I'm the translator - AMA

Lo, I'm the translator for FAKKU Books.

I've done the script for all of our announced books, and I'm currently working on the 8th one. After the translation, I'm involved in the entire process—from proofreading to editing—assuring the quality of the book, up until the point where we send it off to the printers.

If you have any questions suitable for me to answer, ask them here. I'll probably fill in this post with more information (depending on the questions I receive), or make a separate thread in case it's a big topic.

Bigger topics deserving of their own thread:

Honorifics

Can you explain to the other less informed forumites that there are clear and obvious reasons why Fakku can't license doujins and why it has to stick to ero manga? It'll be more convincing coming from someone on the team.
I see people asking for Comiket stuff in the suggestion/request threads, these people don't seem to understand the legal repercussions of doujin artists selling rights they never had in the first place and how that might upset the copyright holders of the source material.

a) There's plenty of non-parody doujins that don't have this issue to begin with.
b) It's only an issue if the creator of the original work has a problem with it. And a lot of them don't give a shit at all.
c) IIRC, Jacob has said he's at least considered adding doujins at some point in the future.

Thank you very much for producing this AMA, you have been on the scene for a long time and I remember seeing you release works years and years ago. So, thank you also for a fine history in producing quality content.

That said, I have a couple questions:

What is your opinion of literal verses metaphorical translation? Obviously, Japanese language structure differs from that of English, and that undoubtedly comes up when translating. Are you more likely to find a suitable English counter-part or go literal and give a side-note explanation?

Over the number of years you've been working in the translation scene, who are your more favorite artists you enjoy personally, who are your favorites to work on, and which couple of your previous works stick out to you even today as being favorites?

Looking forward to your post on honorifics, a topic sure to pique interest.

To begin with, doujinshi are self published, so we would have to make deals with individual artists. Our current partnership with Wani includes books and magazines published by them, but not doujinshi.

Secondly, any doujinshi parody (based on an existing series) would most likely lead to complaints from the copyright holders. The artist doesn't own any rights to the characters, so if we were to license and publish a parody, all we could do is hope that the actual owners would ignore us.

Of course, if an artist mainly does original works, and is willing to work with us, I guess we could publish those doujinshi. That being said, Wani's archive is massive, so there's no shortage of work.



I'm glad to hear you've enjoyed my previous work, and I hope you'll enjoy these upcoming books as well~

I'll bring this up in the honorifics post as well, but I think a literal approach is preferred when working on manga. Unless you use dubs, media like anime or games also have the original voices alongside the subtitles, meaning you can take more liberties in your translation. In manga you only have the text, so anything you drop in your translation is completely lost.

That being said, my definition of “literal” means to stay faithful to the original text; I don't wanna drop parts of the dialogue because I don't find them important, nor do I wanna add things just to make what was originally a very vague statement super obvious (I wouldn't change “Wanna do it?” to “Wanna fuck?”). We try to avoid translator notes in our releases, but thankfully, finding English equivalents are rarely an issue.

While I prefer to translate cutesy love stories, when it comes to “enjoying it personally”—if you know what I mean—I enjoy rougher stuff. I mostly read doujinshi and CG sets. Groups such as Abarenbow Tengu, Aomizuan, Arsenothelus, Condiment wa Hachibunme, Insert, Kawaraya Honpo, Kuro Food, Majimadou, Marked-Two, Niku Ringo, SHD, and Warabimochi, to name a handful.

When it comes to translating, Dr.P is the artist I enjoy working on the most. Besides his books, I had a lot of fun with the Drill Jill books I've worked on. It's hard to pick from 650 releases, but some I remember fondly are Namekuji Mayoigatari, the Arcana Juice series, the D.L. action series, the Maniacs series, and the Foxy Rena series.

how do you address sfx, especially sex sfx, that may not have a comparable tl, like æ²”?
do you prefer trying to find an applicable onomatopoeia like 'WHOOSH' or 'SHPLK',
or use a verb that literally describes the action, ie 'PUCKER' or 'GROPE'?

Sound effects (SFXs) are an interesting topic that probably deserves a thread of its own in the future, but for the time being:

Japanese uses both onomatopoeia—which mimics audible sounds—and mimetic words—which mimics feelings, states, etc. This is the reason you often come across "SFXs" that aren't actual sounds in a manga, such as "Empty" or "Sad."

That's basically what decides how I deal with a given SFX. Although, as the translator, the decision is ultimately up to me, so nothing it set in stone; there are times when I'd use maybe a verb to translate an onomatopoeic word. Obviously, the opposite is less likely to occur—using a sound to translate something that makes no sound. To give a more concrete answer, I try to mimic the sex sounds (splish, splosh, etc.), and use descriptive terms in most other cases (grab, smack, hug, etc.).

Something I didn't want to do with the sex sounds was to just pick a few sounds and say, "'Squish' is the sound of intercourse," and then use nothing but that, because believe me, there are a lot of different sounds used in ero-manga. Each artist has their own set of probably a dozen different sounds they like to use.

I went through a lot of trial and error in trying to put together my own set of SFXs in an attempt to somewhat match the massive number of variations used in Japanese, and I've come up with close to 40 different sex sounds that I use throughout these books. I'm curious to see how you, the readers, will react to these SFXs. I'm sure it'll feel a bit strange at first—especially since we're not used to seeing SFXs at all in scanlation—but hopefully you will, as have I, eventually come to appreciate being able to tell two ejaculations apart based on their sound.

I'm glad to hear this. It's one thing to have a rough translation if that's all there is available, but it's great we'll be able to read something that's closer to the author's original intent.

Long time fan of your translations. I'm asking if Fakku will do a subscription service akin to a magazine release?

The business side of things isn't really what I do here, so I'm not the best person to answer that question.

That being said, our goal is to eventually start publishing Wanimagazine's monthly magazine (such as Kairakuten), and for those I think it would make sense to have a subscription service. However, we're currently focused on books, so I don't think there will be any subscriptions in the foreseeable future.

Thank you for the speedy reply. I'll just cross my fingers for it. Regards to all of you and wishing for your success.

That would be really helpful to go more in depth with.



AWESOME! Yes, I would hope that kind of effort would be put into creating a more engaging reading experience.
Thank you for not spamming us with AH's!



That TL list would be a great reference!! Do you plan to have it posted anywhere in the tutorials on your blog?
What are some of the more irregular sounds you think readers wont be used to seeing?

What is your opinion on localization/westernization for figures of speech that come through funky as a literal translation?
For example, I just came across this one: the last drop makes the cup run over.
I can't for the life of me, ever imagine, in any circumstance, hearing a girl say that to a boy-
how much leniency do you like to give yourself, to extend it (obviously if circumstance permitted) to a more localized cliche that western audiences might use, like,
'let's leave something to the imagination' or 'don't you know, less is more' etc?
I know that's a wonky example, but I hope it gives reference to my question.

A topic dedicated the SFXs is probably something I will do eventually, so that's where I would go into more detail. I think it's just the variety that the readers will react to.

Per definition, a figure of speech (FoS) shouldn't be interpret literally, so translating a foreign language's FoS literally is never a good idea. In the case of idioms, they usually express simple ideas when you break them down—pearls before swine = don't waste stuff—simple enough to be universal, so while you can't translate it word-by-word, there's often a culturally equivalent idiom in the target language.

Was "the last drop makes the cup run over" used in an ero-manga? I can only guess the context, but just based on that expression and your line following it, something like "that pushed him over the edge" would probably be a better one to use.

Of course, an author can play with a FoS, so that it actually makes sense both literally and figuratively. In cases like that, I'd be inclined to go for a literal translation—perhaps after tweaking it a bit. With some reasoning, you can make sense of a lot of FoS. Taking the cup idom as an example:

"A drop is a very tiny amount, but that made a cup run over, which must mean that the cup was filled to the brim, and the cup overflowing doesn't sound like a good thing." In short, "something was about to go south, and this small thing made it go south," which is the actual meaning of the idiom.

As a last resort, you can always make a componential analysis; i.e., breaking down and expanding the meaning of a FoS. I call this option a "last resort" because it often becomes very wordy, and I find it rather boring. You're basically replacing the idiom with its meaning: "Don't cast pearls before swine" becomes "Don't give him something so valuable, because he wouldn't appreciate it anyway."

In general, I like to translate an idiom with a culturally equivalent idiom. If that's not possible, you can try to go for a literal translation, which might work as long as the source language idiom isn't too obscure. If nothing else works, expand the meaning.