Monday, June 15, 2015

FRHS chapter 5

It sure took me long enough, but finally here's some new FRHS. I'm hoping to get more procedures in place to make this a more efficient process; otherwise it'll take forever to get through this series, and that's something neither you nor I desire.

A brief word about chapters 1-4. Back in the day, I thought the Jinmen-Juushin dudes were pretty good. They had decent scans and good flow. But then I learned a bit of Japanese — more than what's required to be dangerous but still far from perfect — and read though the J-J releases again while I was prepping for this project. And let me tell you, there are some real stinkers in there, you can compare if you're really curious. (I used the J-J release as a base, and corrected as necessary. I do love some of J-J's localizations, such as "damn kids are always putting graffiti out there!")

Anyway, I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him, so to speak. J-J did the best they could, and they worked on some great series. Average scanlation accuracy has presumably gotten better over the years, but the lesson is to take it all with a grain of salt. If it doesn't make sense while you're reading it, it's not "zany" or "deep", it could well be completely wrong. I know that sometimes I'll be doing a QC pass, think to myself that a bubble doesn't make sense, do a bit more research, and find that I was completely off base. A bubble here and there usually doesn't affect plot comprehension, of course, which is why scanlators get away with cutting corners. That's no way to live, though.

1 comment:

Juan said...

Thanks! And it's interesting to hear about the translation process. I
appreciate that a: translation is hard, b: good translation is _really_ hard,
and c: people are doing this out love of the material and a desire to share.
Still, we _do_ put a lot of faith in the translators. I barely know enough
Japanese to be confused. I remember trying to figure out the last volumes of
YKK by myself and thinking "I know all the words, and I still have _no_ idea
what being said."

Anyway, thanks! This series is fun.