Pachyderme listed among "Top 21 Great graphic novel localizations from the first 21 years of the 21st century"
At Multilingual, graphic novel critic, illustrator, comic creator, and writer Seth T. Hahne includes my translation of Frederik Peeters’ Pachyderme on his list of “21 Great graphic novel localizations from the first 21 years of the 21st century,” a list that also happens to finish with a series I will be re-translating: Lastman, by Balak, Michaël Sanlaville, and Bastien Vivès.
The whole thing is rather mind-bending, or at least something one has to bend their mind around, but Frederik Peeters’ illustrations and Edward Gauvin’s translation lead the reader by the hand so they cannot get too lost. […] Gauvin enables Peeters’ choices by providing a theatrical translation, full of the furtive mystery that rules this woman’s reveries. Haunted by a life in which she gave up on dreams for stability, this Cold-War-era woman has probably nurtured her longing for the adventurous on thrilling serials and films, on the French mid-century equivalent of dime novels – and this is what comes through in Gauvin’s work.
Even Lizzie Kaye’s lettering, an irregular hand-written font mixing uncials and miniscules, adds well to the quiet, under-stated chaos of the experience. It’s a particularly interesting choice because the font is not what one would usually find in a graphic novel but also doesn’t remotely resemble Peeters’ own lettering, so it feels itself still more like an informed artistic choice to emphasize for the English reader the disorienting dream-state being entered.
Hahne introduces the topic:
The graphic novel employs a unique set of tools to convey meaning. And with those differences come a different set of challenges for localizers.
Sound effects need to be conveyed, and signage needs to be translated. The methods for doing so will vary from publisher to publisher, or even sometimes from work to work.
Additionally, translators bringing work from Japan face opposition from a tradition of amateur localization that became entrenched through the early popularity of unauthorized translations, known as scanlations. These amateur translation teams believed strongly that retaining linguistic idiosyncrasies such as honorifics and particular Japanese phrases added to a translation’s authenticity. Today, as publishers seek to combat the draw of pirate translations of popular Japanese graphic novels, they have to choose between best translation practices and appeasing an errant fandom that demands their -sans and -kuns and onsens.
The last 20 years have seen a rise in graphic novels imports into the US, largely from Japan, but also still trickling in from other Asian nations and Europe. While there are hundreds of great examples of localizers doing what they can to balance the issues confronting English-language editions of international work, with the following recommendations, we’ll look at 21 examples of how localizers have successfully navigated some of the challenges unique to the medium.
