Scott Pilgrim

While there were six books in the original Scott Pilgrim series by Bryan Lee O’Malley, the content of those books has now been condensed into three books in this Irish language edition which has been translated by Seanán Ó Coistín. The graphic novel series, which was written from 2004 to 2010 was hugely popular and became even more widely known and loved when it was made into the film Scott Pilgrim vs. The World in 2010.

Readers love protagonist Scott Pilgrim and the humour and liveliness he brings with him. He lives in Toronto, Canada and at the start of the series is going out with a girl called Knives Chau. But when he meets another girl, Ramona Flowers, she steals his heart. The only problem is that her exes are jealous of Scott and he must defeat them before he can be her boyfriend. To make matters worse, there are seven of them!

This Irish language edition, published by Gliadar Éireann, is made up of three hefty books: the first book introduces us to Scott Pilgrim and Ramona Flowers and Scott is tasked with fighting Matthew Patel and Lucas Lee. In the second book he must defeat Envy Adams and Roxy Richter. The third book sees him fighting twins Ken and Kyle Katayanagi and the final and most brutal contender, Gideon Graves.

The trademark spirit and speedy style not only of the writing in this series but of the images has been maintained by Ó Coistín in his translation and by artist Katelyn McKenna who redesigned the words and Brian Mac Giolla Mhuire who edited the books.

It is no mean feat to translate the informal, modern speech and exclamations to Irish not only accurately but while also maintaining the style of it and this has certainly been achieved here. The humour that goes with such an unconventional love story is still as sharp as ever and Scott’s coming-of-age story is as hilarious as in the original story. The conversations between him and his friends and enemies are plausible and the story reads every bit as well as Gaeilge as it does in the original.

Readers will certainly enjoy this lively series that has been competently translated and that we can add to the growing amount of fantastic graphic novels that are now available as Gaeilge