MH Quality Control - Translators Plan of Motion

But how will we be able to tell the difference between a translation with all the things and a translation from someone who just wishes to do his job without interferences? Is something gonna appear at the top, like: "this translator uses all we could provide! (y)", or something like that?

Wow, it's quite good. Nice idea you got to not make rating system, it'll make the beginner get depressed

I think this is a good way of handling the situation. I just hope that MH will provide for translators (without *enforcing* upon them):

(1) some indication of what an appropriate (or a "minimum"?) level of accuracy is for direct Japanese-to-English (or any language-to-language) translations and the situations in which exceptions can and should be made, (2) some form of a guide on properly representing misspoken or nonstandard speech in translations (see **note1), (3) and a guideline for proper speech-bubble-text management.

While I'm a believer that these additions will garner a very nice overall improvement, I don't think that the best results can be had unless those who are capable of doing so lend their wordsmithing skills to the MangaHelping process (and have an easy way of doing so) because lets face it: people are good at what they're good at, and you can't expect them to wander too far away from their strengths for free. MH has always been an outlet for the willing and capable amongst us, to lend their skills to the subsequent scanlation of our beloved manga. Once people can easily offer their services and become aware of their ability to do so (something on the frontpage?) I'm sure things will get better.

**note1 - Like in Naruto, the ridiculous insistence that pa-frog's speech (even though he himself may use a different dialect) should be represented as a barely-recognizable butchery of the southern US English dialect rather than by shortening his words and using apostrophes (' <-- this thing) and slight alterations in sentence and/or word structure. Just changing dialects across languages doesn't work...

Oooh, I am very interested in the dialects article. I always wished there was some way to make them work in english, because its such a waste for them to go unoticed! I love Kumamoto-ben~

I'm glad something is actually happening instead of it just being talked about. And can't wait for the scanlator movement.

That's right, NJT! That will be the only way Mangahelpers can help out in the translators here. A few article suggestions though, although mainly I understand that most translators here are Japanese to English translators. I thought it might be a good idea to have a few articles on supporting the minor group of translators, who translate either from Korean or Mandarin or the International translators.

As for incentives, I can't think of any up at the moment. Will post them out if any crosses my mind.

My suggestion perhaps concerns mostly scanlation, but for now I'll put it here. It was mentioned somewhere in the comments to the very-long-article, that one of the differences between translations in fansubs and scanlations is the following. When you watch fansubs, you hear the original, and are able to spot the mistakes on the fly. When reading a scanlation, if you haven't gone and found a raw also, you can only guess for the most part.

It seems to me that technically this question can be overcome with little effort. A scanlation group can release, instead of, or along with the jpg/png version, a psd or layered png version of their scanlation. The layers can be
-background: cleaned raw
-layer1: white bubbles over the japanese text
-layer2: typesetted translation.
Surely there would be problems with text outside of bubbles (well, layer1 becomes a bit more complicated), but noone asks for perfection right away.

This would be an analogue of those dual language collection editions. This way the reader can switch between the scanlated version and the original (with the nice cleaned raw too!) by simply turning off the upper layers' visibility. Surely you need appropriate software, but what's the problem. This would be also an analogue of the recent tendency of many fansubber groups to release both mkv-HD-softsub versions for those who need HQ and avi-SD-hardsubs for the rest.

And a translator might express a wish that his translations are used in such dual-language scanlations.

As a newbie translator I'm definitely looking forward to this. I think probably the main things translators, especially new ones need the most help with is Dialects and Slang mostly, then grammar and such.

One of various problems I know I have is when I have a sentence or some such and I can pretty much understand it in Japanese. But literally only in Japanese, and I can't figure out correctly how to put it into English wording since it's so different sometimes.

@ingwe37
Why are cleaned raws not released regularly already, anyway ...? (for series like Bleach mainly. Tankoubon raws are usually good quality)
If groups have a problem doing that, surely they'd have a problem releasing in a format that enables the cleaned raws to be ripped out of the layered PNGs?
That said, if there are any (Java) coders out there interested in this kind of "softsub-scanlation" idea, contact me. I'm currently coding something along these lines. (It's not very far along yet.)

@Dark-san
Not much discussion has been had here about double- or triple-translators in these threads yet...
How to make the wording natural is a separate issue that could be tackled for these kinds of translations, but as far as translation accuracy goes -- this is a bit blunt and doesn't take individual translators' personal situations into account, but -- I think the best advice that could be given is "start learning Japanese and start constantly referencing the raw" :/
I think it would improve the accuracy of translation far more (quickly) than any assistance or comments that could be put on individual translations, particularly since the translator is likely to be unable to learn from their mistakes if they never know what the raw said in the first place.
But perhaps some articles on this issue may still be useful, who knows. ._.

@njt
I'm looking forward to reading and writing some of these articles. I hope I can learn a lot from this. :)

@Hyperworm: Then wouldn't that be the same as learning Japanese? Besides, manhua and manhwa aren't in Japanese, so Dark-san wasn't necessarily talking about 2nd/3rd translations.

Generally though, it'll be useful to have some tips that will help any translator.

@Elkin
Sorry, you're right - I never even thought about single-translations from Korean or Chinese. Advice to those people would certainly be helpful, too. ._. I won't be able to give any, of course. :x

And yes it would be the same as learning Japanese. (I didn't say translate from it; just use it as reference.)
You might say "If they had the time for that, they'd be doing it anyway!" ...Well, I just mentioned it in case there are people who have grown so used to double- or triple-translating that they don't even see learning the original language as useful or in any way necessary--not worth enough for the effort--and aren't even considering it as an option, even if they have the time. ._.
Not intending to start any wars here with foreign translators. ^^;;;

Also, apart from mentioning that double-translations and Korean/Chinese-translations also deserve discussion, this reply is a little off-topic. There might be a proper thread for detailed discussion/articles on this later; for now we should probably keep to answering the questions raised in the OP. :x

Perk-wise then:
The only thing I can think of is name-recognition. List the people who have contributed/helped with a particular translation; how often they've contributed overall, etc. Can MH offer anything else apart from increased reputation, anyway? ._.;

@Hyperworm: Np :) I can't say I wholly agree with you though. Like you said, picking up a new language takes up a lot of time and effort. Part of the problem is that the best way to learn a language is to do so in class, and not everyone's in the position to attend Japanese classes. So personally, I think it's understandable that people just do second translations.

I agree with you on the perks side though. MH being what it is, I can't think of anything it can offer besides reputation. Reputation points, exposure on the front page... :/

I think that's a great step.

I don't think there will ever be something like a perfect translation (unless it is strictly technical, like blueprint translation), but I think it won't harm to aim at reaching a higher level :)

I hope this whole discussion and its results will raise people's awareness about translation! :)

@Hyperworm~ Although I understand that we are referring mainly to Japanese-> English translators here. But we can't ignore the fact that there are still a clear small number of translators here that does translation from Korean and Mandarin to English. If you want to stem the flow of bad translations from the source, you don't just target at the bulk! You target the whole translation community! That is how you get the results you want. No point if the Japanese translators are improving while the rest are flagging behind in terms of quality. If MH is willingly to work together with the existing minority translators, it shouldn't be a problem to get them up in an instant.

seriously ... I have no Idea why you guys making such a big deal out of this. But appreciate the hard work you are trying to make :>

will this be a way to show our appreciation for the translators too??

@Xman
Basically, the crew here at MH just wants to raise the quality of translations, since the average manga reader doesn't realize how bad they can be. For example...
http://www.onemanga.com/Soul_Eater/19/09/ The third panel here, where Elka talks about Medusa killing the Kishin. In the original, Elka says, roughly "In order to inject the Kishin with black blood, we have to protect this case with our lives... or else we'll be killed by Medusa."... in other words, if the average reader didn't know better, they've got the whole point of the story wrong because the translator wasn't very good. Also in the original, Elka tells Jackson to keep at it, because they're almost there. Free comments on how people are catching up to them at an alarming rate (no mention of a fight in the area), and he also never mentions a "Familiar", he just asks for the tadpole Elka's riding. There needs to be some kind of quality control.
Here's another example that makes me laugh...
http://www.onemanga.com/Busou_Renkin/16/16/ First panel... Kazuki's sister said in the original that if he doesn't come home soon, there won't be any apples left for him. Somehow, through the magic power of poor english translations, she learns that he's fighting to the death and is close to being killed. Second panel she originally told Toriko to continue her "Strawberry Talk", meaning flirting.

great! looking forward to reading those articles :)

This sounds awesome! Thank you.

As one of the reasons I've taken up Japanese is a lack of trust in translations, I personally would like to work with TL checks. I don't mean to sound conceited in desiring to help out with them, as my Japanese isn't that amazing either, but I do think I could pick out the errors to a certain degree (if there are any).

On that note, it would definitely help to contribute to the transcriptions archive. I don't know if we have any transcriptions at all posted up.

Also, as a note for articles to make, I've started a couple like ways to translate certain difficult-to-translate phrases. I was hoping to kind of start an archive of sorts for it, but yeah, if anyone cares to take a look and add to them.

And yeah, I vote very strongly against a rating system. It would end up discouraging beginners, who could have lots of potential (although it's me judging, I'd say I've improved a lot in the few translations I've done here).

Like everyone else's enthusiasm over the dialects page, it might also be a good idea to include different ways it could be translated (i.e. how dialects and the such are expressed even in English - which I've notice in novels, but never paid enough attention to)

I'm in favor of an article on translation that contains just two words: "LEARN ENGLISH!"

Some translations are technically correct but nearly unreadable because it's written something like "Up roof jump you see fly bird". And then the translator has the gall to call themselves a native English speaker.

It's gotten to a point where I'd rather see well-written English, even if it's a mistranslation, than the poorly-written English that gets passed off in some scanslations.

Okay, so if I want to help with TLCing, what am I supposed to do? Either you've written nothing about it, or I fail at reading comprehension.

One thing I would really encourage is the mass PMing of translator users to alert them of new features and areas. I barely even knew about the MH translator academy.

@HisshouBuraiKen: A good suggestion. Maybe these suggestion of articles might prompt some activity and buzz amongst the translators to get them to interact with each other in that sub forum.

Even better: how about a translator-only shoutbox item for latest news. Save me from the mess that's already my PM inbox.

I normally don't like posting on forums and such. Really I think just about the only place I make written posts is for NCIS releases on our own website. But I think something really needs to be said about all this making translators better business.

The first thing that needs to be understood is this: Translators hold the only position in scan groups that don't *have* to do this to be able to read manga and are, in fact, only doing this because they either 1) enjoy doing it, or 2) are doing it out of the kindness of their hearts. Why don't they have to do this? Well...because they can read the original language. When you really boil it down, the only thing we should expect from them is a translation that is as accurate as possible. Nothing more.

Now, would it be awesome if they could translate and make it good, conversational English at the same time? Yeah, that would be great. But that would only be a bonus, not part of that job.

So, honestly, I think that all of this project you have going is directed at the wrong people. The job that it *should* be directed at is the one that is most often overlooked, taken for granted, and for some reason seen as the easiest job:

The Proofreader.

I'd go so far as to say that the PR is probably the hardest and most important jobs on a scanlation team. Their work can make or break a manga (or rather, their work is the deciding factor in if the scanlation is good or not). Not only do they have to make sure that all the spelling and punctuation is correct, but they also have to make sure grammar is correct, turn Engrish into English, turn that English into conversational English, make sure that the conversational English doesn't have any awkward sentences that impede the flow of the story, get TL checks if a line looks out of place, make sure that the English has the same connotation as the Japanese (or w/e), ...

The list goes on. The job requires not just a high level of knowledge of the English language, but also writing and creative skills and being able to coordinate between different TLers. It's a very difficult job.

They are NOT, as implied above, assistants of any kind.

Let me also say this. I know that I am very tough on applicants to my scan group. But it's for a reason. I find that less than stellar releases are disrespectful both to the mangaka, and yourself. I want people who work on our releases to have a sense of pride about the things they do. Some may call it overboard and stupid, but, as my Daddy always said, "If you're going to do something, do it right and do it well. That way you'll never regret it."

If you want some sort of proof about how people seem to take the PR job lightly, just go to NCIS's "now recruiting" page. Read the posts made there. That page is the test before the test. And I'm always surprised about how many people fail it. What use is a proofREADER who doesn't read?

~CassiusOS~

@~CassiusOS~: Although your post does make logical sense especially the part where you specified that translators needn't even need to translate for them to read the manga. However we all have to keep one thing in mind is that everything runs in a relative chain reaction. If a translator comes out with a seemingly lously English that is not even close to the literal translations, how can the proofreader even going to understand and proofread the script?

If we are to throw all bad scripts to the proofreaders, even the best proofreaders out there would be stumped by it. Besides the only way that a proofreader to be completely skilled at handling those bad scripts is only when he/she knows the raw's language as well. These sort of proofreaders are difficult to find, much less say recruit.

It's more of a shared responsibility between the translator and proofreader to engage each other. Rather than blaming each party. ^.^;

@Dark-san, You are correct that, yes, we should have a certain standard set at, at minimum, literal translations. However, I still cannot say that it is the responsibility of the translator to go any further than that on their own. It is STILL the job of the Proofreader to recognize that something seems off about a line, and go to the translator for clarification, or ask another translator for a TL check.

I will have to refer back to my own group for examples. If you check some of our credit pages, a lot of them actually, you'll find that we have sometimes 3 and 4 translators listed because we would have problems coming up with a good English translation for a single line. But this was not coordinated by the translator. It was done by the Proofreader.

I would find it a bit silly to expect a Japanese translator who knows English as a second language and has never lived in an English speaking country, to translate beyond literal. (Don't get me wrong though, if they can, that's always good, but you just can't EXPECT it from them).

Again, that's why the PR job is so difficult. THEY are the ones that have to recognize when a sentence or phrase or word seems out of place, not the TL.

@~CassiusOS~: Agreeable that Proofreaders are just as well important. I find myself struggling to get hold of proofreaders at times but lucky our group have a few we can seriously depend on. Huzzah for good Grammar Nazis!

Proofreaders will also need to grasp the mood of the plot, cultural differences etc. And at times when they are not sure, they have to reconsult the translators instead of being smart alecs. So there is still this minimum contact here actually not none. I always want my proofreader to get back to me when in doubt. Since a more accurate translations lead to a more accurate translations and mean a better quality release.

In fact, I am looking forward for the scanlator section on how the proofreaders can improved on themselves. But for the purpose of this discussion here on translators, I don't think it is an overall bad thing to have modules put up to educate translators on how to improve themselves.

Would you want a translators that is constantly renewing themselves and go for improvements from time to time or would you want a translator that remains stagnant to be in your group? IMO, I would picked the former one. And there is where MH comes in with helps to assist these translators picked up on their skills. To overall improve the quality of releases. ^.^;

Dear NJT,
I have come to love MH more than some people can imagine And I have great pride in what you have accomplished and are continually doing at this site. In, short I am a Fanboy (even though I have become mostly inactive). Also I was Proud to read that manga helpers was going to use its great presence and reputation to help improve on a flaw in the translation community. But this was overshadowed by how much it hurt me to read many negative comments, hostile (and in my opinion arrogant) attitudes, and suggestions that go against the principles of MangaHelpers.
To be honest I was beginning to fear that you would let yourself be influenced (even if only a little) into taking this site into a different direction, changing it into something that it was never intended to be.
I can only imagine that it must have been even harder for you to sift through all the critique, recommendations, etc (positive and negative) you were receiving and still stay calm and come up with a solution that is true to the spirit of this great community and addresses the situation at hand in a realistic manner.
Thank you and the entire dedicated staff for always working to improve MangaHelpers and at the same time keeping the atmosphere and the vibe unchanged. MH is like a family, a place I can come back to after years of inactivity and still feel at home. I can't wait to read the articles you suggested and I am this site will continue to improve.
Sorry if I am a little (or a lot) off topic, I'm done now.

@~CassiusOS~:
Yes, you're right, translators don't need to be able to do a good job, just to translate it as accurately as they can. But also, for those of us who actually wish to improve our Japanese or take translating as a serious skill, then we also need to improve the point we can stand alone, without a proofreader.

So in that sense, translation-checks, and even work with proofreaders would be very helpful and greatly appreciated. I myself originally just started out translating to get it out to the fans, but as I worked more on it with proofreaders, I came to appreciate improving the language. And yeah, like Dark-san said, translators provide the basis for which proofreaders work with. Especially stuff like the differences between polite, formal, and informal Japanese are extremely difficult to express in English.

On an ironic note, it improves my English, but I appreciate the fact that both my Japanese and English improve when I translate.

A rating system for the releases could help.
How good was this scanlation e.t.c

I think these are good decisions.

erm...can you point me to the above NCIS test please?

z.

@...um, well, everybody I guess. Please note, I'm not saying that helping translators improve is a bad idea. I'm just saying we can't EXPECT them to work harder to improve. We can't go demanding better TLs from them, because of the reasons I've stated before.

I'm all for TLers wanting to improve and people helping them. But In general, you'll need to target the proofers more than you do the TLers.

@Shrimpy. That idea owns. I usually translate, post, and leave....so having a shoutbox I can kind of glance at would be great. I also am against a rating system, based on the fact that how 'good' a translation is can be based a lot on personal preference. (Some might prefer being more accurate to the japanese, and some might agree that being a bit more 'loose' is better.)

Oh dear God I want a Translation Checker. I have so much trouble sleeping at night wondering if I translated something the best I possibly could. I really really want a person that will look through my translations and tell me what I did well, and what I didn't. That would motivate me to work harder and make sure that my work is where it should be.

Dialects article would be nice too~ I love dialects. I (abuse) use them whenever it's appropriate. I'd really enjoy all of the articles, but this one interests me the most.

@Bomber That's what a good group lead is for. One of their main jobs (if done correctly) is to network. The more they network, the more resources they can provide their staff. We only have 2 resident translators, but because of networking, we have 7 or 8 different TLers we can ask questions of.

This is one part of this program that I agree with. Everything is better when you work together, instead of completing against each other. (hint hint, nudge nudge, speed scan groups).

@zero I would post the link, but I'm not here to pimp NCIS, and I don't want to be accused of it. You can find our link on the manga updates site, or on our group site here.

Interesting discussion! Reminds me of this quote:

"Many critics, no defenders - translators have but few complaints:
when they hit - no one remembers; when they miss - no one forgets."

I'd be interested in reading or helping to write articles. Hoping to major in Translation Studies. This is a wonderful idea!