“See the translator’s notes”. Origin, rise and decline of paratext in manga published in Argentina (1999-2016)
At the end of the 20th century, Japanese comics or manga became a worldwide phenomenon. In the United States and Europe publishers found in this cultural import a way of revitalizing aging comics markets and broaden the readership (Brienza 2016; Malone 2010). Even though manga’s success predates the...
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| Vydáno v: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/comicalites, |
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| Hlavní autor: | |
| Médium: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Jazyk: | Anglais |
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Comicalités
2025
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| Témata: | |
| On-line přístup: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Shrnutí: | At the end of the 20th century, Japanese comics or manga became a worldwide phenomenon. In the United States and Europe publishers found in this cultural import a way of revitalizing aging comics markets and broaden the readership (Brienza 2016; Malone 2010). Even though manga’s success predates the end of practices such as coloring or page-flipping (de la Iglesia 2016), still a certain degree of adaptation, or “glocalization” (Robertson 1995), was needed. In Argentina, a peripheral cultural market but with its own comics tradition (Vazquez 2010), manga was introduced in an even more mediated manner: apocryphal, unlicensed magazines printed by publishers trying to take advantage of the “spontaneous synergy” generated by anime’s success on TV (Pellitteri 2010); and the import of unsold stock from Spain, distributed without the knowledge or approval of the original publishers and authors. This process could be described as secondhand glocalization (Labra 2024), as these Japanese comics were selected, translated and printed without ever having the Argentine readership in mind.It makes sense that when Ivrea became the first official Argentine manga publisher in 1999 with its edition of Rumiko Takahashi’s Ranma ½, they went out of their way to both emphasize that their books were faithful to the Japanese original and differentiate themselves from the Spanish imports by adding locally produced content. One of the ways Ivrea did so was through the extensive use of paratext: mail sections in which an editor and readers discussed the work, or translation notes for example. In the latter, translator Agustín Gomez Sanz not only violated Venuti’s (1995) principle of invisibility by revealing the challenges of his practice, but also provided extensive contextual information about Japanese history, culture, and society. However, although paratext became a distinctive feature of Ivrea’s catalog, its use tended to disappear over time.How exactly did publishers like Ivrea and their competitors implement the use of paratext, and how did it interact with the actual manga text? How did Argentine readers receive and use these paratextual spaces, like mail sections? When did paratext start disappearing? What reasons, if any, were given for this decision? These research questions guide this article through an assorted corpus of manga published by Ivrea. A preliminary approach suggests that changes in the use of and demand for paratext come from both the publishing side (the increasing professionalization of translators) and the readers’ side (wikis, fan sociability shift to social networks, books as collectibles). |
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