Non-english speakers in Tapas

[kyupol]

Nagsasalita ako ng Tagalog. Pero marunong din ako mag Ingles. Wag mag alala. Ingles lahat ng komiks ko...

(I speak Tagalog. But I also know English. Don't worry. All my comics are in English)

[Silerna]

My comic used to be in Dutch. But I translated it into English so that friends could read it too. That's what made me decide to translate all the pages in english instead. But 100% Dutchy

[jurinova]

I'm not a native English speaker but I consider myself quite fluent anyway. I don't really have any problems writing my comic in English but I sometimes still feel quite anxious about it. Especially when it comes to writing conversations. I fear the dialog sounds too stiff and unnatural, so I spend a lot of time fine-tuning it.

Honestly my biggest trouble with language has been the sound effects and onomatopoeia. I find that I can't express sounds very well in English but I love sound effects in Finnish. Like "kipi kipi" is an excellent sound for walking in Finnish but what does walking sound like in English? I don't know. Somehow my brain just has trouble understand how something sounds in English, so I tend to avoid using them altogether unless necessary. Usually I just use something simple like BOOM, POW or SMACK. (Thanks to Batman.)

[azureXtwilight]

I am from Indonesia, that's a veeeery far away place near Singapore and Malaysia. English is my second language, so my comic is set in a society where all world cultures blend so I never name the cities. It's in fear of getting some things / areas wrong. I really hope my english is adequate. I usually get a proofreader!

[ironicalghosty]

It's been 4 years that I lived in New Zealand for my studies and in the meanwhile, learnt to talk fluently in English. My first language is French which I like including into my comics when I get to add a French character (hon hon!).

I usually get help from my friends and my online friends (most of them are americans and from other english countries) to correct my dialogues and different speeches. I still have a hard time to convert different dialects or different accents. I sometimes include rough translated french expressions that don't exist in English by accident. haha!

[Suuh]

Im from Chile so i'm a spanish native speaker, but i post the comic in english here
because i guess the majority of readers here speak english cx
and the comic its posted in spanish in another site, i guess is more organized that way.

[J.Lovelace]

Cześć!
I'm from Poland, but I create all my comics in English (directly, without translating from Polish ), I actually feel more comfortable that way. My honey is my proofreader and I often ask him for his advice if some parts of dialogue can be improved.
Here's the link to my stuff:
https://tapastic.com/jutawi/series

[Chopythes]

Oh gosh.
Idioms and grammar are things that gets me ALL THE TIME.

Very often (too often, people would argue) I use badly translated idioms mainly because I want to. I'm terrible, thank you <3

And I also have a hard time knowing what's ok and not ok to use. Such as cursing (literally, who doesn't curse in their every day life? I TRY not to curse at work, but that's just me trying to sound like a professional and not the dork I really am) and gestures.

I have no one to proof-read my stuff (my bad, I could ask native speaking people but I'm a lazy butt).

Also... We got to learn both American English and British English in school. THANK YOU SCHOOL for now I have no idea whether or not lift/elevator is british or american.
(I... uh, didn't pay much attention in school either, because I thought: Heh, I'm never gonna leave Sweden, why would I have any use of English? I want to smack my younger self.)

However, I'm pretty much known to make my comics in both Swedish and English (but mostly in English)

[AngieVX]

I'm also writing in English, though my native language is not English! But I don't review my texts much, English was my major in Uni, and I make more spelling Errors in my native language than in English! Actually I never saw cultural references as a problem, the world is pretty much globalized now, and I mean not only access to cultures, but also that our local problems are mostly the same only to different extent!

[omarsassi88]

hey! gran casino a volte dover scrivere in inglese! perchè non l ho studiato meglio! vivo su google translate!
Hey! really hard to write in english sometimes! why I hadn't study it better before! I spend a lot of hours on google translate! XD

beh se ti va dagli un occhio!
whatever if you want have a look!

Volpino's adventures

[Mharz]

English isn't my primary language either tho I'm pretty fluent in the language but I get some slip ups from my comic from time to time. One of my readers is kind enough to point out my misspelled words and grammar. I totally tend to overlook and missed out the flaws because I type really fast and I'm a pretty silly person but before I get my chapters to be printed I double check the spelling and grammar.

Someone actually pointed out that my dialogues sounded like it came from a soap opera. I'm pretty bad at observing mannerisms in speaking. Still trying to improve them. ~\/(' ,')\/~

[Kotopopi]

Woa so many answers, thank you!

I checked all of your comics and they're all very good, so many different styles, I love it.

I totally forgot to mention a silly anecdote : after publishing my comics for 6 months, I finally realized that I had misspelled THE TITLE. No kidding... THE TITLE UTSELF. And any of my english/american/australian friends realized it... neither any of my readers! I actually realized it myself while adding a hashtag for my Twitter profile...
The title obviously was present in EVERY SINGLE PANEL _ Took me 2 weeks to fix it everywhere on the web.
Let's say that from that moment on, because nobody noticed it, I kind of started loosing up about double checking my comics... sometimes my readers make fun of me, but it's okay, my English grows with them (and sometimes without, ah ah).

I think there should always be the possibility to keep your work also in the original version and also to translate it. Webtoon kind of does it but this feature is almost hidden and very few people use it.

I dream about a truly international platform in which artists and their followers can interact and make their work as accessible as possible
I love reading in English, French, Italian, Spanish and Japanese (yes, I kind of speak them all), but I prefer to have the choice of reading an author in his/her real language when possible, because... because it was meant to be in another language I guess

[bynuwbis]

Heyy!

I found this post pretty fun!

So many people have responded so cool!!

My first language is Portuguese!

I have studied English for a long time since a very young age!

I don't have anybody reviewing my text but I always use an orthographic corrector to make sure all the text is free of errors! And try to confirm grammar!

I speak and write English but I'm pretty rusty sometimes and make some silly mistakes!

I really like English as the language to my comic because Portuguese sometimes have huge words or phrases that in English are small and simple!
But in the other hand some things are really hard to translate because is very personal to the other language!

My comic is NuwComics! It's about daily fun situations !

Glad to meet so many people from around the world here !

Good luck everyone!

Boa Sorte a todos! (Portuguese)

---

NuwComics
https://tapastic.com/series/NuwComics

[maar0012]

is somebody here from a spanish talking country too?
I`m from argentina

[Shark]

I'm Italian too!
Although I think I know English quite well, sometimes it's hard to translate sentences in my comic Reden and I have to completely change many dialogues.
But you know what? Sometimes I think of a phrase that is perfect in English but can't be translated in Italian, and that's even worse, like I can't even speak my language properly xD

[OliviaMerteli]

French here.
My comic (only cover posted for now XD) is set in a fantasy world so, at least, cultural references are not a problem )
My English is mostly practical. I can read it good, write it more or less but speak it horribly.

I write all my notes in French. Script, characters references, panel indications etc... but write the dialogues directly in English. It's too frustrating to work on a "perfectly polished" line just to realize that th effect is "lost in translation". I like writing that way, words come naturally, as I always picture my characters talking in English.

For now, I don't plan to ask for text reviews but if readers find too much mistakes when I start, it'll become an option.

[Hel]

My first language is English, but I write a version of my comic in my second language, Japanese. It's difficult.

My Japanese isn't great, so I get help from a teacher at my school to translate it so it sounds natural. It's sad though because I feel like some of the nuance gets lost along the way. Sometimes I decide to just leave it, other times I want to try to get the extra meaning in there but I can't explain it well enough to my teacher so she can't help me.

Also, my characters are actually speaking Spanish a lot of the time but I don't speak any Spanish so it's all written in English.

[duochipi]

We're spanish, we post our webcomic in english but we also have a version in spanish

[maar0012]

I`m an african warlord

[Monaho]

Hello! I'm russian (tho i don't live in Russia anymore) and i write my comic on english only.
Sometimes I make language mistakes in there and that's my worst problem i think ;_;;;
But since all my characters there r weird so i guess it's kinda ok. lol.