Forum - View topicINTEREST: I'm in Love with the Villainess Author Responds to Alterations in English-Language Release
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yuricon
 Posts: 147 |
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Hi there, I've been thinking about this and wanted to answer, because I'm sorry I wasn't clear. I was trying to get the article out on a very busy day. I was also doing an AMA on reddit and working my day job at the same time. 
Firstly, the reason I said it was "weird," that Seven Seas might have made the change was because it was not in their best interests to do so. I was 100% wrong that they were the source of the elided passage, so I'll own up to that. But - what I *meant* was this: Seven Seas wants to sell books. To do that, it is in their best interests to put out the best books they can, with the least amount of controversy as possible. In addition, they have spent a decade proving that they are allies of queer fans and content. It was "weird" that anyone there might choose to make a controversial deletion, with the intent of offending readers. That was what I meant. Also you ask why it's wrong to contact the creator. Well...that one is complicated, so let's boil it down to this. How would you feel if you woke up to an email box boiling over with inchoate white-hot rage about decisions you didn't make? inori-sensei is a very cool person and handled the situation really well, by asking fans to be chill and nice, then linking to my article asking for people to be polite. A lot of otaku-media creators are not this centered and calm. So I suggested instead of writing a creator and dumping it on them, that we write the company and ask them to address it. So, we did - and they did address it and it *will* be addressed. Yay! Those of us who have ebooks will get the deleted passage restored. Maybe we can ask politely for a discounted print replacement program or something. My point always and forever is that fan paranoia is destructive and I never recommend it, but I 100% always recommend polite, firm letters to companies to do as good a job as possible. I hope that clarifies my point! Thanks to everyone who did write Seven Seas, I was told there were quite a lot of you.
Cheers, Erica |
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Redbeard 101
Oscar the Grouch
Forums Superstar  Posts: 16963 |
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There's been several reports from this thread so let me clarify something. Baseless conspiracy theory soapboxing is not going to fly. If you're going to make a lot of wild assertations about a company changing a whole bunch of their titles, you better provide some sort of links or evidence to back it up. Otherwise it sounds like a whole bunch of personal pet peeves dressed up as something more. Claiming it would be "too much" to post is just a convenient way to get out of backing up your claims.
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Cloudywind
Posts: 55 |
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Lmao at the idea that a for-profit corporation would be "allies" of anybody or anything past the point where they can make some money out of them. The adapter/editor credited on ILTV is a queer woman[1], and yet the cuts happened. They can say all the right words, hire the right spread of people, license content important to the community, but ultimately the purpose of a business is to show some profit, and by only reactively addressing to individual volumes about which people complained rather than proactively doing a full overhaul of all books that could potentially have been affected, they are showing that they only wish to minimize costs to maximize profit and don't really care to do more than the minimum needed to keep the sales flowing. 1. https://twitter.com/her_nibsen |
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Kabu
Posts: 8 |
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Just so everybody reading this know it, in the Classroom of the Elite subreddit there are ton of examples of all the text cut by Seven Seas. By the way, now we have evidence for another series that suffers censorship from the company: Roll Over and Die. Evidence: https://forums.j-novel.club/topic/4188/seven-seas-in-trouble-for-heavy-alterations-and-censorship-of-light-novels/123 |
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Sakagami Tomoyo
 Posts: 943 Location: Melbourne, VIC, Australia |
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Some allies are more committed to you than others. Just because they're not going all out, doesn't mean they don't care at all and are only in it for an easy buck. And when you compare to companies that refuse to have anything to do with queer content and/or people even when it means turning down profitable work, I'd say Seven Seas is definitely more on the "ally" side. |
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Key
Moderator
 Posts: 18447 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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Yes, this was mentioned (and linked to) earlier in the thread. I know the the thread is getting long, but I encourage people to at least scan previous posts to see if something like this has already been brought up before posting it again like it's a new point. |
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Kabu
Posts: 8 |
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My bad, I should have checked. I mentioned it because I think there should be an article about what happened with the official translation of that series too, so that Seven Seas can't ignore the situation and promise us to do something about it. It's as concerning as what happened with 'I'm in Love with the Villainess', 'Mushoku Tensei' and 'Classroom of the Elite'. Also, potential buyers should be aware of the situation. |
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Blanchimont
 Posts: 3564 Location: Finland |
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Now the issue also affects the light novel(not the manga) of Bloom Into You, a user on j-novel forums posted proof;
https://forums.j-novel.club/post/123589 It's a bit long so I'm not going to quote it here, but essentially what he did, he posted three paragraphs from volume 2 and two from volume 3, the SS official translation, the original Japanese text, and his translation of the text left out by SS. All the paragraphs he showed in the post have around half of the original text omitted in the SS translation. |
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Shiroi Hane
Encyclopedia Editor
 Posts: 7580 Location: Wales |
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I’ve worked in call centres for years. I’ve never been scripted other than salutations, however I have more than once been given a boiler text response to hot button issues that have been signed off by legal.
That instance was literally just assuming gender when one was not explicitly stated in the original text at that point in the story (and both characters where it would be natural to assume male; a spoiler[Demon Lord and a slave master]). Later volumes/passages make this explicit so I was making them aware. However, and this is unfortunately going to stray into the area of certain uncomfortable Japanese stereotypes, it has been pointed out to me recently that when a masculine character in a dress is introduced in Roll Over and Die vol. 2, where the Japanese says “そしてなにより顔つきが、男そのものだったからだ” the English version renders this as “Something about them struck Flum as...off, somehow.” which is rather less explicit, and a following line “てっきり、女性だと思いこんでいた” (the character is referred to as “spoiler[Mother]”) is omitted entirely. As there is a similar “okama”-type character introduction in Reincarnated as a Sword vol. 5 I checked that and similarly, the internal monologue of “ 秘密も何も男だろうが！ 完璧に！ だが、それを言ってはいけないような雰囲気がこの場にはあった。” is omitted in translation. There are clear reasons that these were sanded over but it does fall into the discussion of how true to the original language/context to be when translating and adapting. I would honestly find Mahouka a lot easier to read if the constant repetition (like literally presenting the same information two different ways in the same paragraph), unnecessary explanations (like explaining what a metaphor is) and endless diversions (IIRC there was a mention of removing shoes followed by a paragraph explaining why this was no longer actually necessary. World-building is all well and good but when it gets in the way of enjoying the story...) had been cut down somewhere along the line, but I hesitate to suggest that this should have been as part of the translation process. I stalled on Index years ago for much the same reason. |
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Sakagami Tomoyo
Posts: 943 Location: Melbourne, VIC, Australia |
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That's the major problem I have with light novels; most of them are just not very well written. Oh, the stories are usually decent enough and entertaining enough, but so many light novel authors are just not very good at actually writing the text out in a properly readable way.
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Gamen
Posts: 254 |
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Of course not; that's not translation, that's adaptation, and I count those as two very distinct things. ...or at least that's my gut reaction, but I understand that since there's no one-to-one translation in the first place there's always a little room to improve exposition if the translator is careful. But I can't condone erasing and replacing cultural differences, much less upsetting and controversial descriptions. Ironic that you mention Mahouka - Yen Press's long delay finally pushed me over the edge into continuing it in Japanese instead so I've recently been slowly working through the volumes.... but I can't remember there being redundant explanations. But taking my my poor language skills into account perhaps they're the technobabble sections that're easier to comprehend. |
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Sakagami Tomoyo
Posts: 943 Location: Melbourne, VIC, Australia |
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The line between "translation" and "adaptation" is a bit blurry though, especially when it concerns novels.
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Shiroi Hane
Encyclopedia Editor
Posts: 7580 Location: Wales |
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It’s entirely possible that the translation is at least part f the problem (indeed two of the series I want to read but find a chore to do so, Mahouka and Index, have the same translator). In terms of redundancy and over explaining, this is the example I always remember:
Using a metaphor. Explaining the metaphor. Clarifying, in case you missed it, that yes this is a metaphor. Explaining the metaphor again just to make sure. |
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