[8thSin]

Originally Posted by jfs

Just one comment:
Aegisub is really not designed for entering translations.
The workflow Aegisub is designed for involved viewing the raw video with a regular media player, having a plain text editor (Notepad) next by, and entering translations line by line there, in "character: what he said" format. When done, let it be checked and edited, and then import the text file into Aegisub for timing and styling.

Is this a common practice today? I know some translator like to work on Notepad, but I dismissed this as the old school (no video playback support) or speedsub (no fine-timing) way.

I usually have access to to rough timing before translation, either by Japanese subs off DVD, CC capture/OCR, or stealing Chinese/Korean subs for timing. When they didn't exist, I either timed as I translated, or requested timer to produce a rough timing.

I know Aegisub has choppy playback sometimes, but working with rough timing prevents confusion for both sides: Translator not knowing the line break, and timer making mistake in placement. Also there's no need to switch windows and type out names for every single line.

Groups I have worked with were always Rough Timing --> Translation --> Fine-Timing (or editing before that, doesn't really matter)

Originally Posted by Quarkboy

Very good guide, but I wonder if an audience exists that could benefit from it at this point.

Also, IMO the best online dictionary is www.alc.co.jp in terms of completeness and massive amounts of entires. But it must be used with care since it also has a bunch of weird non-standard stuff in it and it's impossible to know what the most "common" usage is.

I wrote a similar thing a number of years ago which is mirrored here:
http://en.anime-wiki.org/wiki/Basic_Translator_Guide

Well, a lot of old translators will eventually disappear, and new ones will be needed to replace them. There will always be people dissatisfied with CR rips, and I think higher quality subs will be more important for fan translators because there's no longer need to translate speed subs for most series. TBH, I don't actively practice all these, and kind of wanted to have a checklist for myself too

I didn't know about your guide. It's far more comprehensive than my "getting started" section, but it seems to be more about learning Japanese than in-depth tips to improve for existing translators. I'll add that link for further reference

Yeah, I found alc dictionary to be far too time-consuming to find perfect examples. Weblio has dictionaries categorized by type, so it's easier if you know you're looking for categories like medical, business, or law term etc. I guess it's good for more obscure/difficult translations though. I'll add it to the list.


Thanks for your inputs!