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A Little Rant about Manga & Anime in translation |
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Excuse me if I rant a little bit. This isn't something directed to anyone in particular, and I don't care if you read it or not.
This has to do with manga scanlations and the companies who license and distribute manga. Actually, the same goes with anime.
You know, no one had to decide to bring any of these series over. We could have gone on living without them. Anime and manga has slowly been creeping into America since the 60's, and now I'm pretty sure its popularity is at an all-time high. The sheer amount of anime conventions and the people who attend (and even those that don't, because I know there are many who can't/won't go but are still anime fans) is proof enough of that. So of course we have a lot more anime over, but no one is really inclined to license it, or to fansub, or to scanlate. The people that do that have chosen to do it, for whatever reason they did.
I'm sick of seeing all this bitching and whining about "why isn't this out yet" and "they're too slow" or "this company" blah blah blah. People are taking time out of their lives to provide the series to you. Some are getting paid, others are doing this purely because they want to. Do you think they're really going to want to do this if you're just going to complain about it?
You should consider yourself ******** lucky, especially if an episode or scanlation is available to you mere hours or days after a RAW has been released. Many groups take weeks to edit a chapter, or an episode. Now when you think about that, think about the companies who license and distribute a plethora of anime and manga.
Sure, they have very large staffing, but it doesn't mean it takes any less time to do it. The companies that provide us with dubs often give us different covers, they re-mix the audio to give us Digital 5.1 surround--something they do simply to let us enjoy it more. I'm pretty sure the Japanese don't have that. It can take many takes to get a line just right while recording. They make menus, give us extras... I'm sure there's a bit of editing too. It's a time consuming process, and the people who work on these aren't tied down to one specific project. They spend a lot of money to bring us these episodes. The last I read, just to license a damn episode costs on average $20,000 now. That's before all the editing, before all the audio adjustments, before dubbing. I don't care how long it takes the company to give me another DVD. Of course I care how much it costs, but if I like the series enough I'm going to buy it, not just rent it at the video store or borrow from a friend. SUPPORT THE INDUSTRY.
Now, I have only complained about one company in particular with manga, and that is because I cannot understand why it takes them as long as it does, unless of course they are understaffed. That would be Ice Kunion who brings us many manwha. After ranting though, I'm not sure I want to complain anymore. Manga may not have voices or fancy audio to go with them, but they're a lot of trouble. Anyone who has participated in scanlating or has worked in the industry I'm sure knows this. Scanlating groups go by chapter, and they could get a chapter a week, or one a month, or even less often than that (I'm imagining if it's Kouta Hirano's work...) but it is still going to take them some time. Groups will give certain projects many team members to have it done quicker, or not as many and take weeks to get a whole chapter edited and released. Now, how long is a chapter? It depends on the magazine they are first published in. Weekly magazines will typically have shorter chapters at about 20 pages, while monthly magazines like Hana to Yume or LaLa will give longer chapters, around 30 pages. A whole tankoban, or volume, is a collection of these chapters, generally with about 5 chapters. This means it could take well over a month to translate and edit an entire volume.
These companies aren't working on just one volume. They're working on a much larger scale and their product is going to be much nicer than a scanlating group's. (Some groups I must say have excellent quality that could fiercly rival a licensing company.) They must translate everything, and if there are cultural references which Americans would typically not understand, they take note and typically write a blurb in the back. They give us extra information; if they don't take out a sound effect, they will tell us what it means in a small space; they have to edit out the text in each and every bubble and just about anywhere text will occur. Then they have to go through and put English text back inside and still make it look nice. The text size must be just right, they must (or at least should) differentiate text in some places for different emotions or captions as many mangaka do. And of course the company must make sure that it prints out right. The cover pages are often resized, cropped, or redesigned for the American sized books. (Ours are much larger than the Japanese tankoban, and we use heavier paper instead of newsprint.) There's quite a bit of design that goes into them also, such as the back cover and the spine.
Now, once again I'm sure that there are many people working on one project, but it doesn't necessarily mean it's going to get done quicker. I highly doubt they're going to hire 10+ people for one project--VIZ would have well over 1,000 people employed just for this process--not anything to do with prints, shipping, accounting, etc.. I highly doubt they could afford something like that.
So next time you even think about complaining about how long it takes, or just one mistake--remember all the hard work that goes into it and how long it takes to get that done. Some of these people do this for fun, others do it for a job. Either way, they're all human just like you and me. Give them a bit of respect and understanding.
 MistressMizu · Thu May 31, 2007 @ 05:25am · 0 Comments |
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