Interview with Fred Schodt

How long have you been a professional translator and interpreter?

I started working doing written translation in Tokyo around 1977. I didn't work as a professional interpreter, though, until I came back to the States in 1978. Now I make my living mainly from interpreting, although I do quite a bit of manga translation, too.

As a translator of novels and comics, do you have any goals? (Or personal objectives concerning, how you or an author wishes the publication to be received?)

My goal is to recreate the experience that the original target reader has with the original source language. In other words, in my case I try to recreate the experience that the Japanese reader would have when reading the material in Japanese. For manga translation I also try to give primacy to the illustrations. It's fairly easy for manga translators to forget that the pictures, not the words, are usually the most important part of the manga. Manga translation is different from other types of translation in this sense.

Many of your manga and novel translations are very high caliber titles. And your first book, Manga! Manga! The World of Japanese Comics (1983) remains an influential and important source of information on Japanese comics (historically and industrially). What schooling have you received that aids you in your profession?

Thanks for the compliments! In my case I'd definitely have to say that learning Japanese was the key to everything. Beyond that, hmm... maybe just learning from my parents to always be patient, fair, and open-minded. I'm sure the fact that they encouraged me to read a lot helped, too. As did the fact that we didn't have a television for most of my childhood…

How did you come about working on the translation of Tomino's Kidou Senshi Gundam (a.k.a. "The Mobile Suit Gundam: Awakening /Escalation /Confrontation")? Did you meet with Tomino in person?

I had worked as an interpreter for Tomino previously, so I did know him and count him as a friend. However, as I recall it now, I was asked to do the Gundam books (three in the original format) by Risa Kessler, then a senior editor at Del Rey. She had handled the Star Wars novels, as well as the Robotech books, and they had been a great success. I think she had heard of me through my book, Inside The Robot Kingdom: Japan, Mechatronics, and the Coming Robotopia (Kodansha International, 1988), and also from interpreting work I had done at Lucasfilm.

Gundam characters often have strong and/or definitive voices. How often did you come across this aspect of the text in your translation work? How did you approach it?

The characters do often have strong voices. But translating them is really quite a natural process for me, at least. I just listen to the sound of the voices in my head when reading the original Japanese, and then imagine what they would naturally sound like in an English situation. Sometimes translating Japanese too directly makes it sound too corny in English, but there are ways to soften this effect. Out of the respect for the original authors, I tend to do fairly literal translations from Japanese; I think it's possible to do so and still have very natural-sounding English, but not all translators would agree, I'm sure.

When Del Rey first published "Awakening" in 1990, there were introductory translation notes regarding the importance of the Japanese origin of the novel. Keeping in mind the relatively unproven marketability of anime and manga in North America at the time, how was the conscious decision to emphasize the origin and roots of the novel met within the publishing industry?

I think it went over like a lead balloon. At that time (1990), most Americans had never heard of anime, let alone Gundam. In fact, for Del Rey--which was hoping for success along the lines of its Star Wars and Robotech books--I think the Gundam novels were considered to be a colossal flop.

When you are helping translate a novel, what percentage of the text would you say is ambiguous? (Written communication can oftentimes be difficult to decipher even in one's native language.)

I couldn't give you a percentage, but Japanese is a notoriously ambiguous language. That stated, Tomino wrote Gundam in a fairly straightforward style, which helped a great deal. When I was really in a jam, I could also ask him questions and get very detailed replies, and I could check the animation to at least get an idea of what sort of environment or shapes he was really referring to. In this sense I was lucky. In translating most science fiction, there aren't so many reference materials available. However, the downside of this is that fans of Gundam can be quite picky, as they know the Gundam world (at least the animation part of it) very well.