Precisely three years after the animated adaptation first graced televisions and monitors the world over, the original The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya light novel1 is being released in English. But this isn’t the first time that English speakers have been able to read a copy in their native tongue.
As I’m sure many of you will know, the now-legendary animated adaptation of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya received a really rather spiffing English-language fan translation by a group known simply as “a.f.k.” way back when it was originally broadcast in Spring 2006. What many of you may not know is that the text of the first Haruhi book (and the first couple of chapters of the second one) was also given a full fan translation by the very same people.
At the end of the final fansubbed episode, the members of a.f.k. were credited. It seems that the mastermind behind this adaptation is a fellow who goes by the handle “Strato”, who we can assume was also responsible for the similar novel translation, which could be viewed on a website linked to in the credits. Ever since North American publishing house Little, Brown Books for Young Readers (a division of the Hachette Book Group) announced that they had the license to publish an English edition, the a.f.k. translation has been removed from the website and replaced with a message promoting the upcoming release. And this is all well and good: once an English-language license has been announced, the unofficial translation is often voluntarily removed from circulation.
From the end of Haruhi Episode 14. Note the credits on the bottom-left and the URL on the bottom-right.
Now, with the finished product just hours away (at time of writing) from official release, some lucky folk have received their copies early. As I’m still waiting for mine to be posted, I have to make do with a free promotional excerpt being offered on the official website. Giving it a read, I notice that it’s quite similar to the a.f.k. version I read a while back. Very similar, in fact. Hey, I recognise that line! I think to myself. Those idioms, that writing style… They didn’t, did they?
They did. Barring some cosmetic changes and an amount of copy-editing, the official English-language release of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya uses a.f.k.’s fan-produced translation.
Here's the opening text from the sample on the Hachette Book Group website…
…and here's a.f.k.'s translation of the same. Bear in mind that this edition was released in June 2006, nearly three years before the English print version.
It’s not quite word-for-word, but the similarities are undeniable. Although translations of the same work, by their nature, are inevitably going to be similar, this one’s just too uncanny to be pure coincidence. They even use the same backronym for “SOS Brigade” that a.f.k. used (the “Save the World by Overloading it with Fun Haruhi Suzumiya’s Brigade”) as opposed to the (in my opinion, superior) translation from the anime adaptation’s English DVD release (the “Spreading Excitement All Over the World with Haruhi Suzumiya Brigade”). As I said, I don’t have the full, finished product to hand, but the people that I’ve discussed this with on Twitter who do have the novel agree that they’ve got to be the same translation.
So, does this mean that Hachette are making a dirty profit from the sweat of a fan’s brow? I don’t think so. In this day and age of Internet Vigilantism, a publisher would never try and pull something like this off; they’d be found out immediately. This very post is proof of that. No, it’s much more likely that Strato himself (or at least his translation) was brought into the project with his full consent, and was edited for accuracy and readability as such. This appears to be the current consensus, anyway. It’s all speculation at this point, but it makes sense: The link from the Haruhi episode mentioned earlier now leads to a short “press release” which notes that someone named Joe Monti (who may or may not be a member of a.f.k.) will be overseeing the program. I reckon that if the time was taken to credit that person on that particular website, then he ought to be involved with the group somehow. I’ll update if any new details come to light.
For the sake of comparison, the original a.f.k. novel translations can still be found on the Internet Archive (and the Hachette sample to compare it to can, at time of writing, be found in PDF form on their website). If you’re still not convinced, try comparing both editions to the (in my opinion, inferior) fan translation at Baka-Tsuki; by looking at this edition, you can see just how divergent different translations can be.
This being that sort of blog, however, I am obliged to stress that you really ought to go out and buy a copy of the book (or at least rent it, if your local library’s “hip” enough) if you want to read it. The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya is released on the 1st of April in the USA in both paperback and hardback editions. I expect that your local import comics retailer should have it in stock shortly; elsewise, try RightStuf (noting the US$10 international postage) or Amazon.
Many thanks to my Twitter followers—particularly @animealmanac and @animevice—for helping me with my research. I’d've liked to’ve included the original conversation here, but WordPress got confused with all of those <span>s I got from copying and pasting the individual tweets. There’s probably a better way. One day I’ll learn what it is and then update the post accordingly.
- Light novels are, in general, quick-and-easy reads aimed at the sort of person who does not read a lot of books but who is into anime, manga and the general fandom—not unlike myself, in fact. As such, these books are often (if not usually) based on—or adapted into—manga, video games and animated series. Although printed to a cheaper standard than mainstream books, light novels are not necessarily synonymous with Western pulp literature, but there is a great degree of similarity: Like pulp magazines, light novels are commonly serialised in periodicals such as The Sneaker. [↩]
