Right to Left or Left to Right?
12 February 2006
Neither company has responded.
I recently picked up volume twenty-two of Oh My Goddess!—a long-time favorite and the first, for me, in the right-to-left format, because that was the only format available. After savoring the story I glanced at the letters of comment and their glowingly enthusiastic endorsement of the more “purist” approach.
As a result I feel moved to sound a countervailing note. When I was introduced to animé and manga in 1981 at the age of nineteen, I felt much as those letter-writers did, entranced by the idea of utter fidelity to the original. A quarter-century later, in middle age, my view has changed considerably.
The world is built on compromise. Translating any work from one language to another is . . . tricky. At best. No matter how good one’s intentions, the fact remains that, semantically, two languages are different, often profoundly so. Moreover, it’s hard to find a more difficult pairing of languages than Japanese and English. Thus, “fidelity” becomes a slippery concept when languages, cultural and historical references, and even the printing conventions of a literary work are not shared from one place to another, or are shared only partially. How close is close enough? Who gets to decide?
A friend who worked in the computer game industry once told me a cautionary tale. Computer game companies, like any that depend on understanding what customers want, desire feedback. Fair enough. Unfortunately, the vast majority of what they get comes from hardcore purist gamers, drowning out what little trickles in from more casual players—most of whom, of course, have other things to do than write comments to game companies.
As a result, too many of the computer games out there appeal only to hardcore purist gamers, shutting out other potential players. This is a loss for everyone concerned; a larger market supports more companies and, ultimately, a greater number of and more diverse games. As well, depending too heavily on a small customer base that sees little influx of new blood may in the end doom an industry. (I mourn the virtual loss of the historical board wargame industry and remember the days of lapel buttons reading “SPI Died for Your Sins”.)
This same friend has gradually stopped buying and reading manga in lock-step with its transition into right-to-left format; she is dyslexic and says she literally cannot read it. At the other end of the process, Masamune Shirow, author of Appleseed, Dominion, and Ghost in the Shell, felt so strongly about the issue of flipping that he would send pages to his English-language publishers pre-flipped—only to see them flipped back again. Speaking for myself, I am able to read it, and will do so if I have no other choice, but I feel strongly ambivalent about it. A couple of caveats: I did find the right-to-left pure-text pages almost unreadable, and I do find a lack of freedom of choice to be irritating.
Perhaps the “purist” format reduces production costs—and as a desktop publishing professional I know exactly what that entails—and perhaps it pleases those who believe any change is an unacceptable dilution. But it also raises the barrier to entry for potential new readers and for casual readers, who may be put off by the unfamiliar format, the lack of translation for sound effects and the like, and the vague but undeniable sense that manga is for an “in crowd”—in the same unfortunate way that people joke about UNIX fans wanting computers to remain a mystery religion with themselves as the priests. I love to share with newcomers my delight in manga, in the astonishing variety and craft going into an art form, comics, that lamentably languishes in its native land, but the “new” format makes that harder to do.
Normally, I prefer not to raise a criticism without also bringing up suggestions for addressing it. However, I’m not certain what, in this case, would be a good answer. Reversing the trend and returning to flipped pages, as was done in the eighties and nineties, might make the material more accessible to new, casual, and dyslexic readers, but is more expensive and, by now, likely would require once again restructuring production processes. Simultaneous printing of both formats sounds wonderful, but probably is impractical, not to mention confusing.
In the end, of course, the market will decide. Just please be aware that not everyone who has an opinion will necessarily speak up, and that the loudest voices may not be the only voices. Ω
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