『機動戦士ガンダム』
富野由悠季 （著）
Translating Yoshiyuki Tomino's
Mobile Suit Gundam novels.

Covers for the 1987 Kadokawa edition of now-legendary director Yoshiyuki Tomino's Mobile Suit Gundam trilogy.

Covers for the >1990-91 Del Rey edition of Yoshiyuki Tomino's Mobile Suit Gundam trilogy.

In January, 1988, I was contacted by Risa Kessler, vice president and director of creative development at Del Rey/ Ballantine/ Fawcett. They had just negotiated contracts to put out an English-language edition of Tomino's books, and given the nascent status of Japanese manga and anime in North America, it was at the time a fairly bold move. Kessler had kindly been given my name by Yoshiyuki Tomino. I think Kessler had also heard my name from Howard Roffman, at Lucasfilm, where I was doing quite a bit of interpreting at the time. When she asked me if I were interested in translating the series, I jumped at the chance. I had already served as Tomino's interpreter on his trips to the United States, and interviewed him in conjunction with my 1987 book on Japanese robotics; I admired his work, and was on very good terms with him. And this turned out to be very helpful, because the Gundam novels were not always easy to translate. This was partly because they were based on an animated series with which most of Japanese readers were already very familiar, but which many English-speakers knew nothing about. As far as I know, it was Tomino's first attempt at a novel, but he wanted it to stand on its own, to be a more serious, adult work, and one that could also give more depth to the original story. Whenever his phrasing was hard to decipher or convey properly, if I needed to, I could always ask him questions directly.

Del Rey was at the time one of the largest publishers of science fiction paperbacks in North America, and the company had already had great success in publishing mass market books such as the Star Wars novels, and, to a lesser extent, the Robotech novels. They were apparently hoping that Tomino's Gundam series might catch on in the same way. They kept the same basic Japanese configuration of three separate paperback volumes, retitling them to "Awakening," "Escalation," and "Confrontation." There was talk of getting Syd Mead to do the covers, but that apparently didn't work out. I personally recommended using the Japanese illustrator Yoshiyuki Takani, who is famous in Japan for his Gundam and other robot/mecha illustrations, but that didn't work out, either. The poor artist ultimately employed alas doesn't even get a credit in the books. Unlike the Japanese originals, there are no illustrations included, but there is a map showing the layout of the near-Earth Gundam universe in U.C. 0079, with Lagrange Points and Sides, which is very helpful to newcomers trying to figure out the layout of the complicated story. Among fans, there was also some controversy over the spellings I used for characters and place names. At the time,there was no standard English phoneticization of Tomino's names, and for reference some fans were using random and not accurately romanized spellings found on the box tops of plastic model kits or fan magazines sold in Japan, or spellings that they came up with themselves. I tried to hew closely to the original Japanese names, but this upset some North American fans who had already developed an attachment to spellings that they preferred. Some, for example, wanted to spell the character シャー as Char, but I spelled it as Sha, which is far closer to the Japanese (Even though the name may have its roots in "Charles Aznavour"). Similarly, some wanted to spell ジオン as Zion, or Jion, or Xeon, but I chose to spell it as Zeon, to avoid any religious connotations, which I thought Tomino did not intend. It might seem odd today, given the current international appeal of the Gundam franchise, but in 1988 I wasn't even completely sure how to translate the title. Should it really be "Mobile Suit Gundam", or "The Gundam Mobile Suit"? Although the former is firmly accepted today in English and seems obvious, for people seeing the title for the first time, there can be a certain illogic to it in English.

[Photo shows Tomino in the space shuttle, at Nasa's Johnson Space Center, Houston, Texas, 2004.]

Ultimately, the Del Rey edition of Gundam sold what I estimate to be nearly 75,000 copies--a number big enough to make most publishers drool, if not faint, especially given that there was little marketing effort made. But Del Rey was expecting success on a much larger scale. After a few years, Del Rey let the books go out of print. After that, I wrote the editors nearly every year, encouraging them to reprint the books, and telling them of the growing market for Japanese anime and the increasing number of Gundam anime fans. I had no luck, and even received one letter stating that in Del Rey's opinion the anime/manga fan scene was not growing at all in the 'States. Finally, after many years, in 2000 I was able to get the rights back to my translation, and I offered the book to Stone Bridge Press, a small independent publisher in Berkeley, California. Just trivia information for Gundam fans, but Del Rey had originally acquired the rights to translate the original Gundam novels, as well as the Z Gundam series, and asked me to translate all of them. In 1988, I said that I couldn't commit to all eight because it would take years and if the books didn't sell I would starve to death. I suggested doing the first Gundam series and seeing how it was received, then committing to the second series. Unfortunately, we never got to that stage.