As a newbie fan translator, the only things I’ve fan translated are - Old 20+ year old niche comics that have 0 chance of official translation due to a variety of factors - Stories and Menus from a mobile game whose official English version was shut down years ago and remains Japanese only to this day. I’ve even gotten people to play the game who would otherwise not bother and spend money on it. While it is a fringe example, its one that shows its kind of hard to argue that its hurting anyone because the company decided it wasn’t worth translating themselves and that its brought in money to the creators. - Random fanart and comics (only privately between friends on request). I would never ever translate something with an official or confirmed official localization however. Its stepping on toes and discouraging people for doing the right thing. It feels arrogant and a waste of my time when I could be spending energy on something untranslated. I also think its a bit muddier when talking about other kinds of media. Drama CDs almost never get translated. Stage plays and other niche media often don’t either. Or in the case of video games that have English patches but still require you to supply your own copy of the game so its still technically asking you to support the creator officially (even if most people pirate anyway lol). In the case of piracy, I really don’t care if people do it if it isn’t accessible to them, whether it be region, cant afford it and whatnot. Its been shown time and time again that the majority of piracy occurs when either the material is inaccessible or too expensive or the person simply can’t afford it or access it even if its available at a fair price. Therefore its not a lost sale when the individual wouldn’t have purchased it in the first place. Just don’t pretend what you are doing is noble and whatnot and if you liked it, talk about it and expose others to it. I can understand though why you have to condemn it by default though due to your job.
I'm glad I've reached a point in my life where I can afford to purchase the books and media I love, but I know that's not an option for everyone. It's a very nuanced conversation, and I'm glad you touched on that and so many other factors. I hope it opens some peoples' eyes more and help them realize it's not so black and white. That said, what kickstarted my Japanese journey was actually a manga that had its English release cancelled, with only the first two of eight volumes translated. No fan translations, no scans, no nothing. It's a very unknown manga. So I had only one way to get to read it. ;)
The "If you can't afford/don't have access to anime don't consume it period" made me :/// but another comment and reply already covered it great, but I totally agree with the other points. It often feels like alot of antiProtranslators think Translations are still in the 4kids 90's/00's Americanize EVERYTHING era just because protranslations use slang sometimes. It also feels like a lot of the preference towards fan translation is just because they read Fan translations first and for free, so If the official translation differs at all than it's the Official translation that's wrong, rather then the other way around... or that neither is fully 100% correct because Japanese is a complicated language.
wow i just realized this youtuber was the same person with insufferable takes on twitter (they're a great translator tho!!) and now it makes sense lol, yeah its pretty classist and a very stupid take and out of touch take (But i do think translators and people who work on official manga deserve more money!!!! these corps are very greedy and underpay these hardworking people) Honestly regardless of a official translation i always love to see a fan translation just to see another "Interpterion" of the original japanese since A LOT (Especially Viz Media) localizations are kinda ass (most just viz lmao) not because of their translators but shitty editor making a lot of changes to Americanize things and dumbing shit down Piracy>>> but i do love a good official localization!!!
In the old days, we thought of fansubs (no internet yet since we didn't have scanlations) as "necessary evils." Mostly because we couldn't get certain anime or manga as you mentioned. It's really sad that some of my favorite manga, most notably "Hajime no Ippo," isn't officially available for purchase in English. I live in Japan and I know Japanese, so I can easily purchase it and enjoy it in its original language, which I have been for the last 20 years. But I have friends all over the world who I would love to introduce it to but they don't know Japanese nor can they legally purchase it in English. And ALL of my friends who love Hajime no Ippo would buy it in English if they could. But the thing is, a lot of anime and manga is already cheaper and more widely available than ever, which is good, but still have a ways to go.
"Are Fan Translations BAD?" Well, that just depends on how devoted the Fan Translators are and if they have a clear understanding of the language they are translating along with the language they are translating it into.
Another interesting video. When it comes to the difference between amateur and professional translation, I'm surprised you didn't bring up that amateurs are not beholden to the profit motive. Seems like an argument I'd expect you to sympathize with. When I think back to what media companies thought needed to be done to Japanese media for it to sell in the states, I think that professional translation has some specific pitfalls. The infamous example of 4kids doing everything they could to conceal the fact that their shows are even from Japan. Or the video game Earthbound, which did have an amazing official translation, but the advertising played up the gross-out humor, which completely misrepresented a game that was for the most part positive and wholesome. Basically, when the industry culture of the time has some specific restrictions, like the 90s trend of assuming American viewers are morons, then you might have to go to fan translation to find a product from someone who's not necessarily a better or more passionate translator, but isn't beholden to the same rules as the pro translator.
it's definitely a complicated conversation. I'm really into shojo, josei, LGBTQ+, and vintage series, as well as otome games, so I have to rely on fan translations because of how unlikely the works I love are going to get localized. What I try to do is only read a fan translation after I've purchased the manga/LN/game in its original language to support the creator. I'm trying to learn Japanese, so maybe one day I'll be able to enjoy those works without any problems ^-^
I really like your video!!! I found it to be enlightening and educational!! I love consuming manga and basically anything that has to do with Japan or the language! When it comes to scanlations, I see how it helps and hurts. I remember trying to find digital manga in Japanese but it’s hard because one is required to have a Japanese credit card and an address in Japan. Heck!!! I’d love to keep supporting creators. It’s just difficult. I’ve bought physical manga in the past(still do btw) however, for example kinokuniya doesn’t always have the manga I’m looking for and I have to wait weeks for it to arrive. I sometimes don’t wanna wait weeks or months. I try to look for digital LEGAL sources but there’s none that I’m aware of. I look for it in Japanese btw. I would like to but it digitally yet soooo many factors prevent me from doing so, it doesn’t leave a fellow with many options. I personally like to consume content in the language it was intended for. I guess I don’t quite understand all the factors yet. For example, when it comes to streaming anime. I noticed not all of them have Japanese(CC). I don’t know why tho. I hope I’m making sense. It just feels like everything is like a game of tug of war between fans, companies and creators. Fundamentally, I think all creators want their work seen by many It differs down to the how they want it to happen I suppose. Fans just want to consume but fight within themselves between sub vs dub and translations vs original text. Yet deep down 🥺the only want to consume the context, again it’s down to the how. With companies I don’t even know where to begin 😣 companies and creators have their own battle but they do need to pay well and invest in human translation and interpretation!! Humans made languages not machines. The only ones who can better understand, teach or translate it are humans themselves!!! Maybe in the future it will be better we as fans should unite and demand for it tbh in and ideal world all content would be available for everyone! It just freaking sucks because of where one lives y’all know that I love you more than my life tiktok Somali song it was spotify and now it’s unavailable I don’t know why. 😡😡anywho off topic there. Sarah I want to thank you deep down from the bottom of heart!!! I don’t see many translators speaking out or have a platform like you do( I’m not aware of other ones if there are other ones) anyway I wish your channel success!! I hope it grows even more!! Side note tho I wonder if the Japanese have conversations like this when it comes to content from foreign countries like American comic books or Tv shows. Ok my thoughts are all over the place lol sorry about that 😅
You can get digital manga in Japanese from Bookwalker (I just recently learned about this, but have yet to try it because as I said, I don't have very much disposable income right now.)
I've been of the mindset that unlicensed was OK, but that's a good point about the artist and their opinion of the translation. I thought, well what do they care, free publicity! However if I were making a piece of work to be read by potentially thousands of people overseas, I'd care about how well it was being translated. I'd still say the odds are high the mangaka won't really care, but it isn't safe to assume they all won't. I'd almost wanna ask each artist individually but dam that'd be hard
I appreciate this video and the points it makes, and your content in general. You're clearly a professional translator whose work is of good quality. But I deeply disagree with the assertion that "if you can't afford it, then don't consume it at all!" Like, is that the take? That culture, especially fringe culture, only belongs to people with disposable income? And furthermore, only those with access to legal distributions? I hope I'm not accidentally strawmaning your point, it's just the vibe I got.
I have mixed feelings on that, really. Like I said, it sucks that we don't get to keep enough of our money that we earn so that we can spend it on things like art and entertainment--but artists are also struggling to get by, and there is this pervasive idea in our culture that artists aren't as worthy of money as ppl in other sectors. And it's all about quantity, too. I don't begrudge any poor person for occasional piracy (like I said, we all do it a little) it just shouldn't be the default.
@@PrettyTranslatorSarahMoon And if you're in the U.S. you don't really have an excuse anymore because most of the popular stuff that everyone is watching is available legally somewhere, most likely Crunchyroll and all you have to put up with is some ads. Unless it's streaming exclusively somewhere, like Lupin the Third Part 6 on HiDive, you can usually watch it somewhere legally for free and just sit through some commercials.
The pro vs amateur translator bit... There's some that are really good ofc but jfc sometimes I know exactly what is written in Japanese due to the translation being almost translated word for word 😂 Of course I love the effort when it's of a manga not accessible but yeah... it's never going to be as good as a pro translation (obviously). I hope translators will get payed more in the future...
I personally feel like both fan translations and official translations really depend on who's translating what. I've seen lackluster fan-translations, and I've seen lackluster official translations. To say that one is inherently bad would be an untrue statement (to say the LEAST).
я занимаюсь сканлейтом. за последние пять лет почти все аниме можно смотреть с профессиональным переводом почти бесплатно, но мангу на русском лицензируют еще очень мало, а китайские и корейские веб комиксы вообще не лицензируют и еще лет десять не будут. так что ими наша команда и занимается)
I know it’s not the same thing, but growing up in the late 2000s, to the early 2010s, I don’t even know how much time I spent reading fan translated doujinshi. Lol I knew the translation was iffy at best sometimes, but it’s not like it’s gonna get localized to the west anyway. I still read them every so often these days.
Aside from cases where the content is simply unavailable, I generally only read fan translations in the cases where the official content is far behind (and I do buy the official versions when they come out) and the rare cases where the official translators didn't just "make a mistake here and there", their "translations" were absolutely awful. Thank you very much for bringing up Stellvia, that translation brings me actual physical pain and I to this day mourn having lost the old fansubs. I wish they'd just taken the fansubs the way they did with Lyrical Nanoha. Yeah, no kidding, they ripped off the fansubs on Nanoha. If you check the fansubs versus the official English release, you'll see the exact same translation errors in both, corrected at the exact same point in the series. They didn't even bother to proofread. It was a very good fansub overall and the error was actually left in at first because they thought it sounded cooler, but still. Sadly, this is NOT just a thing of the past. I rather enjoy a series called Isekai Nonbiri Nouka or "Farming Life in Another World". However, the official translation is riddled with blatant errors that quickly take me out of it. That said, the amateur scanlators aren't always the most accurate either. I still don't get why neither of them picked up on Ru, shortly after marrying the MC, told him that she was shapeshifting to junior-high age in the day time as a message to "show some restraint" (best translation of her words). Face facts, plenty of people in the industry *don't* care, or if they do, they care about what *they* think *should* be in a story rather than what *is* in it. Sometimes this results in half-assing wherever they can get away with it, other times it results in shoving jokes that some will like and others will hate and either way comes out of nowhere and leaves nothing behind but a clear message of the sort of person who wrote it and the year they wrote it. And honestly, it doesn't feel like good faith to dismiss people who dislike deliberate alterations made to insert a dumb joke or some message that the translator wanted to say, especially by insisting "yeah you don't actually know Japanese anyway". Guess what, a whole lot of us DO know Japanese. If anything that makes it even worse, because we can HEAR or READ what is actually being said in the original and tell just how deliberately wrong it is. If a "translator" decides to turn their "translation" into an editing work to make it how *they* think it *should* have been, then yeah I'm not going to complain about someone wanting to see it how the original author wrote it, and I'm not even going to complain about someone saying "make a machine do most of the work and just have the humans proofread it afterward". Personally, though, I just get the original off Bookwalker (like I said, a lot of us *do* know Japanese).
I do like your general content, but I think this is a bit too anti-piracy. Mainly that some of this sounded a bit like you equated illegal with immoral, which uh. Is some bullshit ofc. Don't think it really was your intention though. (you also mentioned VPNs with the implication of using them to fake your location... which isn't actually technically quite legal in most states, even if VPNs in general are) Otherwise, one honest question I want to ask you, do you actually think that financial support of official releases supports the artists? I mean, in some cases it of course does at least support some major artists, but translators like yourself? I have to admit I'm coming from a perspective more used to the videogame industry and have no idea how your contracts work, so maybe you do actually get better pay for that, but by what I can see, what one would be financially supporting are the corporations who exploit your labour; if I wanted to support you directly, I'd have to go to your patreon, though due to nda bullshit I of course couldn't do so specifcially for the non-credited translators of things I like. another point already brought up by other comments is that piracy is statistically done almost only by people who wouldn't otherwise buy the product for whichever reason, be it not having enough money, it being locally unaccessible, or because they didn't want to financially support the abusive executives at Ubisoft but still wanted to appreciate a legitimately good game created by wonderful diverse artists who were mistreated by the company that'd get the money (purely theoretically speaking of course, don't worry RUclips algorythm, I did at no point pirate AC Valhalla or violate any other intellectual property laws) Anyway, I do see where you're coming from, but this isn't as based a take as I'm used to (even if I already know you aren't as full-blown an ancom as me in any case lol)
It’s weird for me because I do legitimately enjoy unofficial fan made content, but for me it’s abridged series. The thing I enjoy about unofficial stuff is that it’s unhinged from the original creator and writers intent. Series like SAOA, Kemono Friends Abriged, or GUP abriged add so much to the enjoyment of the series for me by subverting my expectations and rewriting characters with more depth and more interesting dialogue. Most abridged series are boring shortened translations, but every once in a while you find something great. I’d be interested in seeing your perspective on abridged series.
We poor people spend all our money with the internet. No problem, the rich fans of anime/manga will always support pro translation. Let us, the poor fans, download the anime and manga for free. Long live to the piracy!
I agree with most of this, but if it's not sold in your region, you are morally justified in pirating. It's not stealing if the company chooses to leave money on the table.
They’re always at least better than nothing, so many of my favourite works of fiction would be inaccessible without them, even now, the official JoJo manga translation is still 20 years behind the Japanese manga and there’s still some things I’m a fan of, I can’t continue cause no one is translating them (like the later Boogiepop novels)
To share 3 thoughts on this i agree that what we want aint always going to happen and can be a 50/50 chance and we got to face the the reality that some works outside the u.s. and are exclusive to the media's country are likely never going to be coming to the states or any other country and vice versa and it's basically like trying to bring the snyderverse back and release the aier cut of the new suicide squad movie and also basically like wanting and wishing so hard for a show you loved finish it's story in its canned season Final like the original teen titans and it's canceled 6th season ( despite teen titans go to Tokyo also taking place after season 5 though i understand that the terra plot point still needs finishing off ), transformer's animated and it's canceled season 4 along with other transformers shows that nevered got there intended new season's ( i know there was a season 4 episode 1 script reading back in summer but that was only that a script reading only for episode 1 of that season and there's already a transformers youtuber out there that made a fan adaptation of season 4 but again that's only fan made ), and ash vs evil dead for example and few others and at the end you either accept the fact everything you wish for would happend in actuality it won't always come true or keep grasping at it, and about the fans that bash pro translators and claim that all of them are "fake fans" there the ones who are the real fake fans because real fans wouldn't give crude about and be super duper obssesed about if the translation is 100 accurate to the Japanese context or give a crude about what a pro translators beliefs are or what they do in there life most actual fans just try not to think about stuff to much and enjoy what they got and yes there are some actual fans out there that are curious to learn Japanese but atleast they don't do it for malicious intent and the butthurt baby fan's just only use the word fake fan because of a superiority complex they have and try to belittle others to make themselves feel superiority over everyone else and that there better than anyone else even though there not, and finally i still agree that translations just like everything else in the world are not perfect and all those people that are demanding translations to be perfect have unrealistic expectations and don't understand that it's impossible for people to reach perfectionist statist and it's basically telling people to reach something that's literally impossible to reach and i still say they should respect the best effort pro translators try to give and accept what we all get, and as for the other stuff i also understand both sides view but to say this this is the reality and the times we live in no matter how anyone wants to be in that other reality the one we live in isn't going to be like the realities we wish for and like i said either except the way thing's are or keep chasing achievements that can't and are impossible to achieve and if the snobs out there were to actually work in the translation industry they would have a better understanding of how translation works Also just to ask a unrelated topic question what are your thoughts on crunchyroll's original series high guardian spice now that it's released? i know the shows being mostly crapped on here on RUclips and getting praised on Twitter because of each site's different political belief climates we're one side ( which i already know ) bashes it becasue they didn't like what the creators said, hate bandwagon's, anti-sjwism, grifting, and amoung other thing's, and the other side overprasing it and calling people who bash it with buzzword labels like ist and phobe's and I've been curious to hear the people on the middle ground's point of view on it and hear there unbiased opinion on it
More-so tokusatsu related then anime related, buuuuuuuuuut- as a person living in the United Kingdom who doesn't have access to that many official subs (unless i want to pay out for a VPN which defeats the whole point), fansub groups is all we fuckin' got.
![BabyChiefDoit - Too Slow (feat. STAR BANDZ) [Official Music Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/zayaxws7RPg/mqdefault.jpg)
Happy Halloween uwu! (Or Dia de los Muertos, depending on your time zone.)
As a newbie fan translator, the only things I’ve fan translated are
- Old 20+ year old niche comics that have 0 chance of official translation due to a variety of factors
- Stories and Menus from a mobile game whose official English version was shut down years ago and remains Japanese only to this day. I’ve even gotten people to play the game who would otherwise not bother and spend money on it. While it is a fringe example, its one that shows its kind of hard to argue that its hurting anyone because the company decided it wasn’t worth translating themselves and that its brought in money to the creators.
- Random fanart and comics (only privately between friends on request).
I would never ever translate something with an official or confirmed official localization however. Its stepping on toes and discouraging people for doing the right thing. It feels arrogant and a waste of my time when I could be spending energy on something untranslated.
I also think its a bit muddier when talking about other kinds of media. Drama CDs almost never get translated. Stage plays and other niche media often don’t either. Or in the case of video games that have English patches but still require you to supply your own copy of the game so its still technically asking you to support the creator officially (even if most people pirate anyway lol).
In the case of piracy, I really don’t care if people do it if it isn’t accessible to them, whether it be region, cant afford it and whatnot. Its been shown time and time again that the majority of piracy occurs when either the material is inaccessible or too expensive or the person simply can’t afford it or access it even if its available at a fair price. Therefore its not a lost sale when the individual wouldn’t have purchased it in the first place. Just don’t pretend what you are doing is noble and whatnot and if you liked it, talk about it and expose others to it. I can understand though why you have to condemn it by default though due to your job.
Tbf, there are a lot of nigh unreadable localizations. Or those that are barely a localization because they are entirely rewritten.
I'm glad I've reached a point in my life where I can afford to purchase the books and media I love, but I know that's not an option for everyone. It's a very nuanced conversation, and I'm glad you touched on that and so many other factors. I hope it opens some peoples' eyes more and help them realize it's not so black and white. That said, what kickstarted my Japanese journey was actually a manga that had its English release cancelled, with only the first two of eight volumes translated. No fan translations, no scans, no nothing. It's a very unknown manga. So I had only one way to get to read it. ;)
Yup. That was basically why I set out to learn Japanese, too. (Only it was Sailor Moon's DiC dub cancellation 😅)
There’s still so many amazing anime from the 70s onward that will probably never get liscenced or subbed at all.
Not to mention, things such as Japanese Dramas rarely ever get licensed into English.
Most of those 70s and 80s anime are from *World Masterpiece Theater.* And I grew up watching them - dubbed in my native language (Filipino).
The "If you can't afford/don't have access to anime don't consume it period" made me :/// but another comment and reply already covered it great, but I totally agree with the other points.
It often feels like alot of antiProtranslators think Translations are still in the 4kids 90's/00's Americanize EVERYTHING era just because protranslations use slang sometimes.
It also feels like a lot of the preference towards fan translation is just because they read Fan translations first and for free, so If the official translation differs at all than it's the Official translation that's wrong, rather then the other way around... or that neither is fully 100% correct because Japanese is a complicated language.
wow i just realized this youtuber was the same person with insufferable takes on twitter (they're a great translator tho!!) and now it makes sense lol, yeah its pretty classist and a very stupid take and out of touch take (But i do think translators and people who work on official manga deserve more money!!!! these corps are very greedy and underpay these hardworking people)
Honestly regardless of a official translation i always love to see a fan translation just to see another "Interpterion" of the original japanese since A LOT (Especially Viz Media) localizations are kinda ass (most just viz lmao) not because of their translators but shitty editor making a lot of changes to Americanize things and dumbing shit down
Piracy>>>
but i do love a good official localization!!!
In the old days, we thought of fansubs (no internet yet since we didn't have scanlations) as "necessary evils." Mostly because we couldn't get certain anime or manga as you mentioned. It's really sad that some of my favorite manga, most notably "Hajime no Ippo," isn't officially available for purchase in English. I live in Japan and I know Japanese, so I can easily purchase it and enjoy it in its original language, which I have been for the last 20 years. But I have friends all over the world who I would love to introduce it to but they don't know Japanese nor can they legally purchase it in English. And ALL of my friends who love Hajime no Ippo would buy it in English if they could.
But the thing is, a lot of anime and manga is already cheaper and more widely available than ever, which is good, but still have a ways to go.
"Are Fan Translations BAD?"
Well, that just depends on how devoted the Fan Translators are and if they have a clear understanding of the language they are translating along with the language they are translating it into.
Another interesting video. When it comes to the difference between amateur and professional translation, I'm surprised you didn't bring up that amateurs are not beholden to the profit motive. Seems like an argument I'd expect you to sympathize with.
When I think back to what media companies thought needed to be done to Japanese media for it to sell in the states, I think that professional translation has some specific pitfalls. The infamous example of 4kids doing everything they could to conceal the fact that their shows are even from Japan. Or the video game Earthbound, which did have an amazing official translation, but the advertising played up the gross-out humor, which completely misrepresented a game that was for the most part positive and wholesome.
Basically, when the industry culture of the time has some specific restrictions, like the 90s trend of assuming American viewers are morons, then you might have to go to fan translation to find a product from someone who's not necessarily a better or more passionate translator, but isn't beholden to the same rules as the pro translator.
it's definitely a complicated conversation. I'm really into shojo, josei, LGBTQ+, and vintage series, as well as otome games, so I have to rely on fan translations because of how unlikely the works I love are going to get localized. What I try to do is only read a fan translation after I've purchased the manga/LN/game in its original language to support the creator. I'm trying to learn Japanese, so maybe one day I'll be able to enjoy those works without any problems ^-^
I really like your video!!! I found it to be enlightening and educational!! I love consuming manga and basically anything that has to do with Japan or the language! When it comes to scanlations, I see how it helps and hurts. I remember trying to find digital manga in Japanese but it’s hard because one is required to have a Japanese credit card and an address in Japan. Heck!!! I’d love to keep supporting creators. It’s just difficult. I’ve bought physical manga in the past(still do btw) however, for example kinokuniya doesn’t always have the manga I’m looking for and I have to wait weeks for it to arrive. I sometimes don’t wanna wait weeks or months. I try to look for digital LEGAL sources but there’s none that I’m aware of. I look for it in Japanese btw. I would like to but it digitally yet soooo many factors prevent me from doing so, it doesn’t leave a fellow with many options. I personally like to consume content in the language it was intended for. I guess I don’t quite understand all the factors yet. For example, when it comes to streaming anime. I noticed not all of them have Japanese(CC). I don’t know why tho. I hope I’m making sense. It just feels like everything is like a game of tug of war between fans, companies and creators. Fundamentally, I think all creators want their work seen by many It differs down to the how they want it to happen I suppose. Fans just want to consume but fight within themselves between sub vs dub and translations vs original text. Yet deep down 🥺the only want to consume the context, again it’s down to the how. With companies I don’t even know where to begin 😣 companies and creators have their own battle but they do need to pay well and invest in human translation and interpretation!!
Humans made languages not machines. The only ones who can better understand, teach or translate it are humans themselves!!! Maybe in the future it will be better we as fans should unite and demand for it tbh in and ideal world all content would be available for everyone! It just freaking sucks because of where one lives y’all know that I love you more than my life tiktok Somali song it was spotify and now it’s unavailable I don’t know why. 😡😡anywho off topic there.
Sarah I want to thank you deep down from the bottom of heart!!! I don’t see many translators speaking out or have a platform like you do( I’m not aware of other ones if there are other ones) anyway I wish your channel success!! I hope it grows even more!!
Side note tho I wonder if the Japanese have conversations like this when it comes to content from foreign countries like American comic books or Tv shows. Ok my thoughts are all over the place lol sorry about that 😅
You can get digital manga in Japanese from Bookwalker (I just recently learned about this, but have yet to try it because as I said, I don't have very much disposable income right now.)
I've been of the mindset that unlicensed was OK, but that's a good point about the artist and their opinion of the translation. I thought, well what do they care, free publicity!
However if I were making a piece of work to be read by potentially thousands of people overseas, I'd care about how well it was being translated. I'd still say the odds are high the mangaka won't really care, but it isn't safe to assume they all won't. I'd almost wanna ask each artist individually but dam that'd be hard
I appreciate this video and the points it makes, and your content in general. You're clearly a professional translator whose work is of good quality. But I deeply disagree with the assertion that "if you can't afford it, then don't consume it at all!"
Like, is that the take? That culture, especially fringe culture, only belongs to people with disposable income? And furthermore, only those with access to legal distributions?
I hope I'm not accidentally strawmaning your point, it's just the vibe I got.
I have mixed feelings on that, really. Like I said, it sucks that we don't get to keep enough of our money that we earn so that we can spend it on things like art and entertainment--but artists are also struggling to get by, and there is this pervasive idea in our culture that artists aren't as worthy of money as ppl in other sectors. And it's all about quantity, too. I don't begrudge any poor person for occasional piracy (like I said, we all do it a little) it just shouldn't be the default.
@@PrettyTranslatorSarahMoon And if you're in the U.S. you don't really have an excuse anymore because most of the popular stuff that everyone is watching is available legally somewhere, most likely Crunchyroll and all you have to put up with is some ads. Unless it's streaming exclusively somewhere, like Lupin the Third Part 6 on HiDive, you can usually watch it somewhere legally for free and just sit through some commercials.
The pro vs amateur translator bit... There's some that are really good ofc but jfc sometimes I know exactly what is written in Japanese due to the translation being almost translated word for word 😂 Of course I love the effort when it's of a manga not accessible but yeah... it's never going to be as good as a pro translation (obviously).
I hope translators will get payed more in the future...
This.
The trouble with fansubs is that most of them are 50% translator notes and unnecessary swearing.
@@TheSHIELDCap Oh, the glory days of Dattebayo subs
I mean, when I was into fansubs, I was a teenager, so I welcomed the shoehorned profanity... 😀
I personally feel like both fan translations and official translations really depend on who's translating what. I've seen lackluster fan-translations, and I've seen lackluster official translations. To say that one is inherently bad would be an untrue statement (to say the LEAST).
я занимаюсь сканлейтом. за последние пять лет почти все аниме можно смотреть с профессиональным переводом почти бесплатно, но мангу на русском лицензируют еще очень мало, а китайские и корейские веб комиксы вообще не лицензируют и еще лет десять не будут. так что ими наша команда и занимается)
I know it’s not the same thing, but growing up in the late 2000s, to the early 2010s, I don’t even know how much time I spent reading fan translated doujinshi. Lol I knew the translation was iffy at best sometimes, but it’s not like it’s gonna get localized to the west anyway. I still read them every so often these days.
The red beret moment was glorious!
Aside from cases where the content is simply unavailable, I generally only read fan translations in the cases where the official content is far behind (and I do buy the official versions when they come out) and the rare cases where the official translators didn't just "make a mistake here and there", their "translations" were absolutely awful. Thank you very much for bringing up Stellvia, that translation brings me actual physical pain and I to this day mourn having lost the old fansubs. I wish they'd just taken the fansubs the way they did with Lyrical Nanoha. Yeah, no kidding, they ripped off the fansubs on Nanoha. If you check the fansubs versus the official English release, you'll see the exact same translation errors in both, corrected at the exact same point in the series. They didn't even bother to proofread. It was a very good fansub overall and the error was actually left in at first because they thought it sounded cooler, but still.
Sadly, this is NOT just a thing of the past. I rather enjoy a series called Isekai Nonbiri Nouka or "Farming Life in Another World". However, the official translation is riddled with blatant errors that quickly take me out of it. That said, the amateur scanlators aren't always the most accurate either. I still don't get why neither of them picked up on Ru, shortly after marrying the MC, told him that she was shapeshifting to junior-high age in the day time as a message to "show some restraint" (best translation of her words). Face facts, plenty of people in the industry *don't* care, or if they do, they care about what *they* think *should* be in a story rather than what *is* in it. Sometimes this results in half-assing wherever they can get away with it, other times it results in shoving jokes that some will like and others will hate and either way comes out of nowhere and leaves nothing behind but a clear message of the sort of person who wrote it and the year they wrote it.
And honestly, it doesn't feel like good faith to dismiss people who dislike deliberate alterations made to insert a dumb joke or some message that the translator wanted to say, especially by insisting "yeah you don't actually know Japanese anyway". Guess what, a whole lot of us DO know Japanese. If anything that makes it even worse, because we can HEAR or READ what is actually being said in the original and tell just how deliberately wrong it is. If a "translator" decides to turn their "translation" into an editing work to make it how *they* think it *should* have been, then yeah I'm not going to complain about someone wanting to see it how the original author wrote it, and I'm not even going to complain about someone saying "make a machine do most of the work and just have the humans proofread it afterward". Personally, though, I just get the original off Bookwalker (like I said, a lot of us *do* know Japanese).
Excuse me I would click on a five hour video.
Answers are always easy.
I do like your general content, but I think this is a bit too anti-piracy. Mainly that some of this sounded a bit like you equated illegal with immoral, which uh. Is some bullshit ofc. Don't think it really was your intention though. (you also mentioned VPNs with the implication of using them to fake your location... which isn't actually technically quite legal in most states, even if VPNs in general are) Otherwise, one honest question I want to ask you, do you actually think that financial support of official releases supports the artists? I mean, in some cases it of course does at least support some major artists, but translators like yourself? I have to admit I'm coming from a perspective more used to the videogame industry and have no idea how your contracts work, so maybe you do actually get better pay for that, but by what I can see, what one would be financially supporting are the corporations who exploit your labour; if I wanted to support you directly, I'd have to go to your patreon, though due to nda bullshit I of course couldn't do so specifcially for the non-credited translators of things I like.
another point already brought up by other comments is that piracy is statistically done almost only by people who wouldn't otherwise buy the product for whichever reason, be it not having enough money, it being locally unaccessible, or because they didn't want to financially support the abusive executives at Ubisoft but still wanted to appreciate a legitimately good game created by wonderful diverse artists who were mistreated by the company that'd get the money (purely theoretically speaking of course, don't worry RUclips algorythm, I did at no point pirate AC Valhalla or violate any other intellectual property laws)
Anyway, I do see where you're coming from, but this isn't as based a take as I'm used to (even if I already know you aren't as full-blown an ancom as me in any case lol)
I love your channel. You're like the Lindsay Ellis of anime.
It’s weird for me because I do legitimately enjoy unofficial fan made content, but for me it’s abridged series. The thing I enjoy about unofficial stuff is that it’s unhinged from the original creator and writers intent. Series like SAOA, Kemono Friends Abriged, or GUP abriged add so much to the enjoyment of the series for me by subverting my expectations and rewriting characters with more depth and more interesting dialogue. Most abridged series are boring shortened translations, but every once in a while you find something great. I’d be interested in seeing your perspective on abridged series.
We poor people spend all our money with the internet. No problem, the rich fans of anime/manga will always support pro translation. Let us, the poor fans, download the anime and manga for free. Long live to the piracy!
I agree with most of this, but if it's not sold in your region, you are morally justified in pirating. It's not stealing if the company chooses to leave money on the table.
They’re always at least better than nothing, so many of my favourite works of fiction would be inaccessible without them, even now, the official JoJo manga translation is still 20 years behind the Japanese manga and there’s still some things I’m a fan of, I can’t continue cause no one is translating them (like the later Boogiepop novels)
To share 3 thoughts on this i agree that what we want aint always going to happen and can be a 50/50 chance and we got to face the the reality that some works outside the u.s. and are exclusive to the media's country are likely never going to be coming to the states or any other country and vice versa and it's basically like trying to bring the snyderverse back and release the aier cut of the new suicide squad movie and also basically like wanting and wishing so hard for a show you loved finish it's story in its canned season Final like the original teen titans and it's canceled 6th season ( despite teen titans go to Tokyo also taking place after season 5 though i understand that the terra plot point still needs finishing off ), transformer's animated and it's canceled season 4 along with other transformers shows that nevered got there intended new season's ( i know there was a season 4 episode 1 script reading back in summer but that was only that a script reading only for episode 1 of that season and there's already a transformers youtuber out there that made a fan adaptation of season 4 but again that's only fan made ), and ash vs evil dead for example and few others and at the end you either accept the fact everything you wish for would happend in actuality it won't always come true or keep grasping at it, and about the fans that bash pro translators and claim that all of them are "fake fans" there the ones who are the real fake fans because real fans wouldn't give crude about and be super duper obssesed about if the translation is 100 accurate to the Japanese context or give a crude about what a pro translators beliefs are or what they do in there life most actual fans just try not to think about stuff to much and enjoy what they got and yes there are some actual fans out there that are curious to learn Japanese but atleast they don't do it for malicious intent and the butthurt baby fan's just only use the word fake fan because of a superiority complex they have and try to belittle others to make themselves feel superiority over everyone else and that there better than anyone else even though there not, and finally i still agree that translations just like everything else in the world are not perfect and all those people that are demanding translations to be perfect have unrealistic expectations and don't understand that it's impossible for people to reach perfectionist statist and it's basically telling people to reach something that's literally impossible to reach and i still say they should respect the best effort pro translators try to give and accept what we all get, and as for the other stuff i also understand both sides view but to say this this is the reality and the times we live in no matter how anyone wants to be in that other reality the one we live in isn't going to be like the realities we wish for and like i said either except the way thing's are or keep chasing achievements that can't and are impossible to achieve and if the snobs out there were to actually work in the translation industry they would have a better understanding of how translation works
Also just to ask a unrelated topic question what are your thoughts on crunchyroll's original series high guardian spice now that it's released? i know the shows being mostly crapped on here on RUclips and getting praised on Twitter because of each site's different political belief climates we're one side ( which i already know ) bashes it becasue they didn't like what the creators said, hate bandwagon's, anti-sjwism, grifting, and amoung other thing's, and the other side overprasing it and calling people who bash it with buzzword labels like ist and phobe's and I've been curious to hear the people on the middle ground's point of view on it and hear there unbiased opinion on it
More-so tokusatsu related then anime related, buuuuuuuuuut- as a person living in the United Kingdom who doesn't have access to that many official subs (unless i want to pay out for a VPN which defeats the whole point), fansub groups is all we fuckin' got.
I got really excited when I saw your five-hour video! ...and then I realized it was a joke. *sobs in weaboo*
Video had me fine, but then at 13:35 I was like
SHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESH
And speaking of translating things they don't necessarily like, someone at Sentai Filmworks had to translate Redo of Healer, I hope they got a raise!
This video is so good
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂