Battle Royale Deluxe Edition vol 1 - thoughts so far
Since I had the retranslation project ongoing, I feel equipped enough to judge wheather Yen Press's translation is of any good, or is this Tokyopop 2: shitfest boogaloo. I'm at the part where Sakura and Kazuhiko are talking, and so far, not bad! The new translation tries to follow the Japanese versions tone and emotional language (f.e. keeping a scene rather quiet for a while, instead of immediately adding needless screaming - f.e. Shuuya seeing Mayumi, letting a character just be scared, and not making them say daft or pervy quips - f.e. Niida seeing Mayumi). The '-san', '-kun' etc. suffixes are kept, which I'm personally a fan of, they're untranslatable anyway, and you get a quick glimpse into the character's dynamics, without having to say a lot. The characters also do the thing where they just say the other person's name and you infer the intent/emotion from the drawn expression. You know. As you should with a visual medium (flashbacks to that insufferable interview where Giffen apparently decided the USA audience is too stupid for that, lmfao). My biggest gripe is with how the characters talk so far. They sound like XXI century USA kids. They say 'like' every few words, and I swear to god, if Kiriyama pulls a 'y'all', I'm canceling my birth certificate. Why keep the suffixes, but take away the varied speech patterns? All the characters show bits of personality in their choice of grammar and particles in the Japanese version. There are plenty of ways to carry over to English the gist of it. Mitsuru is still a bit of a slam poet like he is in the Japanese version, and Noriko also has her pretty way with words, so it's not 100% like that all the time. But it is annoying in a thing that's supposed to take place in the late 90's Japan. They also let Kiriyama keep his lil 'gun goes brrrrr', which no other translation let's him have. Because we can't have him have a childish little habit. It's not like he's a child or something. But they did give him a bit of a sassy attitude, which I bloody hate. Why is it impossible to carry over his matter-of-fact responses. Why must everyone persist to make him sassy, or worse, edgy. It's silly. Speaking of Kiriyama. THE KIRIYAMA FAMILY ARE SAFE FROM PINK PARTY WOOOOOOOO! They get to be just delinquent lads, without sexual crimes to their name! Just as the author's intended. It's almost as if that's what a fucking translation is supposed to do, carry over the original meaning and not make shit up! I'll write another post after I'm finished with the whole volume, but so far, I think it's a major upgrade to the Tokyopop version. Some font choices are atrocious, the cover being offcenter is... a choice (I don't hate the cover itself, but why so uneven bruh), the colourspreads are there, but nothing we haven't seen in other releases so far. I don't regret buying it. It's HYOOGE, the spine looks nice on a shelf, and to me - most importantly - the translation doesn't suck ass.
