Dark Horse Releases

BayJumper, if you cared about sound effects SOOOOO much all this time, why didn't you just learn the Katakana table? It would only have taken a week or so at the most. Once you were familiar with the simple characters, you'd be able to understand exactly what's being conveyed without a) DH having to do the work for you b) having to request them to post obstructive boxes all over the place in critical action scenes (imagine what vol 15 will be like, for example... There'll be SFX on every panel in the fight scenes.).

Honestly it would have taken far less effort to learn to read Katakana than write letters for 4 years. And this is something the Appendix can do for DH readers. Once readers become familiar with repeated sound effects (wind blowing and swords clanging, for example), they won't have to refer to the appendix EVER again.

We're a goddamned lazy country when it comes down to this sort of shit...

PS: Let me guess your reply...: IT'S THE PRINCIPLE OF THE THING, WALTER! THE PRINCIPLE!

Walter said:

BayJumper, if you cared about sound effects SOOOOO much all this time, why didn't you just learn the Katakana table? It would only have taken a week or so at the most. Once you were familiar with the simple characters, you'd be able to understand exactly what's being conveyed without a) DH having to do the work for you b) having to request them to post obstructive boxes all over the place in critical action scenes (imagine what vol 15 will be like, for example... There'll be SFX on every panel in the fight scenes.).

Honestly it would have taken far less effort to learn to read Katakana than write letters for 4 years. And this is something the Appendix can do for DH readers. Once readers become familiar with repeated sound effects (wind blowing and swords clanging, for example), they won't have to refer to the appendix EVER again.

We're a goddamned lazy country when it comes down to this sort of shit...

PS: Let me guess your reply...: IT'S THE PRINCIPLE OF THE THING, WALTER! THE PRINCIPLE!

Click to expand...

Look man, first off my browser is unable to read any Japanese characters. So this whole katakana table is out of question. Secondly, when I buy an English translated manga, I expect it to be fully translated. I don't like it one bit when an English version of any manga series has the dialogue translated, but not the SFX. And last, allowing a casual reader like myself to be able to understand the Japanese sound effects, is the responsibility of the company, and not of the reader. In other words, when I buy DH's Berserk manga release, I expect the SFX translated into English for me and any other reader who wants to know the meaning of those sound effects. And that's especially considering the fact that I'm paying whopping $14.00 plus the sales tax per volume.

BayJumper said:

Look man, first off my browser is unable to read any Japanese characters. So this whole katakana table is out of question.

Click to expand...

Life is hard.

Anyway, you guys don't even seem to be having a coherent argument. The issue isn't translated SFX so much as the bastardization of the artwork here. BayJumper himself said an index would suffice; fine. Of course, he's still lame for not caring that they're fucking it up (among other things), but that's his problem, and more blabber won't change anything. So, everybody loses (except me, 'cause I buy the Japanese editions, anyway =).

Wait.......Berserk has sound effects!?!?!?

"Griffith No More!" said:

Life is hard.

Anyway, you guys don't even seem to be having a coherent argument. The issue isn't translated SFX so much as the bastardization of the artwork here. BayJumper himself said an index would suffice; fine. Of course, he's still lame for not caring that they're fucking it up (among other things), but that's his problem, and more blabber won't change anything. So, everybody loses (except me, 'cause I buy the Japanese editions, anyway =).

Click to expand...

I do care about Kentarou Miura's art. And as long as those SFX captions remain un-obtrusive, as they were in vol 12, that's just fine by me. Let me tell ya, if Dark Horse had chosen to translate the SFX by completely retouching the original katakana SFX (the way Viz does), or by having those captions covering up anything that's important, then I'd be really upset and outraged. Of course you yourself seem to care less about what kind of a quality product American readers will receive (judging by how you said that you'll just stick to the original Japanese version).

TheBeast43105 said:

Wait.......Berserk has sound effects!?!?!?

Click to expand...

Yep. And now, translated in English for the first time ever for your and everybody else's reading (dis)pleasure.

No, I just don't care about ugly-American readers. Trust me, I wish as much as anyone that DH hadn't botched Berserk in the U.S., and in this case, I'd prefer another method, either altering it as little as possible or using margins or an index. Adding a big fucking box in the panel seems about the most blunt and obtrusive solution (not to mention unimpressive production value; these guys do this for a living?). As you can see, anyone can add boxes in MS paint.

Oh, and let me warn you about double-posting, sometimes things can get accidentally deleted or changed in the combining process.

BayJumper said:

Look man, first off my browser is unable to read any Japanese characters. So this whole katakana table is out of question.

Click to expand...

Shit man, I just googled "katakana table" under images and I came up with this: http://www.japan-guide.com/g4/2048_01.gif

Took me all of 16 seconds (not kidding, I timed myself just for the sake of argument). With a little practice, I'm sure I could cut it down to 8.

BayJumper said:

And that's especially considering the fact that I'm paying whopping $14.00 plus the sales tax per volume.

Click to expand...

Exactly why I am pissed off that I am paying a whopping $14.00 plus sales tax per volume on butchered art. The big difference between our gripes is that yours is EASILY solvable by clicking the link listed above. I, on the other hand, would need to import manga from japan, then look back and forth between an online translation and the graphic novel for each and every text bubble in each and every panel on each and every page.

Scorpio said:

The big difference between our gripes is that yours is EASILY solvable by clicking the link listed above. I, on the other hand, would need to import manga from japan, then look back and forth between an online translation and the graphic novel for each and every text bubble in each and every panel on each and every page.

Click to expand...

Ease up man, you're missing point; the important thing is that BayJumper gets what HE wants and that he doesn't have to do or learn anything.

Hmmmm, perhaps this all could have been avoided had we just gotten his mom to learn Japanese so she could read the original volumes to him instead of the English ones. Whoever's typing his posts, ask him if ever had someone look into getting him a Japanese translator to read it to him in English. Maybe someone whose browser can do Japanese on its own.

BayJumper said:

I do care about Kentarou Miura's art.

Click to expand...

If you really did, you wouldn't consider anything on it to be unobstrusive. Not even the original speech bubbles, which are obstrusive but are at least placed by the author as he sees fit, to create an overall good effect. Even white, empty space is important in the composition of a scene.

Now in reference to your last (removed) post, I've told you enough times nobody cared about your personal life, so if you still can't understand people's point after all this time, please don't post in this thread anymore. Otherwise it's just spawning endless replies that don't contribute anything new to the debate, and you know this. Persisting on this way would be considered trolling, as you're baiting a variety of other members into derailing the topic (intentionally or not). You don't mind the captions being on the artwork, Ok. Other people may agree or disagree with you, but that's not your business. You're not waging a war on every reader's opinion here. Use PMs if you want to harass people further or reply to their provocations, but be aware that it's at your own risk if they report it as abusive. And that goes for everybody else as well.

This thread's become a mess already, sorry but I'm not going to let this bickering continue till it becomes unsalvable. If you don't have anything new to add, please move to another issue. I won't hesitate to lock it if necessary.

Just for the record, my vote's also WAY for an appendix. Because with an appendix you can not only transliterate it but explain WTF that noise is supposed to be. Hell, I can read the Katakana myself, now (and no it wasn't hard to learn) but it'll be years before I automatically know 'gaboshi gaboshi' is the noise for hitting a fish on the head with a baseball bat.

They used to do Evangelion like that waaaay back in the day and I remember really digging that, "gakoro - heavy metallic clang," "buchi - giant footstep," "zuzuzu - fast swoosh," stuff that would be ridiculous to try to stick in the sequential art but that was fun to know if you wanted to flip to the last page.

Even so there's only a few fx I've ever run into where context isn't enough. Like wolf howls where you can't see wolves, or the noise the Berserk armor made after it got punctured (which I now gather was a squeaky metal noise for it bending itself partway back into shape).

So yeah. Appendix.

I think an appendix would be silly. I don't think a silly sound effect is worth going to the back of the book and looking up. My vote would be no translations of SFX...

pippin22 said:

I think an appendix would be silly. I don't think a silly sound effect is worth going to the back of the book and looking up. My vote would be no translations of SFX...

Click to expand...

But it would satisfy people wanting them translated, and it would provide information even if you don't want to use it while reading, but only for reference. It's win-win for you. The goal here is to find a solution that everybody (or at least 99.9% of people) would be satisfied with. You have to be considerate of others' desires, otherwise you'll just fall into what I was condemning 3 posts earlier.

I think it might be worth pointing something out; just being able to read katakana doesn't really enable to you figure out Japanese FX. I can read them just fine, and sometimes I haven't the vaguest notion what they mean, even with context to help. That said, if Miura didn't think the sound FX were important, don't you think he'd have either left them out or not made them such an integral part of the art on so many occasions? Of course, translating the FX in panel? Bad idea. Out of panel? Impossible far too much of a time. An appendix is the only reasonable option (unless DH were to go as far as they did in Akira and OMG and actually recreate whole panels with translated FX - though even that's a questionable practice IMHO, and leads to grotesque overpricing), but that's something I consider rather essential for a translation. You can say you don't think the FX are important, but that's just saying that you've gotten used to not knowing what they mean, not that they're not telling you something Miura considered significant.

This isn't complicated; saying that nothing is preferable to an appendix full of useful information is just stupid.

The end!

In the end, it really comes down to actually being more work for DH themselves.

Funkmasta Zeph said:

In the end, it really comes down to actually being more work for DH themselves.

Click to expand...

Exactly. And if they were to include an appendix for the SFX, it would be nice of them to do so. 'Cause as I and everyone else can understand the meaning of those sound effects, and to those who don't want anything obstructing the art, it seems to be the best solution.

And to Zeph,
Dark Horse, while it does not put in an appendix glossary in the back of each book, citing an increase in pages, at the same time it seems to have no problems with putting in those 4-5 pages of advertisements of their other manga series at the end of Berserk graphic novels. While it's typical of DH (and other manga companies) to conduct those shameless self-promotions, rather than to do that, they could've easily replaced those ads with an SFX glossary appendix. If they felt like it, of course.
So, while Chris Warner stated that it would be problematic to use an appendix, maybe he meant that it would take up ad space for the manga series?

BayJumper said:

So, while Chris Warner stated that it would be problematic to use an appendix, maybe he meant that it would take up ad space for the manga series?

Click to expand...

Aaz has already covered the specifics of why Chris Warner's "more pages = more money" defense can't really be accurate. It doesn't add up. If that's truly the case, then how will they handle vol 21, which has several more pages than an average volume? I guess they'll go BANKRUPT from the cost of printing extra pages.

DH is a huge company, they have the capital to back however many pages they have to print to please the fans. It's really just a matter of convincing the execs that sign the checks that those extra $.002 for a 2-page appendix would be worth the "investment."

No, I did not say that by adding extra pages to the book would cost DH more money. What I meant was, that Dh would much rather put up advertisements, rather than an appendix. In fact, as a big company that they are, I doubt that their sales will be repressed, if they don't insert ads in the back of each of their books. If DH wanted to, they could include a SFX glossary at the back of each volume, instead of ads. They just don't seem to want to. They're just not interested in doing so, that's all. That's what I meant to say.

how many times are we all going to say the same things over and over?

Most people dislike the sfx boxes and all would prefer an appendix. movin' on...

No, I didn't mean to keeping saying the same thing over and over. That's not what I was saying at all. I was just saying how I don't say the same thing over and over. If I wanted to just say the same thing over and over again, then I'd just say the same thing over and over again. I wasn't trying to keep saying the same thing, otherwise I would have kept saying it. Then I'd be repeating myself, which is what I was trying not to say. That's all I'm saying about what I'm not saying... again.

"Griffith No More!" said:

No, I didn't mean to keeping saying the same thing over and over. That's not what I was saying at all. I was just saying how I don't say the same thing over and over. If I wanted to just say the same thing over and over again, then I'd just say the same thing over and over again. I wasn't trying to keep saying the same thing, otherwise I would have kept saying it. Then I'd be repeating myself, which is what I was trying not to say. That's all I'm saying about what I'm not saying... again.

Click to expand...

Well why didn't you say that before?!

I was glad to see translated SFX in Volume 12. An appendix would be ideal, but I'd rather have this than nothing. Not being able to read the sounds actually does affect my understanding of the story in some cases.

I got mine in a few days ago. I don't think anyone's yet mentioned that it's not just SFX DH is translating/interpreting. There's an instance in vol 12 with extensive notes about the context of some phrases, to the effect that I supposed DH is taking this newfound SFX box liberty to new heights by turning the margins into an annotated Berserk. While I can certainly appreciate DH explaining the background on these details (I never knew anything about these stars), it's even pretty neat information, HOWEVER, putting them smack in the margins draws far too much attention away from the flow of the panels, and ultimately, the atmosphere of the scene.

Furthermore, DH isn't being very consistent with their rules on the translation of sound effects. It seems that when they can't think of an English equivalent to a sound effect, they'll just transcribe the katakana. The effect is a really jumbled mess of either a literal romanization of the katakana ("HYUUUU," for wind), or a complete transliteration ("Gara Gara" becomes "Clata Clata" for horse hooves). If they're going to translate the FX, I'd really prefer they just stuck with either romanization or transliteration (romanization please...). But flip flopping between the two is just plain unprofessional, not to mention annoying.

I have to say, I really did try and read the volume as objectively as possible, trying my hardest to take in the little boxes as naturally as I could. But, no kidding, the boxes were even more obstructive than I'd anticipated.


To be honest, I was straddling the fence on whether or not I cared about the issue. I figured I could learn to deal with it. That was before I actually read it though... Now... sheesh, stay tuned

Walter said:

I don't think anyone's yet mentioned that it's not just SFX DH is translating/interpreting. There's an instance in vol 12 with extensive notes about the context of some phrases, to the effect that I supposed DH is taking this newfound SFX box liberty to new heights by turning the margins into an annotated Berserk. While I can certainly appreciate DH explaining the background on these details (I never knew anything about these stars), it's even pretty neat information, HOWEVER, putting them smack in the margins draws far too much attention away from the flow of the panels, and ultimately, the atmosphere of the scene.

Click to expand...

Um... do you actually own the japanese volume 12? If so, bring it out and flip to page 99. Too bad that "annoying annotated" bit is in there as well....

(arg, I need a camera)