To Translate or Not to Translate?

That's the question.

This is something I get pretty red in the face over, and it's probably because I worked in the scanlation scene, and tip toeing around in the licensed manga scene.

Sound effects.

Do you translate them, or do you leave them alone? Do you subtitle them? Do you subtitle them literally? or do you have an English equivalent?

When dealing with scanlation, we never dealt with sfx because they're tedious and usually not very vital to understanding the scene. Only when the sfx was part of understanding a scene (like a bright light shining on a character and it's hooooooonk!) or something similar did we do anything.

However, working with Project-H with several titles, sfx are a requirement. EVERYTHING needs to be translated in Project-H and I'm fine with that - but what makes me red in the face is that I feel there is a strict line of "the right way" and "the wrong way" and I feel like translators take the easy way out and do it the wrong way.

When LD and I got involved with Velvet Kiss, a translator already completed a script, but LD was an 'editor' and reviewed the script and got to change it as he felt needed. He was pretty peeved that the translator did an amazing job translating things accurately, but when it came to the sfx they were all still 'Japanese' "Zapupu" "biku" "chupu" "zu" - what the hell are those sound effects to an English reader?

I firmly believe that if someone is going to translate the sound effects that is 100% the WRONG way to do it. Anybody can pick up a dictionary and look up those characters and do that.

Project-H gives the translators and editors a lot of freedom in sfx on how they want to do it. You can remove a lot (though if you do it, they expect you to have a firm grasp of the clone stamp and to do it right), you can translate them how you feel they should be etc.

I was going to buy Colorful Harvest because it seemed like a good title, but because of how the translator, editor, and typesetter chose to do the sound effects I don't want to do it. Maybe this only really matters to me because I'm IN the scene and it's something I would notice more - but it's probably the biggest pet peeve of mine in translations.

Example:


Does this add or take from the quality of the book to you? Or do you not care?

go for it!
your judgement has never disappointed me so far...

the perils of thinking to buy something if you think you could have done a better job

(unless it's taking a toll on your mental health and social life, then you should take a step back)

good luck! whichever your choice will be...

edit: there are other options like the little editors notes at the ending or side to explain what it means (don't they have it?), and IDK if its the language or culture barrier which makes sfx differ. like a sheep's 'baaa' as opposed to 'meeeh' or 'bleeet'

Well I hadn't edited Colorful Harvest, I haven't ever done something I didn't believe in. That's not the problem :) it's just me griping in general :P

Personally it doesn't bother me too much. I think if I had to read words like "slosh" it would just put me off. But that's a bad example and I can't actually think of anything else at the minute. It goes with Japanese onomatopoeia, but because I can read Katakana it does make me cringe a bit reading 'zoku' in Romaji. I prefer it with English dialogue and Japanese SFX in Katakana/Hiragana, but obviously it's an English translation... I can't decide.

Honestly, I don't really care that much for the sfx when reading any manga. but this is the main problem with Japanese manga.

Every people in every different countries have different onomatopoeia for the same sound: like example, meow/nyaa, boom/bokan splash/jabon.

My honest suggestion, well seeing that they're not forcing you to translate sfx to english, might as well try using english first. if it feels not right, then you can just use the original.

Personally, I'll stick with the original untouched, with tl notes on the side/bottom.

Try talking to other manga translators, or seeing some samples of translated work in your average shounen manga that's been translated and compare them if the use and translation is different with another manga.
might help:
http://www.baka-tsuki.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2485

Let's go with simple. Having the sound effects translated can cause too much clutter on the panels, a small tl on the bottom usually does the trick.

One significant problem is that vertical writing seems more appealing to my eye than horizontal, since alot of panels seem to have more vertical space than horizontal space.

How about 2 versions for the digital books?! One with and one without the translated sound effects?!

I'd like to see them untranslated since it always covers a bit from the original picture. Of course you're doing it very nicely to ovoid to hide the picture. On the other hand it's nice to understand the words too.
But if I had the choice I'd like to have both versions to change to whatever version I wanna see at the moment.

Since you are using layers for them it should not be a problem to even go back to the released titles ;o)

This is an extremely old post back when I was scanlating and doesn't really apply in Fakku Books. SFX are also not seperate layers in our files so there is no removing them. Fakku Books translates all the sfx and they do so in a way that is understandable.

YQII (the translator for Fakku Books) made a post about it a while ago specifically to Fakku Books:
https://www.fakku.net/forums/books/translation-insight

Thank you for the information. I found this old topic by looking at you profile.

Well, it was just a suggestion but I can understand the choices.
You can't have everything you want, right? ^^