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 Words of Truth and Wisdom: I Believe An Explanation Is In Order
Written by Alethea and Athena Nibley
Hey, everybody! Have you noticed that our column has a Title now? In case you don't want to glance up and read it, it's “Words of Truth and Wisdom.” How do you like it?
We were actually a little wary of using a title like this, because I just know that some very passionate and well-informed fans will disagree with us at some point and be like, “They have the gall to call this piece of trash truth and wisdom!?” and be all sorts of upset. But it was the first title we came up with, and it just had such a nice ring to it that whenever we tried to think of anything else, it kept popping up and saying, “You know you want to use me!” Like how our column editor told us to avoid using the second person, but it just worked so nicely for the beginning of this column that I couldn't resist. And our column editor liked it (the title; not so sure about the second person intro), too, so now it's stuck there.
And so now! a disclaimer. All the Greek mythology buffs out there will know, of course, that Athena has the same name as the goddess of wisdom, and some of those buffs might also know that Alethea is Greek for truth. Just recently I was talking to a random guy whose IM program contacted us without his knowledge (weird), and he said he was taking a mythology class and seemed to remember Alethea being a goddess too. We'd never heard that before; I wonder if it's true. But anyway, when we say “Words of Truth and Wisdom,” we really just mean, “Words of Alethea and Athena (those two crazy manga translators),” and not necessarily actual words of truth and wisdom, though we hope they're at least a little truthful and wise.
We usually try very hard to make sure we're right when we're saying stuff, and part of that involves admitting when we're wrong, because if we insist that we're right even when it's obvious that we're wrong, not only are we still Not Right, but we look like idiots. That being the case, we got an e-mail from a concerned reader the other day, pointing out that I have a few corrections to make about our column on sound effects.
The most misleading thing he pointed out, in my opinion, is that sound effects actually are listed in dictionaries. I can make excuses for why I said they weren't, but the main reason is I forgot. I think the main reason I forgot is that I have a different mindset for writing columns than for translating, so while Athena's constantly telling me, “That's not going to help,” when I look things up in the dictionary all the darn time, when I'm writing columns the thought doesn't occur to me.
Also, when we were just started translating for our friends, we were only using Japanese to English dictionaries, and, at the time, they didn't list sound effects. I remember, many a time, checking to see if the dictionary might help us and being disappointed. I realized yesterday that even the J->E dictionary we use most (the one on the JWPce word processor) has sound effects now, but it, like the Japanese language dictionaries (sometimes known as J->J) we use, only tells us what the sound is of, without any hope of an “English equivalent.” But it does sometimes help with coming up with things, so we apologize for the misunderstanding.
The reader of which I speak also wanted to point out that I got some facts wrong when I wrote up the little history of US manga, the first of which being that manga has been in the States for at least seventeen years, and was certainly not new ten years ago. And the second of which was that TOKYOPOP stopped flipping the manga for financial reasons more than for the fans' benefit, and they were not the first to publish unflipped manga. So we did a little bit of research, and we came across this interview [http://www.sequentialtart.com/archive/feb02/forbes.shtml] with Jake Forbes about the whole thing at Sequential Tart. I think the main thing we learned from it was, even if it was purely for financial reasons, that led to lower manga prices, which benefited the fans anyway. At any rate, we apologize for our lack of fact-checking. I'm usually very careful about that.
I admit we didn't always follow domestic manga news very carefully back then. We tended to focus mostly on the reading of the manga, to the exclusion of almost everything else. In fact, I remember working on translating the Fushigi Yuugi novels (our Japanese was so limited at the time, that was the surest way to get as much out of it as possible, but of course our translation skills were not so good back then (by which I mean they were terrible)), and getting so into them that my stomach would practically be yelling at me and I'd tell it, “Shut up! I'm trying to work!” Now my stomach's worked out a deal with my brain so that I can't think straight without food; it gets its way a lot more now.
We're still pretty much the same way now, as far as manga news (though I'm not sure that's a safe confession to make). We follow when our favorite things are coming out in Japan, and that's good enough for us, since our personal preference is to read our manga in Japanese. Other than that, we tend to be blessed to find out news right when we need it. For example, thanks to our roommate, we found out that people were asking TOKYOPOP to translate DN Angel and Saiyuki in time to be allowed to be the translators on them. And just a year ago, we happened to look up the actor who played Balthier in the English version of Final Fantasy XII two or three days before he showed up in an episode of 24. Balthier's our favorite and we absolutely loved his dub voice (very unusual for us; I think the sexy English accent had a lot to do with it), so we just had to see it, even though we hadn't seen much 24 before. He got Jack Bauer a phone and then was shot! And we were like, “They SHOT Balthier!” And then we were like, “...as if that's a surprise.”
I'm afraid I've gotten off topic. This is supposed to be a column about manga stuff. You know, there's a manga version of Final Fantasy XII. We haven't read it, but the covers are very cute. (That last sentence would be perfect if punctuated with a heart mark, but that's another rant.)
But anyway. As for the topic at hand, I apologize once again, and we'll be very careful to check our facts more in the future. And next time, I'll try to talk about something with more substance.
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