Darth Bombshell wrote:Sabrblade wrote:The quality for both is about as sub-par as the first two volume 1 books. It's caused kind of a mini-war between those who wanted these books to strive for professional quality, and those who are blindly praising these books thinking we should all just be grateful to have Sailor Moon back at all (which is basically like saying that we should be grateful that we can spend our money on sub-par product).
Considering the originals are long out of print and the possibility of ever seeing them again practically nonexistent until recently...shouldn't we?
The manga deserves much better treatment than it got. Kodansha practically rushed through it without even considering how much backlash their sloppiness would result in. They completed the whole translation well in advance of their very first announcement, which was
eight months ago. They had all that time to go and have an editor look over their work and make the necessary corrections to the spelling/grammar/syntax errors, as well as fix many of the other problems, yet they did not.
After volume 1 was
reviewed, the translator of the book, William Flanagan,
responded on Facebook to give his stance on the translation... except that what he focused on primarily were some of the most minute translation issues that most people would get by easily, completely ignoring the more major concerns people had with the translation.
Why should we be grateful to a company that only cares about getting our money and not giving us a quality product? It's not too much to ask for them to have at least proofread something that they had finished 8 MONTHS before the official release. This release was made out to be such a big deal that seemed like it was going to be a high quality release, and then it comes out chock out full of errors that would make any English teacher cry or cringe. And then when our critiques are addressed, the translator dodges the big points and focuses on irrelevant issues.
We want this to be something great. We want this to succeed and be the best it can be. But Kodansha really crippled it with these translation flaws (since the translation is arguably the biggest concern of English manga releases) and gave us a sloppy and stilted product with little signs of improvement.
And these criticisms are by no means out of line. We have every right to state our opinions and give commentary on the quality of these releases. Yet, SO many people who blindly praise these books as being flawless and godsends just because they're official Sailor Moon manga releases and are of a better quality than the previous Mixx/Tokyopop releases deem us as being inhuman whiners and haters. We shouldn't be content with shoddiness just because it's official.
It's the same with the Transformers. Look at all the reviews of the toys/cartoons/comics/movies/games/books/etc. Just because it's all official doesn't mean it's all good quality product. Nor do we have to "be happy" we have what we have. If something has flaws and can be better, then we have every right to say so. We're not "bashing", we're "analyzing".
Oh good grief, will this streak of flat translating ever end?
As long as it's Sailor Moon, methinks it's cool.
