Behind the Scenes: An Interview With Anime/Manga Translator Jacob Jung

Translator for Sentai Filmworks, Jacob Jung

I was blessed to meet many people when I attended the premier of Made In Abyss:Â Journey’s Dawn (review here).Â One of the more interesting discussions I had on the night was with one of the translators for Sentai Filmworks, Jacob Jung.Â Many of us who read comics will eventually find themselves reading a book from a foreign country at some point or another and while I most certainly need a translator to understand Geordie, thankfully most books from the English speaking world are fairly universal.Â However, unless you are blessed with a preternatural gift for languages, youÂ may need the services of those men and women who translate books and movies from such disparate places as Japan, Mexico and France, so that you can enjoy them as well.Â One of these unsung heroes, Jake Jung, was present at the premier of the movie he did the English sub-titles for.Â I ran into Jake in the lobby, before the movie was set to begin, and he had some interesting insights into how he got into this line of work and what can be involved.Â I’ve included that discussion below.Â Inserted into our interview I’ve included some questions and answers with Jake via Twitter.Â After the premier he reached out and agreed to answer a few more questions via Direct Message, something I very much appreciated and something I thought you would enjoy.

Nemesis: Hi, this is Jake Jung and he“s a translator for anime and manga for a lot of different projects, is that correct?
Jacob:Â Yeah, that“s right.
Nemesis:Â What kind of training did you have, how did you get into something like that?
Jacob:Â Well I majored in Japanese at university. Â Then I went into the JEP program, teaching for a couple of years and I continued studying Japanese on my own at that time. Â I took a translation interpretation course, a program offered, and I also passed JLPT level 1, which is the highest proficiency test for Japanese.
Nemesis:Â How did you get hooked up with the industry?
Jacob:Â I started freelance translating, doing all kinds of stuff”¦.then after about five years of freelancing Sentai“s Director of Translation found my profile on linkedIn I think.

Nemesis:Â Wow
Jacob:Â Yeah, uh, we got in touch and I took the translation test, passed it, and I“ve been working with Sentai for three years now.
Nemesis (via Twitter):Â What was your first project for Sentai and what kind of experience was it?
Jacob (via Twitter):Â Flying Witch was the first anime I translated, and it’s such a charming show. Working on it was also a breath of fresh air after doing video game translation for so long. I think it was the perfect first show to translate because, being set in modern-day Japan, it was relatively straightforward compared to shows I translated later, such as Made in Abyss with its made-up fantasy terms and creature names or Hozuki“s Coolheadedness (Season 2: Part II), which is dripping with Japanese/Buddhist lore. Sentai“s Director of Translation very helpfully did a detailed review of my translation of the first episode. Since day one, he has also always been available when I need to ask a translation question or get some feedback on a terminology choice.
Nemesis (via Twitter):Â What has been your favorite translating job and least favorite and why?
Jacob (via Twitter):Â As far as my favorite, I would say the Made in Abyss anime and ClassicaLoid. I personally love MiA, and it was also the first (and only) time a show I’ve had the privilege of translating became so widely-popular and critically-acclaimed. I add ClassicaLoid because after translating 50 episodes, I know those characters like the back of my own hand. And, although ClassicaLoid is more a niche title, its fans are very passionate and are all-around nice people. As far as worst, early on in my translation career I got talked into translating a manual for some silicon-waver manufacturing equipment. I somehow got through that translation, but I very quickly learned about being very careful in terms of what jobs I accept.
Nemesis:Â Just curious, for our readers, is there any difficulty in translating from Japanese to English or even English to Japanese…if you“re doing a manga or anime, filling the space or maybe it takes up too much space, or time, or something like that?
Jacob: Yeah, the languages are quite different and Japanese relies a lot on context. Â So you can leave out like the subject of the sentence and it“s just implied. Making English sentences short enough to read the subtitle in time or to fit into a manga balloon can be a challenge sometimes.
Nemesis:Â Oh really?
Jacob: Yeah <laughing> Â I just have to do the best I can…in anime also, having the audio, you have to worry about the delivery too. Â If a character stutters, or the sentence is kind of broken into two parts in the middle…I try my best to replicate that.
Nemesis:Â …And then keep to what is going on in the scene as much as possible?
Jacob: Oh yeah.

Nemesis (via Twitter):Â I’ve noticed sometimes when I watch Anime that I can get different sub-title files with vastly different translations. I’ve always been curious why that is and wonder if you can help me with that?
Jacob (via Twitter):Â Japanese and English are very disparate languages. If two translators have taken different approaches, it might well be the case that both translations are valid even if the individual words are quite different, so long as the general sentiment is the same. If, however, the actual core meanings are different, it means at least one of the translators got it wrong. Translation is hard. Even people with the proper skill set and lots of experience will occasionally make mistakes (myself included), especially on a tight schedule. That said, nowadays there a number of skilled J<->E translators, so you generally shouldn“t see more than a few mistakes in an episode. However, back in the 90s and early 2000s, it seems there weren“t enough talented J<->E translators working in the anime field, and some shows from that era have a striking number of mistakes in their subtitles.
Nemesis (via Twitter):Â We talked about translating from Japanese to English but how about translating English to Japanese, is the experience different?
Jacob (via Twitter):Â The number one rule in translation (and media translation in particular) is only to translate into your native language because even if you spend a ton of time trying to write quality, natural-sounding prose in your second language, you will still fail in some cases. That is why only native-Japanese speakers translate Hollywood films and only native-English speakers translate anime/manga (generally speaking). Translating J->E and E->J share a number of the same challenges, but there are also some differences. For example, Japanese often relies heavily on context and subjects are often omitted and sentences are left incomplete more than in English. Also, Japanese prose can be quite repetitive, for example using the same adjective over and over, which is something to be avoided in English. So those would be some challenges of J->E translation. On the other hand, in terms of difficulties with E->J translation, English features sarcasm a lot more than Japanese, and in my opinion English slang can be more unwieldy and obscure. Furthermore, we basically just have “I”“ as the first-person pronoun in English, but Japanese has quite a few, so an E->J translator would need to select the most appropriate one.
Nemesis:Â How about with the written word, is it difficult…primarily what I do is I review comic books, and I know being a letter in comic books is kind of a lost art. Â It“s not always appreciated. But, if you don“t get the words on there right, you know, all the story gets lost. So, is that kind of difficult sometimes to translate the Japanese to English and make it fit into speech bubbles and stuff like that? Â Do you do stuff like that?
Jacob:Â Well..I don“t do the actual lettering but I have a huge amount of respect for those that do that. Â Yeah, because sometimes they even draw the balloons to be slightly bigger so that the words fit in properly. Â Sometimes there“ll be a skinny, like, vertical balloon and they“ll actually write the English in one letter at a time going down vertically
Nemesis:Â Figure it out and make it work?
Jacob: Yeah..figure it out and make it work.

Nemesis (via Twitter):Â Do you have a favorite anime, manga and comic book?
Jacob (via Twitter):Â I often get asked about my favorite anime, and in the interest of not going with the same answer every single time, I will say Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. I“m a sucker for sci-fi action and a cyberpunk aesthetic, and that show has an excellent story to boot. I“ll go with Akira for my favorite manga. It was the first manga I read in Japanese once my ability was at a point where I didn“t have to look up many words, and it has left a lasting impression on me. For comic book, I“ll say Grendel: Devil by the Deed. There“s some great writing at work there.
Nemesis:Â Cool, well thanks a lot for taking some time to talk to us. Â That was really interesting.
Jacob:Â Yeah…this was fun.

Author Profile

Nemesis

Nemesis is a poet, writer and author of the upcoming novel The Long Game. He is a writer of science fiction and supernatural thrillers. Besides novels and short stories he writes for UK based ASAP Comics developing new stories for Level 8 and OPSEC. Nem is a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point and tries to bring those experiences into his writing.

He lives and works out of his home in Riverside, California with his wife and three children. When not writing he enjoys reviewing comic books and graphic novels for ComicCrusaders.com and living the Southern California life with his family.