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Adventures in Fan Translation
Rogan: Way back in 2015, when I was in exile in Ohio, I found online a pirated scanlation of a short beefcake one-shot that I really enjoyed. Ever since, I'd wanted to get my hands on a proper copy, but getting manga from Japan costs through the nose in shipping, and the book was already out of print, so I lamented and assumed I'd never get it unless I was willing to pay ~$50 for 36 pages of story.
Then, around the end of July, we found a copy on Amazon that was only $15. No clue why it was so cheap, but who are we to argue with providence? We slapped down our money before the seller could change their mind, and I received it a few days ago. It's in very good condition; I would have never known it was a secondhand book almost a decade old.
It's also very slightly different from the bootleg scanlation!
The story is the same. The art is mostly the same. But the screentones have been redone, details tweaked and cleaned up, and one panel involving a kitten has changed to make the kitten even cuter. There is also a page that plain wasn't in the scanlation!
The book I have is an anthology of short one-shots from the same creator. Some of those one-shots had been published previously. I think what happened is, the bootleg scanlation was from the FIRST publishing of that one-shot, and I got the SECOND. (And to add confusion, the scanlators slapped the cover from the second printing onto it--thus why I knew what title to buy. I assume the scanlators did their work, and either they or later file-spreaders found the cover and added it later, since the cover image is a different resolution and shape than the rest of the scanlation.)
This is exactly the kind of fiddly detail that I take immense satisfaction in investigating. I have now compared all the pages of the bootleg scanlation to the legit paper copy, pored over all the little changes to tones and cross-hatching. (I'm pretty sure the missing page was just due to carelessness on the part of the scanlators, but who knows, maybe the creator decided to only add it in the second printing! It was placed such that the story read clean even without it, but it does add some context that I appreciate.) I am currently working on meticulously cutting out and rubber-cementing in the English translation, so I can read it smoothly in English. (I can read Japanese, but I'm extremely rusty and slow, and I need like three different dictionaries and NJstar to cover all my bases. Introduce slang and I quake in my boots.)
Roughly half of the one-shots in this book have never been translated to English, as far as I can find. I look forward immensely to slugging through, translating them myself. I am not a good translator, at all, but it's very satisfying, pulling meaning out of words that meant nothing to me a few hours prior. I've always felt bad that I fell off studying Japanese when my schooling ended, and scouring the rust off my brain-gears with manga translation feels really nice. Plus Mac likes watching me do it, for some reason.
This artist, who has no idea I exist, has brought me such joy with her little book. She may still be active online; if I can, I would like to thank her and find some way to give her some money for all the happiness she's unwittingly brought me. (Since the book I bought was by necessity secondhand, I doubt the artist made a cent, and I'd really like her to!)
Then, around the end of July, we found a copy on Amazon that was only $15. No clue why it was so cheap, but who are we to argue with providence? We slapped down our money before the seller could change their mind, and I received it a few days ago. It's in very good condition; I would have never known it was a secondhand book almost a decade old.
It's also very slightly different from the bootleg scanlation!
The story is the same. The art is mostly the same. But the screentones have been redone, details tweaked and cleaned up, and one panel involving a kitten has changed to make the kitten even cuter. There is also a page that plain wasn't in the scanlation!
The book I have is an anthology of short one-shots from the same creator. Some of those one-shots had been published previously. I think what happened is, the bootleg scanlation was from the FIRST publishing of that one-shot, and I got the SECOND. (And to add confusion, the scanlators slapped the cover from the second printing onto it--thus why I knew what title to buy. I assume the scanlators did their work, and either they or later file-spreaders found the cover and added it later, since the cover image is a different resolution and shape than the rest of the scanlation.)
This is exactly the kind of fiddly detail that I take immense satisfaction in investigating. I have now compared all the pages of the bootleg scanlation to the legit paper copy, pored over all the little changes to tones and cross-hatching. (I'm pretty sure the missing page was just due to carelessness on the part of the scanlators, but who knows, maybe the creator decided to only add it in the second printing! It was placed such that the story read clean even without it, but it does add some context that I appreciate.) I am currently working on meticulously cutting out and rubber-cementing in the English translation, so I can read it smoothly in English. (I can read Japanese, but I'm extremely rusty and slow, and I need like three different dictionaries and NJstar to cover all my bases. Introduce slang and I quake in my boots.)
Roughly half of the one-shots in this book have never been translated to English, as far as I can find. I look forward immensely to slugging through, translating them myself. I am not a good translator, at all, but it's very satisfying, pulling meaning out of words that meant nothing to me a few hours prior. I've always felt bad that I fell off studying Japanese when my schooling ended, and scouring the rust off my brain-gears with manga translation feels really nice. Plus Mac likes watching me do it, for some reason.
This artist, who has no idea I exist, has brought me such joy with her little book. She may still be active online; if I can, I would like to thank her and find some way to give her some money for all the happiness she's unwittingly brought me. (Since the book I bought was by necessity secondhand, I doubt the artist made a cent, and I'd really like her to!)
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