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(For a more concise read, check out Proofreading #101 over at Franky House.)
This is intended for new or prospective proofreaders who want to know what the job is like, but may be useful and informative to anyone. It's the compendium of my experience as a proofreader, and influenced a bit by my attitudes, which may be opposed to the mainstream's. Also, it's very open to criticism, discussion, and revision.
Introduction
Usually when we say "proofreader" it's like this: your friend asks you to proofread a paper, so you, as a proofreader, try to point out parts of it with potential to improve. Not the case here.
In Edited Manga, what you look over is the script produced by the translator, but you don't talk about it after you look it over, you edit it as you do.
Don't think that you look at a script like you do a paper. For example, one early pitfall you need to be aware of is your potential tendency to "overcorrect" to improve clarity. You should be aware that you can't be fully certain of what the translator intended by any section of the script. You can only do your best to find parts of the script that would be inadequately or improperly worded from the reader's perspective and rewrite them.
When it comes to rewrites, some people allow, and expect, the proofreaders they work with to completely rewrite any awkward or incorrectly worded sentences which don't have clear fixes, with the sole requirement that the rewrite convey the apparent purpose of the sentence and nearly the same information. Other people prefer that sentences be rewritten seamlessly to retain all possible information. Make sure you know which are which.
Get context!
Reference the raw to match up bubbles in the raw with lines in the script. Not only can you more accurately understand what the text references, it may even be up to you to detect if the script is incomplete this way, if it so happens that the typesetter isn't someone who would make sure of that for you. If you can't find the raw in the usual places, one of the people involved in the Edited Manga should have it, and you should ask them for it.
Many decisions of the more complex types that you will have to make as a proofreader have already been made for you if there are well-done Edited Mangas of previous chapters. When that's the case, usually all you have to do when you proofread the latest chapter's script is make it well-phrased and consistently delivered in the style of previous releases (not that that's simple). If previous chapters were not well-proofread, then you cannot rely on this method, but you can see to it that future proofreaders will be able to.
How to establish a standard
If a Edited Manga project has only one proofreader and only one translator, then over time they will come to know the story well and work well with each other, and the finished Edited Manga will come to have consistent stylistic (English language, translation, sound effects...) language standards and conventions, and have minimal factual errors. On top of that, if one of them learns from the other, then that one may be able to maintain the essential standards on their own. However, it is not ideal to rely on one or two people like that.
Ubel Blatt is an example of a project which has had inconsistent delivery in the past due to multiple translators who used different translation standards. At present, the translators and proofreaders are all in communication with one another and have typed up naming convention standards in a file "List of Names.rtf" which is available to everyone involved in the project through the Null FTP or on request.
When the Edited Manga assembly line involves more than one person working at each stage of the process, there is a need for some kind of extra communication, and either a translator or the project coordinator should be behind it, because they are the people who are able to most effectively push for quality. Without a serious push for standardization, other translators and proofreaders who become involved in the project cannot be relied on to pay any attention to make sure that the same standards are kept.
For projects which have a project coordinator or translator who loves the manga and understands teamwork, standardization is usually taken care of. It is typically a problem when no one who can make a difference in the project cares enough to notice that there are issues of clarity.
Rules of the language
Unless I take the time to talk about what those rules actually are, there is no way I can help you with them. However, there are a lot of them. So I will just very quickly talk about the ones that most people seem to have difficulty with.
First I'll deal with symbols, because their uses (with the exception of commas) are very easy to make decisions based on if you know how to.
Semicolon (
Exactly two uses.
The first use is between related sentences. For example: "I like ice cream. It's tasty." could be rewritten as "I like ice cream; it's tasty." If you feel that a sentence is too short to stand on its own, you may want to see if you can connect it to an adjacent sentence with a semicolon. This kind of semicolon is usually optional (that is, you can replace it with a period anytime).
The second use is when you have a list within a list. For example: Amatsuki and Special A; Naruto, Bleach, and One Piece; and Detective Conan. The first use is probably a lot more important than this one.
Colon (
Several uses, but they're all obvious except for the major one, which I will now talk about.
The foremost use is similar to the semicolon's in that the parts before and after the colon must be related, but the second sentence doesn't have to be a sentence. It just must be a quotation, an explanation, an example, or a series/list. Look at the above section on semicolons for two examples.
Apostrophe (') The uses of apostrophes (contractions, possession) are simple and intuitive. There are two major ones which people confuse in some cases.
The first use is for possession. For example: planet's axis. If a word ends in -s and is plural, just add one apostrophe. For example: "owned by cats" is "cats'". If a word ends in -s but isn't plural already, you can pick between the addition of apostrophe + s or just apostrophe, but it seems like apostrophe + s is more standard. For example: myopius's thread.
The second use is with contractions. For example: they'll, how're, I'm. Just cut off some letters and replace them with an apostrophe, and you have one of those.
Here's what confuses people: usually, possession and contraction with "is" look the same. For example, "the cat's" can mean "the cat is" or "owned by the cat". However, there are many cases where the possession is written differently and without an apostrophe, usually for pronouns like "its". You have to know what the correct word is in these cases--there's no way around it. Just keep in mind this "rule": possessives should have as few apostrophes as possible. For example: if you know of "whose" and "who's" in a context where it's supposed to mean "owned by who" and think to yourself that either one seems to fit, pick the one with less apostrophes (and confirm with a dictionary if you want).
Comma (,) Many uses. I will discuss one that is clear and should be understood well, but somehow isn't, and then link you an explanation of their most common and complex use.
First of all, a comma is necessary to set off a direct address or a word like "yes" or "okay". For example: "Hey stop!" and "Try again John." must be changed to "Hey, stop!" and "Try again, John."
There are also several uses of commas that all serve the purpose of making the greater structure of a sentence clearer. Visit http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/commas.htm and read #2, #3, #4, #7, and #8 to see what they are, and try to adhere to them. Those rules are what people commonly have trouble with; always keep them in mind.
On a final note, in cases where the deciding factor (for whether to use a comma) is subjective, it's better to err on the side of the addition of a comma, since "slowing down" the sentence too much is better than a quick or unclear transition that forces the reader to backtrack.
There's a major exception to the objective use of symbols: verbal utterances. Spoken speech involves a lot more situations than you'd find in an essay. To accurately, yet casually, convey the way speech is delivered, commas, hyphens, and ellipses have additional uses.
Commas are used to interject verbal utterances. For example: "Well, uh, do you mind?"
Hyphens are used when a character stutters. For example: "R-Really?" Since Japanese doesn't separate consonants, a translator may very often put "Re-really", but "R-Really" is what it should be.
Ellipses are used to indicate a pause or implied pause (omission). For example: "I... don't want to be afraid."
Japanese punctuation and bar line
Special terms or phrases are often enclosed within Japanese quotation marks which are intended to provide emphasis. You can see what they look like at the first line of the table at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japane...ation_marks_.28kakko_.28.E6.8B.AC.E5.BC.A7.29 . Usually English quotation marks ("") are used when translating these, so be aware that it's an attempt to provide emphasis.
A wave dash, which resembles a tilde (~), is used to convey a specific kind of intonation (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilde#Japanese). It's commonly translated as one or more tildes.
Ellipses almost always come in multiples of three. There are often consecutive ellipses to convey more of a pause. You also have ellipses in the middle of words or that trail off. I personally believe this is just as superfluous as many consecutive question marks, so I just reduce all consecutive ellipses to one, but other proofreaders don't. I also often replace ellipses used for very sudden pauses with hyphens, based on the mood of the speaker. There are no hard rules for ellipses as such.
In raws there are frequently exclamation points and question marks in odd places. The translator could have kept them in the script and left it up to you to decide whether to retain their oddness, or rewritten them already to what they felt fit. You would typically correct any incorrectly used or absent question marks either way.
A bar line, which resembles a dash (--), is used to mean the stretching out of a sound when it is written in the middle of a word. For example, no-----o could be translated to noooooo. A translator may often leave the bar line in, and you should then determine how to best write the word to stretch out its sound, unless it's a verbal intonation and you feel that the readership understands what it means and so feel that you can leave it in. If the bar line is written at the start or end of a bubble, it usually doesn't affect speech... I believe I may have seen it translated as an ellipsis once or twice, but in any case, it doesn't have much of an impact.
Sound effects
If there is no expectation of the translator to work on sound effects, it is doubtful that you, as a proofreader, will be expected to decipher the kana and translate them yourself. If the translator does it all themselves and doesn't communicate with you to help them out, then you also don't need to do any work.
However, if sound effects are only translated as far as romaji, or if some are translated past romaji while others are not, then you, the proofreader, may be expected to perform some translation.
Sound effects may be replaced with onomatopoeia, replaced with descriptions of what information they convey, translated only as far as romaji, or left alone if outside bubbles. The decision of what approach to take depends on the personal beliefs of Manga Editors and is definitely beyond what I intend to talk about. It may be implicit, or you may need to talk with the translator or project coordinator to determine your approach.
So it may not be up to you to make the decision of how to deal with sound effects, but understand that it's very difficult to find the most appropriate onomatopoeia in some situations. I'm not much of a reader of Western comics, but Edited Manga groups and Edited Manga readers cannot expect proofreaders (or translators) to be, nor is there any online reference for Western sound effects that I'm aware of.
Some references that I've been kindly directed to (and used since) are http://www.lolikon.org/misc/soundfx.html ("Japanese sound effects and what they mean") and http://jisho.org/ (under "Find words / Japanese" type the hiragana or romaji for the sound effect and press "Search").
Final tips
Quality checking versus proofreading: The usual difference between a quality checker and a proofreader is that the quality checker is typically not expected to have a deep familiarity with the story or to rewrite, but is instead expected to focus on typos, awkward phrases, improperly typeset text, unwhited bubbles, and other small mistakes.
Literal versus non-literal translation: Some translators will translate very non-literally. For example, a question intended to convey information to its recipient could become a statement, or a statement with an expectation could do the opposite. Proofreaders necessarily respect this and try to work with it.
Inter-bubble punctuation: Know when a sentence needs to be properly connected between bubbles. Different proofreaders have different styles and/or have to follow different standards, such as considering bubbles to serve as "implicit punctuation" and removing commas and periods at the ends, but in every case you need to make sure you're considering that sentences may stretch over multiple bubbles and how they will flow most effectively from the perspective of the reader.
Honorifics: Place hyphens before honorifics like -san and properly leave them uncapitalized to make it clear to the reader that they're honorifics. (Also, keep in mind that you should standardize translation of honorifics, too.)
Punctuation adjacent to closing quotation marks: In formal writing, where what is quoted is always a direct quotation of what someone said or wrote, these are the rules: periods and commas inside, semicolons and colons outside, and exclamation points and quotation marks either way (depends on whether they apply to the quoted part or to the sentence outside the quoted part). However, when quotation marks are used as makeshift italics and to represent Japanese quotation marks, commas and periods may sometimes be placed outside. This is a subtle point, so it's often easier, especially when you do not have the freedom to enforce the standard, to just treat all quotation marks the same.
Spaces adjacent to ellipses: Different people have different styles when it comes to how to space out ellipses, and there is no correct answer that I have found (let me know if you find one, but make sure it refers to verbal pauses). The best you can do for that is see that the same choices are made consistently. Ideally the ellipses will be typeset on a line by themselves and it won't matter.
Run a spell-checker: You will miss typos. Unless you read through each script several times, you will consistently read over small mistakes. Since a typeset chapter cannot be spell-checked, it should be the responsibility of the proofreader to reduce the number of small mistakes as much as they can. I use UNIX's "spell" command, which gives me a sorted list of all words not in a dictionary file, and then I Ctrl+F for each one until I make sure I have corrected all instances of the error; this has the advantage that I don't skip past a misspelled name due to thinking the spell-checker just didn't recognize it, because the correctly spelled name and misspelled name are right next to each other.
Teamwork versus timeliness: If you are able to consult with a translator conveniently, your ability to reword sentences quickly and effectively will skyrocket, but unless the people you work with support that activity, you will be expected to make the best judgment that you can with high certainty.
Read, write, and think: To proofread well, you need to communicate with others, and pay attention to the quality of your communication. All that I talk about here can only be used if you make the effort to memorize it and then start to use it quickly before it slips from your mind, and train yourself to subconsciously notice it. To proofread means you just read through a sentence while analyzing it in multiple ways in the back of your mind. Most people can't do much at once, but don't want to read through a script many times, and that's part of why it's hard to find well-rounded proofreaders.
Once more, don't overcorrect: Manga is not a series of essays. If you correct every "them" used as an impersonal pronoun to "him or her" or you make sure the active voice is used even when the sentence is simple and clear and may have been purposely structured that way, you have taken your eye off what matters (readers' enjoyment).
This is intended for new or prospective proofreaders who want to know what the job is like, but may be useful and informative to anyone. It's the compendium of my experience as a proofreader, and influenced a bit by my attitudes, which may be opposed to the mainstream's. Also, it's very open to criticism, discussion, and revision.
Introduction
Usually when we say "proofreader" it's like this: your friend asks you to proofread a paper, so you, as a proofreader, try to point out parts of it with potential to improve. Not the case here.
In Edited Manga, what you look over is the script produced by the translator, but you don't talk about it after you look it over, you edit it as you do.
Don't think that you look at a script like you do a paper. For example, one early pitfall you need to be aware of is your potential tendency to "overcorrect" to improve clarity. You should be aware that you can't be fully certain of what the translator intended by any section of the script. You can only do your best to find parts of the script that would be inadequately or improperly worded from the reader's perspective and rewrite them.
When it comes to rewrites, some people allow, and expect, the proofreaders they work with to completely rewrite any awkward or incorrectly worded sentences which don't have clear fixes, with the sole requirement that the rewrite convey the apparent purpose of the sentence and nearly the same information. Other people prefer that sentences be rewritten seamlessly to retain all possible information. Make sure you know which are which.
Get context!
Reference the raw to match up bubbles in the raw with lines in the script. Not only can you more accurately understand what the text references, it may even be up to you to detect if the script is incomplete this way, if it so happens that the typesetter isn't someone who would make sure of that for you. If you can't find the raw in the usual places, one of the people involved in the Edited Manga should have it, and you should ask them for it.
Many decisions of the more complex types that you will have to make as a proofreader have already been made for you if there are well-done Edited Mangas of previous chapters. When that's the case, usually all you have to do when you proofread the latest chapter's script is make it well-phrased and consistently delivered in the style of previous releases (not that that's simple). If previous chapters were not well-proofread, then you cannot rely on this method, but you can see to it that future proofreaders will be able to.
How to establish a standard
If a Edited Manga project has only one proofreader and only one translator, then over time they will come to know the story well and work well with each other, and the finished Edited Manga will come to have consistent stylistic (English language, translation, sound effects...) language standards and conventions, and have minimal factual errors. On top of that, if one of them learns from the other, then that one may be able to maintain the essential standards on their own. However, it is not ideal to rely on one or two people like that.
Ubel Blatt is an example of a project which has had inconsistent delivery in the past due to multiple translators who used different translation standards. At present, the translators and proofreaders are all in communication with one another and have typed up naming convention standards in a file "List of Names.rtf" which is available to everyone involved in the project through the Null FTP or on request.
When the Edited Manga assembly line involves more than one person working at each stage of the process, there is a need for some kind of extra communication, and either a translator or the project coordinator should be behind it, because they are the people who are able to most effectively push for quality. Without a serious push for standardization, other translators and proofreaders who become involved in the project cannot be relied on to pay any attention to make sure that the same standards are kept.
For projects which have a project coordinator or translator who loves the manga and understands teamwork, standardization is usually taken care of. It is typically a problem when no one who can make a difference in the project cares enough to notice that there are issues of clarity.
Rules of the language
Unless I take the time to talk about what those rules actually are, there is no way I can help you with them. However, there are a lot of them. So I will just very quickly talk about the ones that most people seem to have difficulty with.
First I'll deal with symbols, because their uses (with the exception of commas) are very easy to make decisions based on if you know how to.
Semicolon (
Exactly two uses.The first use is between related sentences. For example: "I like ice cream. It's tasty." could be rewritten as "I like ice cream; it's tasty." If you feel that a sentence is too short to stand on its own, you may want to see if you can connect it to an adjacent sentence with a semicolon. This kind of semicolon is usually optional (that is, you can replace it with a period anytime).
The second use is when you have a list within a list. For example: Amatsuki and Special A; Naruto, Bleach, and One Piece; and Detective Conan. The first use is probably a lot more important than this one.
Colon (
Several uses, but they're all obvious except for the major one, which I will now talk about.The foremost use is similar to the semicolon's in that the parts before and after the colon must be related, but the second sentence doesn't have to be a sentence. It just must be a quotation, an explanation, an example, or a series/list. Look at the above section on semicolons for two examples.
Apostrophe (') The uses of apostrophes (contractions, possession) are simple and intuitive. There are two major ones which people confuse in some cases.
The first use is for possession. For example: planet's axis. If a word ends in -s and is plural, just add one apostrophe. For example: "owned by cats" is "cats'". If a word ends in -s but isn't plural already, you can pick between the addition of apostrophe + s or just apostrophe, but it seems like apostrophe + s is more standard. For example: myopius's thread.
The second use is with contractions. For example: they'll, how're, I'm. Just cut off some letters and replace them with an apostrophe, and you have one of those.
Here's what confuses people: usually, possession and contraction with "is" look the same. For example, "the cat's" can mean "the cat is" or "owned by the cat". However, there are many cases where the possession is written differently and without an apostrophe, usually for pronouns like "its". You have to know what the correct word is in these cases--there's no way around it. Just keep in mind this "rule": possessives should have as few apostrophes as possible. For example: if you know of "whose" and "who's" in a context where it's supposed to mean "owned by who" and think to yourself that either one seems to fit, pick the one with less apostrophes (and confirm with a dictionary if you want).
Comma (,) Many uses. I will discuss one that is clear and should be understood well, but somehow isn't, and then link you an explanation of their most common and complex use.
First of all, a comma is necessary to set off a direct address or a word like "yes" or "okay". For example: "Hey stop!" and "Try again John." must be changed to "Hey, stop!" and "Try again, John."
There are also several uses of commas that all serve the purpose of making the greater structure of a sentence clearer. Visit http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/commas.htm and read #2, #3, #4, #7, and #8 to see what they are, and try to adhere to them. Those rules are what people commonly have trouble with; always keep them in mind.
On a final note, in cases where the deciding factor (for whether to use a comma) is subjective, it's better to err on the side of the addition of a comma, since "slowing down" the sentence too much is better than a quick or unclear transition that forces the reader to backtrack.
There's a major exception to the objective use of symbols: verbal utterances. Spoken speech involves a lot more situations than you'd find in an essay. To accurately, yet casually, convey the way speech is delivered, commas, hyphens, and ellipses have additional uses.
Commas are used to interject verbal utterances. For example: "Well, uh, do you mind?"
Hyphens are used when a character stutters. For example: "R-Really?" Since Japanese doesn't separate consonants, a translator may very often put "Re-really", but "R-Really" is what it should be.
Ellipses are used to indicate a pause or implied pause (omission). For example: "I... don't want to be afraid."
Japanese punctuation and bar line
Special terms or phrases are often enclosed within Japanese quotation marks which are intended to provide emphasis. You can see what they look like at the first line of the table at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japane...ation_marks_.28kakko_.28.E6.8B.AC.E5.BC.A7.29 . Usually English quotation marks ("") are used when translating these, so be aware that it's an attempt to provide emphasis.
A wave dash, which resembles a tilde (~), is used to convey a specific kind of intonation (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilde#Japanese). It's commonly translated as one or more tildes.
Ellipses almost always come in multiples of three. There are often consecutive ellipses to convey more of a pause. You also have ellipses in the middle of words or that trail off. I personally believe this is just as superfluous as many consecutive question marks, so I just reduce all consecutive ellipses to one, but other proofreaders don't. I also often replace ellipses used for very sudden pauses with hyphens, based on the mood of the speaker. There are no hard rules for ellipses as such.
In raws there are frequently exclamation points and question marks in odd places. The translator could have kept them in the script and left it up to you to decide whether to retain their oddness, or rewritten them already to what they felt fit. You would typically correct any incorrectly used or absent question marks either way.
A bar line, which resembles a dash (--), is used to mean the stretching out of a sound when it is written in the middle of a word. For example, no-----o could be translated to noooooo. A translator may often leave the bar line in, and you should then determine how to best write the word to stretch out its sound, unless it's a verbal intonation and you feel that the readership understands what it means and so feel that you can leave it in. If the bar line is written at the start or end of a bubble, it usually doesn't affect speech... I believe I may have seen it translated as an ellipsis once or twice, but in any case, it doesn't have much of an impact.
Sound effects
If there is no expectation of the translator to work on sound effects, it is doubtful that you, as a proofreader, will be expected to decipher the kana and translate them yourself. If the translator does it all themselves and doesn't communicate with you to help them out, then you also don't need to do any work.
However, if sound effects are only translated as far as romaji, or if some are translated past romaji while others are not, then you, the proofreader, may be expected to perform some translation.
Sound effects may be replaced with onomatopoeia, replaced with descriptions of what information they convey, translated only as far as romaji, or left alone if outside bubbles. The decision of what approach to take depends on the personal beliefs of Manga Editors and is definitely beyond what I intend to talk about. It may be implicit, or you may need to talk with the translator or project coordinator to determine your approach.
So it may not be up to you to make the decision of how to deal with sound effects, but understand that it's very difficult to find the most appropriate onomatopoeia in some situations. I'm not much of a reader of Western comics, but Edited Manga groups and Edited Manga readers cannot expect proofreaders (or translators) to be, nor is there any online reference for Western sound effects that I'm aware of.
Some references that I've been kindly directed to (and used since) are http://www.lolikon.org/misc/soundfx.html ("Japanese sound effects and what they mean") and http://jisho.org/ (under "Find words / Japanese" type the hiragana or romaji for the sound effect and press "Search").
Final tips
Quality checking versus proofreading: The usual difference between a quality checker and a proofreader is that the quality checker is typically not expected to have a deep familiarity with the story or to rewrite, but is instead expected to focus on typos, awkward phrases, improperly typeset text, unwhited bubbles, and other small mistakes.
Literal versus non-literal translation: Some translators will translate very non-literally. For example, a question intended to convey information to its recipient could become a statement, or a statement with an expectation could do the opposite. Proofreaders necessarily respect this and try to work with it.
Inter-bubble punctuation: Know when a sentence needs to be properly connected between bubbles. Different proofreaders have different styles and/or have to follow different standards, such as considering bubbles to serve as "implicit punctuation" and removing commas and periods at the ends, but in every case you need to make sure you're considering that sentences may stretch over multiple bubbles and how they will flow most effectively from the perspective of the reader.
Honorifics: Place hyphens before honorifics like -san and properly leave them uncapitalized to make it clear to the reader that they're honorifics. (Also, keep in mind that you should standardize translation of honorifics, too.)
Punctuation adjacent to closing quotation marks: In formal writing, where what is quoted is always a direct quotation of what someone said or wrote, these are the rules: periods and commas inside, semicolons and colons outside, and exclamation points and quotation marks either way (depends on whether they apply to the quoted part or to the sentence outside the quoted part). However, when quotation marks are used as makeshift italics and to represent Japanese quotation marks, commas and periods may sometimes be placed outside. This is a subtle point, so it's often easier, especially when you do not have the freedom to enforce the standard, to just treat all quotation marks the same.
Spaces adjacent to ellipses: Different people have different styles when it comes to how to space out ellipses, and there is no correct answer that I have found (let me know if you find one, but make sure it refers to verbal pauses). The best you can do for that is see that the same choices are made consistently. Ideally the ellipses will be typeset on a line by themselves and it won't matter.
Run a spell-checker: You will miss typos. Unless you read through each script several times, you will consistently read over small mistakes. Since a typeset chapter cannot be spell-checked, it should be the responsibility of the proofreader to reduce the number of small mistakes as much as they can. I use UNIX's "spell" command, which gives me a sorted list of all words not in a dictionary file, and then I Ctrl+F for each one until I make sure I have corrected all instances of the error; this has the advantage that I don't skip past a misspelled name due to thinking the spell-checker just didn't recognize it, because the correctly spelled name and misspelled name are right next to each other.
Teamwork versus timeliness: If you are able to consult with a translator conveniently, your ability to reword sentences quickly and effectively will skyrocket, but unless the people you work with support that activity, you will be expected to make the best judgment that you can with high certainty.
Read, write, and think: To proofread well, you need to communicate with others, and pay attention to the quality of your communication. All that I talk about here can only be used if you make the effort to memorize it and then start to use it quickly before it slips from your mind, and train yourself to subconsciously notice it. To proofread means you just read through a sentence while analyzing it in multiple ways in the back of your mind. Most people can't do much at once, but don't want to read through a script many times, and that's part of why it's hard to find well-rounded proofreaders.
Once more, don't overcorrect: Manga is not a series of essays. If you correct every "them" used as an impersonal pronoun to "him or her" or you make sure the active voice is used even when the sentence is simple and clear and may have been purposely structured that way, you have taken your eye off what matters (readers' enjoyment).
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