Quote:
Originally Posted by RKitagawa
I don't really understand why you wouldn't recommend any regular old translated manga. I mean, sure the translations aren't going to be very literal, and in many cases the English version will be completely different from the Japanese. But I don't think that matters unless mariko here is looking to compare the English and Japanese versions, side by side.
It sounded to me like she is simply looking for any manga in English with natural sounding dialogue. Which is pretty much any professionally translated manga.
No disrespect meant MMM, just curious as to why you only recommend OEL manga.
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Three reasons:
1) Readers of manga in 2010 want the translations to be as close to the original Japanese as possible. Therefore uniquely Japanese phrases are translated more "closely" in English, but in the end it is something no one would ever say in English.
For example, we see いただきます～! appear all the time in manga. That is not something that is said commonly in any way in English. Ten years ago it might have been translated as "I can't wait to dig in!" or "This looks delicious!" but now it is often translated as "Thank you for this meal!" which is technically closer to いただきます, but is not something a native English speaker would ever say.
2) Japanese tends to use fewer characters than English, and word balloons are situated for up-down writing in Japanese. If the word balloons are kept as is (which isn't always the case) it gets hard to fit the same idea in English and be totally grammatically correct and a complete sentence. Aren't these two features a student of English would want?
3) The dialog in manga isn't necessarily "natural sounding" as not only the language but the culture are being translated. What results is a conversation that makes perfect sense in the context of, for example, an older student talking with a younger student who is going to do what at the yearly culture festival, but that context, content, and how they communicate are completely unnatural in English.