On Tuesday, January 30, the Maison de la Culture du Japon in Paris (MCJP) hosted a conference as intriguing as it was interesting on the difficulties and nuances of translating manga into French, on the occasion of the award of the 1st Konishi Prize for the translation of Japanese manga into French.
The Konishi Award: the recognition of the profession of manga translator
For 20 years, the Konishi Foundation has rewarded a work of Japanese literature whose translation into French is particularly successful. This year, for the first time, a second Konishi Prize is awarded to a French translation of a Japanese manga. This bi-annual award rewards a title published in France between October 2015 and September 2017.
The ten selected titles are:
- Golden Kamui (ki-oon)
- Born to be on air (Pika)
- Father and son (Ki-oon)
- Perfect world (Akata)
- One-punch man (Kurokawa)
- Red Innocent (tomkam)
- Dead dead demon's dededede destruction (Kana)
- Chiisakobe (The Black Lezard)
- The Divorcees' Club (Kana)
- Takane and Hana (Kaze)
All these titles have particular points of translation, whether botanical terms (Father and son), Ainu words (Golden Kamui), a hermetic language (Dead dead demon's dededede destruction) for example. After several discussions, Sébastien Ludmann was finally awarded the prize for his work on Golden kamui. As he explained during the conference, the most difficult thing about Golden Kamui is to make the language as fluid as possible in French while incorporating Ainu terms. These terms are also subject to validation with the Japanese publisher.
A varied shadow work
In addition to the presentation of the Konishi Foundation Prize, the interest of the conference was clearly to give voice and highlight the role of those who translate in the shadows, always looking for the right and coherent word so that we, readers, are irresistibly carried away by our readings. An arduous and little-known profession, manga translation has now earned its literary nobility. The France being the second largest consumer of manga in the world after Japan, with nearly 1500 volumes translated each year, it was normal for the authorities to take an interest.
It is also important to stress the importance of the translator, because he strongly imprints his paw in the VF text. Some will "crush" in their own way the original text to bring out a fluid and coherent language, others will try to get closer and closer to the original text to preserve the initial flavor of the work. Both approaches are valid, everyone to find his account by reading the books.
In two hours of lecture, it is a dense subject that was addressed, with great freedom of tone. At the end of this evening of debates, we had learned many things about this discreet profession and we promised ourselves to pay even more attention to the texts and their fluidity.
