[ SECRET POST #2884 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2884 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 034 secrets from Secret Submission Post #412.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

And I think most licensing companies are backwards and outdated and don't listen to their fans or care about quality.

I live in Japan and can understand Japanese and watch the anime I like on TV or buy the manga I want cheap and unadulterated at the local bookstore, so I don't have a horse in this race anymore. But when I see scanlation groups doing more accurate, more timely, higher quality scanlations than companies that expect people to pay them for material that's over a year old?

I laugh, shake me head, and give helpful fans links to unofficial stuff that's up-to-date. If the licensing industry goes down, it only has itself to blame. Model yourself after any scanlation group with regard to speed and availability and quality, then you'll see your margins improve.

[(Anonymous)]

companies that expect people to pay them for material that's over a year old

This is my main beef with the US manga industry right here. I don't want to have to wait for months after a chapter comes out to be able to read it and in the meantime avoid tumblr, pixiv, etc. unless I want spoilers.

I just want to be able to read things in a timely fashion. They do it with anime now so why can't they do it with manga too? I know it doesn't take months to translate a single manga chapter because I have scanlator friends who can do it in a couple of hours.

[(Anonymous)]

There are sites that do that. Shonen Jump has an English version released the same day as the Japanese issues. Crunchyroll does it, too, for a scattered variety of manga. And I have no doubt that they'd like to expand their selections, too, as much as possible -- if only people would pay for it. Licensing a series, translating it, and hosting it on the web takes money -- especially the licensing part, which fan translators don't have to deal with. If you want to support manga getting released the same day it does in Japan, get a subscription to one or both of those sites, and keep on pushing for them to expand.

[(Anonymous)]

I don't want a subscription to a site, though. I want to be able to pay for the specific titles I'm interested in reading.

All I want is the ability to purchase access to or a download of the few titles I read the way I can go to Amazon Instant Video and buy episodes of a show I want to watch. I'm not interested in a subscription format because I don't watch/read enough to be able to justify the cost.

[(Anonymous)]

A subscription is going to run you (and other fans) cheaper in the long run though, and be the most efficient business model for companies. We'll never see a pay for chapter type set up, because it would be too costly and the fans would rage over it and not support something like that.

I'd expect they'd want a dollar or two for chapter to make it worthwhile, and considering most of the ebook manga's are around $6-8 generally that'd be insane price gouging. The most a subscription would be is around $7, maybe $15 the most, with a price range for specialties (like Crunchyroll)

[(Anonymous)]

Why not do something like what video games do with Season Passes? I don't see why that wouldn't work for manga too - you pay an upfront cost (probably equivalent to that of the ebook) and get digital downloads of each chapter as it's released.

[(Anonymous)]

They'd still have to charge more, both because of the comparative rush (if you're translating only when a volume is completed, you can fit bits of the work around other things you have to do, and most people won't mind if it comes out a few days late; whereas if you're 'simulcasting,' if you don't have a dedicated team getting it ready within hours of the Japanese release, people will scorn you for being 'too slow,' and if you miss any typos or messy translations because you didn't have the time and manpower for an extra editing pass, people will say the scanslators are so much better), and because of the relative financial insecurity (people buying your whole package are a more predictable revenue stream than people who might or might not pick up a single-volume 'season pass' when their current one ends).

You'd get far less for the money -- and people would accuse the companies of gouging them, once again, and go back to their free downloads. They just can't win...

[(Anonymous)]

(NA)

But each manga chapter is ready long before it's on sale, so companies could have a team translating/editing new chapters a week before or so, without the inevitable rush of simulcasting anime.
And if they feared leakages, they could work with an in-house-translator team in Japan that worked with a physical copy instead of a digital file so it won't be "too slow" or have many typos or messy translations.

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT

'Long before' is an exaggeration, unfortunately. Manga magazines run on as tight a schedule as they can manage, so they can react to the incoming reader polls to adjust the direction of the story or decide which series to drop based on popularity. Generally speaking, once the company actually has all the chapters for the issue in hand, it's off to the printer with them, to make preview copies, which happens about a week before the actual issue is released. And they generally *do* send the chapters off to the companies that are simulcast-translating them around this time.

So the pro companies get about a week to translate them before they have to release them to the public. This is as opposed to releasing by volume, where you can start translating the chapters piecemeal as they go, and still have maybe a month or more to spare before the Japanese volume is released to get things right. (Companies are usually prohibited by their contract from beating the Japanese versions to their street date, for fear that Japanese fans might just import the translations instead of buying the Japanese versions.) So to translate something week by week, you have to do the same work in less time but maintain the same quality. That will always cost money -- whether for hiring more staff, hiring better staff, or training and motivating the staff you have.

And once the preview copies are printed, for the editorial staff to error-check and hand out to the artists and distributors and the like as a bonus, it's rarely long before someone scans them. The professional companies have maybe two or three days lead on the scanlators at most, and even if they can get the translation, typesetting, and so on done in a day or two, they're still not allowed to beat the street date, so if the series is popular enough to attract fast scanlators, they legally can't beat them. And then the fans rail against the pro companies for being 'so slow.'

[(Anonymous)]

The official translations legally can't beat the quickest fantranslators on being 'timely,' because the quickest fantranslators break the street date. The magazines have to start being printed nearly a week before the street date, in order to actually get the magazines to stores across Japan in time. And so someone in the supply chain steals a magazine, scans it illegally, and uploads the scans somewhere, which the scanlators then use to make their translations. Places like Shonen Jump and Crunchyroll release their manga the same day people in Japan get to read it, but that's evidently not good enough.

And quality? I've seen a heck of a lot more fan scans with awkward, stilted, and just plain wrong translations than I have official versions with the same problems. Not to mention the multitude of 'according to keikaku' level incidents of fetishizing the original words.

There's a lot of people who idolize the fansub/scanlation scene way out of proportion to the actual good they do. I really think saying the translation companies are at fault for people wanting free stuff is pretty significant victim blaming here.

[(Anonymous)]

i agree with what you're saying, but using "victim blaming" for this is actually hilarious

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT

I suppose I might have made my point a little too heavy-handedly. But the basic idea behind it remains valid.

[(Anonymous)]

This is a serious fan misconception and grudge held against how official translations were back in the day. Only a few of the big titles get this fast and accurate translation treatment. Even those have a lot of errors.

Most of the fan translators today are super slow and half assed. They give up projects easily and fan are left in the dark about how a series ends/what's going on in it and can only hope someone on tumblr does a simple text translation of whatever was not scantalated. Idek why people still stan for fan translations anymore when they do shit like this. And yes I know they are not entitled to go on but they are feeding into this problem, so they are accountable.

And no the industry isn't to blame. Look at TV fandoms, people do buy into DVD's and watch, so shows will continue to thrive. Anime/Manga fans like to BS that they support, but we've become spoiled by the internet and don't buy the actual products. Then we want to whine when companies don't have more products out, or stop publishing something because sales tanked. The anime and manga industry isn't here to be our BFF's and braid hair, it is a damn business. It wants money and if money doesn't come in, products stop and no new products will be invested in.

I think the biggest think you're neglecting in all this is the chapters are rushed, and it's nice to read them in the magazine, but because of the rush they are often flawed and later in the manga format retouched. It'd be nice to have the chapter next day from an official company to support them, but I'd rather prefer the touched up manga that's been carefully gone over.