As an editor, this is something that interests me. People have different preferences on sound effects, and so far I’ve changed my style of editing them a bit from book to book, depending on the art style of the book. But if You readers had your choice, which method of SFX editing would you rather see?
The results of this poll may or may not have an effect on how our releases look like in the future, but they will not affect the the speed (or lack thereof) we release in.
Thanks for voting!
Well, if it’s not too much work for the editors/cleaners, I’d love to see SFX replaced whenever possible. It’s jarring for me to go looking for footnotes in the middle of reading, and the add-SFX-translation-next-to-SFX is a bit hit and miss – what happens if there isn’t enough room, or if it has to be upside down, left to right, or top to bottom to fit in?
Others tastes may vary, but personally, edited SFX make it more pleasant to read.
This is coming from someone who can read hiragana and katakana, but I don’t think it’s necessary to replace the sound effects; in fact, sometimes I feel like it messes with the artwork if they’re pasted over. Typography is important as well, and even the best editor can’t duplicate the appearance of some really good sound effects. If you read enough manga, I think you should eventually be able to recognize or memorize the meaning of most sfx on your own, even if you don’t study Japanese. That being said, I’d probably still add a footnote for sounds that were vital to understanding something.
Replacing SFX with English for me. Even if I understand it, I’m pretty sure that people would find explanations tedious and I’d rather the SFX be straight to the point, which is what a comic is, straight to the point XD
Well, I definitely like it most if the SFX is replaced. In my opinion, a scanlation looks best when SFX are not japanese anymore because I think if you want to make a whole scanlation from japanese to english, you should also change the SFX – or at least if it is possible for the responsible person, because seeing bad replacements is even not very pretty.
Placing a note outside the panel is a very good way if the SFX is very difficult to replace or if the english word doesn’t make sense, but for easy – whatever easy means for the editor – SFX I would/will definitely try to replace it.
For me, a real no-go is to write the translation just next to the SFX. I know that some SFX are really hard to replace (own experience xD) but this method seems to me as if the editor just wants to rush trough the manga and make the scanlation as fast als possible. And besides, I don’t really think it looks esthetic if there is a english translation next to the SFX…