Manga grows in the heart of Europe (part II)
Takamasa Sakurai wrote in the Daily Yomiuri: Many manga comics have been translated into French, English and Spanish. In Barcelona, I even found manga that had been translated into Catalan...Very girly manga Kimi ni Todoke (From Me to You)—which is about a girl who doesn't realize she's fallen in love—was popular in Italy and Spain... When I visited Geneva in May 2009, I went to a bookstore near Lake Leman called Tanigami, which boasted a stock of 11,000 manga translated into French. The shopkeeper told me he sold between 3,500 and 5,000 manga a month, or more than 100 copies per day. Some manga enjoy initial print runs of more than 100,000 copies.[Source: Takamasa Sakurai, Daily Yomiuri, October 12, 2012]
And what about the language? I spoke with Simona Stanzani, who has translated Japanese manga into Italian since 1992. Originally from Bologna, Stanzani translates three to four books a month. Recently, she has worked on such titles as Bleach, Soul Eater and Kuro Shitsuji (Black Butler). "I get jobs directly from Italian publishers. In Italy, I think between 80 and 100 manga are published per month. The same series are popular in Italy as in Japan," she said. [Ibid]
"I have to rack my brain to come up with the right ways to translate jokes and gags popular among Japanese high school girls into Italian," Stanzani said. "I use different expressions with similar nuances, but I try not to change phrases based on Japanese culture. Instead, I add annotations." For example, when a protagonist frequently uses the "sempai" to refer to an older fellow student, Stanzani leaves the word as is but explains its meaning and nuance the first time it is used. "There's no real equivalent to sempai in Italian," she said. [Ibid]
To help Italian readers share the same feelings as Japanese readers, Stanzani said it's important to translate Japanese culture as well. "That's why I describe my job as 'culture translation,'" she said. Asked about what techniques she uses to translate various mimetic and onomatopoeic phrases in manga, Stanzani said, "I try to change them to something that's used similarly in our language. But, most of the time, I just translate them phonetically like, 'Kyaah,' 'Waah' and 'Uooh.'"
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