Q&A 14: foreign editions

Carlo Condo asks:

"Have you ever thought of having your work translated in another language? Do you think that the way you play with English, that I find quite impressive, might transfer well enough for the comics to be at (almost) the same level as the original?"

Many of my comics have been translated to other languages. Steeple is in Spanish, By Night is in French and Spanish, and Giant Days has been translated into French, Spanish, German, Italian, Hungarian, Romanian (I'm not sure this edition ever came out), Portuguese, Polish  and Dutch. Bad Machinery has made it into Italian, on the Tacotoon webcomic service. There's even a Spanish version of the first Solver story.

These comics have had different levels of success in different countries - for example, not all the Giant Days translations made it to the 14th volume or Extra Credit/Early Registration. It has been most successful in Spain, Poland and France.

The success of the translation comes down to the translator. I have been lucky enough to meet Inma Andreu and Diane Lecerf, my Spanish and French translators, and talk to them about the process of translating my work. Translation is an art - I think every translator should be credited on the cover of the book they have translated. 

Their job is about more than just finding the equivalent word in the language. Inma and Diane both look for colloquial equivalents of the jokes I use, if the joke does not translate for their country's audience. They replace pop culture references with appropriate ones. I reference obscure things from all eras - old songs, ancient TV shows, old technology - because I find them funny. In translating Giant Days, for example, they are sometimes having to essentially write new jokes that work the same way. It is a great skill.

Sometimes Diane would send me a list of phrases that she wasn't sure about and I would have to explain that her interpretations were much cleverer than my original intent. She's a lot more sophisticated then me!

My favourite reinterpretation was in the German version of Giant Days volume 2. Daisy becomes obsessed with the TV show "Friday Night Lights" and sets herself up as both Coach Taylor and his high school counsellor wife Tammy at various points, decorating her room with the appropriate football pennants.

Because this show didn't air in Germany, the translator changed everything to references to the American football movie "Any Given Sunday", with PopCom's designer replacing all the FNL paraphernalia with AGS merchandise. This was one of the first translations of my work and quite an education.

The designers at the foreign licensees carefully strip out all the sound effects and often the posters and signage in the stories, putting in translated versions. Giant Days is full of little text jokes, many of which are things Max came up with, and most of them are translated. Often the lettering is part of the colour artwork, so it is painstaking work to remove these things and put new text in. When I submitted Solver for translation to Fandogamia in Spain, I was careful to put anything that was text in the drawings - no matter how trivial - on a separate layer of the artwork I sent them.

So, in answer to your question, when it comes to foreign editions, I am in the hands of the talented people who publish them. I have apologised a few times for how strange the English is in my comics, but they really don't seem to mind.