Manga - lost in translation? : A study of American and German manga localisation.

While it has been argued in the past that organisational (re-)production of (foreign) media texts leads to a loss of creative value and that the translation robs the originals of their artistic status, this thesis argues that media are socially constructed entities that carry a multitude of voices encoded in their content and format. It thus does not focus on translation of a media text, in which a translator, re-writer and editors are involved, in terms of a textual comparison but as a practice carried out as integral part of the process of production. So are a multitude of other internal (marketing, public relations and sales) and external (laws, audiences, business environment) factors and voices. The thesis thus employes notions of polysemy to reflect on the different aspects encoded within the medium due the different approaches and interest the various areas of localisation are bound by. It thus breaks down the workflow into three different localisation stages: divided stages, during which specialists focus on singular aspects of production; the recreation of context, both in terms of the physical medium itself and the placement of it in a larger meta text; and finally the active framing and placing of the product in the local marketplace. At the end this internal focus is juxtaposed with those of external stakeholders. This approach will be framed by using organisational localisation of manga in Germany and the USA as an examplar. Following a print medium through production allows the steps to become visible since every step is accompanied by a tangible object reflecting said stage