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A lot of us rely on the hard work of (fan) translators who kindly put out translations of our favorite media so we can enjoy them without knowing what a nakama or a keitei is. Usually for free even!  This is the thread for discussing making translations - replacing text and SFX in manga and webcomics or translating light-novels or regular novels or subtitles for anime and movies -- or even dubs! Feel free to discuss your favorite (or least favorite) translation groups here as well. We actually have some goons who have been working on translating a webcomic in GBS for other goons: The Daily Life of a Certain NEET ! If you haven't read it, I highly recommend it to anyone who hates stories where stuff happens! I've really wanted to improve my abysmal Japanese reading ability so I've been doing some manga/webcomic translations for a while now myself for practice. I can post about my workflow in another post. I've always worked alone, so I'm curious how other people do it. Tell me about your experiences and workflows with translations or translation groups!
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Dec 4, 2022 18:49
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| # ? Apr 29, 2024 20:30 |
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ADTRW used to have its own fansub group, if memory serves. Way back in the day, I used to do encoding for a sub group (this was at the very early part of softsubs) - back when video player support wasn't always optimal. Just kidding - it still isn't, VLC still sucks at subtitles.
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Dec 4, 2022 21:41
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It works, but I gotta say I can't recommend it.
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Dec 5, 2022 02:26
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BlankSystemDaemon posted:ADTRW used to have its own fansub group, if memory serves. Oh, definitively. Mostly active between about 2002 and 200..6? Had their own website (long archived), final projects in 2010. Final subtitled anime: Haibane Renmei (up to ep3) School City Valanoir Final attempt at translating manga: Nichijou (early chapters) Kindly referred back then as Studio E:F;B as a in-joke, since it was fairly usual for other groups to start translating stuff they were already working on, or for the project to be officially licensed because it got popular fast. My favorite example of those was Spice & Wolf, which had the one episode released just for every other translation group out there to also release theirs simultaneously because it turned to be super popular.
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Dec 5, 2022 03:02
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Saoshyant posted:Oh, definitively. Mostly active between about 2002 and 200..6? Had their own website (long archived), final projects in 2010. There was also a separate effort in the late '00s. Macross Frontier, Shin Mazinger, I don't recall if there was anything else but I'd imagine there was.
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Dec 5, 2022 03:08
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Another goon translation project that is worth mentioning is the SA-GCCX people, who (up to very recently) translated the Japanese game show with comedian Arino. They did an amazing, consistent job for several years. The thread is still up in the Retro forum. Mandoric posted:There was also a separate effort in the late '00s. Macross Frontier, Shin Mazinger, I don't recall if there was anything else but I'd imagine there was. Most likely, yes. Goon projects used to come and go in the blink of an eye.
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Dec 5, 2022 03:12
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I started studying Japanese in 2010, mostly so I could read/watch manga and anime on my own, but I also had aspirations to eventually become a fansubber. After a couple years of studying, I applied to a group and got in as a QC/editor. I stayed for a while, made some friends, and learned a lot, both about Japanese and fansubbing. I eventually got assigned a show as the main TL, and was excited to finally do some Real Translation. It was a complete disaster. I knew enough Japanesee to watch and enjoy anime without subtitles, but I didn't know enough to understand all the dialogue in a show, though I didn't really realize this until I had to do it. I ended up spending like 6 hours translating the first episode, and later ones took nearly as long. I also had to get a ton of help from translators from other groups. By the end of the show I was completely burnt out from the weekly effort and anxiety that came with being in way, way over my head. The group fell apart a few months later due to drama and internal power struggles, as all fansub groups are fated to eventually. My (mostly) failed attempt at translating a show wasn't a direct contributor, but it might have hastened the end. I was bummed at the time to lose most of my fansubbing friends, but looking back at IRC logs now, the whole situation was actually really stupid and kind of funny. Still, I'm glad I went through the experience. It made me realize that translating is more than just knowing two languages; it takes writing skill in the target language just as much, if not more than, knowledge of the source language. I've since moved to Japan and gotten a job at a webdev company in the country, so I'm still using the language, and I've done some translation (both at work and in private) since then, but I'm glad I didn't decide to pursue it as a career.
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Dec 5, 2022 06:00
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Spoggerific posted:I started studying Japanese in 2010, mostly so I could read/watch manga and anime on my own, but I also had aspirations to eventually become a fansubber. After a couple years of studying, I applied to a group and got in as a QC/editor. I stayed for a while, made some friends, and learned a lot, both about Japanese and fansubbing. I eventually got assigned a show as the main TL, and was excited to finally do some Real Translation. The bright side is that if you do understand all the dialog in a show it is also the same.
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Dec 5, 2022 06:21
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I've found myself translating some manga related to a mobage that I play (well it's Chinese not Japanese but whatever) in both a fan and an official capacity and the differences between the two are pretty night and day.
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Dec 5, 2022 06:44
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sometimes the typesetting and/or cleaning or even just the English being super bare bones (... almost definitely MTL with no proofreading, lol) pisses me off so bad I want to just Photoshop up the lovely scanlation and rerelease it under some jerk rear end name like 'slightly less than zero effort scans' but that's too much effort. maybe if i had more free time in my life and a less lovely computer. also it's kind of mean although some of these MTL mspaint guys are actually worse than just feeding a raw into Google lens
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Dec 5, 2022 07:10
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Larry Parrish posted:sometimes the typesetting and/or cleaning or even just the English being super bare bones (... almost definitely MTL with no proofreading, lol) pisses me off so bad I want to just Photoshop up the lovely scanlation and rerelease it under some jerk rear end name like 'slightly less than zero effort scans' but that's too much effort. maybe if i had more free time in my life and a less lovely computer. also it's kind of mean although some of these MTL mspaint guys are actually worse than just feeding a raw into Google lens shitpost in releases, please, it's been sorrowfully missing since like 2011.
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Dec 5, 2022 07:26
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The endless torrent of lovely releases with zero effort and no quality control that still got tons of downloads was something that fansub groups complained about a lot. It seemed like people had no eye for quality whatsoever, and would just immediately download whatever released first. This is probably one of the (many) things that contributed to the decline of fansubbing; nobody wants to spend hours making a quality product for free if it won't be appreciated, and some rear end in a top hat (or later, some streaming service) who shits something out 2 hours earlier gets all the recognition.
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Dec 5, 2022 07:31
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Spoggerific posted:The endless torrent of lovely releases with zero effort and no quality control that still got tons of downloads was something that fansub groups complained about a lot. It seemed like people had no eye for quality whatsoever, and would just immediately download whatever released first. This is probably one of the (many) things that contributed to the decline of fansubbing; nobody wants to spend hours making a quality product for free if it won't be appreciated, and some rear end in a top hat (or later, some streaming service) who shits something out 2 hours earlier gets all the recognition. I know exactly the kind of person you mean. I have a speedscanner nemesis too.
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Dec 5, 2022 07:43
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there's definitely such a thing as taking too long though lol. also it's funny how many scanlators have credit pages begging for more volunteers but then demand experience. bro nobody needs experience to typeset, just a list of fonts you're using and diligence. it's a basic Photoshop skill
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Dec 5, 2022 07:52
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I usually got my scanlations out within the week for a monthly series, it's just that Speedscans McGee can pop out a garbled MTL mess within 2 hours of release and lodge his terrible 'translation' in the consciousness of the readers and suddenly the whole fanbase is talking nonsense before you even have time to finish translating. It's stuff like that that leads to easy burnout, you can't beat them at their own game while still keeping quality.
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Dec 5, 2022 07:56
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maybe I'm some kind of crazy person but i skip mtl. every time lol. only if I absolutely have to and if it's only a chapter or two and nobody else released one for that chapter, which often happens in-between one scanlation group dying or randomly dropping a series and a new one grabbing it. if a series is mostly or only MTL i just don't read it. so 'lapping' the real scanlators does nothing. maybe there's a lot of serious weebs out there who don't care and are used to having to mtl stuff for themselves or something, idk. but i have better poo poo to do with my day than puzzle out some garbled AI bullshit.
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Dec 5, 2022 08:30
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Spoggerific posted:I started studying Japanese in 2010, mostly so I could read/watch manga and anime on my own, but I also had aspirations to eventually become a fansubber. After a couple years of studying, I applied to a group and got in as a QC/editor. I stayed for a while, made some friends, and learned a lot, both about Japanese and fansubbing. I eventually got assigned a show as the main TL, and was excited to finally do some Real Translation. I originally had this in the OP before I shortened it, but it definitely stood out for me too after I started getting into translating. I can perfectly understand a sentence in Japanese, but be at a complete loss for how to put it into English. It doesn't help that I try to be overly precise. I know translating involves a certain degree of capturing the idea of a phrase or sentence, not being exact, but I consider it my style now, haha. I don't use automatic translators a lot, but I do sometimes turn to them for help understanding a sentence I just don't understand or for inspiration on how to phrase something in English. If I do use one, I usually try out a few translators (I like to use DeepL and Google translate) on the same sentence to make sure I understand the sentence well, and then put it into my own words to better fit the context and speaking style of the particular character or whatever. If it's a particularly difficult sentence or seems like something that leans heavily on cultural knowledge, I'll reach out to my friend or to a Discord language-learning group I'm part of. Despite kanji, I think translating written stuff is much easier. There are definitely things that people say that I'm not even sure I'd know how to spell and would be at a complete loss trying to subtitle. Of course, reading is traditionally the easier of the two comprehension skills, but kanji is really obnoxious. It doesn't help that the dictionaries never like my left-handed drawings and strokes. I like to use Aedict, but the kanji drawing feature rarely ever works for me. My first attempt at subtitling anything was translating from English->Japanese so my friend could enjoy Avatar: The Last Airbender, but I made it only halfway through the episode before realizing how incredibly difficult it is to translate into a foreign language and make it correct and maybe somewhat natural. I actually made a thread here a long time ago asking for tips. I only remember from it someone mentioning the subtitles should start like half a second before someone speaks. Larry Parrish posted:maybe I'm some kind of crazy person but i skip mtl. every time lol. only if I absolutely have to and if it's only a chapter or two and nobody else released one for that chapter, which often happens in-between one scanlation group dying or randomly dropping a series and a new one grabbing it. if a series is mostly or only MTL i just don't read it. so 'lapping' the real scanlators does nothing. maybe there's a lot of serious weebs out there who don't care and are used to having to mtl stuff for themselves or something, idk. but i have better poo poo to do with my day than puzzle out some garbled AI bullshit. There are people in this very subforum who can't even wait a couple of hours before the official English release of a manga before they start posting spoilers based on the pretty pictures from the Japanese release they can't read or understand. 
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Dec 5, 2022 12:52
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I don't have any experience but Dattebayo fansubs was integral to my enjoyment of Bleach and Naruto and I will love those folks forever.
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Dec 5, 2022 14:35
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Some fansub groups would also inject some humor into the subs in various ways. My group once added the Naruto sharingan sound effect to an episode of an anime where a yandere character got crazy eyes, and nobody noticed it (or at least nobody complained about it) until years later after the group was defunct and a thread was posted about it on an anime message board. One group, gg, was famous for occasionally trolling watchers in various ways - leaving Japanese commercials in, making ridiculously long translator's notes, or my personal favorite: putting entire blog posts into the names of chapter bookmarks. The names were long enough that they would sometimes crash certain video players. IIRC they were the creators of the famous TL note of the Code Geass chess scene that some people may have seen. 
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Dec 5, 2022 14:52
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are they the group that left in the morning rescue commercials in the madoka subs. e: they are. they own. Pladdicus fucked around with this message at 21:55 on Dec 5, 2022 |
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Dec 5, 2022 21:49
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are they the keikaku means plan people
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Dec 5, 2022 22:16
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Spoggerific posted:Some fansub groups would also inject some humor into the subs in various ways. Back in season 1 of Jojo, a group took up the mantle DUWANG and proceeded to create the worst translation imaginable for the show week by week, dubbing its hero "Joey JoJo", riding a fine line between very deep cut fan appreciation and absolute shitpost, and just to keep the joke intact: they stopped before it was done, slowing to a snail's crawl and disappearing. Would I have watched a longer, full season of it? No. Did I watch the show twice a week while those subs were around? Yes.
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Dec 5, 2022 22:58
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 im gonna need one of you former scanlators to explain what compels people to do stuff like this lol.
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Dec 6, 2022 12:53
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There's a great video series about the translation of Final Fantasy 7 that at some point (part 2) explains why one might use japanese words and then explain them later (usually the translation would require more words than a text box/speech bubble could hold); https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLsiJPoHlPqEEA07AKMQ2Hm2oRLiGkR_uJ it doesn't really excuse or explain that kind of example though but does touch on why certain choices might get made and is just a neat series for those interested in the practicalities and nuance of translation.
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Dec 6, 2022 13:28
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look i totally get using Japanese words when something in English isn't specific enough, or doesn't have the same connotations, or whatever. but it doesn't make any sense to write baka instead of stupid and then explain that yes, it means stupid and that character said stupid couple lol.
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Dec 6, 2022 13:32
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Yeah, that's entirely some weeb putting way too much stock in "baka" and just not trying at all. Very not sugoi.
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Dec 6, 2022 15:34
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i feel like in general if whatever you wrote requires a TL note and it's not a direct cultural reference like they mentioned a tv show or an idiom with no close equivalent or something, you have extremely severely hosed up somewhere in most cases
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Dec 6, 2022 15:54
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 same scanlators as the last one. im just gonna use this as my clueless scanlator punching bag thread. my brother in Christ, we have the same thing in America. you're just a clueless weeb.
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Dec 6, 2022 16:37
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There can be good translator's notes, but the vast majority of them are worthless weeb wank. One example of a very good translator's note I've seen was in Grisaia, where the main character is a secret agent type character working for the Japanese government. He refers to his employer as "Ichigaya". The English translation leaves it untranslated, and the first time it comes up there's a note that says something along the lines of "Ichigaya is a term used to refer to the Japanese Self Defense Forces, similar to how "The Pentagon" can refer to the US military. The term comes from the name of the neighborhood where the Ministry of Defense's headquarters is located."
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Dec 6, 2022 17:11
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Larry Parrish posted:
Wait, what? I have never heard of such a thing.  Huh. Is this really something only clueless weebs don't know about? Are jocks hanging out in the toy aisles at stores these days? XD Spoggerific posted:There can be good translator's notes, but the vast majority of them are worthless weeb wank. One example of a very good translator's note I've seen was in Grisaia, where the main character is a secret agent type character working for the Japanese government. He refers to his employer as "Ichigaya". The English translation leaves it untranslated, and the first time it comes up there's a note that says something along the lines of "Ichigaya is a term used to refer to the Japanese Self Defense Forces, similar to how "The Pentagon" can refer to the US military. The term comes from the name of the neighborhood where the Ministry of Defense's headquarters is located." Personally, I'd rather have too many translator notes than too few. Like this one - I like this one, I learned a thing. On the other hand,   Back on the first hand though, it's pretty funny and pretty harmless imo. There's also the other extreme. You can just remove all references to Japan!  I spent so, so much of my childhood trying to understand how these were donuts.
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Dec 7, 2022 23:59
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Shadow0 posted:Wait, what? I have never heard of such a thing. it's not like those kind of decoration pens are common but the translator just assumed it was a Japan thing which is why he's an idiot. they're not so uncommon that you need to explain what confectioner's tools are, most people just haven't used one. in a similar vein that guy kept writing it as 'choco' even when he has room to use chocolate and i don't know what's going on there.
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Dec 8, 2022 02:48
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In a certain sense, it's also not necessary for the reader to understand everything.
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Dec 8, 2022 02:55
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Larry Parrish posted:
Too cargo-culted from online weeb bullshit and too inexperienced, incurious, or just plain ignorant to spot that there is nothing whatsoever special about Japanese words. Scanlation is by definition amateur work, you have to roll with a certain lack of polish sometimes, but this specific issue is a different monster entirely. Anytime you see bizarre dumb poo poo like this, it’s 90% from people who are unwilling to spare a single thought to the process, or just plain brain damaged.
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Dec 8, 2022 03:13
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Frankly they are weak for not going for the full "bakouple".
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Dec 8, 2022 03:23
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I could almost respect it if they actually translated portmanteaus but a certain kind of scanlator thinks the concept is unique to Japan for some reason so we get poo poo like that instead lol.
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Dec 8, 2022 03:42
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Clarste posted:Frankly they are weak for not going for the full "bakouple". There's only one way to face a Japanese-generated half-English compound with honor, and that's by translating both sides. ぷうぷ Give us stu夫婦.
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Dec 8, 2022 04:43
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| # ? Apr 29, 2024 20:30 |
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The fan translators who get the most respect from me are the series of lunatics who've tried taking on Heterogeneous Linguistics, the manga about a fantasy anthropologist trying to communicate with a bunch of different monsters, whose languages presumably have rules known only to the author. The translators notes are half the fun.
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Dec 8, 2022 17:03
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