My condolences on your bootleg volume. It's really something that they still managed to charge you 100k vnd for that. I bought Norwegian Wood from a used books cart and the seller even gave me a discount of about 30k, even though the only fault of the book was just that it was old. There are some places that sell (dispose) their books by charging per kilograms, I brought home 4-5 junks during one such occassion for about less than 100k vnd but one of them is a valuable (Soviet) Russian vocabulary book with nice illustrations so it was pretty much worth it. Countryside sells bootleg manga all the time but the prices for them are just cheap and they are still readable + not having real issues. Proper bookstores in D1 HCMC aren't totally immune from having bootleg tier stuff slipping through. I bought one book but couldn't refund under their excuse of the book = different version. Just thought I would share.
To be fair, no one forced me to buy that book. Comic books are generally pretty expensive back home in the US, so for me the price didn't necessarily seem that outrageous, but it's just that it wasn't a bargain. I noticed those Doraemon books on bookstreet one day, and then later it occured to me that my kids might like them, so I came back with the intention of buying the whole stack, but then once I realized they were 100,000 each, I thought "Okay, maybe I'll just buy one for now. Come to think of it, most of the books at bookstreet aren't bargains. Even though some of them are in variable condition. I guess I don't go to bookstreet for the bargains. I go there because I can discover all kinds of books that I would never be able to find in Vietnam otherwise.
It didn't occur to me that the Doraemon book was a bootleg. I guess it might be? The translation is pretty bad, but then my experience is that the English translation of Doraemon is usually pretty bad anyway. I've ordered an official version of Doreamon one for my library (I've done that twice now actually --both here in Vietnam and back when I worked in Japan), and the official English Doreamon was also pretty bad in terms of how it was translated. I've come to conclude that it's not actually made for Americans--it's made for Japanese people who want to practice their English. Although that wouldn't explain why the inking and shading was so bad in a number of panels...
I think somebody just decided to print out whatever English fan-translation of the manga that they could have their hands on from the internet to make easy bucks. Because of the lack of popularity of the manga in the West, people who do the fan translation might just be someone in Asia. I see people like that do that all the time, until the feedbacks from native speakers make them realized their English was not as strong as their confidence makes they think they can do it. Sign = the Japanese onomatopoeia in katakana written on the background of some panels, fan translations tend to leave them be without editing them out because doing so takes too much time, officially published manga always have them edited into the local language. Same can be said about the unedited dialogue bubbles some of which if published officially should be edited to have their sizes fit the texts they encircling. The lack of the very first page which is supposed to provide the manga's publishing information is another give out. Most importantly, the cover and the pages are read left-to-right even though you said the bubbles are read right-to-left, which shows whoever printed the manga didn't even bother to check. Incidentally or not left-to-right is also the default reading order of imported or domestic comics in Vietnam, except for the Japanese manga whose copyrights are later acquired.
Ah. You make a very strong case. Yes, you've convinced me, I guess I was reading a bootleg copy. I had no idea. I encountered a lot of bootleg books in my days living in Cambodia, but they were always amateurish (you could tell they were just photocopied and bound up at a local printers shop). This book looked a lot more real to me. It had a professional binding and everything. But yeah, after everything you've said, I have to agree. It looks like I was reading a bootleg. No wonder the translator wasn't credited.
My condolences on your bootleg volume. It's really something that they still managed to charge you 100k vnd for that. I bought Norwegian Wood from a used books cart and the seller even gave me a discount of about 30k, even though the only fault of the book was just that it was old. There are some places that sell (dispose) their books by charging per kilograms, I brought home 4-5 junks during one such occassion for about less than 100k vnd but one of them is a valuable (Soviet) Russian vocabulary book with nice illustrations so it was pretty much worth it. Countryside sells bootleg manga all the time but the prices for them are just cheap and they are still readable + not having real issues. Proper bookstores in D1 HCMC aren't totally immune from having bootleg tier stuff slipping through. I bought one book but couldn't refund under their excuse of the book = different version. Just thought I would share.
ReplyDeleteTo be fair, no one forced me to buy that book.
ReplyDeleteComic books are generally pretty expensive back home in the US, so for me the price didn't necessarily seem that outrageous, but it's just that it wasn't a bargain.
I noticed those Doraemon books on bookstreet one day, and then later it occured to me that my kids might like them, so I came back with the intention of buying the whole stack, but then once I realized they were 100,000 each, I thought "Okay, maybe I'll just buy one for now.
Come to think of it, most of the books at bookstreet aren't bargains. Even though some of them are in variable condition. I guess I don't go to bookstreet for the bargains. I go there because I can discover all kinds of books that I would never be able to find in Vietnam otherwise.
It didn't occur to me that the Doraemon book was a bootleg. I guess it might be? The translation is pretty bad, but then my experience is that the English translation of Doraemon is usually pretty bad anyway. I've ordered an official version of Doreamon one for my library (I've done that twice now actually --both here in Vietnam and back when I worked in Japan), and the official English Doreamon was also pretty bad in terms of how it was translated. I've come to conclude that it's not actually made for Americans--it's made for Japanese people who want to practice their English.
Although that wouldn't explain why the inking and shading was so bad in a number of panels...
I think somebody just decided to print out whatever English fan-translation of the manga that they could have their hands on from the internet to make easy bucks. Because of the lack of popularity of the manga in the West, people who do the fan translation might just be someone in Asia. I see people like that do that all the time, until the feedbacks from native speakers make them realized their English was not as strong as their confidence makes they think they can do it.
ReplyDeleteSign = the Japanese onomatopoeia in katakana written on the background of some panels, fan translations tend to leave them be without editing them out because doing so takes too much time, officially published manga always have them edited into the local language. Same can be said about the unedited dialogue bubbles some of which if published officially should be edited to have their sizes fit the texts they encircling. The lack of the very first page which is supposed to provide the manga's publishing information is another give out. Most importantly, the cover and the pages are read left-to-right even though you said the bubbles are read right-to-left, which shows whoever printed the manga didn't even bother to check. Incidentally or not left-to-right is also the default reading order of imported or domestic comics in Vietnam, except for the Japanese manga whose copyrights are later acquired.
Ah. You make a very strong case. Yes, you've convinced me, I guess I was reading a bootleg copy. I had no idea.
ReplyDeleteI encountered a lot of bootleg books in my days living in Cambodia, but they were always amateurish (you could tell they were just photocopied and bound up at a local printers shop). This book looked a lot more real to me. It had a professional binding and everything.
But yeah, after everything you've said, I have to agree. It looks like I was reading a bootleg. No wonder the translator wasn't credited.