INTRODUCTION
:A Proposal for 'Alternative Translations'
from Japanese to English
for Manga in the Global Age
These three critical essays comprise the first volume of my continuing series on the Manga work by Kou Yoneda, Twittering Birds Never Fly (Saezuru Tori Wa Habatakanai, or Saezuru for short). I read this work, along with its two precursory short stories, as one of the author’s many passionate devotees, and in my series of essays offer my own new interpretations and critical analyses, aiming to record them for a contemporary and future camaraderie of Saezuru fans and readers.
Chapter 1 and Chapter 2, contained in this first volume, present two individual critical essays, each written in Japanese and English. As a result of my attempts to critically analyse Saezuru as a whole, Chapter 1 has also become a thesis on Japanese Yaoi and BL Manga in general, attempting to answer the question of why a certain types of work in this genre have attracted so many readers for more than half a century.
Chapter 3, to be contained in the second volume of this series in future, introduces one long text with many case studies, highlighting illustrative examples of the issues involved in translating Japanese Manga into English. It will comprise compilations of many case studies of translation, including a brief commentary on each sample study in Japanese; a quote in Japanese from the work; a translation of the quote to English that I made from the original Japanese text; and the same quote from the official English edition (including a translation back to Japanese by myself when needed).
Each of the two volumes stands on its own, as an individual entity, so that readers can approach them either separately or sequentially. The two volumes will be presented two editions, one with Japanese as the main language and one in which English is the main language, as I am writing for the many devoted readers of Saezuru, both in Japan and around the world; both for people who can, and who cannot, read Japanese. I believe that now appreciation of Japanese Manga has become surprisingly widespread abroad, as well as in Japan, it is high time we started discussing Manga seriously in English as well as Japanese.
The Japanese and English versions of the four essays that comprise Chapter 1 and Chapter 2, plus this Introduction and Afternotes, are faithful translations of each other for about 90 percent of the text. For the remaining 10 percent, however, I intentionally allowed them to differ. I have tried to write each text in a way that I feel is best suited to each language, because each language has specific and unique characteristics of its own. I preferred that some parts of my expression remain ‘untranslatable’, so to speak. In other words, the Japanese and English versions purposefully omit sections that do not completely correspond.
Other authors who also write in multiple languages will likely understand and empathise with this approach. As any language is not just a means of communication but also a mode of expression, my decision was, in a sense, unavoidable in order to express myself both in Japanese and English in the ways that are most satisfactory to me. I hope readers will understand how this series of essays were written before starting to read them.
I would also like to explain that my series of essays on Saezuru, especially the second volume, has an additional purpose other than the aforementioned analyses and interpretations of the work. Through the act of re-reading the work in depth, I aim to introduce my own alternative ways of translating Japanese Manga into English, and to ask the important questions: ‘How is it possible to aspire to translate, as faithfully as possible, the author's unique and beautiful original Japanese expressions?’, and ‘How valid and beneficial can these other ways of translating actually be?’. These questions lead to a more general question: ‘How can I possibly make my own small contribution to improve the quality of the English translations of Japanese Manga texts?’.
In fact, the quality of translation of Japanese Manga into English remains, in general, sadly often very poor — much worse than that of literary works such as novels, short stories, and poetry. Mistranslations and overly approximate translations are found at times in Saezuru’s official English editions. It seems that, in general, a similar thing can be said of the translations of Japanese Manga into many other languages. The problem of improving the quality of Manga in translation is a very serious issue that publishers worldwide will have to deal with in the near future.
In light of this, I would like to explain what points I considered important in my attempts at translating the work, and what processes I followed to create the new translations presented in these first two volumes.
First and foremost, I aim to interpret, translate, and ‘represent’ the text of Saezuru as faithfully as possible to the original Japanese through new attempts at creating ‘alternative translations’ of parts of the work in English. I have the belief, hope, and aspiration, that languages can expand and grow beyond their existing limits when critically needed.
As a writer and editor, as well as a professional English to Japanese and Japanese to English translator, I think it best – ideally and practically – especially in cases of highly creative texts such as novels, poetry and Manga, that translations from Japanese into English should first be created by a highly talented, professional native-English-speaking translator, and then be checked and adjusted by a skilled native Japanese professional who can write, edit and translate sufficiently well both in Japanese and English, and who can check and correct mistranslations and any overly rough, inexact translations. This way, the translations are made as a collaborative work between the two parties.
In case of my Saezuru project, however, budgetary constraints unfortunately did not allow me to follow this approach. As a result, in the reverse of my ideal process, I had firstly to create new English translations myself for the parts I found inadequate, through re-reading the existing Volumes 1 to 6 of the official English editions of Saezuru. I then hired an American native-English-speaking, highly talented, professional Japanese to English translator, Bryan Thogerson, to check my translations. I asked him, in a collaborative work with me, to proofread and correct my translated texts at a minimal level, to the point at which they would be acceptable to him as a native English-speaking translator, while paying as much respect as possible to the author’s original expressions, and to my aspiration to create translations as faithful as possible to her texts.
Following this process and the overall policy already outlined, I made my new translations, and finally, I asked my old British friend and a professional editor, James Roberts, to edit and to proofread the complete English parts of the first two essays, Introduction and Chapter 1, excluding the quotes from the official English editions. As for the Japanese parts, I myself took charge of them. Pleaase note that due to my budget limitation, Chapter 2 has not been edited by a native English editor, except the quotes checked by Bryan Thogerson.
These essays are the result of this process. I would like my readers also to be aware that these essays contain numerous experimental attempts at translating Japanese into English, as seen below, due to my strong desire to create English translations as faithful as possible to the original beautiful and unique expressions by the author.
The first issue is that of how to translate the characters’ voices. Although I am fully aware that my essays contain some vocal expressions that may sound rather unfamiliar and novel to readers of English, I have tried to translate the characters’ voices, again, as faithfully as possible to the original Japanese sounds, tones and timbres. This is because, in the real world too, Japanese people vocalise with sounds that are uniquely Japanese.
Secondly, I remain as loyal as possible to the editorial marks commonly used in Japanese Manga, such as ‘…’, ‘......’, ‘——’ and ‘‼’, which are not yet commonly used in English translations. My insistence on veracity to the original editorial marks is because their existence and the quantity in the original text have indispensable and extremely significant effects in the creation of specific ambiences in Japanese comics and literary works, as well as in close reading of those works. In other words, such marks often convey the quality of the individual author’s tastes and create a unique atmosphere distinctive to each work. In my translations, I have tried to retain these marks, especially the three described following, in their original positions and quantity, in order to fully convey the nuances of the work.
The first is ‘…’, or ‘three-dot reader [Santen reader]’. Similar lingering, abbreviated, or hesitant effects are also produced by the second one, ‘——’, or ‘dash [Daāshi]’. Thirdly, ‘‼’, or ‘double exclamation mark’.
I know it is at times very difficult to translate these marks exactly into other languages, especially considering that many languages are only written horizontally. Japanese is a rare language that may be written both vertically and horizontally. If you look at Manga pages in their original Japanese editions, where the text is predominantly vertical with an occasional horizontal section mixed in, you will perhaps quickly notice how this linguistic advantage contributes well to creating dynamic as well as subtle effects inside the space of the pages. Especially in the case of hand-lettered onomatopoeias, words, phrases, and sentences run freely and fluently in whichever direction they wish to go. Japanese Manga often make the most of similar effects by enlarging and/or reducing specific words and text in quite dynamic and flexible ways.
Lastly, and most importantly, I am very well aware that, as in the case of film and TV drama, translations of Manga often have word-length and spatial limitations. The text has to be squeezed into each relevant bubble or background. It is extremely difficult at times to achieve simultaneously both goals of staying as faithful as possible to the original Japanese text and of accommodating such physical constraints. However, as a writer myself, whether it is in the language of the original texts or in translation, I absolutely believe that what writers and authors dislike most are situations in which their texts are misinterpreted, mistranslated, and summarised in an overly rough manner, without sufficient respect paid to their original words and expressions. The text’s meanings, connotations, and nuances, and thereby the text itself, are excessively altered from the original into something else before reaching the reader. Foe me, it feels much better that editors in English-speaking locations should use a range of font sizes in more flexible ways when needed, and should re-think and abandon outdated conventions – such as the heavy use of space-consuming, all capital-letter texts – rather than allowing the distribution of distorted mistranslations and overly rough translations worldwide. At the same time, cases of significant omissions, misreadings or alterations, even when there is sufficient space available, are frequently found. It is very clear that this issue is also a matter of awareness of the individual translators and their employers – the publishers – and a question of the accuracy and the quality standards of translation that each one of us envisions.
In fact, English-language editions are widely read, not just in the US but in many other countries. Not a few native-language editions exist where the translation has been made from the English-language edition rather than the Japanese original. If you consider the current global situation surrounding Manga translation, the problem of poor quality English translations is thus not only limited to readers in English-speaking countries, but causes a huge and deplorable influence worldwide. Behind this issue of the quality of translation, I believe lies a serious problem in that translators, in quite a few industries, in quite a few countries, often seem to have long been forced to work as members of an ‘intellectual lower class’, working for very low pay. As a translator and editor myself, I have a feeling that the real essence of this issue is not as simple as changing the translators’ individual mindsets: there is more of a structural problem, too.
I have digressed from the main point of my argument, but, in my Saezuru project, I would like to reiterate that I aim to create and to propose translations as faithful as possible to the original Japanese texts. Since my essays only use the texts, with no images of the Manga panels to accompany them, the issue of the space and limited word length are not questions with which I have to contend.
There is one final point I should like to make clear. The English texts of the two books are written both in British and American English. For the translations of the work, I used American English. For the rest of the books, I preferred to stick to British English, because it feels more familiar and natural to me.
This preface has become quite lengthy but it contains the most basic information I wish readers to know about my project at the outset. From this point onwards, I hope that as many readers as possible from around the globe will enjoy glimpses of the incomparably beautiful and powerful world of Saezuru, through reading these texts. If they are able to make a small contribution to enriching each reader’s experiences of Saezuru, nothing would be more delightful to me, as a writer as well as a fan of the work.