Translations: Anime vs Manga

[Schneizel]

Are there really more fansubbers than scanlators? It seems like there'd be more scanlators. Wouldn't written Japanese be somewhat easier to translate from than spoken Japanese? (In example, Shota talked about not being able to understand accents in the Free TL thread.) And Photoshop seems like a more widely used program compared to, you know, AegiSub. There's no "encoding" crap to figure out either. Plus the manga raws aren't like lol 3gb like ts. And as for obtaining manga raws... If you know where to look, you can find whole volumes to use. Winny Club, Manga Helpers?

[asunder]

Originally Posted by TheFluff

Historical reasons.

This.
Back like over a decade ago (or close to two >_>) when one would be surfing sites on anipike looking for any information on <insert favorite series here>. Sometimes there would be a manga translation site with typed up translated chapters sans images. I remember reading the text translations in this fashion for Ranma ;_; ... Is there no one else that used to do this? I don't remember seeing any sites with typed up anime translations...just summaries at most.

<Speculation> Perhaps this system came about because of the scarcity of manga digital raws back then as well as people not wanting to ruin the binding of their manga during the scanning process. </Speculation>

[TGEN]

Originally Posted by asunder

This.
Back like over a decade ago (or close to two >_>) when one would be surfing sites on anipike looking for any information on <insert favorite series here>. Sometimes there would be a manga translation site with typed up translated chapters sans images. I remember reading the text translations in this fashion for Ranma ;_; ... Is there no one else that used to do this? I don't remember seeing any sites with typed up anime translations...just summaries at most.

<Speculation> Perhaps this system came about because of the scarcity of manga digital raws back then as well as people not wanting to ruin the binding of their manga during the scanning process. </Speculation>

Maybe it's because people, being the consumerist pigs they are, are too lazy to flip pages. Superhero comic movie adaptations always gross more than the comics themselves ever did, at least for the successful ones.

[roxybudgy]

Originally Posted by Quarkboy

The easiest way is just to print out the pages and use good old fashioned white-out, then scan them in again.

If you like low quality and relatively large file size releases, then yes, this would be the easiest way.

But for scanlators that care about quality, they spend hours and hours transforming a crappy magazine scan into something that looks like it was carefully dissected from a tankobun, then adjust colour levels and format the page to create something of high quality with low file size.

While most reasons for why there are more public translations for manga than anime, I think another reason is e-peen.

While you have scanlators who are doing it for the love of praise and attention *coughnarutoscanlatorscough*, I find that a larger percentage of fansubbers are doing it just for the "fame and glory" than the percentage of scanlators who work for "fame and glory" (I didn't say all, or even majority of fansubbers, so don't throw rocks at me).

Having translated for both a fansub group and scanlation groups, I find that scanlation groups are more likely to pick titles that they really like and care about, and more groups are founded on the basis that there is a series they like and they want to share it.

But my experience with fansubbers is that many are formed around the desire to produce fansubs (which series is generally irrelevant to them, as long as it's not being subbed faster/better by another group). I've even come across a group that shows disdain, sometimes even hatred, for the show they are subbing, but only continue because of the series' popularity (the name of the group/series slips my mind atm).

Point is, I think fansubbers are more likely to treat their translations like "top secret copyright", whereas the scanlation community is more open and eager to spread the love.

[TheFluff]

Originally Posted by roxybudgy

I've even come across a group that shows disdain, sometimes even hatred, for the show they are subbing, but only continue because of the series' popularity (the name of the group/series slips my mind atm).

uh yeah this isn't really rare at all
even if you like the show from the start, watching it five times in a row every episode will quickly make you hate it, so a lot of fansubbers actively choose to fansub series they don't like so that they can watch the series they do like normally

[Schneizel]

(Or they don't subject themselves to poor fansubbing practices that "require" them to re-watch an episode 5 times.)

[Shouta]

Originally Posted by roxybudgy

But my experience with fansubbers is that many are formed around the desire to produce fansubs (which series is generally irrelevant to them, as long as it's not being subbed faster/better by another group). I've even come across a group that shows disdain, sometimes even hatred, for the show they are subbing, but only continue because of the series' popularity (the name of the group/series slips my mind atm).

Point is, I think fansubbers are more likely to treat their translations like "top secret copyright", whereas the scanlation community is more open and eager to spread the love.

Only reason this is somewhat true is because fansubs reached a critical mass where competition was really alive and the current trend is an after effect of it. If manga had the same peak that anime did, it'd be pretty similar.

[blewin]

Originally Posted by Schneizel

Are there really more fansubbers than scanlators? It seems like there'd be more scanlators. Wouldn't written Japanese be somewhat easier to translate from than spoken Japanese? (In example, Shota talked about not being able to understand accents in the Free TL thread.) And Photoshop seems like a more widely used program compared to, you know, AegiSub. There's no "encoding" crap to figure out either. Plus the manga raws aren't like lol 3gb like ts. And as for obtaining manga raws... If you know where to look, you can find whole volumes to use. Winny Club, Manga Helpers?

yeah, I thought there're more scanlators than fansubbers too. Seems to see new groups of scanlators popping up all the time. And you're also right in that more people know how to use Photoshop than all these other programs needed for fansubbing. (after all, even those who don't scanlate use Photoshop often enough)

[Theowne]

Originally Posted by Schneizel

Wouldn't written Japanese be somewhat easier to translate from than spoken Japanese?

No. I can understand spoken Japanese fairly well. However, I still have a few thousand kanji left to memorize before I can read written Japanese.

One could always go through it with a kanji dictionary, but that is just tedious.

[CryptWizard]

Originally Posted by edogawaconan

The answer is actually really simple: (some/most of) anime fansubbers are a bunch of elitist fags

^ This.

And yeh, scanlating sounds like a lot of :effort:.

Raws factor into it as well, I suppose.
Anime is broadcast digitally and a $200 TV tuner could record countless episodes of Anime with no quality loss, but each page of manga costs $$$, and I heard that some really srsbiz people actually rip the pages out to get a slightly better scan (which will inevitably still suffer a quality drop, unlike recording a DTV stream). And due to that quality drop, a lot more effort is needed to make the thing look all fabulous again in Photoshop. (Some would say that you need tons of effort and o9k AviSynth filters to make a TV anime broadcast look fabulous, but most don't).

[Quarkboy]

Do people get so crazy about scan quality for manga pages anyway?

As long as it's leveled right and scanned flat, why would people really care? You're not getting 1600 dpi on your monitor no matter what you do anyway.