What are they saying? Don't ask me

More established cartoonists may take foreign editions in stride, but it is still a novelty for me to see my characters speaking in some language I don’t understand, as they did when both Perspective! and David Chelsea In Love came out in French editions. In my slow, deliberate campaign to cover the globe with my books the latest country to succumb is Japan, where an edition of Perspective! has recently been published. With the French books I was able to do a little second-guessing of the translations (does “parallelepipede” really have the same plain connotations in French as “box” does in English?) but given my utter ignorance of even the Japanese alphabet I will have to take it on faith that my translators know what they are doing. Evidently they are doing something right- according to my latest royalty statement, the Japanese edition is outselling the American version six to one.

Don’t forget the upcoming sequel, Extreme Perspective!, which will appear in English in Spring 2011, and in other languages in sufficient time.

Infinite? Just three so far.

I owe Yasuyo Tanii, a Japanese-born friend living in Portland, an enormous debt of gratitude for tackling the daunting task of ordering a copy for me from Japanese Amazon.