Pine Kiss

Jun. 4th, 2006 08:06 am
cerusee: a white redheaded girl in a classroom sitting by the window chewing on a pencil and looking bored (Default)
[personal profile] cerusee
A couple of weeks ago, I picked up a couple of new manwha titles, Pine Kiss and The Land of Silver Rain, published by Net Comics (a new publisher, I think?). I've been feeling I should try to correct my complete ignorance about Korean comics, and these looked appealing enough. They've been sitting in my giant stack o' manga since then, and I only yesterday got to the first one.

Alas. Pine Kiss is craaaaaaaaaaaap. The translation is almost unreadable. It's at the level of a bad scanlation--one of those translations shooting for as much literalism as possible, with no regards for the sound, feel, or comprehensibility in the new language.

Here's a sample: Sebin, daughter of a powerful gang leader, is being driven to school by one of her father's flunkies.


Flunky: (swearing at an ambulance with its siren on) F#&king hell! Retards...Pulling them babies out at this time in the morning. On this pea sized land, we don't even have enough space to walk around. D%ckheads! F#&ckers!

Sebin: Don't come to work, starting tomorrow.

Flunky: Ha! I'm sorry...this crazy mouth did it again...don't tell boss, I mean, your father! I'll get killed. How dare I say things like "hell" and "f#&k in front of you...Ha! I'm so...sorry! ...but to Boss...no, to your father...

Sebin: Shut your mouth! (thinking to herself) Stinks...a title that reveals his background...it's nauseating!



And it it were a scanlation, I wouldn't complain, whether or not I chose to read it, but it's not. It's a commercial release, and this is not an acceptable level of work for a ten-dollar book. This without a doubt, the worst screw-up I've seen by a publisher in this field, worse than that bizarre, untranslated panel in Tactics, or Tokyopop's hit-or-miss approach to translating sound effects. I would not touch Net Comics with a ten foot pole, after this.

I've never returned a book in my life, but I'm seriously thinking taking these back in and and exchanging them. I don't think I can bring myself to slog through the rest of even Pine Kiss, much less take on Land of Silver Rain, I don't want to keep them, and I can't imagine who could possibly want them.


That said, if anybody on my flist is interested in reading badly translated Korean comics about mafia princesses and Korean fairy tales, drop me a line; they're yours for free.

Re: reposted for HTML

on 2006-06-04 11:16 pm (UTC)
Posted by [identity profile] cerusee.livejournal.com
I did read Demon Diary--it's one of [livejournal.com profile] mikkeneko's favorite series. I always felt a little betrayed by it because the ending didn't match the prologue, but on the whole, it still ranks as the best manwha title I've yet to read, and them's the breaks when you switch writers in the middle of a series.

Remniscient of Petshop of Horrors is reason enough to check something out, in my book. :D I will definitely check out the stuff you linked. I'm still interested in manwha, and free takes away some of the sting of feeling burned by a bad purchase.

September 2012

S M T W T F S
      1
2345678
9101112131415
16171819202122
23 242526272829
30      

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jul. 7th, 2025 06:47 pm
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios