Broccoli Books Blog

Hey, blogger Shiz here.

I’m editing through sola vol 1 today, so I thought I’ll write a bit about the process I go through.

Sola vol 1 went through several rounds of edits by other staffers. For sola vol 1, production staffer Yukiko did the first read-through to make sure all bubbles & sound effects were translated, among other things. Then freelance editor Dee was in charge of checking consistency of the manga with the anime series. Then the book print out comes to me for my round of checks.

First thing I do is read through the entire book against the Japanese manga.

I check to make sure that the nuance of the Japanese text is reflected in the English translation & adaptation. Sometimes the re-writer mis-interprets the translator’s text. Other times it’s a matter of word choice, where it just doesn’t sound right. In sola, we need to make sure that Yorito sounds nice to his sister Aono, even though the line makes him sound like he’s talking back. And that Aono doesn’t get too chatty. Freelance editor Dee was worried that Matsuri sounds too girly in the manga, since she’s more “older sister”-like in the anime… but we decided to keep girly Matsuri in the manga, because that’s how manga artist Chaco Abeno drew her.

Another thing I check for is clarity. Manga in Japanese has a lot of vague text. While we like our translators to keep the translation as accurate as possible, it’s also their duty to make sure that implied things in Japanese are explained to the re-writer. And we need to make sure that the story flows & is explained without being too wordy or explain-y.

Other things are really dull things like making sure page numbers are right. We usually add 4 pages to the front of the book, so all the page numbers need to be modified. The additional 4 pages are character profiles (2 pages), credits page (Japanese books have them in the back, English books have them in the front), and a title page.

And making sure all of the translation notes are covered. sola vol 1 has couple pop culture references that the translator didn’t know. I did a random search, and found where she got “Pudding Something” and “Binkan Stage.” I forwarded the info to freelance editor Dee, so please read up on them in the back of the book.

Hmm, it wasn’t much of a process…

But I finished doing the overall edit for sola vol 1.
I’m just waiting for the vol 2 previews and ads and we’re all done (after graphics assistant Cno works on all the fixes I found).

This entry was posted on Friday, May 9th, 2008 at 4:32 pm and is filed under sola. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.