EDWARD GAUVIN

… translating Archaia Studios Press’ series The Killer by Jacamon (art!) and Matz (words!), with issue #5,

released back to back two weeks ago with issue #6

to grateful exclamation. The start of this new arc, “The Debt”, is a good place for new readers to jump on. Reviews have been ecstatic, especially over the NY scenes in #6, though not a single critic has neglected to bewail Archaia’s lateness in delivering what seems their best-loved translated title. Nor am I privy to what editorial congestion held up timely publication–but it wasn’t this translator! Writer Matz provided Archaia with his own translations of his work, which they asked me to brush up. Working on this series has been a crash course in concise dialogue. The other two Archaia series I work on, Okko and The Secret History, the former with its flourishes of formal diction, and the latter with its historical freight, both allow more leeway in narration than the clipped tone of The Killer. The rule of thumb that English is 15% more concise than French does not apply to slang (and in my experience applies more to the formal French of nonfiction and newspapers than to the literary idiolects authors invent to express largely personal concepts). » Read the rest of this entry «

Continuing the series of places-I’m-already-back-from-but-forgot-to-mention-I-was-going begun with last weekend’s SPX, let me tell you about this party I went to Friday…

The launch party for the AWESOME anthology from ISR and Evil Twin was last night. I got a ride over from Jersey with Mark Smylie. We got a late start, even skipping dinner—I was late to Archaia from the PATH and Mark was wrapping up work—then idled predictably away where citybound Friday night traffic had plugged up the approach to the Holland Tunnel. When we got to Brooklyn, rain was still dripping from awnings where people huddled with their upturned collars, blinking in irritation, wet hair clinging to their skin.

I hadn’t been to this store for a year and a half, during which time the landlord had walled in what I remembered as a back patio, caged in chain link like a city schoolyard, where, in one corner of pitted concrete, a table of beer in plastic cups stood crookedly. The going explanation among disgruntled cartoonists was that neighbors had complained of the noise, which bare sheetrock walls, daubed here and there with white paint, now contained and amplified, so that the room echoed like a cheap venue from the early days of punk. High on the right, a few dusty cinderblocks peered from a ragged gap; above the only sofa, someone had hung the string of jalapeno-shaped lights that once adorned the chain link, tangled like a festive vine, but here did little either to spice up the new atmosphere or to bring back the old. There was still a drinks table in one corner: no longer aslant, but on a cement floor smooth as a garage’s. From behind the girl seated there, the kind of Frosty the Snowman you find on Christmas lawns lent its glow to the bottle of Pinot Grigio, though the reds filed beside remained opaque. I stuffed a dollar in the glass pitcher of tips, and she handed me a clear, hard tumbler of wine. Mr. Phil walked up to me with a Sharpie, proffering a name tag. In white, across a light blue strip on top, it proclaimed: I’m AWESOME. » Read the rest of this entry «

• The AWESOME anthology is getting nods, shout-outs, and a few reviews, the Flight blog, the Top Shelf SPX roundup. Reviews—one negative aside—have not mentioned “We Are Not Alone” yet, so I will chime in with a “GB, you did a f****n’ fantastic job!!!” The book ships today, Wednesday October 17^th, so get your local comic shop to order you a copy, or just buy it yerself!

Have I not plugged this book enough yet? If not, how could you resist publishers like these?

• Mark Woods posts a link to the Châteaureynaud story, “A Life on Paper”, at AGNI Online.

• Sam “Golden Rule” Jones links to Jean-Philippe Toussaint’s “Cap Corse”.

Many thanks!

I have a new idea for my blog: instead of promoting upcoming events, which I never seem to get around to doing in time, whether because I don’t know what to say, or feel self-conscious about self-promoting, or harbor a secret resentment of deadlines and derive a dark joy from failing them, I’ll blog about events after they happened, and hopefully make you wish you’d been there.

This is the feeling I get, anyway, when I read other people’s blogs and find out about happenings I was stupid to have missed, shindigs I can kick myself for not having dragged myself to, or clambakes to which I wasn’t even invited but would very much like to have been a part of.

This plays to my natural nostalgic impulses: for someone so fundamentally wistful, memory is a constant component of daily perception, and instead of past, present, and future, time might better be divided for me into regret, disappointment, and anticipation.

The obvious downside to this is you’ll never know where I’m going to be. But how many people does that matter to, anyway?

I was, for example, at SPX. My first, and a fun time. Ha-hah! Bet you didn’t know that, did you? The AWESOME! anthology, which features the story that the header image above is taken from, debuted there.

» Read the rest of this entry «

I’m not sure how I feel about this. I hope that doesn’t make me sound a grouch. It’s a mean cutlass, though. And it’s proof positive Sardine is being read, to say the least.

I’d wrapped the next Sardine, on which Guibert flies solo (no Sfar), a few weeks ago. Always a pleasure to see what puns can be smuggled across the language border. Got called in today for an emergency on-site translation of a last-second substitute story. This is about as exciting as the profession gets, folks—frantic editors and a sense of mission! Felt grateful I wasn’t halfway around the world—just in Jersey. On the way into Manhattan, the train stalled twenty minutes for a drawbridge. This was a first. All around me, people shuffled papers, shifted briefcases, sighed, texted, left messages, ruffled their hair so they’d arrive, I suppose, looking frustrated in explanation for their lateness. Across the aisle, a girl bet her grandfather that the Amtrak stopped beside us would get to go first.

“See, I told you,” she said when it pulled away. I shared a smile with the old man.

Money makes the world go round. » Read the rest of this entry «

Another San Diego Comic-Con come and gone. What we cannot speak of we must pass over in silence.

Photo courtesy Poketo,  from whom I also bought this nifty tome.

Yes, this post has nothing to do with its title.  Add a little Dada to your day!

UPDATE: This just in from Evil Twin! Advance copies of the AWESOME! anthology may be ordered here at the AWESOME price of 45% off cover! That’s right: only $8.22 for 208 pages of pure comix AWESOMENESS. What’s more, your support goes to two AWESOME causes: all profits will be split between the Indie Spinner Rack podcast and a student scholarship for the Center Of Cartoon Studies. The more pre-orders, the more books are printed. You owe it to yourself to spend your money AWESOMELY. » Read the rest of this entry «

First Second founder Mark Siegel, in an interview at ICv2, has referenced their Cyril Pedrosa Spring ’08 title I’d kept unnamed on the Translations page, alors autant vendre la mèche, moi aussi: Three Shadows, from Delcourt’s Shampooing imprint, is a paean to parental love and the necessity of letting go from the former Disney animator. I can only agree with Mark’s murmured and admiring assessment during our brief San Diego conversation: “angles you’ve never seen before”. The French version, tentative cover above, comes out this fall.

Scheduled to be out the door and on the freeways 10 minutes ago, with a box of donuts in my lap, on the road south from L.A. Yessir, it’s Friday, and I’ll be at the great Comic Con of 2007, for all those fans of… er, translation. Seriously, though, today or tomorrow, check out my friend and co-creator G.B. Tran‘s table in Small Press, or drop by at the Archaia Studios booth and say Hi! I’ll likely be there or roaming the vast nerdy plains. Can’t wait! Also, check out the afternoon premiere of NBC’s fall series Chuck, co-created by the formidable Chris Fedak–known in college days of yore simply as The Fedak.

“The French,” begins Miss Bird, “are different from you and me.” Vive la différence, and vive Miss Bird, prolific Amazon reviewer who in the thoroughness (mystifyingly unmotivated, but let’s not give gift horses oral exams) of her commentary saw fit to honor me beside Alexis Siegel with a mention for my work on Tiny Tyrant in these choice words:

“Not for the first time would I wonder to what extent translator Alexis Siegel and (uncredited) Edward Gauvin added their own personal touches to these exceedingly funny bits of wordplay. Princess Hildegardina, for example, speaks with a lofty convoluted speech that frequently leaves Ethelbert tongue-tied himself. How many of these words are direct translations of the French and how many the delightful vocal curlicues of Siegel and Gauvin?” » Read the rest of this entry «