Notes on Tokyopop’s Translation of ARIA V.1
Dear Tokyopop,
I would like to tell you that you have the permission of all us fans of ARIA to actually use the term “Prima” in the story, since this is the term the author came up with. You don’t need to translate it to the incredibly awkward phrase “full-fledged Undine.” I do not want to have to read “full-fledged Undine” five times within two pages. Furthermore, they’re called Singles, not journeyman, even if that’s what they technically are. Just use the original terminology dammit!
And why the hell are you using a different translator than the one you used for AQUA, who actually got the terms right, when they’re basically the same freakin’ story?! And the biggest mystery of all is, why the hell does ARIA have an older teen rating? I don’t know what you’re smoking, but I didn’t find any nudity, fanservice, or alcohol use in my ARIA volume. The main point is, use the competent translator you already have and don’t use “full-fledged Undine!” GAH! Damn tokyopop.
Those are kind of odd translation decisions.
As for the Teen rating thing, I’m not really familiar with Aria, but if there is anything questionable in one of the later volumes then they’d probably stick with that rating from the start - B&M stores are apparently very, very wary of ordering titles where the rating is jacked-up mid series. Tokyopop have been stung in the past with Moon Phase, where initially they edited a couple of later volumes due to this very issue, only to later republish everything with a higher rating later.
Comment on March 2, 2008 @ 2:36 pm
Yes, those translations really irked me too.
As DiGiKerot says, the rating might be due to content in later volumes. I know Alicia apparently likes to drink a bit (something that wasn’t included in the anime), but i still don’t think it’s justified.
Comment on March 2, 2008 @ 3:09 pm
At least it’s not as bad as Negima, where they changed the titles, spelling of certain names, AND style of translation three times… in the same series, published by the same people. But that’s Del Rey for you.
Comment on March 2, 2008 @ 3:32 pm
And I was just reading Aria the day before yesterday. And wow, I dislike translation practices like this (I didn’t even know that there was original terminology.
I’m starting to get into Aria so this annoys me.
Comment on March 2, 2008 @ 5:43 pm
@DiGiKerot: I didn’t know that about Moon Phase. Do you know what volumes they edited, because I’m working through it right now, though I only have the first four volumes.
@Haesslich: Negima did have it bad, though because I wasn’t as familiar with it as ARIA, they didn’t annoy me as much.
Comment on March 2, 2008 @ 6:12 pm
Oh no.. Tokyopop smoked weed or what..
Hope they’ll correct those things in later reprints..
Comment on March 5, 2008 @ 3:02 pm
Do you have any scans of the original Japanese? ARIA uses two sets of terminology to refer to an Undine’s class - e.g. Prima as written in katakana, and ichininmae to provide a descriptive name for the class when the formal name isn’t used. I don’t object to the translation if the original case being used is the latter, but I don’t have the original volume 1 for comparison.
Comment on April 2, 2008 @ 7:13 am
I’m not in the habit of collecting original Japanese scans and just have English scanlations. sorry.
Comment on April 2, 2008 @ 3:38 pm