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Forum - View topicINTEREST: German Fans Are Disappointed That Tokyopop's New Light Novels Are Translated From English,
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Lord Geo
Posts: 2560 Location: North Brunswick, New Jersey |
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I'm sorry, but WHAAAAAAAAAAAT? If a translator is "not comfortable" with Japanese, then why in the hell would they be hired to translate a Japanese product? This sounds more like TokyoPop Germany is being lazy & just hiring English-to-German translators, who are more than likely more common, instead of actually bothering to look for & hire Japanese-to-German translators, who are likely less common. Not a good look to have, really. |
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Shiawase_Rina
Posts: 76 |
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Sure feel a bit weird to see german news on here. It's welcome tho since Tokyopop deserves to get a bit more shamed over their horrible justification of why they translate from English.
I saw quite a few german translators on Twitter being rightfully offended by Tokyopop's comment. It really would've been better had they just said that they don't want to invest in jp -> de translators because of the higher costs. But no they had to insult every jp -> de translator in one go. Honestly, for me, it's not the end of the world if sometimes jp -> en -> de happens instead of jp -> de. If it wasn't possible to localize it otherwise then I think it is tolerable. Not every German can read English well after all and they deserve their content in German too. However, I will always get the English version in such cases since I can read English well enough. jp -> de will always be better. |
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Moby#922485
Posts: 2 |
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Excuse me but your reporting is not accurate.
Tokyopop didn't say that they may choose English "because translators may "not be comfortable" with Japanese", but because their japanese translators may lack the expertise in the genre of the titles (fantasy for Overlord, comedy for KonoSuba, additionally gaming for Rising). And I am not a TP defender (I'm rather critical of their decision and premature judgement of their translators), but journalistic accuracy is a top priority for me. |
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Greed1914
 Posts: 4447 |
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Going from English to German is obviously easier, but a translation of a translation is bound to produce some odd results.
I'm kind of questioning the reason given. People are bound to wonder why Tokyo Pop is bothering if the translators aren't comfortable, and it isn't hard to think that English to German translations wouldn't cost as much as the more difficult/time consuming Japanese to German. |
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Zeparu
Posts: 11 |
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So much going on in the German anime and manga industry and this is what ANN is reporting on? Really?
Or can we take this as a start that you'll report a little more about the Europen market from now on? Would be a welcome change! |
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xstylus
 Posts: 263 |
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Not to change the subject, but English as a pivot language is standard practice in subtitling (e.g. Netflix). Not surprised to see it being done for manga translations as well.
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TsukasaElkKite
 Posts: 3957 |
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Why am I not surprised?
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OrdepNM
 Posts: 243 |
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There's always something of a Catch-22/Self-fulfilling prophecy when it comes to publishing light novels outside of the English speaking world. As the article aludes to, people who speak English tend to just read the English translation - and that's not a small slice of the population given that the younger demographics that constitute the bulk of anime fans tend to have above average English proficiency rates and frankly, in my experience, until recently it was hard to get into anime in continental Europe without speaking English - avaliability was way too spotty without relying on "alternative" sources - which were subbed in English 99% of the time - so you'd end up with nothing but battle shonen to watch and end up losing interest well before you were exposed to the kind of anime that would get you interested in light novels.
That to say that honestly, publishing non English translated light novels is targeting a niche within a niche within a niche - anime fans who are into reading light novels but can't or won't read English. Suffice to say, margins are slim so costs have to be low and risks even lower - so nothing but sure hits. For example, polish fans are the envy of the Rezero Fandom since their translation comes out so much faster than the Yen Press one - but the darkside of the moon is that according to the publisher it's not economical to publish the Ex novels - only the mainline has the built in audience that guarantees the books will make their money back. That's how you get cost saving measures like ording a pivot translation for a fraction of what the straight from Japanese would cost. Problem is, readers know for a fact that's a thing that happens and there's no way to avoid it since publishers aren't exactly upfront about these practices. Honestly, the only way to know a translation didn't come from English is if said translation doesn't exist to begin with. Frankly, even tough some series I follow have translations out in my native language (Portuguese) I'd still rather read in English. It's not just about the pivot translations, there's also a sense of "safety in numbers" when. It comes to translation quality - bad translations and cut content ala seven Seas will eventually be outed in the big international English release, but can go completely unnoticed in a comparatively niche Portuguese release. Of course that means smaller market, smaller margins and more pivot translations, but c'est lá vie. |
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hexashadow13
Posts: 51 |
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"Dave, a fan who runs the Light Novel Dungeon German light novel news website, told ANN that it was "basically unheard of" for modern German translations of anime, manga, or light novels to use English rather than Japanese as the base."
That's somewhat surprising if true. As far as I know, the FIGS translations done for most JRPGs and other text heavy games are based on the English translation. Though of course there are some exceptions like 13 Sentinels for example. I wonder why it would be different for anime/manga/LNs. |
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BigOnAnime
Encyclopedia Editor
 Posts: 1232 Location: Minnesota, USA |
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xxmsxx
 Posts: 567 |
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Thank you for doing this news piece. I know ANN is an English site but man we really could use more news piece from other corners of the anime community that is not English and Japanese. It really adds a lot to the conversation.
I think the comment above about a niche within a niche within a niche is most accurate. Continental Europe is an area where there is high level of English literacy amongst the manga-reading anime-watching audience, ie. the younger generation. If you decide to publish something not in English, either you have a strong population base, like French or Russian, otherwise the profit margin will be razor thin or basically non-existent. The only way to cut down costs would be lower your expenses: hiring translators at a lower rate. So it makes sense from a business perspective. It is terrible for the end product, but the company is obviously prioritizing the bottom line as without it, they won't be translating anything to begin with. I am still concerned that even German is facing this problem. Can you imagine some of other lesser spoken languages.... *sigh* This is also mirrored in the streaming service. The pre-existing audience in Europe is likely to watch anime in English, yet it is region-locked for them or available in a language they do not speak, ie. having Russian available legally in Malta (a primary English-speaking countries). Yet, English-speaking fans in North America think they should grow their own domestic local language service when this Tokyopop example clearly shows that the profit margins are so thin they are slicing off the translators, a quintessential part of the production cycle
Yeah, I wish they didn't do it either, but from Netflix's perspective, they really have no incentive. Instead, they probably want to automate the process with bots so there is no one required to be paid, let alone paid well for a good translation. |
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Ryuji-Dono
 Posts: 1213 |
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There are actually cases where the Japanese is directly translated to the other language. The most notable one is LatAm Spanish.
What do you mean? [Do not double-post. Use the "Edit" button instead ~Zalis] |
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BonusStage
 Posts: 307 |
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This isn't the first time I've heard of foreign translations being based on the English translation rather than being translated directly from the Japanese source material. I remember it was a toss up if the Digimon translations would use the original Japanese version as it's base (Mexico) or the English dub (Brazil). I also distinctly remember hearing how the German translation of Final Fantasy XIV is based on the American version, while the French translation is based on the Japanese version.
Re: Netflix. I'm glad Squid Game seems to have made the discussion about translations more mainstream. Seems like it was mostly brushed off as mere minor complaining before Squid Game give the topic more exposure and weight. |
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harminia
 Posts: 2006 Location: australia |
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Literally why are you hiring translators who can't speak Japanese then.
Personally I feel that's still a pretty flimsy excuse. It's like they're saying the only have 2 translators to choose from or something. I mean, if you're translating something, you're translating something. Having expertise can help but the context should be there regardless, and Google is just a click away. If it's about the reading flow, how do they know the ENG translators had any better expertise? I'd always respected German Tokyopop because it pumped out so many interesting translations (all of Gosick...) that had no English equivalents, and kept going even after American Tokyopop shut down. But uh... Looks like it's time to change my view, huh. |
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Sakura-Alchemist
 Posts: 489 |
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I've was under the impression this is quite common practice because it's cheaper and more common to get an EN to any other language than JP to any other language. The disappointment is understandable though. Wasn't there drama in the video game realm where they translated JP > EN > German because "Miss(mistake/didn't hit)" was translated to "Fraulein/Miss(young woman)."?
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