How I became and un-became a manga translator | Hacker News Reader

How I became and un-became a manga translator

bemmu.com

49 pointsbemmu9 comments

Yeah, he discovered the cruel truth that translation work isn't seen as cerebral at all by most people, and just thought of as factory labor, to be underpaid and forced to push as hard as possible.

I was once on a similar path, localizing MMOs, and am so glad i got out of that and into software development.

The best part of it was that I was basically getting paid to learn Japanese. Had I continued on that path my language skills would be amazing at this point.

That actually makes me a little envious. :)

I only got the job at a point where i was already very fluent in english, and got into dev because i had enough learning time to learn programming skills to help the translations.

As for your language skills, does that mean you live in japan, have a business selling things from japan, but aren't fully fluent?

(Also, as a subscriber, i adore the service and hope you'll be doing it for some time to come. :D)

Yes, there's a standard Japanese test which has levels 1 to 5, called JLPT. 1 is the highest and 5 lowest, I was able to pass level 2. It's sort of exponential though, you need to know twice as much for each next level basically.

More information: https://www.jlpt.jp/e/about/levelsummary.html

I seem to recall that Japanese Universities require level 3 for exchange students to enroll in Japanese language classes. That's probably not enough to follow lectures, but probably enough to get to the level of being able to follow lectures after 3-6 months.

My literacy is pretty poor, so I don't think I'd be able to pass a level 3 test, but I think apart from the literacy part it's probably a decent description of my current level.

Coming from latin-alphabet languages, it takes some effort to get up to speed -- the primary school curriculum is 1006[1] kanji characters, along with 2*48[2] (depending of how one counts) kana. And that's just the bare minimum, general literacy is ~3000 kanji.

It's a fascinating language, and learning it gives some interesting linguistic perspectives because it's so different, especially from other big languages. It's also a rather simple language -- the main difficulty lies in how different Japanese is, due to the long isolation.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyōiku_kanji

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kana

I'm surprised you got a job without JLPT1. Certainly no self-respecting Japanese corporation would take you without that as a minimum.

Luckily, nobody bothers flipping or translating sound effects these days. It's all about that authenticity.

How much Japanese did you know going in? I took a couple years in it back in undergrad, but it's all rusted away from a lack of practice.

As always it's supply and demand. Translating Mangas/Animes is considered so coool that way too many are willing to do way too much work for way too little pay. As a result the work sucks, considering it as a normal job.

I've done some 'scanlations' work. I couldn't imagine doing it for a job though.

On one hand, there's some pressures and social issues to grapple with when doing scanlations. For example, You can essentially start turf wars by taking on certain projects, even if the 'maintainer' is grossly neglecting the project or non-communicative. Also, the readers are very passionate people, and they have a direct line to air their grievances with the translation/typesetting/rate of release/etc. There's also, of course, the moral issue of enabling what is essentially just piracy.

On the other hand, you're able to work on a manga you're passionate about, or at the very least interested in without worrying about licensing/etc. And being unbeholden to anyone on the level of accuracy-versus-fluidity and offensiveness is definitely very valuable.

Even just doing it for fun was pretty brutal though. I have a lot of respect for the ancient groups and members that've been plugging away at it forever.

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