    "Castle of Women" (v15)

    "Kyushu Road" (v14)

    "Shattered Stones" (v12)

    "The Gateless Barrier" (elements of - v2)

    "Penal Code Article 79" (elements of - v7)

    6. White Heaven in Hell

    "Sayaka" (v16)

    "The Moon in the East, the Sun in the West" (v13)

    "Incense for the Living" (v15)

    "Five Wheels of the Yagyu" (v15)

    According to this list, if the information is correct, at the point at which I am in my reading I can safely watch the first four films (although I don't have Baby Cart in Peril) without fear of spoilers. 

  • Weren't those all largely the work of Anthea Bell?

    Peter Wrexham said:

    "Translation is an inexact science"

    When it's done well, it can be wonderful.  One of my favourite examples is in the English translation of the Asterix books by Goscinny and Uderzo.  Obelix's dog is called Idéfix in the original French.  English translations give him the name Dogmatix, which is not only a more-or-less direct translation of his French name, but is also a pun.  Sheer brilliance on the part of the translator!

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