Jacques Lin

Translating a Japanese Pop Culture Research Article into a Newspaper

How has Japanese pop culture influenced the West? How did it bring anime and manga

into North America? These are just some of the questions I have ever since I became aware of

it’s growing popularity. With this in mind, I researched and found an academic article “Talking

manga: bringing Japanese pop culture to the North American mainstream”. This article was a

series of interviews between its writer, Jeffery Klaehn, and 3 manga editors working for different

manga production companies in America. This article and the interviews are targeted towards

students who have an interest in learning manga distribution editors’ take on why Japanese pop

culture is growing. The article’s interview with the 3 editors gave a strong insight as to why they

believed the influence of anime and manga opened the Japanese pop cultural doors to the

Western readers and audience. For this reason, I decided to translate this article into a newspaper

article..

Jeffery Klaehn’s “Talking manga: bringing Japanese pop culture to the North American

mainstream” follows the interview between Klaehn and 3 separate editors in the manga

distribution and licensing industry. These interviews were done during the mid 2000s. The first

interviewee is Kara Allison who is the editor for TOKYOPOP, a manga licensing and

distribution company. Allison talks about her perception of the westernization of manga and the

influence it has on modern art and literature. Marc Weidenbaum, the second interviewee, is the

editor-in-chief for Viz Media. In his interview, he acknowledges the impacts of popular shonen

jump (a manga industry who’s audience are largely teenagers) characters such as Naruto have an

impact for people – claiming the show has aspects of relatability or significance that has a

positive effect on its readers. Additionally, he also expresses his personal views on how the
licensing company views the impact Japanese pop culture has on Westerners. The last interview

is Eric Searleman who also works as an editor for Viz Media but doesn’t specialize in the

“shonen jump” mangas that Viz Media is highly known for. Instead, Searleman works on the

unconventional mangas that aren’t always the most popular but still brings a variety to their

distribution. Searleman talks more about how licensing companies such as Viz Media’s Shonen

Jump has a wide variety of shounen mangas including Dragon Ball, Naruto, Inuyasha,

Yu-Gi-Oh, etc. He also discussed how Japanese pop culture such as anime and manga open up a

brand new window of curiosity for readers. This is heavily different from American comics that

the West is so familiar with.

I chose this article for a number of reasons. Finding an article that specifically talks

about the influence and how it brought Japanese pop culture to North America was incredibly

scarce. There weren’t a lot of scholarly articles that discussed this topic. The ones that were are

from published books which I could not use for this assignment. I also wanted to find a

published article that provides a secondary source of insight on the topic. Having editors from

manga licensing and distributing companies allowed a perspective from someone who works in

that industry. This research article as well as the interviews between three separate editors in

brought detailed backgrounds and their personal perspectives.

Figuring out the audience for my paper was also important. Newspapers can have a broad

range to their targeted audience. Sandra Giles mentions that, “Intentions—a sense of audience

and purpose and of what the writer wants the essay to do—are essential to a good piece of

communicative writing” (Giles, 2010). This shows that the importance of reflection within the

writing process will highly depend on the targeted audience and the goal my genre translation

needs in order to be effective. Having a research article with personal insight from the
contributing editors allowed me to figure out why I decided to write a newspaper article. During

my early childhood, I fondly remember reading newspapers and magazines. As I grew up and

began reading newspaper articles online, it fascinates me the most when a news coverage is

about a new discovery or research rather than depressing crimes. I decided to add the discovery

aspects with the interview and emphasize the growing impact Japanese pop culture has on the

modern world. I also blended the informational texts one may found in magazines such as

National Geographic, but added informal, easy to understand words. I also included a

subcategory, “CULTURE”, in the top left to make it feel more like this article belonged to the

cultural news section. This newspaper article’s main targeted audience are people who are

familiar with the “weeb culture” as well as any reader who has a strong interest in Japan. I titled

the newspaper as SBS News (Santa Barbara Student News) to keep the look that this is a

newspaper..

Understanding what I should and shouldn’t include in the newspaper was also important.

I wanted to keep the look that this is a newspaper while being informational enough for the

audience. In the definition of a genre, author Lisa Bickmore states that “Each time a writer takes

up a genre, the writer reaffirms, in a way, the stable features of the genre. But the writer

also—perhaps in minuscule ways—might adapt and reshape the genre” (Bickmore, 2016a).

When writing my newspaper article and manipulating the information from the primary source, I

was careful to include the strongest beliefs each interviewee had on the impacts of Japanese pop

culture. I also used quotes from the interview itself and added them into the newspaper to create

the look that this newspaper is legit. Additionally, I separated the news into separate sections: an

introduction, a general information, interviews 1-3, and a conclusion/why it’s important. While

adding the images, I made sure they were relevant to that particular section of the newspaper.
 Since I was translating a research article that contains an interview, I needed to make sure

my newspaper doesn’t just summarize the content. Instead, I used other news article as

references so I could figure out how to do it. Specifically, I drew inspiration from National

Geographic’s informational texts, CNN’s subcategories of news, and New York Times’s headers

and footings. Karen Rosenberg’s brings a incredible advice on reading academic articles – “Once

you have the main argument you can make wise decisions about which parts of the text you need

to pore over and which you can blithely skim” (Rosenberg, 2011). With this in mind, I separated

the unnecessary information (company interests, origins, etc.) with information that best suits my

thesis (impacts, influences, personal thoughts, etc.). Lisa Bicksmore also has an important

reminder when separating the informational texts – “So, by analogy, when a writer wants to deal

in information, s/he must first lay hands upon information of good quality, which readers will

find credible and useful.” (Bicksmore, 2016) Additionally, I needed the ensure the information is

relevant to the main question “Why/How is Japanese pop culture impacting North America?”.

One of the most challenging aspects of a newspaper article was the word choice and

organization. Since my paper is a newspaper, I needed to ensure the words were not too formal

or overly specific. Word choice is important in a newspaper article because something too

advanced for the reader will only cause them to become uninterested. A hard to understand

newspaper article is considered to be useless. To overcome this challenge, I simplified certain

parts of the interview into the central idea. Organization and the general layout was also a tough

challenge to overcome. I haven't been keeping up with the news. Due to this, it makes it difficult

to understand how I should head my title and what should the subheadings be. In order to

overcome this challenge, I researched various newspaper articles online to understand what’s

usually on a news article and what isn’t.

 Translating a scholarly article into a newspaper was an interesting experience. It was cool

to see how one should balance the interviews between three different manga editors.

Incorporating what should be included as well as what should be left out was a tough challenge.

Furthermore, figuring out who my targeted audience is and ensuring it will reach the audience

was important for the entire paper. By making sure all of these follow the central topic of

learning the insights of Japanese pop culture with the 3 editors, I was able to learn and

understand what I needed to improve on in my writing.

Works Cited

Bickmore, L. , (2016, August 1). Genre in the wild: Understanding genre within rhetorical

(eco)systems. Open English @ SLCC.

https://openenglishatslcc.pressbooks.com/chapter/genre-in-the-wild-understanding-genre-
within-rhetorical-ecosystems/ [Accessed 22 May 2022].

Bickmore, L., 2022. The Information Effect: The Facts, the Figures, the So What?. [online]
Openenglishatslcc.pressbooks.com.

https://openenglishatslcc.pressbooks.com/chapter/the-information-effect-the-facts-the-fig
ures-the-so-what/ [Accessed 22 May 2022].

Giles, S. (2010). Reflective writing and the revision process: What were you thinking? Writing
Spaces: Readings on Writing, 1, 191-204.

Klaehn, J., 2021. Talking manga: bringing Japanese pop culture to the North American
mainstream: Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics. Routledge.

Rosenberg, K. (2011). Reading Games: Strategies for Reading Scholarly Sources. Writing
Spaces: Readings on Writing, 1, 210-220