Manga to 漫画

A discussion on translation [by way of the ever engaging Precocious Curmudgeon] leads to an intriguing question; what’s the difference between reading the same story across several languages, be it in translation or flow? Coming from a quadlingual manga library myself, I think it really comes down to a mixture of intrinsic differences between reading styles of the languages and your own personal preference. The biggest gap obviously lies between Japanese and English; it’s clear that reading in Japanese ups your panel speed per page, as kanji can be processed as a whole more quickly. For me, though, the difference seems to lie in a kind of linguistic ambiguity that prevents an exact, correct translation. I’ll occasionally cruise through both the English and Japanese editions, and while the translation that I might pen for a certain panel may not match that of the English translation, I can certainly see why the author opted to translate “gambare” as “fight-o!” instead of “go get ‘em!” To boot, reading kanji is simply….different. It’s as if every noun in the place has been crystallized into a single, pictorial idea conveyed by the character- small wonder the flow isn’t like reading in English. Personal preference will always make me choose French manga over English manga, in particular because of the sound effects. To me, describing shock as “hein?!” has always seemed somehow more appropriate than both “what?!” or “あれ?!” That, and we’ll always be attached to languages to which we return to for non contextual usage; I still talk about jello with the word “congelez,” simply because I don’t know any other way to put it accurately. It only follows that we feel our translations lack something of the original- it’s because they aren’t the original, and simply changing that can alter perceptions as radically as any translation, good or bad.