Hey!
The comic book translation job is over, and wow am I glad. I never thought I'd see the day when I cursed any job related to comics, but wow, this was a hum-zinger! Warning to people starting out in the translation biz or even old hands getting their first "manga" job: It takes a lot longer to read a simple shonen manga (comics for boys) and translate one page than you would think! This blog is my take on how long it takes to translate comics, and what you should watch out for when considering what price you are willing to take on a comic translation project.
It took me about one and a half days to read the thing, which was a scant 363 pages long. Usually I like to take my time and really let comic book imagery sink in while I read, so I was surprised that it took so long with all the engines running. I imagine it would take a lot longer to read if I stopped to admire the pictures along the way...
As for the translation, I supposed I averaged about 20 pages per day. That was after reading it once through. And to think, I started the project thinking I could do the thing in a week! A month and a half would be closer to the truth. In the end, it wound up eating up my weekends and most of my weekday hours. It was worth it in some ways, because the story was interesting. But if you are still wondering how much you should be charging for translation, beware. Most people old enough to have developed the skills required to translate a manga professionally will probably need somewhere between USD 1,500 to USD 2,500 a month to live, so if it takes you a month or more to read and translate one, make sure that is your budget for the project.
Of course everyone has a different pace. If you have worked through any business or legal documents, you can compare your general speed to mine: I average between 3000 and 4000 Japanese characters per work day (depending on content and how focused I am that day). If you are averaging anywhere similar to me, expect to spend at least one very full month on a 365 page shonen comic. And I imagine comics for adults take even longer...Ok, well, I am back in the flow this week with some contract jobs, so I will get back to you with some interesting legal terms later.
Oh, by the way, my first baby is due any day now!! If I take a horribly long and extended break from blogging, you can guess that I have probably become a sleepless but incredibly loving pop!
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5 comments:
Congrats on wrapping up the project. Was it a pretty text-heavy book? How many 400-ji pages would you say you went through?
It was a fairly standard shonen comic, with some fairly text heavy pages and some very light pages too. I have no idea how may characters the project was, because it was all on paper, so no word count is possible. And my final script is chalk full of various notes, character names, etc., so I cannot really give it a word count for the English either. The comic itself was 362 pages long. Sorry I cannot be more specific.
Thanks for checking out my blog! Are you freelance or do you translate through a company? I am freelance. I will check out your site later.
I do the odd freelance job, and I teach translation on a regular basis, but I've been in-house for the last 12 years or so at a little publisher in Tokyo.
That sounds very romantic. How is life in the in-house biz?
I have been doing freelance for about 6 years or so now. It has plenty of good things going for it.
I teach Japanese art history at a college here (just one class a week, one semester out of the year). It would be interesting to teach a class on translation at some point...
Congratulations, by the way!
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