Lam Hoang Truc: Continuing to write the dream of bringing Vietnamese comics to the world

Originally an underdeveloped market for comics, in recent years Vietnam has emerged as a “new star” with many talented young authors and many interesting comic series, loved by the international community. prefer. What is precious is that many authors have made efforts to bring Vietnamese culture and life into pure Vietnamese comics, helping readers be entertained while discovering traditional cultural values and national history. . of Vietnam.

Some Vietnamese comics have been copyrighted and published by foreign bookmakers. Most recently, the comic book Endless Summer (released in 2021) by author Lam Hoang Truc was copyrighted by Toshokan Publishing House (Italy) and put on shelves in Italy.

VietnamPlus Electronic Newspaper reporter had a conversation with author Lam Hoang Truc about his journey of bringing Vietnamese comics to foreign readers.

Building a Vietnamese comic book brand in Italy

Could you please tell us what was the fate that made Endless Summer known and chosen by Italy’s Toshokan Publishing House for publication?

Author Lam Hoang Truc: Endless Summer is a work that I have been preparing and building characters for a long time to achieve rigor and natural, attractive development. After that, it took me about a month to write the script, and about a year to finish drawing it. Currently, the Vietnamese version of Endless Summer has been printed twice, with a total of about 7,000 copies.

Last year, the Editor-in-Chief of Toshokan Publishing House proactively sent me a message via Messenger, at that time I thought it was spam or a scam or something. But after that, the Editor-in-Chief of Toshokan Publishing House continued to send me the publisher’s catalog so I could refer to the projects they had done and the comic works they had published. I also looked for information about this unit online. After making sure that this publisher was real, I felt secure working with them.

After that, we cooperated very smoothly, I sent the PDF version of the story to them to read, then signed the contract. About half a year later, the work was released in Italy, and there were no problems with censorship at all. This quick working process is the result of the arduous journey of composing, drawing, translating, and the careful refinement of the previous work.

In the process of publishing Endless Summer to foreign markets, what difficulties did you encounter?

Author Lam Hoang Truc: I only have a few small barriers in the process of bringing my work abroad, which are language and cultural differences.

I have translated the work into English to facilitate promotion in many different countries. For Italians, there is not much of a problem because European countries are used to using many languages in life. However, the English translation cannot completely express 100% of the spirit of the original story, especially when translating the lyrics to the songs mentioned in the story. Mainly the translation will be based on the meaning of the lyrics. Once the story was translated into Italian, I didn’t have the ability to check it again.

As for cultural differences, I’m glad because there are almost no details that are difficult to understand for Italians. If there is anything that needs a lot of annotation, it is the literary works taught in Vietnamese schools that I have included in the story.

Some writers and poets during the resistance war against the French and Americans in Vietnam for many reasons were not known to the world. The Italian publishing house did not know these authors, nor could they find any information in their library.

For example, with poet Y Phuong’s work “Talking to my children,” I had to collect his very few low-quality images and write articles summarizing information about the author and his views. Authors and typical works to send to publishers. The story only mentions you in a few verses, but I had to write a long essay to annotate.

In addition, I also noticed one thing that is a bit disappointing, which is that there are still many foreigners who do not know anything about their country other than the war. “Endless Summer” appeared in Italy and surprised many readers there because they also draw comics in Vietnam.

So how is “Endless Summer” received by readers in Italy, ladies?

Author Lam Hoang Truc: Comic book fans around the world are familiar with Japanese manga and European-American comics. Recently, Korean and Chinese comics are also emerging rapidly as a work of fiction. Original Vietnamese paintings appearing in Italy are a surprise and not a common occurrence.

However, the work has received positive feedback, Italian readers have enthusiastically reviewed the story on Instagram, Youtube, and Twitter with many compliments, making me feel “Ah, this road will still be very open.” This.” A small story book can also lead to many larger works later.

Currently, Endless Summer in Italian has been printed in 5,000 copies. After Endless Summer, I introduced a number of other comic works to Toshokan Publishing House to prepare to create a Vietnamese comic brand to the world. Readers and publishers in Italy are also very enthusiastic about receiving a new artistic breeze from an extremely interesting Southeast Asian country.

In my opinion, young authors, new, youthful, different, multicultural works and ideas are what we all need and what art always needs.

Dream of spreading “Vietnamese quality”

How do you evaluate the Vietnamese comic book market at the present time?

Author Lam Hoang Truc: I think the current Vietnamese comic book market is quite favorable because gradually the national spirit of readers is increasing. When a domestic author has quality works that can be considered sellable and readable, readers are very supportive.

As for the limitations, they are also common limitations of authors everywhere, not just in Vietnam. For example, royalties are not too high, only authors who sell a lot of works have a lot of royalties, royalties are low everywhere. Then it’s difficult trying to balance making a living with personal matters. Before being famous and having an income, everyone had difficulties, so I don’t see anything special. In my opinion, this is a limitation that doesn’t affect songwriting too much.

What do you think about the influence of Korean and Japanese comics on the creative style of Vietnamese artists? Does this reduce the purely Vietnamese element?

Author Lam Hoang Truc: In my opinion, art influencing each other is very normal, we just keep learning from each other. Art has no borders.

Like how to create characters, I learned from manga stories, then how I wrote dialogue and framing was learned from movies, how to write stories I learned from Hollywood movies, according to their textbooks…

There is no such thing as being pure of a certain country, so it is very difficult to have something called completely pure Vietnamese. Just like the theory of universalism, everyone collaborates, exchanges their most quintessential things and spreads them everywhere without borders or countries. Therefore, I do not support closing the vision to try to bring out a purely Vietnamese product.

What I want and try to do is that when foreigners read my stories, they will like it so much that they want to learn Vietnamese and learn about Vietnamese culture. I think that’s a way to spread my Vietnameseness. When people learn my country’s language, they will understand my stories better.

So what are your plans to continue to impress Vietnamese comics with world readers?

Author Lam Hoang Truc: Regarding bringing my work to the world, that is my orientation, always when I started writing. I don’t limit my dreams but always set huge goals to see how far I can reach, I just try and see.

From the moment I started writing, I felt that whether I was a foreign reader or a Vietnamese reader, it was the same, so I tried to write so that many people could read it, without distinguishing between domestic and foreign readers.

I am researching more new ways of expression such as webcomic to see how to present it because the advantage of webcomic is easy access to readers. I’m also doing some projects with foreign friends, they write and I draw. Besides that, I also collaborated on a few more long stories, but there are still quite a few stages to complete.

Thank you and wish you more success!

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