[m10i]

A similar issue has been plaguing the manga industry since "The Great Scanlator Purge" that took place a few years ago, leaving only the "official" Viz media-contracted translators in the wake of the ruins. For some reason, this change came with a general unwillingness on the translators part to correct, or translate, concepts that virtually all fan translators would've been happy to do.

Here's some examples (there are many more):

1) the explanation of puns and hidden meanings in the kanji used to describe names, locations, special abilities, jokes, which honorifics are being used currently (if any), etc. of which there are usually many. Understanding/being aware of this context used to be absolutely vital to the experience of reading manga.

2) there's a relatively new manga called "Versus", in which humans from parallel earths, in parallel universes all merge into the same universe, and their planets are also merged together. In the english version, Viz translates one of those worlds as "Indignia", which doesn't mean anything. However, the Japanese for this world is "怒ど神しん界かい" (Doshinkai), which is literally interpreted as "World of the Angry God", or "Mad God World". They took it upon themselves to make similar changes for all the other worlds, obscuring their original meanings as intended by the author... why? Beats me. Now, one could make the argument that "Mad God World" doesn't sound good in english, so the Viz translators change is an improvement, which is not unreasonable. However, any half-decent fan translator would've simply left a footnote like "the literal Japanese interpretation is X; I changed it to Indignia because...". Problem solved! Don't just retcon things because you feel like it without explaining yourself. And if you won't explain yourself, then leave it as is.

3) english One Piece readers often have no idea just how many things are lost in translation; One Piece is filled to the brim with puns, double-entendre's, and foreshadowing, which has always been a significant part of its appeal, and is now nowhere to be found via the official providers.

4) Physical signs, such as things written on buildings, on somebody's clothing, or even on a stop sign, are usually not translated.

5) cover pages! You wouldn't know it anymore, but manga often has cover pages (often officially colorized) with extra comments and tidbits from the authors. Fans would include these pages in their scanlations. Viz pretends they don't exist.

I can only imagine the thought process of whoever's making these decisions at Viz (or its parent company Shueisha) resembles something like "westerners don't care about that stuff. Stop wasting precious time and resources trying to explain it". They don't quite seem to understand how badly they have diluted the manga reading experience in the west, especially for those of us that grew up reading this stuff, way before it reached mainstream popularity.

[charcircuit]

>"Indignia", which doesn't mean anything

It's a combination of indignation and the suffix ia, meaning land of.

[m10i]

Ohh, that's probably it. I had considered whether or not they were trying to incorporate indignant/indignation in some fashion when they came up with it, but never made the connection with "ia" being "land of".

Still, that's a bit complicated because it's missing something essential that the author had originally intended. It's like replacing "Mad God World" with "Unjust World"... well, they're very much all unjust, have to be more specific.

This is even more of a reason why they really should be explaining these self-insert puns to the readers, since they invented them. It's a nice touch is all, and fan translators made that (among the other things I mentioned) a standard practice.

[boredhedgehog]

Footnotes and endnotes always carry a hidden burden: They interrupt the reading flow and direct the mind of the reader away from the characters and the plot and towards linguistics. If the translator follows a philosophy that prioritizes the subjective experience of the reader over a deeper understanding of the material, this "mode switch" is something he will try to avoid.

Personally, I tend to agree that a need to explain a translation represents a failure to come up with a satisfying equivalent in the target language.

[Daiz]

The key to good endnotes is to make them a nice bonus for those interested rather than required reading for everyone. Basically, make the main text work on its own, then get into the weeds of translation details separately. It's the best of both worlds, though admittedly requires quite a bit of extra work to pull off.

[m10i]

I think we agree on the conclusion, but differ on the premise. As a lifelong manga reader, I can say that the footnotes/endnotes made me more focused and invested in what was going on in the panels, not less. It's a different flavor of footnotes than the one you would find in a textbook or reference manual. One way to look at it is as an extended dialogue box for context that can't fit in-panel, but is "vital" from the author's perspective (since they aren't english speakers, they can't really be expected to know just how badly their work is altered sometimes). It's an optional aid for those that are interested in getting more engrossed into the world building.

At the end of the day, when a phrase has multiple meanings (as intended by the author), it can be impossible to translate it into a single, tidy, english catchphrase. This is why in manga raw's (the original, non-translated versions), when authors write kanji characters, they will often superscript them with smaller, hiragana characters. This is essential because in japanese, those kanji characters usually have multiple meanings, so it's necessary to guide the reader towards the intended ones. And even from there, the re-interpreted hiragana characters/words themselves can have multiple - sometimes conflicting - meanings. It's in these conflicts that puns/dual meanings can arise. It's all part of the beauty of the language, and mangaka's are obsessed with showing that (as they should be).

So this sort of nuance will always be lost in translation, but can be essential.