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Well, kanji without furigana isn't a huge issue. Makes translating a little slower, because it's a little slower to look up words I don't recognise, but hey, if I had a huge issue with it, then I'd be screwed when (as is often the case...) the furigana is barely legible in the RAWs. And when translating xxxHOLiC, for that matter, which doesn't use furigana at all except for unusual readings.
Handwritten text, on the other hand, can always be a pain
Can take ages to work out what exactly a kanji is supposed to be if I don't recognise it ~_~ Same goes for when the RAW is just too low-quality (either because the RAW is just THAT BAD or because the text is too small) that the kanji themselves are barely legible, so forget recognising them, actually making out their shapes to look them up is practically impossible.
But to be honest, more often than not, it's not either of those things that throw me, what really throws me is when there's an unusual phrase or word (in the case of a word, usually without any kanji) where I just have no idea on the meaning. A phrase/word unusual enough that I can't find it in any dictionary (or a variation, a phrase which is in such slangy/dialect speech that I can't work out the standard form to search for in a dictionary).
Usually when that happens, I have to resort to searching for the phrase in Google (or if it's a word rather than a phrase, the Japanese Wikipedia can also help) and using actual Japanese pages in context to try and work out the meaning, which is EXTREMELY hit-and-miss ~_~
One thing that used to throw me a lot when I tried to translate it is giongo and gitaigo (the sound-effect-type words that show up both in actual sentences and as, well, sound effects.) I don't translate the SFX generally except in a couple of series where I feel it's actually worth it, but when I did (or when they came up in ordinary text), they often threw me because there are just so many of them and they tend to be so badly-documented in dictionaries. However, recently, I found an awesome giongo/gitaigo dictionary which finds what I'm looking for nine times out of ten. It's great.
As for Gintama, I don't read it. I did kind of check out the beginning of it at one point, but didn't read very much.
Handwritten text, on the other hand, can always be a pain
Can take ages to work out what exactly a kanji is supposed to be if I don't recognise it ~_~ Same goes for when the RAW is just too low-quality (either because the RAW is just THAT BAD or because the text is too small) that the kanji themselves are barely legible, so forget recognising them, actually making out their shapes to look them up is practically impossible.But to be honest, more often than not, it's not either of those things that throw me, what really throws me is when there's an unusual phrase or word (in the case of a word, usually without any kanji) where I just have no idea on the meaning. A phrase/word unusual enough that I can't find it in any dictionary (or a variation, a phrase which is in such slangy/dialect speech that I can't work out the standard form to search for in a dictionary).
Usually when that happens, I have to resort to searching for the phrase in Google (or if it's a word rather than a phrase, the Japanese Wikipedia can also help) and using actual Japanese pages in context to try and work out the meaning, which is EXTREMELY hit-and-miss ~_~
One thing that used to throw me a lot when I tried to translate it is giongo and gitaigo (the sound-effect-type words that show up both in actual sentences and as, well, sound effects.) I don't translate the SFX generally except in a couple of series where I feel it's actually worth it, but when I did (or when they came up in ordinary text), they often threw me because there are just so many of them and they tend to be so badly-documented in dictionaries. However, recently, I found an awesome giongo/gitaigo dictionary which finds what I'm looking for nine times out of ten. It's great.
As for Gintama, I don't read it. I did kind of check out the beginning of it at one point, but didn't read very much.
Between you shrimpy and the other translators...at least all of jump is being translated ^_^.
