Vietnam - Science comic recalled at publishing ceremony

The media meeting held on Wednesday to announce the publishing of the second volume of the South Korean science comic series Why turned out to be a meeting to declare the book’s recall, after some reporters pointed out myriad translation errors in the publication.

The publishing rights of the multi-author comic series were purchased by the Dai Viet Global JSC in Vietnam, which is also in charge of the translation and editing tasks.

The 51-volume series is published by First News, under permission granted by the My Thuat Publishing House.

Its first volume, titled Invent – Explore, was published on August 22, and the press meeting Wednesday was intended to announce the publishing of its second volume, Universe.

But the meeting became heated after many reporters pointed out translation errors, many of which were due to the translator's failure to find a simple way to explain the scientific terms to the book’s target readers – children ages six and above.

The books thus contains many words and sentences even incomprehensible to adults, such as the word “lsochronal,” meaning 'equal in duration,' on page 19 of the Invent – Explore volume.

There are also cases of careless translation, such as in the part mentioning the black hole, in page 19 of the Universe volume, which says [translated into English]: “A black hole, after becoming a giant red star weighing far heavier than the sun, will cause an explosion that creates the universe.”

A journalist said at the meeting that the sentence contains two errors.

“First, only a red star can become a black hole, and not vice versa,” he said. “Second, the black hole cannot cause an explosion that creates the universe, as it’s already part of the universe.”

In response, Nguyen Van Phuoc, director of First News, said they will stop publishing the first two volumes of the series, and will edit and republish the books.

“For those already sold, we will recall them, and for the third volume, First News will join in the draft organizing tasks, providing better editing and focusing more on the translation work,” he said.

The first two volumes of Why were translated by Nguyen Thi Bich Viet, who was introduced as having translated more than 60 Korean TV dramas that have been broadcast in Vietnam.

TUOI TRE

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