Send your contact info to nick.mamatasATvizDOTcom and I’ll fwd your info to the PR people who handle review copies.

Listing the the translators on the covers seems an excellent practice; as I’m sure you know perfectly well, the same text handed to three different translators can produce three very different versions, and so much of the quality of the final product depends on the skill of the translator’s writing skills, as well as depth of understanding of the authorial intent.

If you’d, perchance, like to send me a review copy or two, I absolutely won’t promise to read them and review them on my blog, but it could happen. If you’d rather not bother, that’s just fine; I’ve got too much to read as it is.

I do envy you chances for trips to Japan!

Our translators come from the growing pool of professional J-E translators that have emerged over the past decade or two thanks to the rise of manga and Japanese video games. Many of them also work doing business translations.

We list the translators right on the covers. THE LORD OF THE SANDS OF TIME was translated by Jim Hubbert, who has been Studio Ghibli’s translator for years. Alexander O. Smith and Joseph Reeder translated ALL YOU NEED IS KILL. Smith also did BRAVE STORY, which won an award for translated YA/children’s lit last year. We’re running a series of interviews with the translators on http://www.haikasoru.com, so be sure to click over occasionally for those.

We acquire via informal committee: my supervisor Masumi Washington keeps a close eye on what’s coming out in Japan and reads the material in the original, and I and Eric Searlman, another editor, will decide which books to commission samples for, and then the three of us will talk about which books we wish to do and when based on the sample. As far as who gets their way the most, well…

We do draw from a range of Japanese publishers; we’re not simply translating a single firm’s line or anything like that, nor are we bound only to a small handful of licensors.

So, um, who are the actual translaters? What are their professional credentials?

In the Avon Latin American line, we did such writers as Octavio Paz, Marcio Souza, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Mario Vargas Llosa, Manuel Puig, Julio Cortazar, Jorge Amado, Machado de Assis, Reinaldo Arenas, among various others. We used highly credentialed translators such as Thomas Colchie, because, well, if we didn’t make clear who the translator was, so that people in the field knew his reputation, our line wouldn’t have been taken seriously.

So that’s why I’m left wondering who will be doing the actual written translations from Japanese to English for Haikasoru, since it’s clear that Nick Mamatas is “commissioning the translation” from… who? What are these people’s other credentials in translating other Japanese novels to English?

Or are they unknowns, and it’s up to Nick to essentially turn their versions into great English-language versions?

This is what I’m left wondering after reading about this quite interesting venture, which I applaud.

It’s also entirely unclear to me who the actual acquiring editor of these books is: Nick Mamatas? Some sort of committee?

Lastly, what sort of pool is Viz/Haikosuru drawing from? Trying to make deals for whatever Japanese-langugage books they most like and can most reasonably buy English-language term license rights to? Or are they dealing only with certain Japanese publishers? Or what? I’m trying to get a sense of how representative their choices can be.

Thanks for any answers to any of this from Mamatas-san/N Kid.