Re: [AMS] Skipping Chapters


to megami@usagi.jrd.dec.com
from Les Jenkins <Dream@cris.com>
subject Re: [AMS] Skipping Chapters
date Wed, 3 Dec 1997 13:23:06 -0500 (EST)
On Wed, 3 Dec 1997, Kenohki wrote:

> > Dark Horse has said that one reason they didn't translate a lot of the
> > early chapters was because of the wide availability of translations on the
> > 'net.  
> 
> Actually, that's not what I heard... When DH first picked up on the series,
> they didn't know how successful this series was going to be. So what they did
> was print out the equivilent of the OVAs to see what kind of response they get.

> This accounts for the HUGE gap in the first few issues. Then when they started
> to make some prfit, they went back and filed in some of the chapters they've
> skipped over, but since they kept falling behind, they sort of quit doing that
> and picked a point on one of the volumes and continued on from there.

The aforemention quote about Dark Horse and fan translations can be
attributed to me. I've said it before on this list. You may have heard
differently, but I got my quote straight from a Dark Horse representative
a few months ago when interviewing them for a column I was working on for
Animecca. The official line as far as that DH representative was concerned
was that the number of fan translations on the net made it unprofitable to
bother translating anything beyond what they already had in terms of the
first so many chapters. They hadn't ruled out going back and filling in
the gaps, but I was told the prospect was "highly unlikely".
 
> > I found the price quite reasonable.  The same that Viz charged for their
> > first volume of Ranma 1/2.
> 
> Reasonable? I don't think so. Just because Viz set that outrageous price 
> doesn't mean that price is reasonable. Especially when they're being
> so sloppy.

Sloppy in what way? The DH/SP translations tend to be some of the best
available in terms of quality work. Most folks would be hard pressed to
tell that Japanese text was edited out and English text edited back in if
they didn't already know it was so. 

As for the price, hey, anime and manga is expensive. It has to be
licensed, translated, reproduced, packaged, marketed and distributed. All
of that costs money. More so than an in-house title because of the added
costs of licensing, translating, and reproducing. All in all, the prices
charged are not all that out of line considering the amount of work
involved.

> Skipping around the chapters seems to be DH's common practice. For instance, 
> their release of Taiho Shichauzo... Lots of skipping around when I last
> checked the series. This is of course, outdated info, but I doubt they took
> the trouble to go back and fill in all of the chapters.

Probably not and probably for the same reasons as OMG. 

> They really should take advantage of the translations on the net. They
> shouldn't steal the translation, of course, but I hardly doubt the translators
> who put their work on the net for veryone to downoad woul ask for much higher
> price for their work than DH's translators are demanding (plus, they are 
> probably more accurate).

That's debatable, on both counts. Accuracy in terms of translation is a
very subjective thing. A straight translation is impractical simply
because everyone would sound like an idiot. Personally, I have no problems
with the work Dark Horse has done outside of a desire to see them go back
and fill in the blanks, but what they've done so far is just fine.
  
Les

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Les Jenkins    | The Casual Otaku (http://www.cris.com/~Dream)
dream@cris.com | Animecca: The Anime Magazine (http://animecca.com)



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