Hey guys, thank you so, so much for your positive inputs on the previous interview. I've been wanting to release this interview for a while but something something excuses. The pace of these releases will pick up from now on, so look forward to some great new content from the minds of the people who bring you these translations!
Again, the interview is available in its entirety here. This and previous interviews (some not hentai-related!) are also available on
4playeranimecast.com. Enjoy!
For this interview, I had a great, lengthy discussion with a translator that’s been churning out work after work for the community at large for over a decade. Although based strictly around a commission model of translation unlike many other translation groups today, SaHa has maintained a prolific volume of quality works in English for readers to enjoy over on its blog. Sayo – the founder of the group – was gracious enough to tell us more about the experiences through the years.
What got SaHa started? What is the daily life of a commission-based translator like? What does he think of the online fan community now and the rise of aggregate manga-reading sites? For the answers to these questions and more, read on!
SaHa’s most recent series involve Seishokuki (Inamitsu Shinji), The Great Escape (Ozaki Miray), and My Family Passion (Yasuhara Tsukasa).
-----
OK, so first question - just tell me a bit about yourself, what you do, how you got here, and any hobbies that you have.
Hello, I am Sayo of SaHa, the manga/doujin translation group. I started off doing translation in my final year of university after some of my more advanced Japanese courses got cancelled due to a lack of students. I decided to take a stab at translating some very basic doujins at the time (which I believe were all of the
Negima doujins by Gust). This allowed me to slowly build up my kanji vocabulary. When I started out, it probably took me like 10 hours to get through 1 doujin - it was pretty rough at first.
Eventually, a guy called "Numbus" caught wind of me and offered to start paying me for translations, so I started doing work for him. Later on, I saw that that was going nowhere, so I struck out on my own and opened the blog - which is where I still am to this day.
Those radical searches, eh? What do you rely on now for translating?
When I started out, radical searches were definitely what I had to rely on. And obviously, a dictionary. Eventually, I got my hands on an OCR which sped things up a bit. Nowadays, I've built up enough of a vocabulary that I don't need to rely on OCRs or anything like that quite as much - maybe for scientific words that I've never encountered before like diseases and junk like that.
Ah, ok. Back on topic, what exactly did you mean by “going nowhere” with Numbus earlier on?
Oh, with Numbus? Basically, it got to a point where he was sitting on something like 100 unreleased doujins, and he'd hold them back out of spite for the fanbase.
Also, we were in talks to potentially get a legit business going with the Japanese artists to start releasing paid manga in English. But I later found out that his intention was to essentially let me do all the legwork and he'd just sit back, take the translations, and make the money off them.
That is extremely...unfortunate.
It’s also worth mentioning that Numbus was paying next to nothing for the translations, so it got to a point where either working for him or working via commission for others was not even an option worth weighing.
Basically, Numbus would take anything I sent him, but it would always be a flat fee regardless of page count. He even wanted to pay that same flat fee for 200 page books, which was just lol. So I just stopped giving him large books. I did the average doujin stuff, which was maybe 20 pages each.
A natural consequence.
Ya. I don't really like going on the attack or anything, but Numbus was not a swell guy.
Eventually, I decided to contact one of the few people actually releasing legit manga, which was Simon from Icarus comics. After some back and forth discussions, I started working for him. So I did a couple dozen books for Icarus, until Simon fell ill and dropped off the face of the planet.
:( An unfortunate part of working like this over the internet, and in a field like this too.
Ya. After that, I just kept going with my commission work on SaHa. And most recently, I was contacted by Jacob to work with Fakku, and that's essentially where I'm at now.
Was the business idea that you worked on with Numbus sort of like what Fakku is doing now?
Pretty much exactly what Fakku is doing now, yes.
When did your communications with Numbus begin?
When did my communications with Numbus begin? That would have been 2004. He caught onto me pretty quick if I recall correctly. I was maybe two months into doing translations when he contacted me through HongFire, which was where I would release my translations at the time.
About the recent development, do you mind sharing more details on your current contract with Fakku, or is it something still in the works?
It's barely begun, but it's in motion. I don't think I'm allowed to go into any specifics about what it involves, though. Suffice it to say, it's translation work.
Then just one last question about this before we move on - is it on a greater or smaller scale than what you have going currently for commissions? For comparison, would the amount of Fakku-related work be greater than what you're doing currently for commissions?
Hmm... lol. I'm afraid that answering that may reveal too much. It's essentially a full-time job. I will still be doing commissions when I have the time, though. The thing is, it's not just me working on it, so I've gotta juggle contacts with other people and stuff.
Ahh, all right. I'm fine with keeping it a juicy secret for now. But in any case, I'm sure that a lot of people will be anticipating the announcement :D.
It's fairly exciting stuff.
Haha, excellent. Ok, so could you briefly go over some hobbies that you do outside of scanlation, if you don't mind me poking into your personal life a bit?
I'm a reasonably heavy gamer, though I feel like it's gotten to the point where I have a lot of difficulty getting around to playing all the games I buy. Steam is a curse...my pile of shame is quite shameful. Nowadays, I mostly play
League of Legends, though.
Other than that, I'm taking courses in 3D modeling/animation, so that's sucking up a good chunk of my time as well. I watch the occasional TV show.
Game of Thrones is a favorite of mine,
Better Call Saul, etc.
Are you looking into becoming a computer graphics designer in the future?
I'm not entirely sure where I'm gonna take it. The thing is, when I was growing up, I always wanted to get into the gaming industry. For a variety of reasons, that never actually worked out. If I do end up completing this course, I suspect I may attempt to turn into a solo venture of sorts of do something similar to what
Studio FOW is up to. So whatever it is, it'll probably be adult in nature, but I'm still far away from that stage.
Ok, then. So the next topic, again, is a bit more focused on yourself. What are some favorite anime/manga/LN/VN/doujinshi/etc. that you like, and maybe some artists/tags/genres (H or non-H)? You can also hate on stuff if you want here.
I can't say I've watched much in the way of anime in the past several years, mostly due to time constraints. I need to juggle the work, the games, etc... That being said, I did manage to watch all of
Attack on Titan when I got my Netflix account a while back, and I really enjoyed that one. Before that, I think the last anime I watched to completion was
Code Geass R2 so many years ago. Around that time,
Naruto was falling apart, so I stopped watching that. I remember I used to like
Naruto a lot, and then it felt like it was 29 budget animation episodes for every super cool, well animated fight, so I was like, "Eh... Do I need to suffer through another dozen episodes with ugly animation before I get to something cool again?”
A lot of anime was also really boring, same-y, moeblob harem crap, so I kinda fell out of it a bit. Or nothing held my interest past episode 1. But like I said, it's not that I don't want to watch anime. It's just that I need something to hook me quick. And for me, that was
Attack on Titan.
But in terms of older anime I liked, I guess some would be
Gundam Seed, Saber Marionette, and Code Geass. One I really loved that never made a domestic release as far as I know was
VS Knight Ramune & 40 Fire. I'd say back before 2009 or so, I watched almost everything that ever came out.
And do you also read manga or LNs or VNs, the usual stuff?
Hmm... Well, the thing is, I technically read manga 10 hours a day. It's not necessarily manga I read for fun, though. However, I used to read manga back when I was still into anime. One of my favorites back then was
Keroro Gunsou. Tenjou Tenge was another I liked a lot.
Yakitate Japan was awesome, as well. But I haven’t read any fansub manga in recent years.
Any particular reason?
Well, for the domestically released manga, it just got to a point where I was buying manga and I never got around to reading a lot of them due to time constraints, so I just said "I could spend 15 bucks on this new issue which I'll probably never read, or I could just save my money and accept that my schedule's completely trashed."
And don't even get me started on how much doujin I've got sitting there. Like physical books. I used to go to anime cons and just buy everything that was even remotely interesting to me. It also got to a point where I was actually becoming afraid to import doujins, just because our customs agents are incredibly stupid - I've had a few packages get seized at the border.
Did you get them through official markets or were they on auction sites?
I can't remember the name of the site. Some of them were simply through
amazon.co.jp before they stopped all shipments of hentai to other countries.
I had a package come in once with a book by Takemaru Sesshu which included a 24 year old women who looked underage. That book got seized. But in the same box was a JKP book. And if you know JKP's thing, the book included a guy strangling girl while clutching her uterus and jerking himself off, as well as another scene where a guy is frantically jamming his dick into a pregnant woman's nipple. That was let through.
Go figure. Can't let that obscenity poison our minds.
Hahahaha, oh well, can't choose who searches these things I guess. But yeah, with all the manga/doujinshi you've seen, do you have any particular artists/tags that you like or hate?
Specifically Japanese artists or general? Either way, I could make a list that could wrap around the planet.
I guess in this interview let's keep it to JP artists.
JKP is obviously one of my favorites. Katou Jun is one that I really like. I usually like Erect Touch. Lemme see if I can find others. It would be hard to rank them, I think. Finecraft 69 is awesome. Looking through a list...Gura Nyuuto's pretty good. Shinozaki Rei is another one I like a lot. Eroquis! too. Most of these would probably not survive the top 5 if I was to make a list, but they're pretty good.
I tend to like very clean linework, which is why I say "Usually" for Erect Touch.
Erect Touch does get slightly messy when he starts up on his tentacle shenanigans, I think...Although I did like his Pandora works.
It's not really the tentacles that bug me. It's that sometimes he releases that are very "roughed out" in terms of linework. Almost like he was in a rush to get it out there and he didn't want to bother inking it something
That sometimes does happen in the middle of doujinshi I guess. It's jarring.
I'm sure it does. Gotta get that stuff ready for Comiket.
Then, any tags that you like/dislike?
Tags that I dislike would be guro for sure. I think that just about does it for stuff I genuinely dislike. There's other stuff that makes me go, "meh, whatever. it's there," but in terms of stuff I really hate, it would be guro. I once translated a Kaki no Boo doujin, and I was genuinely ill afterwards.
Right, you do mention that in your info on the blog.
As for tags I like (in no particular order): creampie, preg, loli, futa/shem,...I dunno. gimme a tag list.
Haha, that's fine as is - so many tags to go through anyways. Well, another quick question: if you specifically weren't allowed to do hentai/doujin commissions, what, if anything, would you be doing in its place?
I'd be up for regular manga. It's just that not many people are willing to pay for it, so it's either free fansub groups that do it or it doesn't get done. As for anime, I wouldn't say that that's my specialty. I could get accustomed to it over time, I suppose, but vocally, I'd say I'm a bit lacking. Not having anyone to speak Japanese with tends to eat away at your comfort level with the spoken language.
Especially when dealing with homophones and the like, I assume.
Ya. The thing with manga is there's very little wiggle room on how something can be interpreted. There's still "some" wiggle room in certain situations, but it's a lot more concrete than trying to differentiate certain words without kanji there to lock you down.
Next question - could you give us a brief timeline of an average day for you (scanlating, schoolwork, etc.)?
Well, the classes are online classes, and only twice a week, so those don't take up an enormous amount of time on their own. The assignments are another matter.
Typically, I'll wake up around 11-noon. I'll grab some lunch/breakfast. I'll get back home and begin working on the translations. I may stop around 7 to grab something to eat. Then I'll work another 3-4 hours. Probably until midnight unless I've still got the energy to keep going. If my brain's turned to mush, I'll probably play a couple of
League of Legends matches, and then I'll go to bed around 3am or so. Whether or not I have some assignments to fit in there depends on what I need to get done.
Typically, I work in phases, so I'll finalize the payments on a number of commissions. Let's say 3 or 4. If my brain's not cooperating, I'll do the boring grunt work of cleaning the pages and adding the moaning sounds to all 4. Then I'll come back to them the next day and begin going through the translations themselves. Doing it that allows me to focus on the translation without having to go, "Okay. I'm in translation mode and everything's gravy. Page 1 done. Clean page 1. God, this is boring. Okay. Switch back to translation mode for page 2. Time to clean page 2." etc., so I get all that nonsense stuff out of the way, and then I can just go through a translation cleanly, without having any downtime between pages, which can potentially cause awkward tonal shifts [between pages].
Factory line style, I see.
Also, I can't listen to podcasts or anything like that while I'm translating because it throws off my focus, so I don't listen to music or anything. I use the cleaning process to listen to any podcasts I need to because it's just grunt work.
Ah, ok. Since it does require a lot of concentration I can see how the multitasking will slow it down a lot.
Yes. That's probably why it used to take me 10 hours to get through a doujin.
What's one aspect of scanlation you wish you could improve upon?
Well, when it comes to rebuilding artwork underneath text, I basically don't have the artistic talent for that. It's not necessarily that I wish I could improve on it because I'm fairly certain I just don't have that in me, and I'm really not willing to sidetrack into 2D art courses to become good at it.
I used to have a guy for about a couple of years who would clean any background text and all that stuff. He was very good at it, but eventually, it became unmanageable for me to keep him on. Basically, I would send him something to get through, and he would take 3 weeks to actually clean it and get it back to me. Meanwhile, the client would be waiting, going, "wtf, why is it taking so long?" So even though his work was top notch, it was losing me clients, and after repeated warnings, I decided to cut it off completely.
Could you give one or two tips, warnings, advice, etc. for a person that's interested in scanlating for the fan community?
Tip 1: Don't go into it for the money. I get these comments all the time about "Oh, you must be making tons of dough with all the commissions you've got." The truth is, I'd probably make more working at McDonald's.
A jacuzzi full of money, I’m sure. Any others?
Tip 2: Don't feed trolls. As for warnings, don't feed trolls is kind of a warning in itself. But really, the internet is a cesspool of negativity, and you need to be cautious about having an opinion on anything. One of the reasons I do not use Twitter or social media is that I wouldn't be able to handle it.
Oh, and one more tip - if you take payments, do not advertise the method.
As in, discuss privately with the clients?
Exactly. A certain service that will forever remain nameless is exceptionally hostile to this line of work. The same tip could apply to artists or anyone even remotely connected to this field.
All right, we'll just do two more questions before we wrap up. First, why do you think futa series/scanlations are so sparse? Is it just because of the niche or something else?
Are they really that sparse? It does feel like they don't come out as often as they used to, though. At the same time, I feel like the futa genre is well taken care of by western artists (which reminds me, Uno Makoto is another favorite of mine.) I mean, the futa genre is niche in the sense that it's one out of several dozen genres. But I don't believe there's necessarily a lack. Just maybe that people will always want more than what's available.
As far as scanlations of futa are concerned, I think I do quite a few of those. I'm not sure of the exact distribution of my futa to non-futa commissions, though. Granted, I'm also factoring in shemales, which some may balk at. I know some people who used to like Amanoja 9 for example, and then suddenly stopped liking him once the translation came out and they read that many of the characters self-identify as men - and I know that's a sticking point for real life trans women.
I had one commissioner of the Amanoja 9 books angrily tell me to replace all the mentions of "man" with "woman" and that using "man" everywhere is super insulting. I'm like "Okay, you try to replace †˜man’ with †˜woman’ in all of these occurrences and then tell me that the sentence still makes any sense. I translated that line that way because that's what it says." He tried to say that it wasn't like that when the previous anon had translated the first two books and I basically told him, if that is the case, then either the artist did an about-face on the identity of the characters, or it's a rewrite. It turns out it was neither, he was just mad and didn't remember the first two books that well.
But yeah, there's definitely a growing trend where shemales are superseding futa. And obviously, people who think that jerking off to shem makes them automatically gay will get pissed about it.
I see. Ok, last question. So an online site named Vice recently released an article about the fan scanlators, briefly covering some stuff, etc. Now, one of the points it makes is that when the aggregate sites started to come out - Mangareader, Batoto, Fakku, TokyoTosho, Nyaa, the subreddits, and so on - the community as well as the market shifted because of the sudden easy access to titles. Do you think your views/thoughts on the community and scanlation has changed due to the rise of these aggregate sites? If so, how?
I don't have a very favorable opinion about the aggregate sites, to be honest. The thing is, a lot of these aggregates take in ad revenue, which can eventually become rather substantial. And they're essentially riding on the backs of scanlators, some of whom get paid for their work, but almost never from the aggregates directly. Doujin-moe, for example, pays a lot of their translators directly, but they also leech in order to pad their site and turn into a fatter, yummier turkey. And by doing this, the scanlators, who obviously only host their own content, become an extra bookmark that can be deleted in favor of simply going to the aggregate site. So the aggregates are doing a lot more harm than good to the scanlators themselves, unless they keep them on the payroll.
Part of why there were especially so many complaints against Mangafox/Mangareader for deleting the watermark pages.
Ya. I've had people delete my watermarks as well. They'll argue that they want the release to be "clean" or whatever, but that's just bullshit. They just don't want to give free advertisement, and they don't want to risk people finding the source because they want the ad revenue. For my part, I've always said that I don't care if my stuff is reposted elsewhere, but keep the release intact, and don't put it behind a paywall. Ad revenue is one thing, but when you get into pay-site territory, that's really shitty, because that’s stuff that doesn't even belong to them.
Right when you try to sell someone else's effort.
Exactly. That said, even though Fakku made their name by "leeching" content from elsewhere, they did ask me for permission when it came down to it. And now they've been fortunate enough to snag legit deals, which is going to bring hentai translations out of the gray area it's been in for a decade. I feel like what they're doing is probably the best thing that could happen to the industry. The translators can get paid. The artists can get paid. And people can fap to more stuff than ever because there's an incentive to release more and more.
It's basically like how Gabe Newell said that piracy is a service problem. Beforehand, the manga publishers were always reluctant to jump overseas and get a huge new revenue stream. If Jacob can pull this off and be successful at it, perhaps more publishers will come along, and people can get every Comic Unreal, every Masyo or wharever manga they desire in record time. And it won't be up to one generous guy to foot the bill for a prohibitively expensive 400 page translation.
And hopefully slowly loosen that bottleneck. Anyways, this is the end of the interview - do you have any last comments, questions, shout-outs, callouts/flames, or shameless plugs?
I'm not sure... Drawing a blank a bit. Obviously, people can find me at
sahadou.com. Things will probably slow down on the website in terms of releases, but I'll still be around, and if people want to see what's slowing everything down, they can keep their eyes on Fakku over the next few months. I suspect there won't be an announcement for a month or two, though.
Thank you so much for doing this interview.
No problem.
-----
This interview as well as more anime-related content will be available on
4playeranimecast.com. Also follow us on:
http://www.facebook.com/4playeranimecast
http://www.twitter.com/4ppanimecast
http://twitch.tv/4playeranimecast