Godaigo Daigo: Author is translating his own manga with Machine Translation
Instead of going out and hiring an official translator to translate his manga from Japanese to English, author Kounosuke, creator of the manga Godaigo Daigo has used automatic translation to make his manga available in English.
He has been posting his manga on his English profile using automatic translation, but he asked his fans for help, on his profile he posted the following:
“I am working on a translated version of Godaigo Daigo. I am currently looking for English staff to help me revise the machine-translated English for this comic, as well as staff in other languages. Please DM me if you are interested”.
I am working on a translated version of Godaigo Daigo!https://t.co/tIRoXjkFgg
I am currently looking for English staff to help me revise the machine-translated English for this comic, as well as staff in other languages. Please DM me if you are interested. pic.twitter.com/e4DlpGjk4f
— コウノスケ (@kounosuke0808) January 30, 2023
This generated a certain controversy on social networks, in case you didn’t know, currently in the US, translators and localizers of games and manga from Japanese to English are suffering a lot of criticism for changing the meaning of several lines.
There are several examples of bad translations that games and anime have suffered and fans are complaining and compiling all these bad translations. I’ll talk about something I started to notice, I’m playing a lot of games and I finished some recently like Persona 4 and 5, Devil Survivor 2, Super Neptunia RPG, Daemon x Machina, and I always try to put audio in Japanese and text in English.
The number of times the character says something is immense and the speech bubble shows something very different from what the character said, on some occasions, you start to think that some characters are more aggressive when in the original version it is not the case, among others other changes.
Katrina Leonoudakis, who does not have a good reputation among the public, saw the author’s publication and said this:
“A mangaka is asking for help revising the machine translation of his manga, could someone politely tell him that this is an insult to his art and story?”
Katrina is responsible for the English translation of the anime Inu ni Nattara Suki na Hito ni Hirowareta, and some profiles pointed out errors in her translation of the anime in several episodes, Katrina posted on her profile that she doesn’t feel guilty for what she did with the translation of the anime, saying that if that person didn’t like it, the anime is not for her.
— へいわじま ネロ (@Heiwajima_Neroo) January 20, 2023
Another person commented the following:
“Please look for a professional Japanese to English (and other languages) translation, and don’t give them machine-made scripts. There are excellent translators who can do the job”
But other fans tried to warn the author not to look for such translators:
“Please, as a westerner myself: DON’T TAKE ADVICE FROM WESTERN PEOPLE. Bit of an oxymoron, yes, but trust me when I say this: Western localizers will spit on your work and say it’s an improvement.”
Another fan looking worried said:
“Whatever you do, DO NOT hire western localizers, history has shown they have no respect for authors, they will change their work”
A Japanese seeing this whole situation commented the following about the case:
“I don’t think hiring professional translation is a bad idea, but this phenomenon shows that part of localization has lost trust.”
Anyway, the author communicated that he found someone who will help him with his English translation of his manga:
Thank you to everyone who helped with the applications and publicity.
We have only just begun, but we will do our best to bring this manga to many people in other countries.— コウノスケ (@kounosuke0808) February 1, 2023
You can read the English version of the Godaigo Daigo manga here..