Why am I writing about this digital graphic novel? Two reasons, the first one is to let everyone knows about this gorgeously illustrated web comic, and the second is about my association with it. Daniel wanted if anyone can translate it in their language, to get in touch with him. I contacted him about translating it in Hindi, and got immediate go ahead from him.
I really liked the way he has managed this translation part, where various people across the world are working to translate this into their language, Daniel has created an Google Doc Spreadsheet, with first column in English, and assigned one column to each of us, for filling our language translation of that column’s caption. This is a great way of collaboration effort, using free web! Nice idea Daniel!
I really liked the way he has managed this translation part, where various people across the world are working to translate this into their language, Daniel has created an Google Doc Spreadsheet, with first column in English, and assigned one column to each of us, for filling our language translation of that column’s caption. This is a great way of collaboration effort, using free web! Nice idea Daniel!
The Wormworld Saga - a digital graphic novel
Recently I came across a web based Graphic Novel by Daniel Lieske. I liked the idea of creating sequential images to present story. You just have to scroll down, no pages to turn, no scroll up and down for reading out small fonts of one page etc. It is just one panel after another, and another after that, put together merged with each other, so that you don’t even know when the page changes. Rather, there is no concept of page by page layout. It’s like each chapter is one long image, where you just keep on reading and scrolling down. The use of light, great background details and bright colours, it’s a visual treat for any graphic novel fan! You should read this at http://wormworldsaga.com
The Story
The story is about Jonas, where he's the only kid who doesn't know where he's going to high school. Jonas is a disappointment to his father, as for his father, he is a doodler than a good student, and always gets poor grades. Jonas also had an intense fear of fire ever since his mother died. When he goes into a panic attack, his father expects strength rather than offering sympathy.
Jonas is a dreamer, and he is visiting his favourite place in the world, his grandmother’s house. He has a cat and dog there, and a secret hideout, plus a forest for his adventure. But behold, there is a magical door, which opens up an adventure Jonas has not expected! That adventure continues in Chapter 2.
Idea of Translation
Why am I writing about this digital graphic novel? Two reasons, the first one is to let everyone knows about this gorgeously illustrated web comic, and the second is about my association with it. When I went on to read this comics, at the end, I was looking at the names of artists and other associated people, and saw an offer. Daniel wanted if anyone can translate it in their language, to get in touch with him. I contacted him about translating it in Hindi, and got immediate go ahead from him.
I really liked the way he has managed this translation part, where various people across the world are working to translate this into their language, Daniel has created an Google Doc Spreadsheet, with first column in English, and assigned one column to each of us, for filling our language translation of that column’s caption. This is a great way of collaboration effort, using free web! Nice idea Daniel!
Typing out Hindi text
But the task was not that easy, we do not have Hindi keyboard in Indian pc, it’s all English. I do know Hindi very well, but do not know how to type Hindi on my laptop. And don’t even think about trying out Google translator, you will end up messing the whole story with it.
So, I decided to try Google transliteration, and it worked! Now I can type Hindi in English, and Google will convert it to Hindi. And it’s not translation, but I am actually typing out Hindi in phonetic spelling, like how I would speak it, and Google is just replacing the English spelling with Hindi, keeping the phonetic part as it is. It’s like converting “Mera Bharat Mahaan” to “मेरा भारत महान”, and it’s very simple. There are issues with few words here and there, but I was able to manage, thanks to Google. I am not sure about other languages, but typing Hindi is very easy with Google Transliteration.
Translation
I now have an easy tool for typing Hindi, and my Hindi as well as English knowledge is good, so this translation should be easy, right? Wrong! I have not done any translation earlier in my life, and while reading English or Hindi books or comics, never realised that there would be many challenges while translating from one language to another. For example, what would you write in Hindi for the word “Bacon”? There is no Hindi work for it, but the meaning in Hindi is “सूअर मांस”, loosely “roasted pig” or something. Then there are capital words in English, which is to show the yelling or impact while speaking. But there is no capital or small characters in Hindi. This is another challenge. Then the phrase like “I’m glad I caught you!”, which translate into “मुझे प्रसन्नता है की मैंने तुम्हे पकड़ लिया” (like physically grabbing). So, now I realise that it’s not so easy, and requires some effort as well as time. But it was fun, and I slowly started finding solution to it. I left Bacon as बेकन, and change the capital words into bold in Hindi. The best part is that I had to change the language of few captions, to translate them into Hindi, showing correct meaning or expression, rather than just language based translation. The simple example of this is to convert “I’m glad I caught you!” into “मुझे ख़ुशी हैं की तुम मिल गए”, which is same meaning, but with different words. “That’s great!” was converted into “बहुत अच्छा है!”, “Yeah, well….” changed into “वो क्या है की...”, and so on. “Great” is a phrase which can be used in different ways, and I had to come up with different Hindi words to convey the actual meaning of this expression. Sometime it is expressing joy, sometime surprise, and sometime anger. So, according to the actual meaning, I went on to choose and fit right word or sentence in Hindi.
Implementing it into images
Google spreadsheet does not support word or character based formatting, it only support cell based formatting. So, I had to use Google document to show all words which will go as bold, to represent the capital words in English version. I passed both the document and spreadsheet to Daniel, and his layout assistant Ivan started converting it into the images. That was another nightmare, he was using Photoshop, and the first draft, all the characters are messed up, with characters in left to right mode, but vowels or “matras” in opposite mode. Here is what Daniel has to say about this in his blog:
My layout assistant Ivan Berov has recently reached the rank of official layout wizzard by finishing what was the most complicated translation up to this date. When we started to paste the first lines of Hindi text into our layout we had to realize that we were in deep trouble. To put it in a nutshell: you are not supposed to layout Hindi text in a western version of Photoshop. The process to accomplish it anyway is so mind bending that I'm not even trying to explain it to you. You have to be a wizzard to do it. That's what Ivan is now. A wizzard! Thanks also go to Binay Kumar Pandey for his translation work and for being very patient with us constantly screwing up the review layouts for him.
The final product
The final product is posted now on the website, with Indian flag used as link to Hindi version. Do read it if you know Hindi, and let me know if I have done it right or need some improvement. I do need the feedback, as I am currently translating the 2nd Chapter of this digital graphic novel. You can read it online at http://www.wormworldsaga.com/chapters/chapter01/IN/Index.php
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