anime fansubbing without a translator?
October of this year was a crazy month for the anime lovers, and it continues to be. This fall, there were TONS of new anime starting up. Along with all these new shows, there were also numerous new fansubbing groups popping up on the net. I gotta say… wow… more people are bored out of their mind than I thought. Well, it’s a good thing – keeping them off of the streets, at least.
Anime Suki forum‘s help wanted section has lots of these new groups, looking for new members. And what’s the most sought after position? Translators. What else?
Wait.
That’s a strange thing to look for. Yes, I know that translators are NOT available in abundance. But in my mind, people shouldn’t even be thinking about forming a fansubbing team without first having a translator or two to start with. Some of these groups gets lucky and find someone who has taken about 3 semesters of Japanese in high school or college, and… *sigh* those subs really irks me. They often miss the fine nuances during its rough translations. Even those people who have Japanese parent(s) have problems with their Japanese skills. As a native speaker, it still is difficult at times. I just can’t stop think that this fansubbing business is really getting crazy.
There’s some reason to it though. As recently as a year ago, there were very little resources that taught people how to fansub. With the maturing of digital video (thanks to MP4 and its alikes) and broadband internet, fansubbing on the internet is easier than ever. But there were very little “howto” documents on line. I’m not sure how different people got started back then… Then came bunch of these “howto” documents. Timing Guide on AnimeSuki, my own typesetting guide, Doom9 for encoding, etc, etc… It’s just easier than ever to get started with the fansubbing business, except when it comes to finding the translator.
I won’t go flame those people who are starting a group up. But I can’t help myself but to just think lowly of those people…
October 22nd, 2004 at 10:51 am
I sort of pondered something similar lately. In fansubbing, almost every single task can be learned fairly easily (well, perhaps not editing for those who can’t speak English), and yet there’ll always be a limiting factor in the translators. Everything else is limited to technical resources and the desire to contribute/learn how to contribute, but the supply of those are nearly endless, perhaps even in excess at this stage. And yet for all the groups and people, there are only a few translators, and even fewer who stay on and either finish a series or do multiple series. Strange thought.
November 2nd, 2004 at 2:04 pm
Japanese sentence syntax is so different from English, as we know…
phony fansubs deserve two thumbs down.