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Hey, Answerman! - Translation Mitigation

wtf who goes to libraries anymore?

Haven't all the people who track the anime market been doom and gloom for the past 4 years or more?

Be it a restaurant or a bank or anything else, when there's new owners, it's not uncommon for things to change. And when it comes time to draw up a new contract, the new owners may not agree to the original terms, and so on.

The one fly in the ointment was that my draft introduction included a quotation from Bob Shaw's Fire Pattern. [...] Unfortunately I committed the routine courtesy of checking whether Bob's family had any objection to what I'd written and quoted, and his son stunned me by demanding a £300 permission fee. For 175 words. The mind reels.

Professional editors conveyed to me that "the late author's family" is a term of terror in the industry. Charles Platt robustly suggested I should tell the son and heir to piss off. Though knowing that Bob Shaw's own suggested fee would have been at most a pint of beer, I cautiously made a modest counter-offer; silence fell, and despite a follow-up letter continued for months. In the end, for safety's sake, that passage was paraphrased almost out of existence.

I'll probably be the 437th or so person to say this, but what's inexcusable is Sentai continuing to harbour Steven Foster. Anybody who checks out his work can see that he obviously doesn't like anime. What does he like? Himself. This is why he is one of the Enemies of Anime--the types who selfishly overimpose themselves on other people's work because, dammit all, those Japanese just don't understand that he's much more brilliant than the people who only create the work in the first place. The only reason I can see for to Sentai to continue to allow him to use the anime they license to wipe his backside is that he's holding something over the people at the top there, like incriminating pictures or videos. If that is indeed the case, then, if the concerned party really cares about and loves anime, they should own up to their indiscretions and sacrifice their career as well as cutting him out if it will stop the ongoing damage. It's bad enough that I refuse to buy Penguindrum--a series which I WANTED to buy--because of his greasy, ketchup-smear fingerprints all over it. I don't want to add anything else to that list. I genuinely want to give Sentai my money for their work, but not if it's covered in raging egomaniac drool.

Only people who have been doom and gloom are Westerners who are upset that anime isn't being made that they like. From a sales perspective, its doing as well as ever and is very healthy. Those sales just happen to be going towards moe and other otaku oriented shows instead of Western oriented action shows or artsy stuff.

...Brazil got Digimon in Japanese? D: Poorly packaged, poorly released Japanese, from the sounds of it, but... Japanese? D: Considering my recent ramblings concerning the unfairness of all this hype about Digimon boxsets in the US only to find out that they still (*still*) only contain the edited, English version from the TV release, this makes me very, very sad. (Also, Brazil, you have Saint Seiya. >< Clearly I'm living in the wrong country).

Only people who have been doom and gloom are Westerners who are upset that anime isn't being made that they like. From a sales perspective, its doing as well as ever and is very healthy. Those sales just happen to be going towards moe and other otaku oriented shows instead of Western oriented action shows or artsy stuff.

Ow. I know I shouldn't be surprised at such an attitude, but still...

Quote:

I'll probably be the 437th or so person to say this, but what's inexcusable is Sentai continuing to harbour Steven Foster. Anybody who checks out his work can see that he obviously doesn't like anime. What does he like? Himself. This is why he is one of the Enemies of Anime--the types who selfishly overimpose themselves on other people's work because, dammit all, those Japanese just don't understand that he's much more brilliant than the people who only create the work in the first place. The only reason I can see for to Sentai to continue to allow him to use the anime they license to wipe his backside is that he's holding something over the people at the top there, like incriminating pictures or videos. If that is indeed the case, then, if the concerned party really cares about and loves anime, they should own up to their indiscretions and sacrifice their career as well as cutting him out if it will stop the ongoing damage. It's bad enough that I refuse to buy Penguindrum--a series which I WANTED to buy--because of his greasy, ketchup-smear fingerprints all over it. I don't want to add anything else to that list. I genuinely want to give Sentai my money for their work, but not if it's covered in raging egomaniac drool.

*winces* Jeeze, Foster's among the "Enemies of Anime," huh? I'm not what one would call a "fan" of him either-- I created that "Penguindrum dub is being directed by... Steven Foster?" thread that expressed my worries with him, after all-- but still, that sounds like weeaboo speak to me, frankly.

In that case.... as much as one might not find agreement with all the casting choices of characters, I don't think those two (admittedly theorized) bases of critique have merit with regard to Penguindrum, and at least the movies like GotF or Mardock Scramble he's worked on lately. There is very little script adaptation going on-- too little for some people, actually-- and the drama is never swapped out for comedy or vice-versa, with the actors themselves seeming to get the tonal intonations right.

RyanSaotome wrote:

Only people who have been doom and gloom are Westerners who are upset that anime isn't being made that they like. From a sales perspective, its doing as well as ever and is very healthy. Those sales just happen to be going towards moe and other otaku oriented shows instead of Western oriented action shows or artsy stuff.

Yeah pretty much, though I wouldn't say we're getting that much less of the mainstream/action want than people claim. Those shows are still getting made, it's just that since we're pretty much caught up with whatever Japan puts out these days we have to wait for them to make it. In the upcoming season alone I'd say there's a couple of titles bound to make action fans happy.