I'll just have to read something else, then

[julesjones]

Arrived home to find yet another installment of an order I put into Amazon last week, which has been arriving in dribs and drabs. This slim and sylphlike packet contained one yaoi manga. Said yaoi manga is offered by Amazon UK, and has a title in English. I think it may even have ended up on my wish list and thence in my basket courtesy of an "if you liked that, you'll probably like this" email from Amazon UK. So I do not think it was unreasonable of me to assume that the text contained therein would be the English translation.

Alas, it was the German translation. It has an English title on the cover, but the contents are entirely in German, a language which I do not read even a little bit. I have requested a returns number, on the grounds that the item is unfit for purpose. Purpose being me reading it, in a language I am fluent in...

And I was looking forward to reading it, damn it. :-(

Comments

[nojay.livejournal.com]

German and French publishers release quite a lot of manga series that don't appear in English translation. I don't track the yaoi/yuri stuff particularly but a few of the titles in question are ones I particularly like and I have in fact bought some French editions since I can fight my way through the text with my schoolboy French and the occasional help of Google Translate. It gives me a better understanding of what is going on than hacking the same text in Japanese via assorted online tools but it does leave me at the mercy of the original Japanese-French translators.

[julesjones]

This particular author has several titles in English translation, and several titles in German translation. What I was not expecting was an English title and German content, sold by the English language site with no warning...

If I'd ended up with a French translation, I might conceivably have tried to fight my way through, but I have non-zero knowledge of German only in comparison with my knowledge of Japanese.

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

And I presume it's not the sort of thing you could ask my sister to translate!

[julesjones]

No, not really... :-)

[growlycub.livejournal.com]

Well, you could always post a few sentences at a time here and I'd translate them for your live! :)

[julesjones]

[grin]

If you'd been in the UK, I'd have asked if you wanted it, but unfortunately it's heavy enough to be a non-trivial amount to post to the US.

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

The next question is... are they going to start recommending you dictionaries?