Jacqueline Fung

Dear manga publishers, we don’t want your AI translations VIZ Media quietly added an AI-translated manga to their app and hoped no one would notice. We did and want none of it.

VIZ Media quietly added an AI-translated manga to their app and hoped no one would notice. We did.

Manga deserves better than cheap, soulless automation. This is a betrayal of translators, fans, and the art form.

We don't want your AI translations!

No worries! I only did the book release. The translation on manga UP is by someone else!

This is the first book where I had to translate two languages at the same time. But the challenge is incredibly fun... I am so grateful I got the opportunity to work on this book and experience such a beautiful story. 💖

Some people might say this is a dumb thing to get hung up on...but I REALLY hoped that the 1% of people who would read this AND know sign would appreciate the little bit of extra work put in.
And it just feels good to see how nicely the sign and the english text come together!

At first, I thought of keeping all of the sign speech formal and stiff, but realize that would never work.
Sign is just another language. The way Fujinaga was waving his hands and the look on his face made me think, yeah, if this was any other language, he'd be speaking casually!

This first panel, too. He's finishing off his sentence about how he's happy he got to do all those things with Keito. I had to add extra words in to make sure I have "all of that" and "happy" in there and still make it flow well in English.

I had to use a lot more text than one simple sentence (which, thank goodness the letterer could fit it all in! Thank you!!) but by moving my words around, I was able to slot in the right word for the right panel.

It's a very simple sentence here in the Japanese.
俺意外に - Aside from me
手話 - Sign language
習わないでよ - Don’t learn
(Don't learn sign language from people aside from me/other people.)
But I needed to have "other people" "sign language" and "don't learn" in those 3 panels.

I also did a ton of research into all the sign language in the manga. I wanted to make sure that each panel that focuses on the sign language will have the word associated to the sign in the text.

I was told we're going to try tilting some of the letters to replicate the effect in JP.
I watched Gangsta and A Silent Voice for research and very carefully chose which letters to tilt so we can replicate the JP as closely as possible (TY to the wonderful editor for her help!)

I got permission from my lovely editor so I wanted to share a few cool things I got to do with Love in the Palm of His Hand volume 1!
This is one of the most unique experiences I've had. I did a TON of research into JSL and the hard of hearing community!

I really enjoy working with new editors and learning from them. I hope I get the opportunity to work with lots and lots of new people ✨

🙇‍♀️🙇‍♀️🙇‍♀️ it's an honor to bring all that BL smut to the English audience 😆
Thank you for the shoutout! 🥹🥹🥹

At least until I get annoyed and cut them again 😂

Hand with long, blue nails

Being a translator is hard.

I want to have pretty nails but they also cause way more typos ;;

Getting into the Japanese media translation industry, especially for manga, is a lot harder nowadays, but here are some resources for translators, letterers, and editors

Dunno about translators, but when I TL I take on a lot of the emotions of the characters (which is why it's a tad bit hard for me to translate a character I can't empathize with [very rare. only happened once])
Which also means I cry a lot easier when I'm translating 😂

a man with a beard is holding a microphone in his hand and talking into it . ALT: a man with a beard is holding a microphone in his hand and talking into it .

That is to say...
It's one of those days where I'm feeling just a bit overwhelmed
😱

Project management is super fun and cool! But sometimes I just want to ram my head against a wall when trying to come up with plans to target unique projects
But the overwhelming feeling when facing unique challenges can be super fun and interesting too... At least it keeps things rather interesting

🌸🌸🌸🌸

Oh I didn't know it had synonyms!! I used it for rhyming words when I was translating ya boy kongming!

Thanks! Another resource obtained 😌

It's so bad when it's at the tip of your tongue D:
Fellow word hippo visitor! o/!

I can't be the only one who's constantly googling "[word] Synonym" when my brain just isn't *in the zone* while I'm translating

The things you have to look up when you're a translator:
Electromagnetic induction and jellyfish courtship dances
All in one manga

._.

Thanks! I'm already registered and got my link 8D excited to give some of these a read! Thanks! ❤️

Watching a horror tv show with the husband and I've been pretttttty freaked
Until the ghost in a kimono for some reason speaks perfect American English

Well that kicked me out of the experience 😆

Anime in Concert pamphlet in the forefront with the concert stage in the backdrop

At a super cool concert tonight.

We're still trying to figure out why Nyx is barbering. We did an ultrasound yesterday and the vet called me with the results: a big fat question mark.
So she asks if he's not eating, losing weight, lethargic...
I turn around and see him stealing one of the bright red strawberries I just washed. 💢

Just gonna report it finally ended at 5 hours of waiting.

Why it took 12 min per person? Apparently the clerk would confirm your order and then go to the back to grab the item ONE. AT. A. TIME. she ran to the back 4 times on my preorder.
To be fair, it's probably a policy thing but...wtf.