Yo!
Thanks for all the encouraging input. That's pure midnight oil...
Sorry for the confusion with "Dark Horse". Got the publishers mixed up.
Sergio wrote:No, it would never be Gary. Remember that in motorball her helmet brings her name written in Latin.
Indeed, her motorball helmet spells GALLY for all to see. But I wouldn't have known about it if I had translated the first chapter the moment it was out, if I had been anywhere back then.
Besides, the Japanese are rather liberal in their romanji rendition of the characters of the "R"-column of their kana charts, choosing either "L" or "R".
Kishiro's double "L" surprised me though. It didn't bother me much, though part of my mind kept wondering, whether he was taking his liberties or whether his publisher had coerced him to come up with a romanization that made his protagonist's name more feminine - maybe in view of a translation.
According to the Hepburn standard, the original ガリィ should be transliterated as "Garyi". But since the Japanese tend to drop the "i" from their pronounciation in certain places and words, it seemed quite legitimate at the time where only the first chapter was out to think of "Gary" as THE sensible transliteration. Aside from the other corner of my mind that found "Gary" to be more appropriate for a dog than a cat.
But hey, I'm all for the creative freedom of the author, his wast scope on philosophy, ethics, foreign languages, science, etc. and his occasional rebelliousness. (...)
Sergio wrote:As to the cat named Alita, I understand that Kishiro made a joke with the American edition (even because American edition was repeated in German and Spanish, to say the least).
Heh-heh-heh. Now I know. Thanks for that bit of information.
I haven't studied the "making of" much as I read GUNNM (another creative transliteration) just for my personal entertainment. I was rather happy with whatever philosophic inspiration I gleaned from my own reader's experience.
Dharko wrote:Say 100 times a lie doesn´t convert the lie in true.
Hmmm... if that's not a kindred spirit speaking...
I've often questioned my dedication to "truthfulness" in many different facettes of life.
With regard to manga it was: "Why be so serious or demanding about the quality of something that's merely popular entertainment?"
And the answer I found was: "Because it's art and art deserves every kind of attention as long as there are people willing to lavish so much on it. If the 9th art makes for just a 'light' cultural topic, so much the better for our mental relief, considering what happens when people seriously disagree on topics they deem vital."
As far as the Viz translation goes, I suspect that their choice of the names "Tiphares" and "Ketheres" had something to do with not wanting to attract the wrong kind of attention. Also with "Alita" alluding to "Aelita" I imagine that whoever did the commercial translation was rather knowledgible and dedicated. In spite of the points that cause disagreement, I would consider the Viz translation to be above average.
I certainly appreciated their effort of coming up with SFX and not just words like "smile" and "rumble" but actual sound creations that would be more accessible to a westerner's understanding of "noise". For example when Alita tries her berserker body with a tentative series of punches in the air (Vol.1, Fight 4) the japanese SFX is シュピュン (SHUPYUN). Viz gives us FWAP FWAP. Surely English readers would find this sound interpretation more comprehensible.
Or take the haunting sound of the tubes connecting Tiphares to the scrapyard factories. The original goes ゴゴ-..., ゴキャ-ン and ギィ-ッ (GOGO-..., GOKYA-N and GYI-'). It looks like the three sound words which appear in consecutive panels are different snapshots of a longer sound extending over the time the panels cover. Viz manages a similar effect with OHHUMMM, UMMSHHOOHHMM and OHHHUUUMMM.
I wonder if the first OVA was out by the time Viz had the translation under way...
At any rate I have to confess that I took the good sides of the Viz translation as guidelines when I did the chapter under discussion here.
Oh, and one last @Dharko:
I heard from an art student once that da Vinci left many of his great works unfinished, walking or running out on the project so to speak - a true artist! And that one of the more important people getting stuck with the task of completing what da Vinci had started was Michelangelo...
