Written by: Theo Moon
Source: AMPlus Issue 2
Dated: February 12, 1996
Via e-mail, I had a chance to interview the group who is putting together the translations for the Evangelion TV series, among other things. The group consists of Arale, Takagi Hiroaki, Wada Mitsuhiro, Takeuchi Shouichi, Onizuka Kentaro, and a few others who were unable to reply for various reasons. For the sake of clarity and space, the replies have been edited as necessary.
Takeuchi: "OK, I'm Takeuchi Shouichi, a male otaku, age 26. I was born in Nara, and grew up in Hyogo, Tokyo, Saitama, and Chiba. Now I live in Kyoto. Some of my favorite anime and manga are Saint Seiya, Macross 7, Aoki Ryuusei SPT Layzner, Gundam, Sailor Moon, and works by Hagio Moto and Tezuka Osamu."
Wada: "I'm Wada Mitsuhiro and I'm usually on the mailing list 'Hayao Miyazaki Mailing List — Nausicaa'. I also run the 'GETRO (Ghibli External TRade Office)', 'Literal Translation', and the 'Evangelion Web Site' Web pages, the last two of which hold the collective translated output of the group. Some of my favorite works include Nausicaa, Gunbuster, and Himechan no Ribbon."
Takagi: "My name is Hiroaki Takagi and I am 23 years old. I'm [a] student of the Science University of Tokyo. I'll graduate S.U.T. this March. In anime I like Gunbuster and Evangelion and Macross. And in manga, I like Bastard, comics of Yasunaga Kouitiro, Patlabor, and lots of other stuff."
Arale: "I'm Arale-chan, a humanoid robot. You might remember itfrom Dr.Slump. I cannot tell you my age, because I am feminine-typed. I have too many favorite anime and manga to remember them all at once or pick my absolute favorite."
Onizuka: "My name is Onizuka Kentaro, and I am a 32 year-old single male. My background is molecular-bioinformatics and physics, and I am currently an engineer at Panasonic on a temporary basis. My hobbies are watching anime and linguistics. Some of my favorite anime are Gunbuster, Gall Force, Kyuuketsuki Miyu (Vampire Princess Miyu), Five Star Stories, Patlabor, and a lot of other things."
Q: When did your group start doing translations?
Onizuka: "About a year ago. When I launched the Five Star Stories E-mail Distribution list, I was very interested in classic Chinese. I first tried to write the stories of FSS in classic Chinese. That became my first time translating Japanese manga into a foreign language. Afterwards, I found that Five Star Stories was not well known to the world. So I tried to translate FSS in English. The manga version of FSS was too long for me to do on my own, so I began to translate the script of the anime version. It was not that difficult, since FSS is the story about an emperor, knights, and ladies and other such aristocratic people, so the background of FSS was rather universal to any kind of background.
"After that, I translated Gunbuster, my most favorite anime. This is when I truly realized the difficulty of translating. Gunbuster is full of Japanese cultural things (which by nature are difficult to translate), but I finished it. Since then, I've translated Miyu, Gall Force #1, Plastic Little, and an episode or two of the first Patlabor OAV."
Wada: "After Onizuka Kentaro translated Gunbuster into English and put it on rec.arts.anime, he went to the US, Italy, France and UK in the summer. While there, he bought lots of magazines and visited local anime shops. He knew that Japanese anime was introduced in small amounts and done rather poorly. He was shocked to know that most Japanese animation introduced there was centered on sex and violence."
"In August, Michael Studte came to Japan from Australia. His group in Australia did good translations of Patlabor. The people from the FSS Mailing List met him, and he showed us lots of anime magazines which he brought. I was impressed. This meeting is how Onizuka-san and I met."
"In September, Onizuka-san and I got excited talking about 'Japanese animation outside Japan'. I have been angry that the people outside Japan can see only the TERRIBLE Warriors of the Wind. We thought that we must show Japanese anime other than badly edited sexual/violent ones. So, we decided to start a translation project here in Japan."
"Onizuka-san translated Vampire Princess Miyu, Five Star Stories(FSS), Gall Force and Patlabor into English. I started 'Literal Translation Web Site' on the Internet. We don't know fluent English, so we try to translate literally. English speakers who read our translations could later do better translations based on our previous work."
"I wanted to change the situation that the anime fans are unable to deal with the anime which American distributors release slowly and often badly. I decided to translate the scripts of Neon Genesis Evangelion (which started in October) in order to make them more aware of the bad situation they are in. If I translate the scripts and send them to the fans in a week, overseas anime fans could enjoy them almost simultaneously. I thought it was a good idea. I saw Eva on Wednesday, wrote the Japanese scripts on Thursday and Friday, translated them on Saturday and Sunday, sending them onto rec.arts.anime by Sunday evening. It was very tough work for me. I spared all time I possibly could.
"Onizuka-san appealed to the anime fans on the network. Some of them joined the translation project. We started the translation Mailing List and are discussing topics there now."
Q: What was your first translation project?
Wada: "Evangelion is my first work. To be honest, English translation is stressful work for me."
Takeuchi: "Evangelion, episode 10."
Takagi: "My first translation hasn't been completed yet. It involves translating a drama from the Gunbuster CD."
Arale: "My first project has been translating some e-mail from a German anima/manga-related mailing list into Japanese for our translation group members, in order to introduce German anime/manga influences."
Q: For what personal reason are you translating Evangelion — as opposed to Slayers, for example — into English?
Takeuchi: "For me, it's trivial. I love anime — especially hard, sci-fi anime. I also love 'kakkoii' (cool, neat) stuffs. Evangelion includes both."
Wada: "When I decided to start translating Eva in September, it's because I like Gunbuster and I feel that Eva is the closest to that style of anime. It was true that in the beginning I expected a lot from it, but I was afraid that it wouldn't be a good anime. When I finally saw Eva, I got very, very excited! I thought, 'Coooooool!' I wanted to really introduce Eva to the people outside Japan as best I could."
Takagi: "Because I love Eva very much and I hope more people will know and come to love Eva (like I do)."
Arale: "Because I'd like to translate it into German in future, if I have the time and the will-power."
Onizuka: "(Well,) my aim is to promote GOOD anime to the world. People outside Japan think that Japanese anime is just sex and violence. However, those sex and violence anime well known to the world are only a portion of the whole anime world. That's why I translate my favorite animes."
"(As to Evangelion,) I was influenced by Wada-kun."
Q: How much have you done so far?
Wada: "I translated episodes 1 through 5, Onizuka-san did episodes 6, 7, 9, and 10 and Takeuchi-san has done episode 8."
Q: What specific problems have you encountered while translating Evangelion?
Takagi: "It is very difficult to translate about words using in talk, or slang."
Takeuchi: "Well, because I've never lived in an English-speaking country, basic vocabulary and grammar are serious problem for me."
Onizuka: "Military jargon, and expressions based on Japanese culture."
Q: What kind of problems do you have translating Anime in general?
Takagi: "Translating expressions unique to Japanese. For example in English, it's like 'See you later alligator.' which is in Mr. Takeuchi's signature."
Onizuka: "What I've said before, as well as shortened speech, various dialects, and slang."
Wada: "I don't know 'real' English. I can only use English via the dictionary. But I have some friends who help me with translation. They help make my translations more natural. They were a great help, and I thank them very much for it. As I mentioned, English translation is stressful work for me. I got burned-out while translating episode 5. Onizuka-san did translations for me after that."
Q: What kind of time/resource commitment does it take to translate a half-hour series like Evangelion?
Wada: "I'm a slow translator, so it takes more than 10 hours for 30 minutes (of script). I'm lucky that I can use hundreds of dictionaries at work, but I really don't have enough time to consult them. I often use the 'Science and Technology Dictionary' and 'Colloquial Expressions in Dialogue Form' in addition to a general Japanese-English dictionary and the English-Japanese Electronic Dictionary. But since I have so many other things that I want or have to do, the time it takes can be a real problem."
Onizuka: "It requires 2 to 3 hours (or sometimes more) to hear and write down the script (in Japanese) from a 30-minute episode. These days, Mr. Matsuoka from the Gainax mailing list does this most tiresome job for us."
Q: Are you affiliated with Gainax at all?
Everyone: No.
Takagi: "Translation of Eva is strictly our work. Gainax isn't related to our translations."
Onizuka: "I have contact with one of GAINAX's people. (But it is) Only a slight contact on the Internet."
(Getting to more personal information...)
Q: Do you watch other anime shows, or just Evangelion?
Takagi: "I watch lots of anime — not only Eva."
Takeuchi: "I watch Gundam W and Goldran (something kiddie), but never record them."
Arale: "In these days I don't watch any anime show, but I always watched many anime shows when I was a kid. Therefore, I know old animes much better than new ones."
Wada: "Himechan-no Ribbon, which is now being re-broadcast. No new series, though. I try to watch Power Rangers but I always miss it because I get excited about Eva being on the same day."
Onizuka: "I am very busy at the moment, So I don't get to the time to watch other anime."
Q: What other anime does your group like?
Onizuka: "Other GAINAX works and... Well, that's a difficult question. Preferences are different from one person to another."
Q: Do you collect anime or manga?
Takagi: "Why not? I have hundreds of manga and several anime."
Takeuchi: "I'm collecting manga and novels (right now). Perhaps I'll start collecting anime..."
Arale: "I'm collecting many manga. I don't know how many, though. I know only that I have 200-300 volumes of Tezuka's various manga series. I don't know about the others anymore..."
Wada: "I'm a collector of Miyazaki anime stuff. I also have three hundred shojo manga."
Onizuka: "Yes. Anime LDs."
Q: Who's your favorite author or artist?
Takagi: "In manga, I like Mamoru Nagano."
Takeuchi: "I love many authors/artists. I can't choose one person from them."
Arale: "Same here."
Wada: "Ammu — a dojinshi artist who is not famous, and Miyazaki Hayao."
Onizuka: "Gainax and Mamoru Nagano."
Q: Is there anything that you look forward to seeing that will be coming out in the next few months?
Takeuchi: "As for anime,I'm not looking for anything, but I'm looking for more info about new sentai shows."
Wada: "No. I don't expect much. I'm happy to see Eva!"
Onizuka: "I don't have the time to check any of the new series."
Takagi: "No. In anime, I am only look forward to Eva."
Q: Finally, do you see yourself translating another series after Evangelion is over?
Onizuka: "I have a lot of animes that I wish to translate for others — most of them are classic OAVs."
"Orguss02, Patlabor early OAVs, Mermaid's Forest, to name a few. Even though some of these have been long since translated, I will still translate them for the behalf of other fans of anime."
Takagi: "I hope I can, but it depends on what I do in the future for the company I work for."
Wada: "Heisei Tanuki Gassen Ponpoko, The Prince of the Sun, and Horus's Great Adventure."
Takeuchi: "Maybe some sentai shows. I love Saint Seiya, but it has 110 episodes..."
Arale: "Maybe. I'd like to try it if I come across any manga or anime that I like. Of course when my translation skills are more advanced, that is."
Well, that's it for now. Something else of note is that Mr. Wada has been working with a Japanese anime store called Beltran and the Yaesu Book Center Online Shop to get them to do overseas deliveries. Contact to Beltran is available via NIF00195@niftyserve.or.jp, while the Yaesu Book Center is accessible at NIF00201@niftyserve.or.jp. Both of these addresses are for information requests only. Also, Yaesu does not deal in manga.
Again, I'd like to thank all five of my "guests" for helping me with this online interview, and I wish them the best of luck in all their current and future endeavors.
— Theo Moon