Seven Seas in Trouble for Heavy alterations and censorship of light novels.
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@Jon-Mitchell Adding onto that, normally if that were the case, the statement from the company would normally contain something along the lines of working closely with with their Japanese counterparts when they need to make edits that change the context of the story.
I will probably still get the series I was planning to get from SS unless this starts spilling into more series at this point, but I have no compelling reason to pre-order anything and am definitely going to wait until the volumes have been out for a while before making my purchases now.
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I am really wondering aboiut one thing. Why do they change things in some series and in other they leave them. Did a double check in my copy of Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear Volume 2. And we all know this is mostly a heartwarming Slice of Life story. But they left in there the part that this noble raped girls, imprison the victims and anyone asking for those woman and afterwards killing them all.
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@saskir Part might be that was more background info rather than direct description of things happening.
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@saskir from the random things I'm hearing, several people seem to think it was a specific editor acting on his own and not something the company endorsed, and so it was only projects that editor was involved in.
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@pcj I really hope that's the case since Seven Seas is publishing several series I enjoy.
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I feel like an opportunity was missed by not going with, "Seven Seas in rough seas for heavy-handed alterations to light novels."
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@Paul-Nebeling yes any monetary investment would be seen as support. thare is a website that has them and they can be downloaded without giving monetary support
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@lookman373 I avoid fan translations of officially licensed titles.
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@Paul-Nebeling That was my policy until someone at SS's decided that some things were too naughty for our delicate eyes.
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I've gone back to both the manga and novel translations of Mushoku Tensei, both done by Seven Seas. The manga translation predates the LN translation by about 4 years, and they were done by different translators, with different editors.
The "rape" scene is handled pretty similarly in both. The word "rape" is not used in either translation. The idea that it was a forced action is given in both. In the manga, Lilia says the first time was forced, in the LN she saw it as "her opportunity".
I don't have the original Japanese to fall back on, but both translations are consistent with Paul committing adultery and giving Rudeus two siblings.
So, I'm not seeing where this is a significant change to the story, "to protect our tender sensibilities", or to "make it more marketable".
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@SomeOldGuy Those weren't the only changes. It seems entire paragraphs are missing. In twitter you can find exactly what was changed. Anyway those changes go beyond what a translation should be, because they change the perception on some characters and parts of the story. As for the "sensibilities" part I think they mean less people would get offended and the "marketable" part is because with the changes they appeal to a wider audience (Lower age rating perhaps...), so more sales.
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It's interesting for things such as classroom of the elite. Many people think trival changes are fine, but if someone wanted to insert a narrative into media without being blunt there is a technique used in modern journalism that's now being used in all forms of literature called "framing". Framing is a psychological form manipulation in many non fictional literature works. By taking a statement and re-arranging the structure of the sentence or by changing from a statement to a question (that may include added context) does the meaning and result change.
Here is an example in journalism.
"Original: Mr. Hertz interrogated the man in the room with his colleagues and they found no results of spying. ""Modified: Mr Hertz interrogated the man in the room room with his colleagues and found no results in spying."
In this example the original implies a group consensus of no spying. But in the modified section by removing 'they' from the sentence changes the framing that Mr. Hertz was the only one to come to the conclusion of no spying and implies to the reader the rest in the room may not think the same way.
Another example is declaration to question.
"Newsflash! Bob Ross found to be painting forgeries in the park!""Newsflash! Was Bob Ross found to be painting forgeries on the streets of the park?"
This trick changes the qualifier. By changing it to a question and putting "on streets of the park" it asks to qualify the statement did Bob Ross paint forgeries in the park to did Bob Ross paint forgeries on the physical street in the park. This rephrase makes the truth false because the the qualifier now points elsewhere. People will see that no fakes were on the streets but the fact that it happened in park is now obscured.
It's like in literature where characters originally say
Koyabashi: You aren't dressed lightly today.
Luccoa: I was told it was it was drawing unneeded attention. Everything was getting bothersome.Being modified to.
Koyabashi: You aren't dressed lightly today.
Luccoa: I stopped because of the perverted stares were unwanted. It was bothersome.So here it's a tweak but meaning is changed rather easily. Rather than being scolded for dressing lewdly and changing because the whole situation was bothersome it's been rephrase to "I have an issue with being stared and I found those stares bothersome." No longer is it about finding being scolded the issue but the stares.
Now with classroom of the elite it does multiple things on a psychological level to the reader. The omitting of sentences will cause. Changing cold in my heart to the ice in my heart along with the omitted sentences now frames the girl from being gripped with fear and self blame, to anger and no self introspect. This is a cultural difference in mentality between western and Asian for bullying.
Also a heart filled with ice in literature has long implied cooling of emotions, a calm anger. A chilled and cold hear usually references fear.
The following sentences omitting again of removing the idea that accepting reality makes it easier. The sentence leaves up for interpretation but on a surface level by omitting those sentence and only leaving in acceptance of reality it portrays the character as silent resistance with strength. But the omitted lines show the character as weak. So basically the editor couldn't stand the thought of a bullied girl being mentally weak to the point of self depreciating.
As for the last part it was a lot harder without reading the whole chapter but I think the omitting of text causes a framing of shift of blame, removal of doubt and a need to cause readers to view characters a certain way.
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@SomeOldGuy You don't need the word "rape" to be spelled out to make it clear what happened. But Seven Seas muddles this event to the point where it looks closer to consensual casual fling than forced encounter, which is further muddled by changing straightforward "cheater and rapist" description of a character to "cheater and womaniser". Think how it would change impressions about Paul's techings about consent from the previous chapter and readers impressions on him going forward.
Not to mention that it is only one of half a dozen changes that were spotted because of the anime (there probably are more), which include not only "questionable" stuff like that barn scene, but also random lines and paragraphs like Rudy wanting to use Sylph as chick magnet or, the most recent example, "Let girls fall from the sky" prayer. Which is not only a reference to a very popular anime/manga trope, but is also a damn foreshadowing.
If all of that aren't significant changes, what is? A complete rewrite?
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@BookManiaReader said in Seven Seas in Trouble for Heavy alterations and censorship of light novels.:
It's like in literature where characters originally say
Koyabashi: You aren't dressed lightly today.
Luccoa: I was told it was it was drawing unneeded attention. Everything was getting bothersome.
Being modified to.
Koyabashi: You aren't dressed lightly today.
Luccoa: I stopped because of the perverted stares were unwanted. It was bothersome.If I encounter something like this, I would probably ask what the line was originally, since Japanese is a language notorious for not having subjects in sentences. As an example, not too long ago, I had a discussion with the translator of The Apothecary Diaries in its correction thread on whether a certain beautiful eunuch himself thinks or is told by people that his beauty could even attract the Emperor--two situations with different implications considering the context.
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Did we hear any news of Seven Seas correcting the "errors"? Or will they simply try to put this under the rug?
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@saskir I know they rereleased volume 7 of Classroom of the Elite earlier this month. I didn't really look much into why specifically though, so maybe it's unrelated.
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@saskir They fixed CotE vol.7 (you can find extensive comparison on r/lightnovels, I won't link it here since it has an amount of text far larger than can be justified by any fair use) and announced fixes of MT volumes 1 and 2. No news about fixing the rest of th volumes yet.
P.S.: here's a small part of that comparison: -
@saskir
This is what they have said recentlyWe’ll be releasing new edits of those books very soon. See these pages for details:
https://sevenseasentertainment.com/books/mushoku-tensei-jobless-reincarnation-light-novel-vol-1/
and
https://sevenseasentertainment.com/books/mushoku-tensei-jobless-reincarnation-light-novel-vol-2/ --LWI've also found that they have also left out an illustration from volume 7 as well. :(
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I'm glad to have found this thread, I was planning to buy new volumes sometime soon, including some Seven Seas titles. Now though... Yeah, looks like Seven Seas is going to my boycott list.
This is depressing though. I thought at least light novels would be safe from western censorship, but I suppose it was a vain hope...
Edit: I guess I'll wait and see whether I'll continue buying Seven Seas works or not. From what @Timmaaah said, I can see they're releasing edits of MT volume 1 and 2. If it has been truly uncensored and they'll do the same to all other volumes as well, I'll continue buying from them still.
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Does anybody else own Classroom of the Elite Volume 7 for Kindle? According to the Seven Seas website, the updated editions should be freely available, but my Kindle library is not indicating any updates available, nor does the copy on my device reflect a March 2021 date.
I'm just curious if anybody else has yet been successful to download the update version from Amazon.
