[ 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)]

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.'