[essay] Viz's Mistakes: The Mistranslation of Tenipuri
It is known amongst most fans of Prince of Tennis that the American publisher, Viz, is not entirely accurate in their translation.

Wait, that doesn't sound quite right, let me try it again...

It is known amongst most fans of Prince of Tennis that the American publisher, Viz, is complete crap at translating the series.

There, that sounds better, doesn't it?

Harsh, but, as many fans would agree, very true. There are lots of mistakes in Viz's Tenipuri-- from little common mistakes to horrible blasphemies. Here is an outline of many [but probably not all] of them.


First of all, we'll start with the more well-known changes. A personal little nitpick of mine is that the surnames and given names are reversed-- not uncommon given the fact that we're a Western audience, but it still throws me off a bit whenever I read it. More importantly, there is the fact that all of the surnames that the characters use to refer to each other are changed to given names. This... is very distracting, especially if you're familiar with Japanese culture. Politeness is big in Japan, and the way a character refers to someone can reveal a lot about the relationship they have with that person. Then Viz just goes and... destroys all that. The audience isn't stupid; many of us know that the Japanese don't typically use given names, and if some don't, a simple editor's note will do the trick. Viz was able to explain the cultural differences when they did series like Rurouni Kenshin, so why is it so difficult in Tenipuri? Let me tell you, as a Yagyuu roleplayer, it is very distracting to see him referring to everyone by given name only.

Viz, overall, doesn't seem to like names very much. In fact, some of them they just plain get wrong. Observe an instance of Oshitari's name:



That's right, Oshitori. This I could forgive if it was a simple typo, but they do this every. single. time the name appears. How difficult is it to romanize a name properly? [...Speaking of which, Karupin becomes "Kalpin." This might be just another nitpick, but... do we have an official spelling of the name? Anybody?]

Viz also tends to take a lot of liberties with their translation. This often results in famous lines being mistranslated. Like, that one line. You know the one. Tezuka requests a match with Echizen, they play, Tezuka beats him, Tezuka has him down on his knees, and then he looks at Echizen and says...



...wait, what? That doesn't sound right. Let's try that one again:



...there, that's better. Looking at the original Japanese-- "Seigaku no hashira ni nare"-- I can safely say that "become Seigaku's pillar of support" is as good as it's going to get for that line. So where does the "you can carry" blah blah blah stuff come from? I can see the "pillar = carry" thing, but.... that's taking quite a few liberties. It makes me wonder what other potentially important lines they're missing.

[Another translation I personally have never liked is the scene where Inui asks Kaidoh to play doubles with him. Kaidoh says "I refuse," but Viz changes it to a simple "No." It's another famous line, and beautiful the way it was originally, and changing it completely loses the weight of the scene. Grr.]

Which leads me into another point-- "Seishun Gakuen" is translated as "Seishun Academy," and the abbreviation "Seigaku" is turned into "Seishun." This is also very distracting. Why not just leave the "gakuen" untranslated and leave the "Seigaku" as is? It's not like we're going to care if "gakuen" isn't translated-- it's a school name. And besides, the back of their uniform says "Seigaku," anyway. Give us some credit here, Viz.

Viz also seem not to have a very good grasp on the way characters are meant to speak. Take one of Atobe's lines, for example. Let's compare the scanlation version:



with the Viz version:



...Ignoring the fact that they probably switched the speech bubbles around again. Atobe is a prissy rich boy. So, "nerds"? "Whup your butt"? Can you see a guy like Atobe saying things like that? The snob in me says not.

Of course, there are much more hilarious instances of this. I don't even need a comparison to know that Sanada's manner of speech is horribly wrong:




Whose idea was it to make straight-laced, stick-up-his-ass Sanada sound like a guy from a western? Whoever they are, I would like to find them and thank them for making me laugh hysterically.

Many of the characters' special move names are translated wrong, as well. Example-- "Tezuka Zone" is first translated as "Kunimitsu's Domain," and then later on it becomes "the Kunimitsu Zone." The Japanese clearly has it as "Tezuka Zone." I'm still wondering where that first one came from. They obviously cannot make up their minds, either.

Of course, besides that one, there's the ever-infamous "Drive V." This, as every fan knows quite well, is originally supposed to be "Drive B." The shot looks like a B. The letter in the Japanese is a romanized B. So how on earth did they get this wrong?

...Personally, I think that mistranslation is purely out of spite. There is no other possible explanation for the stupidity.

There's more to it than that that I skimmed over. But I could put up with it all. The names, the cheesiness of the lines, the mistranslations... by the time I got to the Rikkai arc, I was sure that I could put up with any shit that they threw at me, because it was Tenipuri and that was all that mattered.

And then I read the D1 match. And that idea promptly went to hell.

In this match, there are two inaccurate translations that completely ruin the point of the scenes. First of all, little Oishi and little Eiji. Let's compare the scanlation:



with the Viz version:



...I'm sorry, Viz, but that last thing there is not an invitation to play doubles. That is a simple question of whether or not Eiji plays doubles. This is quite missing the point. Oishi is the one who asks Eiji to play doubles, and Eiji refuses. In this, they make it look like Eiji just got it into his head to play doubles with Oishi one day. Not the same thing.

At this point I still thought I could put up with it. And then they gave us this.

Compare the scanlation:



and the Viz version:



[forgive the bad scan; if you look closely you can see where I was mad enough to cross out the line]

Ignoring the name changes and the fact that the scanlation makes it so we're clearly able to tell who's talking. The problem her is that Viz took speech bubbles 2 and 3 as one line when they were clearly supposed to be two. This resulted in a complete mistranslation [and before you go doubting D1, I checked my various sources, and believe me, that translation is wrong].

One version implies that Yagyuu is just as dangerous as Niou. The other version implies that Niou is blackmailing Yagyuu into their little scheme. These are two very different things. Given the fact that these two have very few appearances, and even fewer appearances together, the mistranslation of one important line like that manages to not only take away the truly interesting part of the match, but also completely ruin an important part of Yagyuu's character.

Fellow D1 fans, your opinion? I personally think it's just unforgivable.

Here ends my little spiel-- although I'm sure there are plenty of errors that I haven't pointed out. If there's anything I missed, please feel free to point it out in the comments~

EDIT: It has come to my attention that there are indeed several different interpretations of that last D1 line. Considering I've seen three different translations and at least four interpretations of that one line, I for one am sick of trying to figure it out. I don't know if my interpretation is right or not, and I don't think I will ever know at this point, so I would prefer to please just drop the issue.