Well, as a QCer, I'm one of those people in charge of checking the English in scanlations.

It's a lot of work and we do our best, but we make mistakes, too.

If the spelling and grammar bother you that much, how about helping some of the scanlators out? Haha, sorry.

Can't stand it.
I hate bad grammar. I just hate it.
Sure, a random overlooked error in an otherwise flawless scanlation is nothing if not forgivable.
But there's no excuse for screw ups a la "suicided". *shudder*

Living in a country where the main language is foreign to me, I encounter this phenomenon all the time.
If English is your first language, there's no reason for you to make such dreadful mistakes,
or for a proofreader not to correct them.

My English grammar isn't perfect either, but I try.
And like another member here said, the dialogue isn't even that complex in shoujo and yaoi where bad grammar is quite common. But I guess it's part of the problem.

@otaku_mel
Speaking as a scanlator, the piles and piles of wrong have nothing to do with lack of help but with inexperienced or otherwise lacking people.

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You should add another vote, "English isn't my native language, so it's hard to find bad grammer\spelling"
I think where are a lot of ppl around the world who prefer to read english translantions\scanlations. In countires where anime\manga community is small homemade scanlations and official translations are just appaling. And some use english scanlations and not raws for translation anyway.

I do think it's distracting but I overlook it unless it's so bad, it makes the scanlation useless. I mean, it's great that they're scanlating it but if it's not legible or you can't make sense of it, they're just wasting their time.

I am just REALLY, REALLY grateful to be able to read manga at all. Hugs everyone responsible for providing it to me and gives them a dog lick. I was looking at some raws of a manga the other day to figure out what would happen in Volume Three, but it was two people sitting in a car and chatting and chatting. Unusually huge talk bubbles. It might never be translated because I guess English takes a lot more space. Too bad I'm too dumb to learn a foreign language. Thank you smart people. *dog romps around you happily and barks like 'let's play!'*

(Oh yeah, I have read a few mangas of which I totally couldn't grasp what was going on, but at least the bad translations gave me a spring board for some confused conjecture. Bad is better than nothing at all, plus they are doubtless improving their skills by the very act.)

P.S. I am more obsessed with the text size. Can't read the stupid, friggin' tiny text bits...




Last edited by nowyat at 4:57 pm, Dec 12 2012

Leechers are to blame. An average scanlator has higher quality standards than an average leecher. So the reason scanlations are as good as they are is because scanlators resist leecher demands for "more and faster" and try to produce something palatable (yes, with all the bugs, but still). If scanlation were leecher driven, spelling, grammar, and everything else would be even worse. But if it were up to scanlators alone, releases would take longer and have fewer mistakes.

Also, there are too many proofreader applicants and too few of them are actually capable of doing the job.

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Unless it changes and/or makes me second guess the meaning of the sentence, I don't care. Well, not enough to act like a 'holier-than-thou' whine-bag, anyway.

Honestly, what bothers me more than anything is bad typesetting. You know, like using lowercase letters with a serifed typeface... and then not centering it. (Sorry, it's not on batato.)

Ewww...!

See? Now that's just WRONG. If your English blows, that's one thing, but English proficiency be damned, ANY clown should at least be able to SENSE how terrible that looks in comparison to other scanlations.

-extremely late edit-

as a sidenote i love topics about grammer and speling because it really brings out the pretensious asshole in everyone - like OMG you complained about spelling but you cant even spell!! and then the next reply says the same thing untilll eventually youre looking through the trying to 1up the last guy w/uberleet grammer skillz like a buncha little kids tying to win an argument as if doing so will validate your intelligence





This.

This is the type of attitude that I appreciate the most in a grammar topic: an understanding of your own proficiency before criticizing others. That's really the key to NOT looking like a grammar snob. Sorta like, "Hey, I'm not perfect, but I expect at least THIS level of proficiency."

Last edited by Badkarma at 8:52 pm, Dec 9 2012

@NightSwan I see where you're coming from. It was just me trying to shamelessly encourage others to help out, haha. My English is far from perfect, but I am fairly confident in my abilities. It's my belief that people should only apply if they know that they are capable.

Blatant errors annoy the hell out of me. But I don't complain. I'm happy the stuff I like gets scanlated, so I'm not extremely picky. If the grammar and spelling are truly unbearable I will drop a manga though...

As long as the spelling and grammar are not horrific, then I only become slightly distracted by the errors. I try not to let mistakes bother me too much but it becomes annoying when mistakes are made in every panel. What bugs me the most is actually sentence structure..

Very annoyed. Well, only in the worst case though. The worst case would be syntax! I've read a few translations that I understood as well as its Japanese/Korean/Chinese counterpart, seriously. The syntax was so bad that I got a serious headache from reading it and I could not make head or tail of what's going on (well the pictures helped a bit).

I know translating is a quite difficult job, because it's not only about knowing the languages and translating the words but it's primarily about conveying the correct meaning into the other language. To bring the message over so that it is as close as possible (almost 1:1) to the original text, but at the same time also makes sense in the other language. Even one of the most famous literature known to our world is not without its translation errors (maybe you'll guess which one I mean). Translators might have a difficult time, especially if the languages are as far apart as Asian and European ones.

I don't mind some bad spelling or stuff like the wrong use of tenses though.

P.S. if you see this text as ironic my german roots just shone through

Last edited by kujika at 3:37 pm, Dec 8 2012

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i get annoyed if its really bad and drop the manga if it became unbearable. the occasional misses is okay though. the quality need to be really bad since i am not an English speaker so i don't notice much, so the ones that get dropped are really atrocious.

Hate them with a passion. Why release half-assed work? Where's your spell-check? If you're translating it into English, you should have a firm grasp of the language. We don't want to read nonsensical gibberish. Those who claim that they can submit whatever they want 'cause it's volunteer work are just plain selfish and immature. If you're doing it for yourself, then don't submit it online. =_= If you're contributing to the community, then please do submit it online. And if you are, then you should put some effort in proofreading it. Simple as that.

It's sad that people suck-up to these guys regardless.

i can deal with bad grammar / spelling

as long as i can still understand the "thought" or what the character/s are trying to say
it's much better if all the conversation are still "understandable"
despite the bad grammar / spelling.

what i can't tolerate is when the bad grammar / spelling is no longer understandable
or it makes the whole conversation confusing @ A @;;;;;;;

Bad grammar, yeah I get annoyed by it sometimes lol. 'Cause bad grammar is bad grammar, but slang is cool with me.
But sometimes the translations you're working with... it's hard to try and fix them. I mean, you can get into weird situations...

Besides, there's a bunch of people trying to get it out for the fans as fast as they can. I don't believe they're supposed to be perfect scanlations, that defeats the point of having them. So that's why I like the imperfections of scanlation because it's just another reminder to the reader to go buy the official version or learn Japanese and read the original themselves

(It does not matter if they're English natives or not. Mistakes happen and they will continue to happen whether anyone likes it or not. People will miss things and if you know what those errors are and what they were supposed to be originally, then there's no harm done.)