Batman and Plagiarism in Translation

“Haven’t I read this before?” A couple minutes into an article on Batman, I hit a line about angry viewers of the 1966 TV series calling ABC to complain after breaking news about the Gemini 8 spacecraft failure interrupted the live broadcast of Batman. An interesting story, no doubt, but I couldn’t help feeling a sense of déjà vu. I’d just read the same scene—in Japanese. Same information, same order, same quotes. That coincidence pulled me into an odd corner of comics history: when translation and reference blurs into uncredited reuse.

Why I Read Batman in Japanese

As an American, I never had much formal language training. Especially growing up in rural areas. With that said, in adulthood I did live and work in Japan for two years and not wanting to squander this rare (and free!) opportunity, I really worked on picking up as much of the language as possible. So Japanese is the only language I am relatively conversant in. I’m not totally fluent by any means, but I can understand most things and hold a conversation… unless it ventures into a specialized topic.

Since returning to the United States, I don’t really have much chance to practice and advance my Japanese, but I make a concerted effort to maintain what I have. One of the easiest ways to do this is to “double dip,” especially when I find myself low on motivation. In other words, to study Japanese I use materials that I would have already been reading in English and/or use things that I’m highly interested in. For me, this means anything in Japanese that has Batman in it. Luckily for me, this is not too difficult of a task. Batman has quite a few original manga (i.e., not translations) and the two recent Ninja Batman films are good listening practice.

The Coincidence That Wasn’t

These are all relatively well-known products, so easy enough to find and obtain (many even have digital versions), but every now and then I will run into something new. Something I’ve never seen or heard of before pops up. Something that has no digital copy (authorized or otherwise), has no translation, and requires a bit of finagling to find and obtain a copy. One such find: 『バットマンになりたい：小野耕世のコミックス世界』(Wanting to be Batman: Welcome to My Fantastic World of Comics) by Kosei Ono. The information I could find was scant: the publisher (晶文社, Shobunsha), the publication year (1974), and a general synopsis. Based on what I know about the author—a Japanese comic book critic/academic who previously wrote material for the 1966 Batman manga reprint (Volume 1)—I could surmise that it would be more academic in nature and not strictly about Batman.

The title and cover image alone were enough for me. I purchased a copy as soon as the opportunity presented itself. The book turned out to be a compilation of individual articles previously published mostly in a Japanese Science Fiction Magazine. I was excited to see at least three were about Batman including a camp chapter: バットマンキャンプ・ヒーロー(Batman – Camp Hero). Naturally, this was the first one I wanted to sink my teeth into.

Overall, the chapter was uninteresting. Most of it was familiar territory—recycled facts I’ve seen many times—except for its opener: the story of ABC fielding angry calls when coverage of the Gemini 8 emergency interrupted the broadcast of Batman in 1966. This was a new story for me. I didn’t hold the lack of novelty against Ono. He’s writing for a more general audience, and a Japanese one that may not be as familiar with Batman. Besides, he can’t help that I’ve read way too much material on Batman, and the average reader may not share the same Batman trivia backlog.

A Broadcast Interrupted, Twice

I may have been a little disappointed that there were no new and interesting insights—especially insights into Japanese history and reception of the character/show—but it was good practice, and fun to read about Batman in Japanese. Now though, I found myself in a “Bat-hole,” or that period after finishing one thing and trying to decide what to consume next—often paralyzing because there is so much to choose from. I decided on a chapter in Paul Sann’s Fads, Follies, and Delusions of the American People (1967) that I found and saved when I saw it referenced elsewhere. Entitled Batman: Galahad in a Cape, the timing of the reading choice would prove auspicious.

As I started reading the opening, I experienced what I wrote in the intro. “Wait didn’t I just read this? Oh yeah, this was one of the few ‘new to me’ elements from the Japanese chapter I just finished… and come to think of it, it was the opening of that chapter as well. That’s kind of odd. Meh, it’s probably just a coincidence.” When you read enough Batman stuff, they often just rehash the same stories on repeat like a broken record. Below are the first few sentences of each:

Ono’s Japanese: 一九六六年十二月十六日、アメリカ合衆国のロシアとの宇宙競争は、突然の、しかも深刻な障害に出くわしていた。打ち上げ後七時間、中国の上空一八○マイルの宇宙空間で、ジェミニ8号は後部のロケット回路に不調をきたし、ひどく振動をし始めたのである。宇宙飛行士のニール・A・アームストロングと、デヴィッド・R・スコット大佐は、宇宙船を軌道に乗せておくことができなくなった。(90)

My translation: [On December 16, 1966, the United States of America’s space competition with Russia suddenly ran into a serious obstacle. Seven hours after launching, 180 miles into China’s airspace, Gemini 8 experienced a malfunction in the back rocket’s circuit and started to violently shake. Astronaut Neil A. Armstrong and Major David R. Scott could not keep the spacecraft in orbit.]

Sann’s English: On March 16, 1966, the United States’ race-into-space against the Russians suffered its first real brush with human disaster. Seven hours into the mission and 180 miles up, over Red China, a short circuit in the tail of Gemini 8 touched off a rocket booster and the craft, linked by then to its Agena target rocket started to tumble so violently that astronauts Neil A. Armstrong and Major David R. Scott could not steady it on its course. (7)

I shrugged it off and kept reading. The further I read, the more the “coincidences” stacked up. The contents of the chapters, the ways they are organized, the references, and even the specific quotes used line up suspiciously well. In his article, Ono did add a few things: one comment on Japanese reception*, a couple pages of letters pulled from Bill Adler’s Funniest Fan Letters to Batman (1966), and some personal commentary and opinion (“not my Batman”). Outside of that however, the Ono’s piece reads like a Japanese version of the Galahad chapter.

When Translation Forgets to Cite

Looking at the dates, the Fads and Follies book predates even Ono’s original magazine article (1967 vs. 1974). Did he plagiarize? If you’re playing devil’s advocate, it may be a crazy coincidence: he never read the article before, and they just happen to line up so well. Or perhaps a simple mistake: he read the chapter previously, and the content just stayed with him, resurfacing as “general knowledge.” But the specificity is hard to ignore. 

Take the Bob Kane section. In Fads and Follies, Sann talks about Bob Kane in the beginning (8) while Ono saves it for the end (102). The details and the sequence is again the same between the two. Sure, most of this is publicly available information, but even the setup is non-typical. In my mind, there is no way specificity like this is a coincidence. You can judge for yourself:  

Ono’s Japanese: では、そもそものはじまりはなんだったのだろうか？ジェミニ８号の事件から、三十二年ほど前のことだった。ブロンクスに住む、当時10歳の少年、ロバート・ケーンは、保健ブローカーの息子だったが、自分の好きな新聞マンガのヒーローたちを落書きしては、楽しんでいた。その中には、「マットとジェフ」「ポパイ」「フラッシュ・ゴードン」などの姿あった。(102)

My translation: [So, what was the very beginning? It was something that happened thirty-two years before the Gemini 8 incident. Robert Kane, who lived in the Bronx and was a 10-year-old boy, was the son of an insurance broker and liked doodling his favorite comic strip heroes. Among these were Mutt and Jeff, Popeye, and Flash Gordon, etc.]

Sann’s English: To go to its actual inception, it began thirty-two years before Gemini 8 when a ten-year-old Bronx boy named Robert Kane, son of an insurance broker, began making copies of his own favorite comic strip characters, Mutt and Jeff, Popeye, and Flash Gordon. (8)

Even where Ono pulls material extensively, he doesn’t cite it appropriately. Neither the individual chapters, nor the book as a whole has a bibliography/works cited at the end. In the text, there are many times he doesn’t cite at all. On page 94 for example he says: “many things have been said about the Batman TV series” and then proceeds to give us a string of quotes… without sources. Who said them? Where did you find them? As it happens, they are the exact quotes used in Fads and Follies, which luckily cites them somewhat better (12). Sann points us (imperfectly) to mental-health professionals—important context omitted by Ono.

If there are in-text citations, it’s often skeletal. In the case of the Adler book, Ono gives us the compiler’s name and a translated title (98). No date, no publisher, nothing else. This removes context and makes it harder to find for someone who may want to reference the original. Considering he pulls almost two entire pages directly from this book (98-100), I think he owes it a proper citation. Admittedly, much of this is also true of Sann, although he does a better job in some respects such as when referencing the psychology quotes mentioned above. With that said, while we may know who we can attribute those words to, we still don’t know where it was said or written.

Sure, in a different era, the standards weren’t what they are today; these also aren’t academic monographs. Still, at a certain point, you must acknowledge that you did not author this but translated and/or adapted someone else’s language and structure. What this point is I can’t say. If it was a conscious decision on Ono’s part, why omit it? Maybe he thought the overlap would go unnoticed across languages and niches. Few English speakers can read Japanese, and how many of these would be reading a Batman book? In the reverse, how many English-speaking Japanese people would be reading both texts?

So… Coincidence, Plagiarism, or Something in Between?

I land here: the parallels exceed coincidence. If not outright plagiarism, then uncited adaptation—a line that was easier to cross in non-academic publishing of the time, but still worth naming. 

What do you think? Where would you draw the line between inspiration, translation, and appropriation—especially across languages where “invisible” borrowing can hide in plain sight? Is Sann guilty of the same? Is it even that big of a deal?