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Erin:
So what were some of the challenges in translation?
Yani:
We were very lucky to find a great translator in Alexander O.
Smith. At that point he hadn’t translated any novels,
he had done games basically. This was his first book and it’s
a pride for me and Vertical to have brought him into the world
of translating books. He loves the fantasy genre, has read a
lot of fiction, and I think is trying to write his own too.
So he already had this fantasy style. Not that degrees matter,
but he did go to Harvard and he is an all-round solid writer.
One
reviewer that reviewed HC Book One said, “This is the
best translation from Japanese I’ve ever read.”
And I do believe it’s that good, including Kawabata and
all that.
It’s
interesting, when you read the Japanese, it feels almost purplish.
She’s writing in a baroque style on purpose and when you
translate that into English, it’s not as salient. Think
of Haruki Murakami, writing that feels regular for contemporary
Japanese readers—when it’s translated it may feel
vague or bland.
There’s
this sense again that she was harking back, very consciously,
to that American model that would feel foreign and pulpy for
Japanese readers.
Serdar:
I’ve read a number of criticism of books, Vertical books,
on Amazon, where they say “the translation is so flat”
and I just think, No, that’s because that’s the
way it was written. They’re being faithful to the fact
that it’s very spare prose and that it’s not meant
to be very, like you said, very purple-y.
What
I liked most about the translation: never at any point did I
feel like I was reading one. I was just reading a great book.
A lot
of the time I would think, “Okay, what did they mean here?”
since I know a little Japanese but am by no means a translator.
Erin:
So are you thinking about reading The Guin Saga in
Japanese?
Serdar:
I would love to. To quote someone else, I can smell a bad translation
when I see one.
I was
reading this and shaking my head thinking, I could force this
on anyone with the name removed and they would never know that
it’s a translation.
Erin:
I think after the first half of the first book it really picks
up, and it keeps getting better up through the fifth book.
Serdar:
With a lot of Japanese creative properties, there’s nothing
inherently Japanese about them except that they were created
there. More recently we had this series Claymore, which
I love, and of course Berserk, Vampire Hunter D.
And while there are touches of things that are Asian or what
have you, if the name was filed off, no one would know the difference.
And I always think that if Hollywood is going to start somewhere
they should start here because it’s easy to transport
without losing anything. It’s already alien to its original
audience so it will be foreign to us too. If there’s a
short list of properties, this should be on top.
Yani:
It is toward the top; you have to give credit to Hollywood because
in our first 18 months of operations, so many production companies
contacted us. You know those production companies formed by
actors, Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio, all of them. So they are
watching, they have people in studios who are curious—curious
enough to find a small company like Vertical.
Erin:
There are a lot of small production companies who buy ideas
and stories, even if they never use it. They read newspapers,
and they go buy so-and-so’s new book, and buy the rights
to stories just to beat other studios to the punch.
Serdar:
They’re always looking for new fresh ideas. One of the
other things I was thinking about while reading was, we have
this hero, who is faced with all these different external tasks,
pulling armies together out of nothing, which I love, but the
whole thing is about the most fundamental human question. And
that’s Who am I? What am I? Am I human or not?
And in the treatment I was doing I was going to make that one
of my central themes. And in the end, he finally realizes, he
has the permission to say, Yes, I am a man. I’ve been
standing next to these two kids whose worst crime is that they
were born to the wrong family. That kind of thing, I saw the
series really start to develop especially in Book Four. Book
Four is very introspective. There’s this whole beautiful
segment in the middle that a lot of people thought was slow,
but I didn’t think it was slow.
Erin:
No, that was the best part!
Serdar:
Where he’s really digging into himself and making these
remarkable discoveries about who he is and who he ought to be.
This is really not what I expected at all from this series.
And again in the same book, we have Istavan’s betrayal
which really hit me very deeply and I said, “Okay, now
I understand how big the ambitions were for this series. She’s
not just trying to give us a thrill ride, she’s trying
to give us everything.”
Yani:
That betrayal becomes relevant in Book 90-something.
Serdar:
I could tell that it was hugely pivotal.
Erin:
Yeah.
Serdar:
Up until then, Istavan is kind of a roustabout. And he thinks
he can get away with everything. And then he discovers there
are some things you can’t get away from. And I love that.
Yani:
He’s haunted by it.
By the
way, Koji Suzuki’s favorite is Book Four. He read the
Marches Episode upon my recommendation. He loves stories where
man is alone and has to struggle against nature and try to survive.
That whole chase sequence with the wolves.
Serdar:
I just finished reading his Promenade of the Gods and
even there there’s an element of that. It starts off in
a detective story vein, and he’s trying to piece together
the facts amid the chaos and the nature of his fellow man.
Yani:
I think the whole Guin series, even just the first
five books, serves as a kind of leadership manual because Guin
is such a powerful figure.
Serdar:
He forms an army out of nothing. He goes into the woods to these
furry little creatures that have nothing and says, “Okay,
what do you have.” And finds out they have exactly what
he needs.
Erin:
There’s a lot of resourcefulness.
Serdar:
But he’s not a jerk about it. He knows the extent of the
weight he’s carrying around. And he tries to have a sense
of humor about it, he looks at it as part of the bigger picture.
I love it when the two twins are whining about being split up
and he just says get used to it.
Yani:
I love those sentences about fate and destiny.
Serdar:
The whole thing is woven around the idea that there are some
people who can serve as a nexus for the way things change. They
can embody these things without even trying. They’re like
magnets and people flock to them without knowing why. And then
when they finally realize, they can use that to make things
happen.
Noah:
Besides, or beyond discussions, how are you promoting the series?
Yani:
Well, we did many more ads for this than we did for many of
our other titles. And leopard masks.
Noah:
So when you say ads, you mean in manga magazines?
Yani:
Advertisement in various monthly fan-type zines and such. The
usual suspects in print.
Serdar:
I know I’ve been stumping as hard as I can for it through
word of mouth.
Noah:
The best kind of advertisement.
Serdar:
I have a friend who runs an internet radio station who focuses
on anime and game music. He told me that word of mouth is the
only thing he has ever found in the years that he’s been
running this to get people to come back. Fliers, ads, cross-promotion
does not work. The only thing that works is having people come
talk to other people. And so on my own site, I looked at the
first HC books, and was heartbroken at the end of that. And
I did the trade paperbacks for AMN, and they were actually surprised.
And they asked about the tie-in, and I told them the whole deal.
And they told me wow, keep in touch with them!
Yani:
Definitely from the beginning, with the hardcovers in 2003,
and earlier when we contacted her, movies, visual adaptation
was part of our strategy. We’ve been waiting for that
and finally it will happen. The TV anime series is pretty much
guaranteed and I am pretty certain that something will come
from Hollywood.
Erin:
I found out about the series from reading manga blogs.
Yani:
Actually, our main promotional thrust is Serdar. (Laughter)
Serdar:
Really?
Yani:
He reviews every book before it comes out.
Serdar:
I’ve really been on top of it, because these guys are
the only company that I can think of right now that are doing
what I’ve always wanted to see in English-language publishing.
Which is go to Japan and find all the cool stuff and bring it
here for us and take a gamble on it. I’ve been lapping
it up because I wanted to see this for 15 years. Ever since,
I started finding out about Japan in general. And since my command
of Japanese is terrible, I have them as a go-between.
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