Posts Tagged ‘translation’
Thursday, June 11th, 2009
Fiat 500 is really coming to US. Yeah, I’m excited. I hope Chrysler will bring that car untouched. I want a car like Lupin’s, not Chrysler 500.
Then, I wasn’t expecting Firefox to release this latest beta. This one is exciting too. With this kind of version number (3.5 beta99), I suppose this would be their release candidate candidate. Their new font support is really exciting to me. Just like we get to have fun with fonts in our subtitles, we can now have fun with fonts on the web pages. Ugh, this is really going to show the lack of test my creativity.
Yesterday, I got to help a guy set up the xdccparser plugin for wordpress that I whipped up a while ago. For one thing, it’ll be fun to see someone else use it too. Second, it made me realize I need to clean up a lot of the code in it. Third, I need to build the admin section to that thing, so we can control the whole thing from within wordpress. I’m hoping to make this available for download soon.
I got behind on my translation again this week. I finally submitted my latest Ippo translation this morning (translation log #733).
A post from couple of days ago generated lots of comments. The content of the comments aside, I saw some opportunities to improve the formatting of the comments section. Also, I saw an opportunity for a plug in I haven’t tried before. I just installed a WYSIWYG editor for the comments. Enjoy. Other changes I’m hoping to put includes:
- Define a specific formatting for a block quote
- Make the comment section threaded, including a plugin that enables replies to specific comments, like what I see on this page.
Tuesday, June 9th, 2009
I got this note today.
I read your blog and noticed you promised the frostii team to do mouryou no hako. I also noticed that your schedule is quite busy and you probably don’t really want to translate MnH. This is why I contacted you. #********(channel name masked) is currently acquiring the BD for MnH and we will sub it, regardless of whether or not YOU decide to sub it. You must understand that this is our first project and we are unable to drop it. On the other hand, if frostii does this show, our group may not receive the popularity it might deserve due to a group with a higher rep – our download counts are sure to drop.
Which gives me a good chance to talk about why I torture myself so much and devote so much of my time to fansubbing.
First of all, I like anime. I’m not crazy about anime like some people I’ve seen.
Then, J→E translation is something I’ve been doing for such a long time, it’s almost natural part of me. My first translation attempt was around 17 years ago, first couple chapters of Record of Lodoss War. I just wanted to share what I was reading with friends. That desire is what got me into fansubbing.
Once I started fansubbing, I got hooked to the process of fansubbing itself. I like working with all the anime geeks. I like working with videos. I like working with fonts and such. And it gives me some excuse to build web pages and such here and there.
But, really, I wouldn’t have continued for 6+ years without all the fun people I’ve worked with. (I have yet to meet a sigle one of them. That should change at one point…)
Now, to respond to the guy who messaged me:
We will also go ahead with our project, regardless of your project status. If anything, you should have advantage over us, for we know we will take a late start. I’m trying to finish some of my shows before I pick up a new show (namely K-On, Ippo, and Black Jack). So you have definite head start. We want to do it because there are so may people in Frostii who are so eager to do it themselves, that they’re willing to put up with the wait.
And, on the assumption that I probably don’t want to translate MnH: yes, but no. It’s really not the type of the show I would pick up myself. But, since the start of Frostii, I’ve done all the stuff I wanted to do (Nodame, Black Jack, Ippo, Lupin, K-On!). Now I want to give back to the group. It’ll still be fun for me. And when people tell me that it’s not an easy show to translate, I can’t turn down the challenge.
Go on, do your own thing. We will do ours. And, FYI, I won’t be starting my translation until I come back from Japan next month.
Monday, June 8th, 2009
The recent dispute of Holo vs Horo spelling yet again reminded me of the story of a minor league baseball umpire that I heard couple of months ago on NPR.
What happens when an umpire has to make a call, like on a base, and they just can’t see it? They’re just not in the position, and they just don’t know?
It happens frequently. Maybe. I don’t want to say that it happens frequently. It happens from time to time. You just make the call. You have fifty-percent chance of getting it right. You call it, then sell it as if you have seen it. There is no alternative, you know. If you blow it, you blow it. Admitting that you didn’t see it is not an alternative. Once you’ve done it, you’ve completely lost your authority in the game. Every call you make from that point on will be open for questions.
Q: What happens when an umpire has to make a call, like on a base, and they just can’t see it? They’re just not in the position, and they just don’t know?
A: It happens frequently. Maybe. I don’t want to say that it happens frequently. It happens from time to time. You just make the call. You have fifty-percent chance of getting it right. You call it, then sell it as if you have seen it. There is no alternative, you know. If you blow it, you blow it. Admitting that you didn’t see it is not an alternative. Once you’ve done it, you’ve completely lost your authority in the game. Every call you make from that point on will be open for questions.
Here, of course, people are trying to defend their stances with variety of reasons, everything from spelling on the official product page, what’s printed on the DVD/Blu-Ray disc, how the name is pronounced, etc… One of the tough thing of being a translator (in this case, I’m including other supporting roles like editors, since they are also making decisions on these matters) is that sometimes, you have to make a call and live with it. It was probably hard to predict that this Holo vs Horo issue would spark such a discussion prior to the release. Sometimes, you simply get to labelled by some as being an incompetent translator for these little things.
At least, in this world of fansubbing, we can release a fixed version if we strongly compelled to do so. Sometimes, we just need to accept the criticism, and live with the mistakes we’ve made in the past, and let them not haunt you.
There are many reasons we can make these “mistakes.” In fansub, often it does come from language or hearing incompetence. (Afterall, majority of translators are not native Japanese speakers. Also, Japanese language has many homonyms, which makes translation even harder.) Other times, inaccuracy can stem from inconsistent spellings listed, even within one official web site. Or the line being so dang hard to hear. (Often happens in the opening/ending songs. I still remember how difficult the first episode of Last Exile was, throughout the episode.) Or, sometimes we try to make some judgement calls, trying to strike the best balance between the length of a translated line and the total accuracy of the translation.
In my case, I found some aspects of translation got harder as I got more experience, because I start thinking of all the different possibilities of translating any single word. Some people may not like the word/phrase I picked. But, usually, there’s a good reason why I phrased any line certain way. If you ever wish to dispute anything, I’ll be open to discussions (within certain limit, as I want to leave lots of time for other activities, including more future translation works).
I think I have much lower tolerence against cussing and cursing compared to these pro baseball umpires though.
Sunday, May 31st, 2009
Things are crazy at work. Hard deadlines are everywhere. Every projects that pops up are “very important.” It’s not easy being in IT—everyone wants so much from you. We don’t have projects of low or medium urgency. We only have urgent, very urgent, and ultra urgent projects. Urgh.
Not everything is bad in life though. I finished translating K-On! episode 9 today. (translation #730) Also, there was some progress in Black Jack ground. More release is drawing near!
Friday, May 22nd, 2009
That’s what someone in IRC described of my day today. This week alone, I released 3 version 3s, and 9 version 2s. I hate releasing version 2, let alone any higher versions. That would give out impressions that we are just pumping out releases without care. And on my end, that’s what I did. When I was told that files were ready to go, I pushed them out without checking them. That’s the quality checkers’ job.
So, that’s got to change. I will have to come up with some kind of work flow for some quick checks of everything we release. We’ll see how that will turn out.
On the other front, I made another translation contribution – K-On! episode 8. The episode had another new insert song. Songs always give me good challenge to translate. Those are not my favorite.
Then, this week’s episode included 3 spots with Japanese word yoroshiku. Translating that one word gives me more headache than translating songs. Always. I got lazy (and frustrated from the other stuff going on) today, and I didn’t put any real, definitive translations. The team has relatively good comprehension of Japanese. With commonly used word like this, I hope the team will come up with something good.
Friday, May 15th, 2009
Day one of the rants.
I thought I’d have an easy evening of translating something quickly, followed by some relaxing time. Hell, no. The life never goes that well. It all started at work earlier today. Some big project got dropped on me. I had to stay at work late so I could finish the tasks I was planning to finish tomorrow. I got home around 7:30. That usually happens by 5:30.
Then my mother dear calls me. We talked for a while… I ranted and ranted… while transcoding K-On raw from .ts raw to avi. It’s good to have that process pretty well automated, so I don’t have to think much to do that.
Once I was done with that, and got dinner… I somehow ended up reading about 16 volumes of Ippo manga. Yeah, great way to kill the evening.
K-On! translation didn’t happen until 11:30. Finished it at 1:00. Now I’m dead tired, and I’m gonna have a long day tomorrow. Way to go, me.