Click here for an introduction to this post.

"........all..service.. Story..Heliogabalus..Vatican..request..take..vampire..hunt..toward..Charlie.However, there is a back in the request. ･･･ It faces it in Rafro that sleeps in the coffin, and disgusted Charlie forcibly takes Rafro and ..bed.. faces purchase. Bubble over..perplex..manage..hope..all..realize..bed..obtain..the..bed..ghost..provide. Others collection to drama CD ChapterI or Ferris wheel date of Rafro and Charlie complete collect story of synchronization original of three comic blur id magazines 2005 year drama CD ZEBEL EDITION........" -Description of Vassalord Drama CD: The Hidden Palace of Heliogabalus as translated by Excite Translator (parts I cut out are marked with multiple elipses as the translation has elipses already.)

..... *giggles insanely*

Ahhh, excite translator, how you... excite me.  Okay, okay, sorry for the pun. Bad one, I know. Oh well.

I cut some of the original Japanese (just the beginning and ending, trying to isolate one line) and this is what the translator came up with: "･･･It faces it in Rafro that sleeps in the coffin, and disgusted Charlie forcibly takes Rafro and ..bed.. faces purchase. There is ghost in the bed though the bed where all his hope was realized though it manages to be perplexed to bubbling over of Rafro is obtained ･･･. " Which makes little sense, and knocks out the fun that "hope..all..realize..bed..obtain..the..bed.." has. Unless "his hope" isn't the ghost's hope, but rather... Then it still is a bit fun. Suffice it to say, it's all interpretation anyway, pretty much, because the translation is so lousy in the first place.

Now, I read a lot of professionally translated things - manga, subtitles for anime/movies/tv shows, a few novels, though less often - so I'm not completely estranged from the world of professional translations. Within professional translations, you find a lot of discrepancies. I've read the released books from Only the Ring Finger Knows, by Kannagi Satoru with illustrations by Odagiri Hotaru, and they were... simplistic  and somewhat awkward. I wasn't ever sure if that was just due to some weird style thing or if the translation was bad (I ruled out that the writing was THAT bad, because it is pretty popular, the series, and there ARE four drama CDs, which I've listened to and seem perfectly fine from what I can understand.) I've been leaning toward a poor translation, more so because I recently heard that DMP, which released the books, has been known for poor quality translations of their BL books. Pity. If you're going to spend the money to license something and then translate it, you may as well get it done WELL.

For manga, I've noticed poor translation and editing before, too. I ran across a comparison of the fan translated Prince of Tennis manga and the professional translation done by Viz. ......... Like hell Atobe would say anything like that and Sanada? Yeah, right... And that was for the professional translation. There was also much to note on the editing. I've noticed this myself. Because they changed the names to the first name, for whatever reason which I can't understand, as I can refute every argument I can think of brilliantly, It isn't odd to see someone being referred to by the wrong name. Inconsistencies are common in Tokyopop's translation of Dragon Knights, and I've caught myself backtracking when I catch something amiss in Viz's version of Yu-Gi-Oh (well, I did when I still read it. And don't even get me started on the editing of the art... *shivers* That was... just completely awful...)

Now, I understand translating is a tough job. It takes time and effort and checking and rechecking and stylistic and slang/idiom decisions that the translators must make. But does quality need to be sacrificed for that? I don't think so. But then, who's going to listen to me? I don't know if I would even.

I hope that my works will get translated into other languages. Sure, it won't be EXACTLY like my words, but the story will still be there and the emotions can all be conveyed. I just hope for quality rather than speed.

One of the translation errors (or so I've always thought... Whether it was from English to Japanese or from Japanese back to English...) that I can't stand is Markle from Howl's Moving Castle. In the Miyazaki movie, Markle is a young boy who is Howl's apprentice. In the book, Markle doesn't exist, but a boy (older, age 15, not 6 or however little he is) named Michael does. I can deal with the movie Solomon or whatever she was called, even if she IS a mish mash of characters. But Michael to Markle? That's not acceptable to me. Sure, his age changes, but why couldn't his name have stayed the same? Lettie was still Lettie, even if she isn't really Lettie in the book, and they didn't explore that storyline (time constraints, MICHAEL'S age change, etc.) But, again, I don't know where the mistake was made, so I guess I can't point fingers. Well, yes I can, but not COMPLETELY fairly.

I guess that's all I really have to say... Maybe I'll cover this topic again, because there really is a lot to say, but this is what I feel like saying at the moment.

Vassalord is originally a manga by Chrono Nanae (I didn't touch much on the spellings of names. I've seen Krono before, but the official translation has been Chrono, so... And then there's the fact of whether or not the author/original publisher spelled it a certain way already or not.) about a cyborg vampire (and vampire hunter) and his vampire master, who he uses as his meal. Rayflo's the master and Charley's the cyborg vampire. Tokyopop uses Charley, while I've seen Charly and Charlie before. Charlie makes the most sense to me, but...

And if you want to know what the Japanese introduction is saying (or what it SHOULD say and mostly does, actually...), here.
Hello. I don't know if this is correct, but it sounds cool all the same. Welcome to Eddy's blog. I hope you all enjoy your stay here. I write about my writing. I also talk about my thoughts on different aspects of the publishing world. There are probably mistakes in this as I am using an online translator. In fact, that's partially what I am going to talk about today. Please, read and have fun. Comments are appreciated.