Seven Seas in Trouble for Heavy alterations and censorship of light novels.
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I think we've discussed the "art" vs. the "science" of interpreting/translating in previous threads. It takes genuine talent the translate/interpret a work between languages and sometimes there will be differences in opinion as to what choices a translation team makes. That doesn't appear to be what happened here, at least in some of the instances scenes were edited out (supposedly to make the final piece more marketable?). In principle I am ok with this if the original creator of the work is involved in the decision to edit. THAT is the part of what is going on that makes at least some of this torrid event censorship and wrong. I suspected that publishing MT in English would be problematic (w/o a 18+ label) and that edits would need to be made for it to be offered in the LN section at the local Barnes and Noble, but I believed that the Japanese creator would be making the edits or at least approving the ones made by SS. Even though the anime is watered down vs the LN, it is getting flak, and has been banned from some streaming services (in China, were tolerances are lower on many things and Censorship is more rife)
I read banned books
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Uff. This is a tough one. I dropped all my pre-orders from SS and will stop buying from them entirely until I know how they will handle the Mushoku Tensei rewrite (I already have 9 volumes D:). This doesn't look good.
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@Jon-Mitchell said in Seven Seas in Trouble for Heavy alterations and censorship of light novels.:
In principle I am ok with this if the original creator of the work is involved in the decision to edit. THAT is the part of what is going on that makes at least some of this torrid event censorship and wrong. I suspected that publishing MT in English would be problematic (w/o a 18+ label) and that edits would need to be made for it to be offered in the LN section at the local Barnes and Noble, but I believed that the Japanese creator would be making the edits or at least approving the ones made by SS.
That sounds like you know the Japanese publisher didn't know about these changes. Do you have any sources?
Also, to add to the above, if SS had informed potential readers that there were changes, while I would still have taken my money elsewhere, even so I would have, begrudgingly, accepted their decision...
By not informing was the worst possible decision they could have made. Ie, from now on, if there's a chance a title of theirs may be controversial, I will hold of on the actual purchase until I'm certain something similar didn't happen. And I also don't think I will place any further preorders on their stuff...
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So here are my thoughts: I don't like censorship, especially in a translated work, since the fact that it is translated means it is harder for me to know if it has been censored.
That being said, I will probably still buy manga from Seven Seas; there are series that I'm too invested in to stop. However, until this whole thing shakes out, I will probably not be buying light novels from them.
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@Korppi
If the Japanese publisher knew, SS wouldn’t have had to apologize (unless this is SS “falling on their sword “ to protect the creator...which I doubt)I read banned books
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Thank you for bringing this into forum. This certainly makes me reconsider whether I will continue to purchase from them, especially their physical books. And who knows how many titles were affected.
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@custodes said in Seven Seas in Trouble for Heavy alterations and censorship of light novels.:
Personally, I had no issues with the majority of the edits. I know there are some purists out there that want a word for word, phrase for phrase accurate translation.
Even within European languages with common root languages there are issues with that, so you can only imagine the issues between English and Japanese which have no relation.Translation is not an exact science, Heck, its taken me years to even grasp the basics. What matters is why the editing has been done in my opinion.
If it purely to censor, I would have to frown upon it unless it describes something which the laws of a country do not allow to be described. If it to maintain the flow of the novel because it would be translated poorly in its "pure" format, absolutely. There are many novel series in all companies which have needed this treatment.
I agree with the last parts you said. But I must say I disagree with you mentioning that a word to word translation gives issues. Let's take MT. It is not like there is no translation for rape. And they altered the character for Paul by this change. And this was even done post translation.
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@Jon-Mitchell I really doubt, the edits were needed for Mushoku Tensei to be published normally considering that worse LNs have been published without much problem, and what was removed from MT was really tame.
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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.
