專訪紐約客漫畫編輯 漫畫也要做事實覈查
You’re the cartoon editor of The New Yorker and the subject of a new HBO documentary, “Very Semi-Serious.” In it, cartoonists often try to explain their cartoons to you if you aren’t initially sold. Does that ever work?
問：你是《紐約客》的漫畫編輯，HBO紀錄片《幽默的嚴肅》(Very Semi-Serious)的主角。在影片中，當你不買賬的時候，漫畫家們就會向你嘗試解釋他們的作品。 你真的會被說服嗎？
I’m not infallible. I might be the king of cartoons; I’m not the pope. But what I say to cartoonists is that there is often something to “get” in New Yorker cartoons — anyway, we hope so — but it should never feel like a puzzle to the reader.
鮑勃·曼科夫(Bob Mankoff)：我並非絕對正確。我或許是漫畫之王，但不是教皇。不過，我會告訴漫畫家，《紐約客》的漫畫得讓人“抓到”一些東西——至少，我們希望如此——而不應像一個謎題令讀者猜不透。
The market for magazine cartoons has shrunk in recent years, but there are some wildly popular online comics like “The Oatmeal” and “xkcd.” Does that give you hope?
問：最近一些年，雜誌漫畫市場有所縮減，不過網上也有一些連環漫畫網站大受歡迎，如The Oatmeal和xkcd。這會讓你覺得還是有希望的嗎？
You’re not going to be able to kill cartooning as an art form, you know? Like how cockroaches will survive nuclear apocalypse — cartoonists will survive everything, too.
答：你知道嗎，漫畫作爲一種藝術形式是不會滅亡的。就像蟑螂可以倖免於核帶來的世界末日，漫畫家也可以倖免於所有事。
Most of your job seems to be selecting cartoons for publication. Do you ever actually edit them?
問：你的工作內容似乎大部分是挑選要發表的漫畫，真的會編輯它們嗎？
All the time. I try to punch up the joke or compress it — not change it, not write a completely different joke, but edit it. And then the fact checkers and grammarians get involved. I’ll often have to stop them because, though they’re experts, sometimes good grammar makes for a very bad cartoon.
答：那是我一直在做的事情。我試着讓笑點的力度更強一些，或者緊湊一些——並非改變，也不是寫一個完全不同的笑話，就是編輯它而已。之後，事實覈對員和語法專家會介入。我經常會制止他們，雖然他們是專家，但有時候好的語法會把漫畫的效果毀掉。
The cartoons are fact-checked?
問：漫畫作品也需要做事實覈對？
Absolutely. We check them against all 80,000 cartoons that we’ve ever published. People produce the same ideas all the time. They’re also checked for logical inconsistencies. Then you have to say, Yeah, I know lemmings don’t actually commit suicide, but for the purposes of cartoons, they do.
答：絕對需要。我們把它們和已經發表過的8萬幅作品進行比對。人們會一直有雷同的創意。同時，這些作品也會經歷邏輯一致性的檢查。之後你可以說，我知道了，旅鼠實際上是不會自殺的，不過爲了漫畫的效果，它們會了。
What’s the difference between the cartoons that you put in the magazine and those that go in the caption contest?
問：爲雜誌挑選的漫畫作品和送往漫畫配文大賽的作品，有什麼不同？
The caption-contest cartoons are not great cartoons. We usually pick a submission that we don’t particularly like and take the caption off. Most cartoonists are perfectly fine with that. I often say the difference between an amateur and a professional is that an amateur really likes everything they do.
答：配文大賽的作品不會是非常好的作品。我們通常挑選一個沒那麼喜歡的作品，然後把圖說去掉。絕大多數漫畫家完全可以接受這件事。我總是說，業餘人士和專業人士之間的區別在於，業餘的人喜歡自己做的每件事。
Are you familiar with the theory of the universal New Yorker cartoon caption: that there’s one caption that could work for every single cartoon?
問：你熟悉《紐約客》的漫畫圖說是萬金油的說法——一個圖說適用於每幅作品嗎？
Oh, am I ever. One recent suggestion was, “I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn.” I have a meeting every week with David Remnick, and he makes the final decisions on the cartoons. For the first 10 I showed him, I printed the LinkedIn caption on all of them. David said, “What the [expletive] is this?”
答：太瞭解！最近的一句是“我想要在LinkedIn把你加入我的職業人脈”。每週，我都和大衛·瑞姆尼克(David Remnick)開會，漫畫的最終決定權在他手上。在我展示給他的頭10幅畫中，我會把LinkedIn的這句圖說都在所有的作品上。大衛會說，“這（髒話）是什麼鬼？”
Did he publish one?
問：他同意這麼幹過嗎？
I explained it, and he said, “Let’s use one.” One of the interesting things about humor now is that it’s so pervasive, it can make fun of itself.
答：我解釋以後，他說，“那我們就用一個。”幽默的一個有趣之處是，幽默無所不在，幽默有時拿自己開玩笑。
Are we funnier than we used to be or just more aware of how funny we are?
問：是我們變得更逗了，還是我們其實本來就挺逗的？
I think we’re funnier. You can’t exist in this society without at least having the appearance of a sense of humor, even if you don’t really have one. If Jesus Christ came back, he wouldn’t really be accepted unless he appeared on “S.N.L.”
答：我覺得是我們變逗了。在這個社會裏，如果你連幽默的皮毛都沒有，會很難生存，即便你可能真的沒有。耶穌如果回來，人們不會接受他，除非他上了《週六夜現場》(SNL)。
In the movie, I noticed that among the cartoonists pitching to you, there wasn’t a single person of color.
問：在影片中，我注意到，在衆多向你提交作品的漫畫家中，沒有一個人是有色人種。
Unless off-white is a color, I think you’re right. We’ve been pushing for more diversity. There’s not that many cartoonists in the world, O.K.? It’s not incredibly remunerative, so you’re not going to make an awful lot of money. But we’re trying.
答：除非灰白色也算作有色，我覺得你說得對。我們一直在推動多元化。不過這世界上沒有那麼多漫畫家，好嗎？做這個的報酬不會很好，所以，你不會賺許多許多的錢。不過，我們還是正在嘗試。
There was a recent survey of last year’s cartoons, which found that around 94 percent of the characters in the cartoons are white.
問：有一項最新的調查是針對去年的漫畫作品的，發現94%的漫畫人物是白人。
And I think an awful lot of them are Jewish, too.
答：我認爲他們中的很多人還是猶太人。
This might get you in trouble: Do dogs or cats make better cartoon material?
問：這個問題可能會使你陷入麻煩：貓還是狗，纔是更好地漫畫題材？
No question, cats. We can project so much more onto cats. If you look back at the history of New Yorker cartoons, in the ’20s and ’30s, the cats and dogs don’t talk. And once they really start talking, in the ’40s, they don’t shut up.
答：毫無疑問，是貓。我們可以讓貓來表達很多東西。如果你回顧《紐約客》的漫畫作品，20年代和30年代，貓和狗都不說話。可是一旦到了它們開始說話的40年代，它們就再也停不下來了。
Have you ever had a submission you loved but couldn’t print because it was unsuitable for The New Yorker?
問：你遇到過自己非常喜歡，但不適合在《紐約客》發表的作品嗎？
Yeah, anything with [expletive] in it.
答：有，所有帶XX（髒話）的漫畫。
