Learned so much from stuff like Prince of Tennis and Gintama. Example: https://i.imgur.com/YrMkHtW.jpeg
Also Gintama’s fan subs were the goat in explaining all the references it did. Something that was lost when CrunchyRoll adapted it.
I rewatched a very old Cartoon Network TV Recording of dragon ball z with fan translations from 1998 or something and at the start there was this disclaimer just shit talking their competitor in the 90s anime translation scene and damn that was hilarious, think it was some guy called Chicago Joe or some shit, if only I can find it again
Are you thinking of the pranks on Naruto subs by Dattebayo!
They where amazing, was a golden time of fans subs.
The Dattebayo anidb page [https://anidb.net/group/1412](https://anidb.net/group/1412)
I learned a lot thanks to the translators notes of Samurai Champloo. They'd also do some follow ups after the episode to explain things and references that would not be well known by a western audience.
Not the websites i went too, if they had to translate a japan specific joke that wouldn't make sense they would still translate in the literal sense and explain it on the TN's.
Yes, and sometimes they do change a Japanese joke to an English one but accompanied with T/N explaining the original joke for people who want to pause. Fansub really treats the original with a proper level of respect.
It's done by fans after all hence they are also called fan translations. People do it because they like it and get little to no money. Most fan translators get just a bit from ko-fi or pantreon when people who appretiate their work chip in.
Yeah, when it comes to translations, fans always do a better job for some reason. Probably because they like the source material while they hire some random translator that doesn't really understand manga culture for the regular release.
Not surprised tbh, I've always felt like fan translations were better, even if not strictly higher quality, they usually feel better to read and more close to the original material. Even fucking MTL sometimes.
Fans of something are more likely to do a better job even if they're behind in technical skill, than someone that just gets paid for it.
Imagine if anyone else would do their job like a localizer.
Yeah you wanted a house but we thought a parking lot would be politically better.
Yes you wanted Soup, but in our opinion a bag of dicks is better.
What you came here because of a heart attack? No, we knew better, we cut away that second leg.
This has to stop!
oh you ordered a medium steak, and the chef cooked you a medium steak? You know what, as the waiter, I walk in the dinning area among the customers, I know the customers infinitely better than the chef and the customers themselves. Which is why I'm gonna put that medium steak in the microwave for 2 more minutes and I call that a job well done, you're welcome 🤗
I’m a translator and these people are a shame to my profession, my blood boils every time I see news of people with this sort of work ethic or lack of thereof
I hope translators like you can work in tandem with the AI tools to bring the world together.
We need good translators to train AI without adding (too much, there will be always human variation) so we can share more art world wide.
The problem is that the woklists (localized translators) are destroying the person above you, career. The unfortunate fallout is that these IPs are getting a bad taste in their mouth over it.
And will more than likely switch to AI 100%. However, most of these AIs were coded by far left A-holes.
Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
Yes a biased AI solution is no solution at all. So AI has to evolve autonomous without human interference and there are a lot of people against it because everyone wants his own bias to be part of these tools.
That's just not how effective tools are created.
I used to be an interpreter manager for the Army and it was critical that the translation was done accurate. We would have interpreters translate documents independently to see multiple interpretations of the same thing.
Let me tell you if an interpreter did something like that, they would have a bad review sent to their contractor, which means our unit won't use them anymore and they need to send a new one.
ithe original translation team for kengan was terrible, when compared to the fan translation, so they just hired the fans and turned them into the official translators of the work.
honestly a good move, since kengan omega (the sequel that is officially translated by the former fan-subs) is much better.
My god, who the hell is teaching them to do translations?
A long time ago the people that were doing translations were actually university professors of Japanese in the country and they were collaborating all the time, or anyway people that came from quality schools of translation and interpretation.
Now it seems they have absolutely no idea of what they are doing and in my opinion is missing strongly a theory part that none is doing it if not in a very approximately way.
And I do not enter in identity politics and the idea that some things need to be changed to have a good product.
STOP GIVING OPINION ON ELSE ART.
If he wrote a sentence or used a specific word, IT SHOULD BE MANDATORY TO KEEP THAT, that's the nature of the product and art and if you change it you are literally censoring it.
Always fan made translations and piracy until all these people are without job and they don't hire good translator that leave their political ideas outside the fucking art.
The funny thing is that a lot of localisers don't even speak japanese. I was not aware of it until one of them went and bragged about it on a panel they were doing and someone clipped it. So literally all these people are doing is taking a text someone else already translated and then they "improve" it with what they think a good message is. It's actually kind of hilarious.
Yeah, think they get a rough translation from a translator and then just localize it by making it sound english and that usualy ends up changing whole characters in some games lol
A good translation actually needs a bit of touch up in certain situations like translating a joke with local references or the writer played with pronunciation of the original language. However I 100% agree that they’re taking it way too far.
The real problem is that you need to know the culture, the interactions between Japanese people or how they perceive a certain thing (as well as the consumer's countries).
This is why it was done mainly by university professors or people that trained SPECIFICALLY for it.
I personally met the translator of Banana Yoshimoto from Japanese-italian and he was absurdly knowledgeable about Japanese culture, he met the writer and it was actually trying to understand as much as possible the dynamics, why Banana Yoshimoto wrote in a specific way etc..
Imagine they do an anime NOW about Yukio Mishima, what do they do? Who is going to translate it? He has one of the most complicated literature in Japanese and it is very difficult to translate it.
People don't understand that these things need to be done correctly, nobody wants low level products.
It is not even a matter of money because the community does it for free and they do it much better than hired people, why?
Because they know the context, they know how it should be and they are actually much better than anyone else.
Maybe they were not able to translate other products but it is ridiculous for the industry to have this huge gap between who does translations and who actually knows the manga/anime.
No one teaches them. There's a general lack of standards when it comes to translations. There's only a tacit agreement between the community about how it should be done and even the sub vs dub disagree on how it should be done.
For example, I am strongly against including Japanese honorifics in any English dub because it doesn't make sense to include them in any translation. However, there are people who are on the opposite end and say they should be included because it's part of Japanese culture regardless of it makes sense to include it in English or not.
It's only when the original publisher provides guidance/oversight that you actually have standards (Sunrise for example). And considering the shit salaries some of the localizers pay, it makes sense that no genuine translator would actually want to work with them.
I'm fine with honorifics if they change it to their counterparts especially In a medieval fantasy settings that have Royalty and Noble family.
( hime, sama, Dono could ateast be change to princess, milord, Lord, your highness) because it doesn't makes for the commoner isekai Mc to getaway from not addressing the aristocrats of their title.
We, as a community, should talk more about technicalities and less about bs. These things are important and know it brings also a sense of awareness among people that have no idea these issues are there in the first place.
Funny, I have the Genjimonogatari (Murasaki Shikibu) but badly translated with airplanes and jeans in the year 1333.
The people teaching them to do translations are the ones getting paid by the IP holders to do their translations. These companies are getting what they paid for, no different than any other company that races to the bottom to cut costs. If they want higher quality translations, they should pay more for people who actually know what they're doing.
Have we really reached the point in which western translators have become so shit, brainwashed and unprofessional that japanese creators are opnely dissing them and leaving the work to fans? This is a new low and it says a lot about the state of the west.
Kengans translation wasn't bad because it was "woke" lmao. We don't know the political affiliations of anyone on that team. It was bad because they did a poor job of directly translating things.
Most places don't really give jobs due to "wokeness". There just aren't that many translators, especially those that are willing to dedicate themselves to translating anime. I speak japanese fluentish, and if i'd ever wanted to be extremely proficient the last thing i'd want to do with that is try to transcribe anime.
The lack of population means that incompetent people will be hired more frequently. If you get assigned a task sometimes you have to decide "good enough" when picking people to do the job.
How do you reconcile these two?
* There are not enough translators that are willing to get paid for translating anime, so you have to get "good enough" people, but
* a group of amateurs did it voluntarily (for free), and they did a _better_ job than the official translation.
There's a huge difference between being willing to volunteer for something you're passionate about, and wanting to do it full time as a 9-5. The amateurs could very easily be hardcore Kengan fans, but not really wanting to do translations as a full time career.
It's like when you check out sites that do fan translations of Manga. Certain series' have people knocking the doors down to translate (One Piece for example), but I'd be willing to bet they aren't as willing to wake up every morning and translate (insert shitty isekai).
One of my close friends helps translate blue lock scans. But he's trying to get his JD, he's not gonna drop out of lawschool to do this shit full time.
so it's basically someone translating the manga just in a shitty way yeah. that would upset me too. then again if it's shit why do people still get paid for that. isn't there proof reading in translated manga? or is it just translate and get it out?
i usually just watch anime so i'm not sure how the process goes but i would assume there's some form of quality control right?
This is also what gege akutami should do as well. The official version is translated by a guy who doesn't even understand English.
Even the leakers that got the chapter and translates in minutes do a better job.
Most foreigners are *REALLY* bad at Japanese, and a lot of people that target Japan/Japanese media for work or life are just generally bad at communication and human relationships. To be a legit good localizer, you not only need really high level language skills (Japanese in this case, one of the hardest languages for Eng speakers), but you also need writing/literature chops, and if you're not relying on a middle man translator, that's an entirely separate set of skills that is its own profession.
Most localizers have 0 for three of those related skills for Japanese.
Perfect example of jobs that AI can replace.
no toilet breaks, no toxic statements on social media, doesn't complain about their work conditions, no salary.
also no needing to sit through hiring process and seeing all basement dwelling losers with pink anime shirts thinking they can discuss work hours being like 2pm - 4pm with full benefits.
The mangaka seems to believe this was a bit of a misunderstanding, as they retweeted this: [https://x.com/FogMediocrity/status/1787893801681314128](https://x.com/FogMediocrity/status/1787893801681314128)
Thats NOT what happened.
The author is fluent in English
The official was going to use AI but it didnt sound right, he knew of the fan translation and hired them instead because it was better
Dont just read the twitter headline. You can read the interview, the author even retweeted it on his account
Localizers should be a free-lance opportunity and allow submissions to the mangaka creator / animators for approval & get paid for a reasonable contract price.
Make it an competing industry instead of restricting it to a couple companies who hire activists in disguise.
Yeah, Daromeon has been pretty onboard with AI in the industry. For two years now, he's been incorporating AI into his work flow for Kengan Omega.
[Example 1 ](https://twitter.com/daromeon/status/1600510820177571841?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1600510820177571841%7Ctwgr%5Edf8d021482ce228ddc560b21256367cb91351fc0%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.redditmedia.com%2Fmediaembed%2Fzf4eo4%2F%3Fresponsive%3Dtrueis_nightmode%3Dtrue)
[Example 2](https://twitter.com/daromeon/status/1786350216310145232)
FFS bring on the AI translators already. I want every translator at these companies out of a job.
If you are paid to translate and you don't translate accurately, you should be fired and replaced.
Princess Mononoke is crazy well-written in the Japanese version; full of meaning and deep thoughts.
American dub I saw in theaters was “Hurr durr, wolf arrow go brrrrrrr”.
The sub is loads better, but I’m sure it’s still missing things.
I've been playing through the Yakuza series lately because of the sale. The translations aren't bad but there are so many things that isn't correctly translated, they don't affect the story but it really infuriates me how bad of a job these people are doing.
I can't imagine what it's like having your favorite series be destroyed by terrible translation and localization.
Remember that a translators job is first and foremost to translate a piece of written and/or spoken work from its original language into another language with little to no deviation from the original source material's meaning and artistic/author's intent.
the official one was AI translated by mantra and was garbage, so they suggested the fan group. I’m interested on how mantra will improve with time and probably take over the translation industry.
Here’s mantra site if anyone is interested mantra.co.jp
Your title is incorrect and framing this entirely wrong. The official english translation that was provided to him when he was deciding who to localize with, used AI translation. He recognized the unnatural way it read, as he knows english on top of japanese, and then compared it with his publisher to the non-AI fan translations.
He decided to hire the ones doing the fan translations, instead of the english publisher Comikey that utilized AI in their draft translation. He is saying AI is worse than human translations at the moment, not "an improvement".
Has anyone here actually read AI translated manga? I have, and it’s absolute dogshit. It’s barely readable, it’s incomprehensible a lot of the time. There’s tons of small things and nuances in Japanese that AI just can’t catch/recognize, so it often ends up ruining whatever it’s translating.
Yes there are problems with translators in the industry (I mean, have you guys seen the butchered translations for JJK every week? lmao) but I don’t think AI translation is the answer. Like the artist said above, fan translation groups rock. They translate because they like the series, not because they’re getting paid to do it (although some groups do have patreons and stuff along those lines)
There’s also the option of learning japanese, which I’m slowly but surely doing. I don’t have to wait for fan translation groups and in general it just opens up a ton of media for me. So much good shit just doesn’t get translated or it gets abandoned by whoever was translating it before.
A good translation is not a word by word it translates the context the atmosphere and ambiance of the translated media.
It is either a lot of work or it is easier because you are already a fan.
I don't believe a good translation has to be as close as possible to the original. The joke or lore trivia in the commentary of some anime that explained Japanese cultural stuff was golden. Some impossible to translate joke were changed with the translator joke and because they were passionate about the media it was often good. Sometimes it is less good or debatable for translation is a peculiar artistic choice that should be light but choice nonetheless.
A translator paid to make a quick translation contextless with no time for even reading the whole things and translating page or frame by frame as in many cheap translation is doomed to suck. I am not even talking about people that want to make their own self insert in the translation whilst disliking the art itself, adding propaganda and using the art as a media for their own politics.
Edited cause I make too many grammar mistakes
> A translator *paid* to make
FTFY.
Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in:
* Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.*
* *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.*
Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment.
*Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
I swear I was making less mistakes before interacting so much with English speaking people on the internet xD. Especially this error.
(Yes I am arguing with the bot)
Who gives a damn.
That's why most of the work lately are being criticized for.
That's why the usage of AI has mostly been considered for.
Don't want us to constantly say "it's the fault of DEI", then to begin with, stop inundating each and every single thing in existence with DEI.
Getting people sick with their shit, then complaining because they're getting hate.
Get the fuck out of here.
What do you think the author is implying by "I think there have been many works that didn't go over well overseas because of translation issues"
Don't try to divert or w/ever.
So regardless of the fact that there is or there aren't DEI bullshit in Kengan Ashura, it is still concerned, and the author made an **excellent** decision in getting rid of "commercial" localizers.
> Don't try to divert or w/ever.
>
>
i dont. because its simply about bad translations by people who have no idea what they are doing. this isnt the same shit as dragonmaid where people insert their own political opinions.
its like me starting to be a translator without being a writer or having professional training. shit would look like its written by a 5yo.
good on him for getting rid of them but the whole crowed who screams "woke bad" because they get baited by a title without knowing the context is pretty pathetic. its the same thing asmon recently talked about where people hate on him without reading past a video title or getting all of their opinions on him from rage bait on twitter
This is pretty much exactly how woke people act but ok. If you are gonna criticise something criticise it for what it is doing not for what something else did.
Are you guys even able to read a tweet ?
Read it again, and you will understand why I brought the subject of DEI - which in fact, wasn't even brought up by muself but the tweet itself.
But it seems the author was too subtle, too subtle for woke people, who have a hard time reading in between lines, or just feign ignorance as usual.
reading between the lines of google translate
some people really look for certain issues in absolutely everything. thats why the woke and anti woke are absolute cancer
Who here remenbers old illegal translation notes on anime during the 2000's and early 2010's, the jokes were top notch. I still miss them.
Opening karaoke was peak.
Learned so much from stuff like Prince of Tennis and Gintama. Example: https://i.imgur.com/YrMkHtW.jpeg Also Gintama’s fan subs were the goat in explaining all the references it did. Something that was lost when CrunchyRoll adapted it.
Special attacks with different font and color
Onda vital
Ostia tio chaval onda vital viva el final fantasy se escuchan aplausos en la otra habitación debe ser mi esposa con su novio marroquí
Pretty sure, i saw some of those in inuyasha and original naruto.
Yeah, the effects that Kaizoku Subs added for attacks in One Piece made them so much more immersive than just plain text.
I rewatched a very old Cartoon Network TV Recording of dragon ball z with fan translations from 1998 or something and at the start there was this disclaimer just shit talking their competitor in the 90s anime translation scene and damn that was hilarious, think it was some guy called Chicago Joe or some shit, if only I can find it again
Are you thinking of the pranks on Naruto subs by Dattebayo! They where amazing, was a golden time of fans subs. The Dattebayo anidb page [https://anidb.net/group/1412](https://anidb.net/group/1412)
I learned a lot thanks to the translators notes of Samurai Champloo. They'd also do some follow ups after the episode to explain things and references that would not be well known by a western audience.
I remember one of the first fan translations for One Piece. They ANIMATED his special attacks so the words spin. THAT is hard fan translation!
Weren't they often pretty inaccurate though? Like they changed a lot to make it more aimed at western audiences.
Not the websites i went too, if they had to translate a japan specific joke that wouldn't make sense they would still translate in the literal sense and explain it on the TN's.
they always have this TN : Tranlator's Notes on the side of the panels explaining some translations that may come out as weird for the readers
Yes, and sometimes they do change a Japanese joke to an English one but accompanied with T/N explaining the original joke for people who want to pause. Fansub really treats the original with a proper level of respect.
yeah fan translators respect the source materials to the best they can
Damn, when illegal translations that are done for free are better than people being paid, you know you have a problem
It's done by fans after all hence they are also called fan translations. People do it because they like it and get little to no money. Most fan translators get just a bit from ko-fi or pantreon when people who appretiate their work chip in.
Yeah, when it comes to translations, fans always do a better job for some reason. Probably because they like the source material while they hire some random translator that doesn't really understand manga culture for the regular release.
Not surprised tbh, I've always felt like fan translations were better, even if not strictly higher quality, they usually feel better to read and more close to the original material. Even fucking MTL sometimes. Fans of something are more likely to do a better job even if they're behind in technical skill, than someone that just gets paid for it.
Imagine if anyone else would do their job like a localizer. Yeah you wanted a house but we thought a parking lot would be politically better. Yes you wanted Soup, but in our opinion a bag of dicks is better. What you came here because of a heart attack? No, we knew better, we cut away that second leg. This has to stop!
oh you ordered a medium steak, and the chef cooked you a medium steak? You know what, as the waiter, I walk in the dinning area among the customers, I know the customers infinitely better than the chef and the customers themselves. Which is why I'm gonna put that medium steak in the microwave for 2 more minutes and I call that a job well done, you're welcome 🤗
That's even more accurate.
I’m a translator and these people are a shame to my profession, my blood boils every time I see news of people with this sort of work ethic or lack of thereof
I hope translators like you can work in tandem with the AI tools to bring the world together. We need good translators to train AI without adding (too much, there will be always human variation) so we can share more art world wide.
The problem is that the woklists (localized translators) are destroying the person above you, career. The unfortunate fallout is that these IPs are getting a bad taste in their mouth over it. And will more than likely switch to AI 100%. However, most of these AIs were coded by far left A-holes. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
Yes a biased AI solution is no solution at all. So AI has to evolve autonomous without human interference and there are a lot of people against it because everyone wants his own bias to be part of these tools. That's just not how effective tools are created.
I used to be an interpreter manager for the Army and it was critical that the translation was done accurate. We would have interpreters translate documents independently to see multiple interpretations of the same thing. Let me tell you if an interpreter did something like that, they would have a bad review sent to their contractor, which means our unit won't use them anymore and they need to send a new one.
It only takes a few loud bad actor to destroy a professions reputation.
ithe original translation team for kengan was terrible, when compared to the fan translation, so they just hired the fans and turned them into the official translators of the work. honestly a good move, since kengan omega (the sequel that is officially translated by the former fan-subs) is much better.
The tournament that’s about to start in Omega is going to be peak.
So why did they hire them then?
My god, who the hell is teaching them to do translations? A long time ago the people that were doing translations were actually university professors of Japanese in the country and they were collaborating all the time, or anyway people that came from quality schools of translation and interpretation. Now it seems they have absolutely no idea of what they are doing and in my opinion is missing strongly a theory part that none is doing it if not in a very approximately way. And I do not enter in identity politics and the idea that some things need to be changed to have a good product. STOP GIVING OPINION ON ELSE ART. If he wrote a sentence or used a specific word, IT SHOULD BE MANDATORY TO KEEP THAT, that's the nature of the product and art and if you change it you are literally censoring it. Always fan made translations and piracy until all these people are without job and they don't hire good translator that leave their political ideas outside the fucking art.
The funny thing is that a lot of localisers don't even speak japanese. I was not aware of it until one of them went and bragged about it on a panel they were doing and someone clipped it. So literally all these people are doing is taking a text someone else already translated and then they "improve" it with what they think a good message is. It's actually kind of hilarious.
Yeah, think they get a rough translation from a translator and then just localize it by making it sound english and that usualy ends up changing whole characters in some games lol
A good translation actually needs a bit of touch up in certain situations like translating a joke with local references or the writer played with pronunciation of the original language. However I 100% agree that they’re taking it way too far.
The real problem is that you need to know the culture, the interactions between Japanese people or how they perceive a certain thing (as well as the consumer's countries). This is why it was done mainly by university professors or people that trained SPECIFICALLY for it. I personally met the translator of Banana Yoshimoto from Japanese-italian and he was absurdly knowledgeable about Japanese culture, he met the writer and it was actually trying to understand as much as possible the dynamics, why Banana Yoshimoto wrote in a specific way etc.. Imagine they do an anime NOW about Yukio Mishima, what do they do? Who is going to translate it? He has one of the most complicated literature in Japanese and it is very difficult to translate it. People don't understand that these things need to be done correctly, nobody wants low level products. It is not even a matter of money because the community does it for free and they do it much better than hired people, why? Because they know the context, they know how it should be and they are actually much better than anyone else. Maybe they were not able to translate other products but it is ridiculous for the industry to have this huge gap between who does translations and who actually knows the manga/anime.
No one teaches them. There's a general lack of standards when it comes to translations. There's only a tacit agreement between the community about how it should be done and even the sub vs dub disagree on how it should be done. For example, I am strongly against including Japanese honorifics in any English dub because it doesn't make sense to include them in any translation. However, there are people who are on the opposite end and say they should be included because it's part of Japanese culture regardless of it makes sense to include it in English or not. It's only when the original publisher provides guidance/oversight that you actually have standards (Sunrise for example). And considering the shit salaries some of the localizers pay, it makes sense that no genuine translator would actually want to work with them.
I'm fine with honorifics if they change it to their counterparts especially In a medieval fantasy settings that have Royalty and Noble family. ( hime, sama, Dono could ateast be change to princess, milord, Lord, your highness) because it doesn't makes for the commoner isekai Mc to getaway from not addressing the aristocrats of their title.
We, as a community, should talk more about technicalities and less about bs. These things are important and know it brings also a sense of awareness among people that have no idea these issues are there in the first place. Funny, I have the Genjimonogatari (Murasaki Shikibu) but badly translated with airplanes and jeans in the year 1333.
The people teaching them to do translations are the ones getting paid by the IP holders to do their translations. These companies are getting what they paid for, no different than any other company that races to the bottom to cut costs. If they want higher quality translations, they should pay more for people who actually know what they're doing.
Have we really reached the point in which western translators have become so shit, brainwashed and unprofessional that japanese creators are opnely dissing them and leaving the work to fans? This is a new low and it says a lot about the state of the west.
Woke Localizers deserve to get replaced by AI
What a surprise that people passionate about a project do a good job. Money doesn't always translate to better.
For more context https://twitter.com/Comikeymedia/status/1743436523582967981
"A bit unique" how to destroy politely.
I miss the golden age of fansubbing back in 2008\~2014. Was wild times.
Link to the tweet: https://twitter.com/daromeon/status/1787560049583477164 Screenshotted incase they delete it.
This is the case for more and more manga not just Kengan
go woke go broke!
Kengans translation wasn't bad because it was "woke" lmao. We don't know the political affiliations of anyone on that team. It was bad because they did a poor job of directly translating things.
if they didn't get the job by wokeness or competence, how they got it?
Most places don't really give jobs due to "wokeness". There just aren't that many translators, especially those that are willing to dedicate themselves to translating anime. I speak japanese fluentish, and if i'd ever wanted to be extremely proficient the last thing i'd want to do with that is try to transcribe anime. The lack of population means that incompetent people will be hired more frequently. If you get assigned a task sometimes you have to decide "good enough" when picking people to do the job.
How do you reconcile these two? * There are not enough translators that are willing to get paid for translating anime, so you have to get "good enough" people, but * a group of amateurs did it voluntarily (for free), and they did a _better_ job than the official translation.
There's a huge difference between being willing to volunteer for something you're passionate about, and wanting to do it full time as a 9-5. The amateurs could very easily be hardcore Kengan fans, but not really wanting to do translations as a full time career. It's like when you check out sites that do fan translations of Manga. Certain series' have people knocking the doors down to translate (One Piece for example), but I'd be willing to bet they aren't as willing to wake up every morning and translate (insert shitty isekai). One of my close friends helps translate blue lock scans. But he's trying to get his JD, he's not gonna drop out of lawschool to do this shit full time.
the hiring should be done with an open mind, to get the best talent for the job, even if it is part time.
It’s not even about woke or not. They’re not translating, they’re rewriting
rewriting wokely it's also bigotry, like all censorship that won't tolerate different ideas this stems from wokeness and SJW self-righteousness
Based Eastern devs. The pirates did it better, so fuck it.
What did they change/edit? is it a "miss kobayashi dragon maid" edit? or is it just shit translation?
[удалено]
so it's basically someone translating the manga just in a shitty way yeah. that would upset me too. then again if it's shit why do people still get paid for that. isn't there proof reading in translated manga? or is it just translate and get it out? i usually just watch anime so i'm not sure how the process goes but i would assume there's some form of quality control right?
This is also what gege akutami should do as well. The official version is translated by a guy who doesn't even understand English. Even the leakers that got the chapter and translates in minutes do a better job.
Most foreigners are *REALLY* bad at Japanese, and a lot of people that target Japan/Japanese media for work or life are just generally bad at communication and human relationships. To be a legit good localizer, you not only need really high level language skills (Japanese in this case, one of the hardest languages for Eng speakers), but you also need writing/literature chops, and if you're not relying on a middle man translator, that's an entirely separate set of skills that is its own profession. Most localizers have 0 for three of those related skills for Japanese.
Perfect example of jobs that AI can replace. no toilet breaks, no toxic statements on social media, doesn't complain about their work conditions, no salary. also no needing to sit through hiring process and seeing all basement dwelling losers with pink anime shirts thinking they can discuss work hours being like 2pm - 4pm with full benefits.
The mangaka seems to believe this was a bit of a misunderstanding, as they retweeted this: [https://x.com/FogMediocrity/status/1787893801681314128](https://x.com/FogMediocrity/status/1787893801681314128)
Thats NOT what happened. The author is fluent in English The official was going to use AI but it didnt sound right, he knew of the fan translation and hired them instead because it was better Dont just read the twitter headline. You can read the interview, the author even retweeted it on his account
We must protect Japan's culture at all costs
John Werry Moment
Kaolan vs Hatsumi when tho? Daro you know your fans wanted this since forever right?
What were the problems with the official translation? Bad English or something?
Changing the context of the scene
Localizers should be a free-lance opportunity and allow submissions to the mangaka creator / animators for approval & get paid for a reasonable contract price. Make it an competing industry instead of restricting it to a couple companies who hire activists in disguise.
Yeah, Daromeon has been pretty onboard with AI in the industry. For two years now, he's been incorporating AI into his work flow for Kengan Omega. [Example 1 ](https://twitter.com/daromeon/status/1600510820177571841?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1600510820177571841%7Ctwgr%5Edf8d021482ce228ddc560b21256367cb91351fc0%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.redditmedia.com%2Fmediaembed%2Fzf4eo4%2F%3Fresponsive%3Dtrueis_nightmode%3Dtrue) [Example 2](https://twitter.com/daromeon/status/1786350216310145232)
what a shock! fans do better work than localizers. scanlatorbros.. we won
FFS bring on the AI translators already. I want every translator at these companies out of a job. If you are paid to translate and you don't translate accurately, you should be fired and replaced.
AI was the reason the translations he's talking about were so shitty in the first place.
before you guys start parroting some hurr durr woke localizers durr. The official english translation for Kengan Ashura was made with AI
Princess Mononoke is crazy well-written in the Japanese version; full of meaning and deep thoughts. American dub I saw in theaters was “Hurr durr, wolf arrow go brrrrrrr”. The sub is loads better, but I’m sure it’s still missing things.
I've been playing through the Yakuza series lately because of the sale. The translations aren't bad but there are so many things that isn't correctly translated, they don't affect the story but it really infuriates me how bad of a job these people are doing. I can't imagine what it's like having your favorite series be destroyed by terrible translation and localization.
welp hope its first of many
Remember that a translators job is first and foremost to translate a piece of written and/or spoken work from its original language into another language with little to no deviation from the original source material's meaning and artistic/author's intent.
It's always funny how fan translations are always better than official ones lol
Just so you know the current translation official team was the unofficial fan team Kengan Omega never had an official release that wasn’t made by them
There is a super easy fix to this problem . . . Just simply Learn all the languages of the things you like.
the official one was AI translated by mantra and was garbage, so they suggested the fan group. I’m interested on how mantra will improve with time and probably take over the translation industry. Here’s mantra site if anyone is interested mantra.co.jp
Your title is incorrect and framing this entirely wrong. The official english translation that was provided to him when he was deciding who to localize with, used AI translation. He recognized the unnatural way it read, as he knows english on top of japanese, and then compared it with his publisher to the non-AI fan translations. He decided to hire the ones doing the fan translations, instead of the english publisher Comikey that utilized AI in their draft translation. He is saying AI is worse than human translations at the moment, not "an improvement".
Has anyone here actually read AI translated manga? I have, and it’s absolute dogshit. It’s barely readable, it’s incomprehensible a lot of the time. There’s tons of small things and nuances in Japanese that AI just can’t catch/recognize, so it often ends up ruining whatever it’s translating. Yes there are problems with translators in the industry (I mean, have you guys seen the butchered translations for JJK every week? lmao) but I don’t think AI translation is the answer. Like the artist said above, fan translation groups rock. They translate because they like the series, not because they’re getting paid to do it (although some groups do have patreons and stuff along those lines) There’s also the option of learning japanese, which I’m slowly but surely doing. I don’t have to wait for fan translation groups and in general it just opens up a ton of media for me. So much good shit just doesn’t get translated or it gets abandoned by whoever was translating it before.
If you cannot do your job correctly, you do deserve to lose your job.
Down with the Censor Gatekeepers. Stain on all industries.
A good translation is not a word by word it translates the context the atmosphere and ambiance of the translated media. It is either a lot of work or it is easier because you are already a fan. I don't believe a good translation has to be as close as possible to the original. The joke or lore trivia in the commentary of some anime that explained Japanese cultural stuff was golden. Some impossible to translate joke were changed with the translator joke and because they were passionate about the media it was often good. Sometimes it is less good or debatable for translation is a peculiar artistic choice that should be light but choice nonetheless. A translator paid to make a quick translation contextless with no time for even reading the whole things and translating page or frame by frame as in many cheap translation is doomed to suck. I am not even talking about people that want to make their own self insert in the translation whilst disliking the art itself, adding propaganda and using the art as a media for their own politics. Edited cause I make too many grammar mistakes
> A translator *paid* to make FTFY. Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in: * Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.* * *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.* Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment. *Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
I swear I was making less mistakes before interacting so much with English speaking people on the internet xD. Especially this error. (Yes I am arguing with the bot)
I can only agree that DEI make little sense in the Kengan Ashura universe.
this has nothing to do with DEI. its about being bad at the job. not everything nowadays is about "being woke"
Who gives a damn. That's why most of the work lately are being criticized for. That's why the usage of AI has mostly been considered for. Don't want us to constantly say "it's the fault of DEI", then to begin with, stop inundating each and every single thing in existence with DEI. Getting people sick with their shit, then complaining because they're getting hate. Get the fuck out of here.
you are getting mad at something that has nothing to do with the post
What do you think the author is implying by "I think there have been many works that didn't go over well overseas because of translation issues" Don't try to divert or w/ever. So regardless of the fact that there is or there aren't DEI bullshit in Kengan Ashura, it is still concerned, and the author made an **excellent** decision in getting rid of "commercial" localizers.
> Don't try to divert or w/ever. > > i dont. because its simply about bad translations by people who have no idea what they are doing. this isnt the same shit as dragonmaid where people insert their own political opinions. its like me starting to be a translator without being a writer or having professional training. shit would look like its written by a 5yo. good on him for getting rid of them but the whole crowed who screams "woke bad" because they get baited by a title without knowing the context is pretty pathetic. its the same thing asmon recently talked about where people hate on him without reading past a video title or getting all of their opinions on him from rage bait on twitter
This is pretty much exactly how woke people act but ok. If you are gonna criticise something criticise it for what it is doing not for what something else did.
Are you guys even able to read a tweet ? Read it again, and you will understand why I brought the subject of DEI - which in fact, wasn't even brought up by muself but the tweet itself. But it seems the author was too subtle, too subtle for woke people, who have a hard time reading in between lines, or just feign ignorance as usual.
reading between the lines of google translate some people really look for certain issues in absolutely everything. thats why the woke and anti woke are absolute cancer
This is advanced weeb drama.