Why? Who? How?

Basically, why not?

But seriously, why Achewood?

If we believe the author, Achewood gets about six million daily visits, making the author completely able to make a living solely with his creation, via merchandise sales.

Achewood has a unique humor, that nevertheless has managed speak to and attract a vast amount of readers. (The wikipedia article explains it better than i ever could, being i'm not as anal as a wikipedia editor)
As an up-and-starting translator i'm highly interested the challenge involved in translating (or adapting, as much as i don't like the term) Achewood, owing to the humongous amount of terms, references and elements that basically belong more to Achewood than to a particular culture.

As far as i know, there haven't been serious attempts to translating the strip, just some fan-made attempts in latin, and norweigan ( I also made an early spanish attempt)

It is then that i proppose to translate Achewood to spanish, more specifically, mexican spanish, Mexican culture, being, due to its closeness to California, where Achewood is based, an apparent source of inspiration, making it a fair trade.

This started as a mere hobby for my amusement and practise, but the validation of my translation teachers has pushed it into a project with a life of its own. I hope the blog will allow me a close control of my progress, to eventually turn the work into something akin a graduation paper, perhaps. Flights of fancy about publication will be discused with mr. Onstad, Achewood's author.

Who the heck is behind this?

The name's Aldo, i'm 23, and i'm Achewoodholic. It's my sincere hope that the love i have for the comic is turned into serious efforts to create translations faithful to the original spirit, yet understandable (and hopefully enjoyable) in a whole different culture. What i am lacking in experience yet i hope to make up for with hatred towards improper translation.

Why blogger? The Achewood characters use it. Works fine so far, though it has a couple of annoying quirks.


That's all for now.

Start

Achewood debuted October the 1st, 2001, coincidentally the very same day i became 17 years old. I must confess that when i found the then-relatively unknown world of the 'webcomic', years later, Achewood's starting day did bias my interest a little bit.

Even back to the period in which the webcomic made an effort to appeal, not only to the lowest, but to all the denominators to earn a niche and audience, Achewood dared to be 'itself', and exist under its own rules and sense of humor, at the same time taking advantage of the digital medium it existed within: I.e. a total lack of editors, specific schedules, advertisers to please or to be censored by.

After a brief starting period to find and stand in its own feet, based on developing the personalities of its multiple characters, Achewood has become one of the best and most esteemed representatives of the webcomic genre.

The already described advantages (inherent to the webcomic, but not always fully taken advantage of) have no doubt allowed the creation of Achewood's characteristic humor, since the author has total creative liberty over it, what allows him to base in all sorts of experiences to draw humor from, from the rudest and most scatological ( an alcoholic tiger puking hard enough on a football to make it roll three feet) to the deepest and most tender of emotions, (the emotional development of a neurotic cat after finding love) everything drenched in a generous dose of californian culture, idiosyncrasy and even gastronomy, impossible to describe as 'simply american', defining this culture a conflict by itself.

It's the result of the union between the author's creative liberty and his hability to express his culture that makes Achewood such a particular product, with a humor of its own, not compatible with everyone. (Even so, Achewood reports 6 million readers across the US) It is also a considerable challenge for the translator, who must sort thought a tidal wave of california-local and specific terms, old timey slang, and countless cultural references, that the author is able to use at his free will, lacking as he is of a target demographic to pander and subjugate himself to.