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Forum - View topicNEWS: Ōoku: The Inner Chambers Wins Tiptree Award
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GATSU
Posts: 15558 |
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Congrats to Viz. I hope their Ikki line wins more awards. [*cough* I'll Give It My All...*cough*]
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vashfanatic
 Posts: 3495 Location: Back stateside |
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Ugh, I have such mixed feelings on this. I'm glad Ooku is getting attention, but I don't think Viz's "translation" of it should be getting awards. Their pseudo-Shakespearean dialogue is practically unreadable. It was clearly written by someone who thinks that the best way to make something sounds archaic is to make the sentence structure as awkward as possible while still using modern words.
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Chrno2
 Posts: 6172 Location: USA |
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This is great news to hear.
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Zopelthe543
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I just find it interesting when people have something to complain about the translations because most of time I don't notice this stuff until someone points something out. There have been a few cases that I've seen and had minor complaints about certain translations in a manga but is there been any real bad translation in manga that just ruined the series? |
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marie-antoinette
 Posts: 4136 Location: Ottawa, Canada |
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I've been planning to read this series for awhile now and, with this news, I'll definitely be checking it out. I've heard about the translation issues before and it really does seem to come down to a matter of personal preference.
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enurtsol
 Posts: 14886 |
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Good thing they don't nominate crossdressing manga to the Tiptree Award.
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vashfanatic
Posts: 3495 Location: Back stateside |
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Well first off: this doesn't take place in the Middle Ages, it takes place in the early 1700s (IIRC, either that or the late 1600s). To take a parallel from English, people spoke a little differently back then, but not to the point that you couldn't understand them. It's also somewhat difficult to determine "how people spoke," since we only know about it via literature, which is a different style than speaking. That said, you can always look at more popular works to get an idea of how people spoke - and it doesn't sound like the mess Viz has here. Second, you shouldn't translate it to "sound like" it's in the time period, you should translate it to match the Japanese (hence why it's appropriate for Dark Horse to use anachronisms in Blade of the Immortal; the Japanese is anachronistic). My first exposure to Ooku was indeed reading it in Japanese. The casual conversation is slightly archaic at times, but it's still readable to someone with only modern Japanese in her background; the real issue is that in the court, they speak a very formal and old-fashioned style - only Viz's translation makes no distinction between how the commoners speak and how the courtiers. That's my really big gripe: you could have the court-speech rendered in ultra-formal, stilted English since it's ultra-formal and stilted in Japanese, but in Viz's translation, it's all the same. Is Ooku ruined by this? It was for me. I really hate the translation, it's hard to read and it bogs you down. Relating to characters that never speak like real human beings is difficult. Personally, this is one I'm getting in Japanese and never looking back at - unless Viz comes to their senses and redoes it. To me, the "way to translate it" would be, first and foremost, to make it readable. To indicate archaicisms, look up some actual English archaicisms and use them once in a while, don't just shuffle clauses around. And make sure that you differentiate between the "levels" that people speak at, since that's important in Japanese and especially in period pieces. |
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poonk
 Posts: 1490 Location: In the Library with Philip |
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I've been following Ooku through the English releases (2 so far) and find the translation to be acceptable in that I don't find it inordinately difficult to follow. However-- I would also have been perfectly fine with a "normal" English translation as long as it didn't seem blatantly anachronistic (no slang, for example) so you won't find me arguing on the pro-Viz-translation side either. Since the translation does seem to bother a significant number of readers maybe Viz should've taken the "plain English" route after all. I'll be picking it up regardless. I think Fumi Yoshinaga is worth it (and, well, like many of us I can't read Japanese so it's my only option).
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marzipan.dragon
 Posts: 70 |
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Yep. I hope this award introduces more readers to this engaging book. Congratulations, Fumi Yoshinaga! |
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jtstellar
Posts: 94 |
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i have no problem with the BL genre, but the jury that gave out this reward feels like some cliche feminists taking a look at asocial problem from the perspective that somehow most of it is due to some kind of lack of understanding of gender, and that somehow women are being repressed from their natural abilities. the first thing under the introduction about the reward is about how this author broke away from the notion that a woman can't have masculine writing.. so on and so forth.
i checked out the manga a bit and it turned out the author's a famed BL artist.. while the scenario it puts forth is quite interesting, i really just can't see things play out exactly like it would in the manga even if a disease were to somehow wipe out 3/4 of the society's male. to seriously reduce the "dominance" of male in every aspect of the society and to render them powerless, their intelligence and physical strength have to be reduced to that lower than an average female's. actually the chances are the scenario would play out exactly the opposite--males now fewer in number have lost many of their potential competitors, and the few that remain now gain more power and control, not less. the extra social status they gain from what arises out of reproductive scarcity is secondary to the old world factors that brought men to dominance in a hierarchical society--their strength and intelligence, which enabled them to become the most effective providers. unless males all willingly give up their urge to provide and instead become a dove, and even willingly give up defense of their own possession and status, which i doubt would occur since it is not only against male instinct but simply against human instinct in most cases, then it might be possible for them to lose all their social status. otherwise the outside society, or "women", will have to have the ability to provide and enrich the remaining men more than they ever could obtain with force and wits, or violence and coercion, which were the foundations of power in a hierarchical society by the way, to quench their initiative to usurp power on their own, if we even disregard the fact that the instinct of a male in many cases are against this regardless. also, there's simply no arbitrary reason why all of a sudden all female would unite and imprison men--each female does not share immediate self interest with another automatically. if you argue from the stand point that all women realize if they work together, wage a war against men and imprison them against their own will, then everybody will have a better chance of reproduction--we all know that is not the case. humanity seldom comes together for a common good. if one person can get ahead one step at the sacrifice of 10 steps of progression of another human being, in most cases they would do so. somehow all women can work together in perfect collaboration to form this orderly society to imprison men is just ridiculous. for a starter, prove even the statement that all women are altruistic. if one is not, there will be a second who departs for caution, mistrust, and self interest, and a third. it's not possible. also, when a male is the provider, the reproductive aspect is secondary because the provider aspect trumps the reproductive advantage by many folds. there's no example where a king was disqualified because he somehow had a reproductive illness. he could simply adopt someone else's and it makes no sense for a person capable of obtaining higher social status to not do so. it is against self interest. the society prospers through competition. the only way to obtain social status is to become the most effective provider and trump your competitors.. it has nothing to do with arbitrary stereotypes of a male or female, though genetic make-ups could provide advantages in certain aspects. it's a manga with interesting assumptions, but all in all it's just a fantasy on women's part and on those who lack a practical understanding of how social status arises. good setting for feminists and those who indulge in BL scenario though. i have none against the latter, can't say much about the first. |
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Dop.L
Posts: 725 Location: London |
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I have to admit I'm with vashfanatic on this one. While i have no idea what it might have been like in the original Japanese, the translation has always struck me as a kind of cod Ye* Olde English 'Yea verily forsooth my liege' nonsense you only get in movies.
I can't help thinking that maybe consulting someone more versed in the language of the era might have helped. (* Before anyone says anything, I am fully aware that "Ye" is not and never was a word, but is just a common misreading of the 'thorn' character used to represent 'th'. Read http://www.askoxford.com/asktheexperts/faq/aboutspelling/ye.) But apart from that, it's great that it's won such a serious award. |
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