As our first work, Dourk Output translated chapter 72 of Sora no Otoshimono. At this time, our scanlation is available at http://kissmanga.com/Manga/Sora-no-Otoshimono/Vol-017-Ch-072--Stone--?id=169190 .
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Hi, I'm DeProgrammer, a software developer by trade. I'm a big fan of anime and manga, so I recently invested a lot of time in learning Japanese. In fact, I've spent about an hour and a half studying Japanese every day on average for the last six months.
Oh, yes, six months. In roughly the duration of one college semester, I spent the equivalent of about 16 college semester hours studying the language. So, can you tell I love what I do?
Regardless, Tourk and I share the love for anime and manga. Sora no Otoshimono is one of our mutual favorite ongoing manga series, and since I had already read the next chapter, and since Tourk likes to spend a lot of time transcribing the pages without actually involving himself much in understanding the language, we thought we may as well try the whole scanlating thing.
After we submitted our first completed product, I spoke with an experienced scanlator, who informed us of some rules of scanlation etiquette. Thus, at this point, I'd like to take a moment to apologize to Renzokusei Scans for violating the etiquette.
For the record, apparently the rule is that you shouldn't work on translating a chapter if another group has posted an update for that series within the last 90 days. It might sound territorial at a glance, but if we didn't already understand, we promptly learned the reason first-hand.
After teaching us that rule, our contact had specifically suggested that we work on "Golden Time" because it hadn't been updated in a long time, so we did. Tourk had finished cleaning and redrawing chapter 14 and I was 60% through translating it when I noticed that our friendly neighborhood Village Idiot Scanlations had beat us to the punch. I'm not sure if our contact knew that it had only been about 60 days since that same group had last uploaded a chapter of Golden Time, but I should have double-checked, regardless. It wouldn't have been cool to do the same thing to those fine individuals too.
That said, Tourk has come to hate textured speech bubbles.
And now we need another manga to translate, hopefully one slightly easier than Golden Time. :P
Dourk out!
hey, let me be the first to say thanks for translating sora no otoshimono. but also i was wondering if, unless you have some reason not to, you could upload your chapters to the website batoto, its a great site and might also help to get your scans out there faster as not everybody will find them through bakamanga updates as i have, but again thanks a ton for translating it.
ReplyDeleteIt shall be done!
Deletewow welcome to the world of scanlating(im niot one of them)
ReplyDeletebut either no matter wich manga ya will scanlate it looks like they will have good translations :)
Rule 2 of scanlation wisdom is that if you try and listen to every rule every scangroup asks of you, then you're in for a world of agony.
ReplyDeleteScangroups have two philosophies they could reasonably take, both of which are fair, but they contradict each other:
1) "We have a territorial claim over this series, if you have any issues with the speed or quality then tell us and we'll work hard to get better"
2) "This is what we do: if you don't like it, do a better job yourself"
Choose which side to take, and then take solace in the fact that you could never satisfy the other without violating your own principles.
The whole "90 days" thing isn't usually much of an issue unless you're doing it because you think the group in question is too slow and you want to take control of it all because you think you're better, followed by churning out a lackluster release. I mean Renzokusei is treading on Foolz's toes, but their releases are both good and fast enough (and they aren't on some sort of ego trip) that nobody really cares - they're just a second option there if you don't want to wait for Foolz.
ReplyDeleteYou did this chapter because you just wanted to scanlate something and not to get a leg up on other groups, but you'd find better success with something that isn't being done. Look for things with NO chapters, things people want, do a little digging surrounding that sort of thing (and read a little first so you'll know whether or not you'll enjoy scanlating it before jumping in). Also you desperately need a cleaner. And to upload things to somewhere not mangafox. Maybe even DDLs. Or an irc channel with a distro bot. Otherwise you're just going to get ignored. Oh, and welcome, by the way.
Well, technically, we uploaded it to Google Docs first. Then we submitted it to KissManga and MangaFox. Those are just the main sites I tend to read manga on. Actually, we tried submitting it to another site or two, but their "Contact Us" links were broken. >.>
DeleteWe'll just have to get a list of the main sites to submit to, but for now, it looks like we might be working with Kisu KSM on a series. I'm sure those individuals have all sorts of handy information for us. :P
"Foolz's toes, but their releases are both good and fast enough" FoOlRulez and fast in the same sentence, hahahahaha. The raws are out since last week. (sorry for my bad english)
DeleteThanks for the chapter.
I was talking about Renzokusei, bro.
DeleteWhile I can't say I'm too keen on the idea of another group releasing SnO, I have zero room to complain given that we basically did the same thing to FoOlRulez, and have done it on other occasions to other groups.
ReplyDeleteIt's always nice to see more translators and more groups coming into the scanlation scene, regardless of what series they do, though.
Assuming you don't intend on releasing more chapters of this (since that seems to be what you're saying), I have a list of more than a few hundred series that can use updates, if you want to look at it.
That's what I was saying, yes, that we won't release more chapters of SnO since someone else has it covered.
DeleteIt would be excellent if you would supply that list to us. :D
hmmm....only 6 months. I also wants to learn Japanese,but don't know how to start and which books i should prefer,if you like can you help me with this.
ReplyDeleteThanks
I started with a mediocre-quality textbook called "Nakama", myself, but I used http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/ for most of my grammar learning after that point. I've been using my own Android app to study, but this app is really good since it has all the Japanese stuff built-in, whereas mine is a generic self-quizzing app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.Obenkyo
DeleteAre you just learning to read and write, but not speaking? When I learnt my second language, I totally ignore the speaking and listening all together, and now I regret it.
DeleteI'm not completely ignoring speaking and listening, but I'm not going out of my way to practice speaking because I can't think and talk at the same time. :P
DeleteI do at least practice saying words aloud when I read them, and I tend to listen carefully when I watch subtitled anime.
Hi there, I'm a cleaner for a few groups.
ReplyDeleteIf you have a steam or skype handle, I could try giving you a crash course on cleaning manga if you'd like?
Hey there. I also currently play with the idea of learning japanese and looked a bit through it already.
ReplyDeleteSince I've seen a lot of anime already I already know some words and phrases so I guess this'll make it a little bit easier.
I can probably learn hiragana and katakana in the matter of 1-2 weeks and then comes the learning of the vocabulary and such.
But the thing I'm worried about is Kanji. Learning throusands of these symbols that sometimes even look so damn similar is a real nightmare.
Of course there are some mangas like Otoshimono that have furigana so you don't really need to know Kanji for it but most aren't like that.
I believe you have learned at least some Kanji until now, right? If so, how far did you come in these 6 months?
The key to learning to differentiate kanji is to learn the radicals, or the parts that make them up. I've found that it really helps to come up with a unique name that describes the shape for each radical, and then as I'm studying individual kanji, I list off my names for the radicals that comprise them and try to find at least *some* awkward way to link the radicals to the kanji's meaning.
DeleteI was recently telling people I can recognize 600-650 kanji, but those numbers were actually from several weeks ago. By now (still not at my 6 month mark yet) I can recognize most kanji up through the 5th grade ones, so that makes the number closer to 800.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyōiku_kanji
http://jisho.org/kanji/radicals/