translations
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I've never done translations my self but I've been wondering how is it that a 1.5-2hour anime movie can be translated in a single day but a 40 page manga takes like a week, I would guess that the movie should take longer to translate, but instead the manga takes a longer time. Can enyone answer why this is. If I'm not correct about this then why does it seem like anime gets translated faster then manga.
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As someone that translates manga and is not japanese. Reading japanese is harder then listening to it, you usually have to look up a few kanji and that may take time. If they don't talk to fast in a movie you can just sit and type down the translation as you watch it, you'll probably miss a few areas but you can just go back to them and if there's a word you don't understand you can just type it in and get a translation, you don't have to try and find the kanji.
For a movie all you need to add timestamps or what they're called for the translation and do some technical mumbojumbo like encoding. In a manga you need to clean out the japanese text + other things depending on scan quality, then you have to try and fit the text in the bubbles and you have to do all this by hand.
For a movie all you need to add timestamps or what they're called for the translation and do some technical mumbojumbo like encoding. In a manga you need to clean out the japanese text + other things depending on scan quality, then you have to try and fit the text in the bubbles and you have to do all this by hand.
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ANIME MOVIES: not much reading skills required only if you recognize words spoken, then you might just make some sense out of it and come up with a translation, most people use aegisub for softsubbing these movies, you can just rewind the movie to the dialogues needed to be translated.
MANGA: you have to know the meaning of each kanji,hiragana words,katakana words, romaji pronounciation, before you can make some sense of it, and for the scanlation you have to edit speech baloons and insert the translated texts,usualy people use photoshop. for the kanji some people use OCR(optical character recognition) to extract kanji then use some machine translation software like ATLASV14, google translate, yahoo babelfish, "own self experience",, other peoples assistance, to translate text.
MANGA: you have to know the meaning of each kanji,hiragana words,katakana words, romaji pronounciation, before you can make some sense of it, and for the scanlation you have to edit speech baloons and insert the translated texts,usualy people use photoshop. for the kanji some people use OCR(optical character recognition) to extract kanji then use some machine translation software like ATLASV14, google translate, yahoo babelfish, "own self experience",, other peoples assistance, to translate text.
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Mod Note: Topic has been moved from Serious Discussion to the Anime General section.
Sorry for the inconvenience caused.
Getting back on topic, from a business point of view, it depends on the budget assigned to a particular project, especially if there is intention to reap monetary profits. In addition, the number of people working on a project may affect the amount of time spent translating.
Sorry for the inconvenience caused.
Getting back on topic, from a business point of view, it depends on the budget assigned to a particular project, especially if there is intention to reap monetary profits. In addition, the number of people working on a project may affect the amount of time spent translating.
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LD
Soba-Scans Staff
For scanlation and fansubbing, it's really dependent on the individual group doing it and what their staff members are like. Reading and listening have their own challenges. Written dialog is less ambiguous but often more complex than spoken dialog. In either case there has to be staff that replaces the Japanese with English, either through cleaning and typesetting manga pages or timing English text into anime. I honestly don't know how the two fields compare in terms of time investment but I doubt that they vary too much. Staff experience has a lot to do with it.
The reason why fansubbed shows seem to come out faster than manga is that there's generally more competition than there is in manga. It also seems to be regarded as a little more prestigious. So they'll align their schedules and stay up late hours to get things done as soon as possible.
On both sides there's tons of variation between groups. It often comes down to how long it will take for each individual staff member to get their piece done so the whole thing can be finished. But thinking about it terms of speed alone isn't the best idea, since there are plenty of people out there who are fast but sloppy.
The reason why fansubbed shows seem to come out faster than manga is that there's generally more competition than there is in manga. It also seems to be regarded as a little more prestigious. So they'll align their schedules and stay up late hours to get things done as soon as possible.
On both sides there's tons of variation between groups. It often comes down to how long it will take for each individual staff member to get their piece done so the whole thing can be finished. But thinking about it terms of speed alone isn't the best idea, since there are plenty of people out there who are fast but sloppy.
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Sindalf
Used to do stuff
ENJOY YOUR WALL OF TEXT AND QUOTES.
So I pasted this thread into an anime translator irc channel and had a load of laughs with people. My experience is that I have been subbing for about three years now in anime fansubs and I do work for mazui, gg, coalguys, utw, fakku, a nameless group that subs wakfu, and underwater when requested to do so. I also have my hand in other groups but more into the distribution department instead of their subbing field. I hope this gives you a good idea of where I get my opinions from.
First off, decent anime translators know their shit. They actually know the language unlike a lot of manga translators. This allows them to breeze through the content fast. A regular anime episode about 400-500 lines can take about two hours on average. Sometimes less sometimes a bit more depending on how much they care. If the line count is less it will obviously take less time than that. A good translator also can do it live as they watch it and then just do a quick second pass if they so choose to thus getting it done in about 45mins. In some cases they do it purely off of text if they have access to closed captions. This gets it done even faster because any anime translator will tell you the exact opposite of what is being said here, reading is easier than listening. Some anime sub groups sync their work flow up properly so that 5mins after the translator is done the product is ready for release. Otherwise you might have to wait another hour or so depending on the amount of fucks they are currently giving. Workflow matters and staff quality matters.
For a movie all you need to add timestamps or what they're called for the translation and do some technical mumbojumbo like encoding. In a manga you need to clean out the japanese text + other things depending on scan quality, then you have to try and fit the text in the bubbles and you have to do all this by hand.
Oh god what the fuck am I even reading. You should probably know your stuff before you actually attempt a translation. Timestamps? What the fuck? If you are doing that then you are doing it completely wrong and someone needs to be slapped. Encoding is just video compression and within a decent group this may be the biggest bottleneck for the group. Encoding can only be sped up by decreasing the quality of it since its totally based off of computer cpu. Not much can be done about it.
MANGA: you have to know the meaning of each kanji,hiragana words,katakana words, romaji pronounciation, before you can make some sense of it, and for the scanlation you have to edit speech baloons and insert the translated texts,usualy people use photoshop. for the kanji some people use OCR(optical character recognition) to extract kanji then use some machine translation software like ATLASV14, google translate, yahoo babelfish, "own self experience",, other peoples assistance, to translate text.
You know rewinding is more of a pain than turning the page back right?
I seriously hope you are not suggesting machine translation because that is going full retard on so many levels. Simple way of putting is that if your translator can't translate then the project should be dropped and burned.
On both sides there's tons of variation between groups. It often comes down to how long it will take for each individual staff member to get their piece done so the whole thing can be finished. But thinking about it terms of speed alone isn't the best idea, since there are plenty of people out there who are fast but sloppy
Actually competition is a common misconception. As far as that goes only the first three episodes matter. After that the normal leecher sticks with a group. You can normally tell who is going to get the most downloads on episode 1 anyway so competition has never been a good argument. The real reason would be "what the fuck are you waiting for?". You get to work as soon as you can and you finish it in one sitting. If someone isn't around you replace them. If they are not twelve years old then they should understand why. Late hours don't really matter anymore as if you have a competent group the entire thing should be done in like three hours easy, five hours for the slower groups out there. Personally my fastest release has been in 2hrs and 45mins or so after air time. One thing that has to be understood though is that many times things are just not being worked on. They might be waiting on something to show up like an encode cause they don't feel like translating off of an SD raw or whatever the reason. But normally after the raw shows up 2hrs later you can expect a release if everyone is on the ball, if not you just replace them.
Speed isn't really a factor on quality. It comes totally down to staff skill. I have seen groups release a week after air time and put out the most absolute terribad subs you could come across. Same thing with a couple hours after air time. It really doesn't matter how fast it is, it matters how good the staff is at doing their job. If you have a translator that knows their stuff then you obviously are going to have a better script. Same thing with a good timer and editor. What I can do in 20mins can take others a good 1hr and 45mins to do. I can also assure you my work will be quite good. Most of the subs you see now are also completely void of any quality checking. Quality check is now seen a dumb mental blocking process that allows people to make mistakes during their work so someone else can fix it later. Things might be a bit better if we decided to double check things but to waste all that time for one little thing is just a waste.
I hope you enjoyed this stupid rant of mine.
So I pasted this thread into an anime translator irc channel and had a load of laughs with people. My experience is that I have been subbing for about three years now in anime fansubs and I do work for mazui, gg, coalguys, utw, fakku, a nameless group that subs wakfu, and underwater when requested to do so. I also have my hand in other groups but more into the distribution department instead of their subbing field. I hope this gives you a good idea of where I get my opinions from.
First off, decent anime translators know their shit. They actually know the language unlike a lot of manga translators. This allows them to breeze through the content fast. A regular anime episode about 400-500 lines can take about two hours on average. Sometimes less sometimes a bit more depending on how much they care. If the line count is less it will obviously take less time than that. A good translator also can do it live as they watch it and then just do a quick second pass if they so choose to thus getting it done in about 45mins. In some cases they do it purely off of text if they have access to closed captions. This gets it done even faster because any anime translator will tell you the exact opposite of what is being said here, reading is easier than listening. Some anime sub groups sync their work flow up properly so that 5mins after the translator is done the product is ready for release. Otherwise you might have to wait another hour or so depending on the amount of fucks they are currently giving. Workflow matters and staff quality matters.
Koyori wrote...
As someone that translates manga and is not japanese. Reading japanese is harder then listening to it, you usually have to look up a few kanji and that may take time. If they don't talk to fast in a movie you can just sit and type down the translation as you watch it, you'll probably miss a few areas but you can just go back to them and if there's a word you don't understand you can just type it in and get a translation, you don't have to try and find the kanji. For a movie all you need to add timestamps or what they're called for the translation and do some technical mumbojumbo like encoding. In a manga you need to clean out the japanese text + other things depending on scan quality, then you have to try and fit the text in the bubbles and you have to do all this by hand.
Oh god what the fuck am I even reading. You should probably know your stuff before you actually attempt a translation. Timestamps? What the fuck? If you are doing that then you are doing it completely wrong and someone needs to be slapped. Encoding is just video compression and within a decent group this may be the biggest bottleneck for the group. Encoding can only be sped up by decreasing the quality of it since its totally based off of computer cpu. Not much can be done about it.
CEDR777 wrote...
ANIME MOVIES: not much reading skills required only if you recognize words spoken, then you might just make some sense out of it and come up with a translation, most people use aegisub for softsubbing these movies, you can just rewind the movie to the dialogues needed to be translated.MANGA: you have to know the meaning of each kanji,hiragana words,katakana words, romaji pronounciation, before you can make some sense of it, and for the scanlation you have to edit speech baloons and insert the translated texts,usualy people use photoshop. for the kanji some people use OCR(optical character recognition) to extract kanji then use some machine translation software like ATLASV14, google translate, yahoo babelfish, "own self experience",, other peoples assistance, to translate text.
You know rewinding is more of a pain than turning the page back right?
I seriously hope you are not suggesting machine translation because that is going full retard on so many levels. Simple way of putting is that if your translator can't translate then the project should be dropped and burned.
LD wrote...
The reason why fansubbed shows seem to come out faster than manga is that there's generally more competition than there is in manga. It also seems to be regarded as a little more prestigious. So they'll align their schedules and stay up late hours to get things done as soon as possible.On both sides there's tons of variation between groups. It often comes down to how long it will take for each individual staff member to get their piece done so the whole thing can be finished. But thinking about it terms of speed alone isn't the best idea, since there are plenty of people out there who are fast but sloppy
Actually competition is a common misconception. As far as that goes only the first three episodes matter. After that the normal leecher sticks with a group. You can normally tell who is going to get the most downloads on episode 1 anyway so competition has never been a good argument. The real reason would be "what the fuck are you waiting for?". You get to work as soon as you can and you finish it in one sitting. If someone isn't around you replace them. If they are not twelve years old then they should understand why. Late hours don't really matter anymore as if you have a competent group the entire thing should be done in like three hours easy, five hours for the slower groups out there. Personally my fastest release has been in 2hrs and 45mins or so after air time. One thing that has to be understood though is that many times things are just not being worked on. They might be waiting on something to show up like an encode cause they don't feel like translating off of an SD raw or whatever the reason. But normally after the raw shows up 2hrs later you can expect a release if everyone is on the ball, if not you just replace them.
Speed isn't really a factor on quality. It comes totally down to staff skill. I have seen groups release a week after air time and put out the most absolute terribad subs you could come across. Same thing with a couple hours after air time. It really doesn't matter how fast it is, it matters how good the staff is at doing their job. If you have a translator that knows their stuff then you obviously are going to have a better script. Same thing with a good timer and editor. What I can do in 20mins can take others a good 1hr and 45mins to do. I can also assure you my work will be quite good. Most of the subs you see now are also completely void of any quality checking. Quality check is now seen a dumb mental blocking process that allows people to make mistakes during their work so someone else can fix it later. Things might be a bit better if we decided to double check things but to waste all that time for one little thing is just a waste.
I hope you enjoyed this stupid rant of mine.