slr2moons | Dou shi you?!??!?!?!?!

Mina-san, I'm conflicted. :|

Thanks to a friend, I have the chance to download an almost infinte number of manga scanlations, including one long series by a mangaka that I love. Now, this series in particular is not licensed as far as I know. So it should be fair game for reading for free. I mean, scanlations aren't all that different from borrowing a book from a library..only you get to keep the book, in this case.

But I can't do it. Especially for something like Naruto. The licensed release is so far behind the anime and the Japanese release it's kind of laughable. But I love Naruto too much to just go out and read it for free online. It seems disrespectful. Not to mention that feels like I'm betraying and stealing from myself. I remember when a friend of a friend told me that he tried the Claymore manga after hearing that I worked on it. I was quite delighted when he said he liked it--until he told me that he read the scanlations. What?!?! I took it as a slap in the face! He might as well have told me, "I don't give a crap about your version. Not even to sit for an hour in a bookstore and read it for free." Grrrrrrrr. And for the record, I chewed him out about it, too. X(

Though it isn't just the whole licensing issue, either. The translation comes into play. Most scanlation translations suffer from being too literal, and thus the English sounds stilted or is just wrong. And don't get me started on the prevalent grammatical errors and typos. But then, most licensed translations suffer from dumbing down and over-adapting and thus lose that Japanese feel. Thankfully this is improving slightly (Yay to leaving in name suffixes!) but I still hesitate about licensed translations because I see first-hand on my own titles what is changed. And several times a week, I'm seriously irked. Once every couple of months the change will be bad enough that I'll speak up about it, but more often than not I'll bite my tongue and try to ignore it. *much in the way of eyebrow twitching* (Quick disclaimer: any title translated by Kimura Tomo--where she is also the rewriter--is 97% correct and faithful. I wish she translated--and rewrote--everything, I'd do much less eyebrow twitching that way.)

So. Scanlation translation = usually rough and irksome, licensed translation = usually dumbed down and irksome. Which to read?? The solution is simple: read the Japanese version.

But I take forever and a day to do my own translations. I'm sooooooo ssssssllllloooooowwwwwww. I do know that I'll never get faster if I don't practice...and I'm already so much faster now than I was 5 years ago, but still. It would take me a year to read one book. If I "settled" for someone else's translation--either licensed or not--I could read that same book in one day. Such is the price of not being bilingual, right?

My horribly slow Japanese comprehension speed means that I will only ~~slog through~~ read in Japanese a title I dearly love. Such as Skip, Touch, Sailor Moon, Fushigi Yuugi, and Naruto. No way would I spend the hours and hours to read something I'm only interested in, like Bleach, Hana-Kimi, Godchild, Hellsing, and Crimson Hero. Then we also have the titles that I do dearly love, but am much too intimidated to try in Japanese, either because they are steeped in history, old-style Japanese language, and culture that I really need liner notes to understand--Kaze Hikaru and Rurouni Kenshin--or because they are so incredibly wordy, like Death Note. (Gia Cam Luc, the letterer for Death Note, has my utmost respect for making it through the entire series. Ghaaaa! Death by inner monologue!)

*sighs*

About every 5 or 6 months, I am confounded by this dilemma. I want to read the original version, but it takes me so long, and most nights I just don't have the brain power to concentrate. I only want to read something to relax me from the stress of work before I crash. This is why I'm in the middle of reading/translating four series: Arlsan Senki, Hana Yori Dango, Skip Beat, and Zetsuai 1989. I haven't worked on any of them in months. :|

I know that five of you on my flist have Japanese skills pretty much equal to my own. How do you guys balance reading the original vs someone else's English translation?? I know you all don't exactly face the whole I'm-stealing-manga aspect on scanlations like I do unless it's out of loyalty to me ha ha but still. What have you done to handle this??? If anything? Hanashite kudasai!

As for me...I should stop whining and start studying. *a very tired and resigned headdesk* Maybe I should start a kanji-a-day LJ com to keep myself motivated...