Pipeline and Sundry: The Eurocomics Revolution, Digital “Graduates”, Van Hamme Unretires
There’s Hope
Over at The Comics Journal, Bart Hulley has an optimistic look at the increasing rate at which European comics are making it into print in the North American market.
He brings up some interesting points, many of which I haven’t discussed too seriously around here. The two biggest one are:
- Are the translations any good?
- Are they translating the right titles?
Maybe I’m not in a great position to judge, since I can’t read the original French text. It seems to me, however, that the translations are, at the very least, fine. There are occasionally hiccups, but they’re not problems.
I know that these translations often go through multiple approvals before making it to “print” to help fend off the most obvious blunders. I don’t think rushing them is the problem at all. Nobody is ever happy with any translation. Yes, there are people who think Anthea Bell wasn’t perfect, too. (Crazy, isn’t it?)
Maybe there’s room to add in more “flavor” to some of the translations? I guess, but I’m not missing it just yet.
I’m more interested in the choices of books to publish. Most of what makes it to print are books I’m not that interested in, or that I don’t think enough people would be interested in to get excited over. Frankly, in the case of Cinebook, their economics work by printing worldwide, so their output includes a lot of stuff that I have to think is Dead On Arrival over here, but might sell well in Great Britain or another country they have interests in.
A lot of great stuff never makes it to paper. A thriller book like “Ken Games” would be an amazing introduction to North American superhero readers, for example. It’s a thriller with great art that would appeal to the “Wednesday Warrior” crowd.
It has yet to see print.
Unfortunately, a lot of the classic stuff isn’t going to make a dent because some would find them “problematic” for various reasons. Hell, look at the complaints about Asterix — I’d even agree with some of them, but then people push it as far out as they can go and wind up looking absurd.
There’s a ton of “safe” stuff that could work, but for some reason we just get new printings of “Metabarons” over and over again. And then there are some kind of rights issues that continue to deny us the work that people in North American have actually asked for when it comes to Moebius. Argh!
There is some hope, though, as some of my favorites have seen print recently. (“Harmony” and “The Old Geezers” comes to mind there.) I don’t know if they made a dent in the market, especially when they come from smaller publishers that I don’t think many people in North American even know exist.
I’m just hoping that enough darts get thrown at enough boards that something eventually hits, and hits big. As much as I complain about some of the choices I mentioned above, there are still a lot of great books that could find a strong market if readers would give them a chance, or if retailers would stock them, or if the publishers had the money to market them properly. (Hint: Current comics professionals with large audiences can be your biggest word of mouth generators. Dare I call them “influencers”?)
The article also includes a couple quotes that made me jealous because I was working on an article and failed to get an interview from a similar person about this topic a year ago — holidays, time schedules, Festivals, COVID all played a part.
Maybe I need to get back to that?
I also noticed that a few of the books mentioned prominently in the article — “Invincible“, “Pico Bogue“, “Freaks’ Squeele” — are ones I have reviewed here. I have not reviewed “The Little Hens,” though. I don’t think there’s an English translation of any kind.
The comments in that article start talking about which comics people should read, and it took all of my restraint not to drop a link back to this site, the only review site in English in North America focused on this kind of material. For as much as I complain about a lack of marketing for these comics, look at the crap job I do in marketing myself. Oh, the ironies…
I hope Hulley is right and that this slow trickle of translated European comics is only going to continue to grow, even if it requires more crowdfunding. It’s a bit frustrating that, once again, success seems to be centered on print comics only. It reminds me of some of the attitudes people have about movies going to streaming instead of being in theaters…
In Print
In somewhat related news:
Europe Comics notes the books that graduated into print in a new article. Again, I’ve reviewed a bunch of these, though not nearly all. It’s a varied list, including a couple I had forgotten about.
NBM published “The Forbidden Harbor”?!? That book haunts me. I read both volumes and enjoyed it greatly, but had a tough time writing a review. It was tough to find an angle on it, though I think it’s worth recommending.
I forgot Insight Editions exists, but they did a print edition of “Harmony” that collects the first three books. Cool!
I completely missed that Fantagraphics printed “The Grand Odalisque,” too. It’s 128 pages, so I assume they printed both books in the series together. I need to read the sequel book one of these days…
Jean Van Hamme Fails Retirement
Photogaph By Éditions Dupuis – Éditions Dupuis, CC BY 3.0
Well, that didn’t last long…
Jean Van Hamme is writing a new “Largo Winch” book already.
It’s a three book prequel series telling the tales of earlier generations of the Winch family.
Philippe Berthet is the artist. The first book is due out in the spring.
You can take the boy out of Largo Winch, but you can’t take the Winch family out of the boy? Something like that…
THE GRANDE ODALISQUE doesn’t come out until Feb 2021. As a translator, I’m thrilled of course when these books get picked up by U.S. publishers, but yes, it is very disappointing when they fall under the radar.
Having been able to compare the French and the English versions of Asterix, put me in the “Anthea Bell wasn’t perfect” category. She gets undue credit for Goscinny being the genius that he is but she can also be forgiven for not thinking her work would travel beyond the British Isles. I acknowlege that translating/adapting is a very unrewarding task, if done right, and only noticed if badly done or if liberties are taken, straying from the source material. I know a few guys here who translate american stuff for the French market, and whenever I read one of those books, I can’t help but think “I could do that better”. Of course, I never tried to do that myself professionally because, one, it doesn’t pay much, if anything, and two, the unrewarding part that would make my work the target of a$$holes like myself ;-0 That being said, translation is a necessary evil for those who do not have the time, the skills or the dedication to try the source material in its original idiom (for which effort praise is highly deserved).
I agree with you that the second question is the most important, publishers policies can be hard to fathom… So is their masappreciation of foreign sensibilities, at times.
No one here is surprised that Van Hamme is back, Largo and XIII are his cash cows so he probably need a new sports car…
I totally agree with JC. I know it’s sacrilege to say so, but it’s true in some cases. In my experience, where many translations go wrong is lack of understanding of the source text. Goscinny was an absolute genius, but many of his puns were completely missed in the English translations (granted, I haven’t actually read the English translations, only the parts I’ve seen in Augie’s reviews, but just that was enough to tell me there were things the translators failed to grasp). As for some of the early translations of my all-time favorite Franco-Belgian cult classics on Cinebook… they made me want to cry. Not the newer ones, Jerome is very good :):)
I will admit though, that some of the puns in ASTERIX would be really hard to translate, even when you do understand them. One of my top five is, “Eh oui, il ne faut jamais parler sèchement à un Numide,” but given the language-specific pun (Yep, you should never speak dryly to a Numidian, except that in French, Numidian sounds like HUMID, so It reads, You should never speak dryly to a HUMID), I’m not sure what I would do with that one.
Anyway, Augie actually thinks someone can learn a foreign language in a weekend, so it’s hopeless to try to drive this point home with him 🙂
If it makes you feel better, it took me 350+ days to get to the past tense lessons in DuoLingo. I’m beginning to think you’re correct about this language thing.
But I’m no Anthea Bell. And, darnit, I need my gods and goddesses to aspire to be. Willful ignorance for the win!
I read a new book from another publisher this week whose translation needed a second pass to clean up the dialogue. It wasn’t stylization problems; it was just clumsy language that I tripped over. That should be the easiest problem to solve — read the translation out loud once before publishing.
But, generally speaking, I don’t think bad translations are the #1 or even #2 cause of BD NOT breaking into the North American market in a big way. I think it’s mostly book selection and marketing, plus the problems built into the Direct Market that works its hardest to keep out anything that’s not a 32 page stapled superhero comic….
French heritage, when it comes to comic book dialogue, stems from classic literature. You’ve seen pages of Blake & Mortimer so you know what I mean 😉 There is zero attempt in yesteryear French comics to sound like real spoken dialogue. Someone like Bendis would never work here, even in French movies and TV, dialogue purposefully sounds like Theatre sometimes, it’s the storytelling technique giving us the impression to retain some of our past glories maybe…
“Il ne faut pas parler sechement a un Numide” has to indeed be my all-time favourite Goscinny quote, right next to “Je sens confusement quelque chose.” but there are probably a million more in Asterix, that wouldn’t really translate in any other language, I definitely agree with Mr Montana Kane here who, noncontempt to have the coolest name ever (I’m jealous) also has impeccable taste.
If Manga now flourishes in the western world lifted by amateur scantrad, publishing choices must indeed be the main deciding factor in what gets out there. I do wish American mainstream would embrace the European model but you can’t really fault publishers for not taking that kind of risk in the current context. They tried the anthology format that worked in the Golden Age a few times in history after that, be it Marvel Comics Presents, Adventure Comics, Action weekly, etc. but none of these really stood the test of time, sadly.
@JC, I agree about the theatrical aspect of dialogue in French film, novels and comics. I think it gives it a stilted, unnatural feel and I’m not a big fan (however, to a non-French speaking viewer, they won’t notice a thing, for instance, when watching a Rohmer film). There is a much bigger difference between written French and spoken French than there is between written English and spoken English. The fact that there is a major past tense that you don’t typically use when you speak but that is often the go-to tense in literature (the passé simple) is part of the problem. I do find that all that has changed a lot in the past decade or so, though, and dialogue sounds much more natural in film and TV.
@Augie. Europe are getting more attention than ever before (thanks in part to people like you) so there is reason to remain hopeful! Certainly this year at the Eisner Awards there was quite a long list of foreign titles on the nominee list, which was heartening.
That was supposed to read “Comics from Europe” and not “Europe”…
Nice to see the subject has provoked some lively discussion.
You have to remember that Anthea Bell ran almost all of her translations by Goscinny for approval. The only person who gets undue credit is Derek Hockridge who did next to nothing yet is co-credited on all the translations. If you want some insight into Bell’s true brilliance, I can highly recommend “Le coq gaulois à l’heure anglaise” by DELESSE and RICHET (2009) which delves into how Bell solved the countless problems posed by Goscinny’s texts.
Again, I’m basing my comments on the few excerpts I’ve seen here, which indicated that there was a lack of familiarity with some of the source material. I have no doubt Bell was a genius when it came to political references and such.
OK, for example, for those of you who have the English book ASTERIX AND THE LAUREL WREATH: what does the weird looking circus dude tell Asterix and Obelix right before they’re about to into the arena to fight the big cats? I’m curious to know.
Wait, Asterix talks to a few funny looking guys just before then… On 36B: Asterix asks, “Er.. where are the other animals?” And the man in the toga replies, “Inside that one!” as he points to the lion. The crowd shouts “Thieves! Swindlers! We’ll wreck the circus!” Or do you mean the red-haired guy on page 35B, who does a little sing-song, “Come along, now! The audience won’t eat you!”
I’m talking about the really weird looking bald circus dude who brings them food (seriously funny joke about how prisoners sentenced to be thrown from the cliff are fed heavy food while those thrown to the lions are brought delicacies), tells them Caesar is out of town, and begs them to go into the arena because the circus is his whole life and “they won’t regret it.” But right before they’re about to go into the arena the first time, before finding out Julius isn’t in Rome, he tells them something like, “And you know what I say to you.” What he meant is that he’s saying “Sh!t” to them, because in French, that’s the equivalent of “Break a leg,” i.e. what you tell someone for good luck before they go on stage. So he says it without saying it, and then Obelix keeps repeating it, but Obelix clearly doesn’t know himself what it stands for, so he just tells everybody “And you know what we say to you!” before he punches them.
Anyway, it’s just one of those little things, like the Egyptian’s puns in Asterix Legionnaire, that probably a lot of translators would miss unless they spent a big chunk of their life immersed in French culture.