It's not better than no release at all because if the scanlation is noticeably bad, then it's distracting. There are plenty of series I've skipped out on reading because the groups doing them were (or still are) terrible.

i once read a scanlation where the scanlator admitted that their translations were based off another translation of ANOTHER translation and that their translation was largely derived from google. suffice to say when i bought the official english translation the context was wildly different and made a lot more sense.

never settle for bad scanlations!

I'd say yes, because someone else might take notice of the series and do a better release someday. If the scanlations are that poor though, I'd go looking for the raws.

Depends on how bad the scan is and how good the manga is.

Skimping on the editing is okay, but shoddy translations are a no-no for me. Has to somewhat readable and makes sense story wise (since I am unable to read the original material).

I'm gonna have to say no, it's not better than no release at all. Shoddy editing can be endured to an extent, but shitty translations that are in broken english can't.

Agree

Read a series that was for many chapters only worked on by the translator... the text was cleaned out with a white box, and the text was typed leftbound in ... Arial or something. The rest of the scan was grainy as fudge, but I still enjoyed the story, and by now somebody came along and is properly scanlating it.
Especially for smaller series, that wouldn't even be available outside Japan, if it wasn't for the poor quality scanlation there wouldn't be any people noticing it, hence, nobody to scanlate it and no fanbase to appreciate it.

Depends on how bad.

Regardless I feel if there isn't a raw available, having a poorly translated anything can at least provide the images which is something (and probably better than nothing)

If it's understandable, like the overall content is there but some words might be weird or the grammar is off, it can be salvaged with your own logic and grasp of the context. It is a series of pictures after all. If you really like a series, desperate times = rock bottom standards.

If it's hardly understandable at all or so littered with mistakes it's completely distracting then no, I would be very unhappy reading such garbage. It'd be the equivalent of a raw at that point, which like mentioned is probably still providing images in the least.

Even though I feel something is better than nothing, it does reinforce bad content and quality because it means people will take anything - so lowering our standards also isn't good either.

Most of the time i would say that it's better than getting nothing, but some scanlations are so bad that it would have been better to have nothing.

I do appreciate quality in the editing and in the raws, but it's not a deal breaker for me. I'd still be able to enjoy the manga. However, a bad translation is something I really can't stomach. You could even not put the translated text in the boxes, just release the script, I'd still be fine with it. But the translation must be decent. Otherwise I'm not really reading that manga.

Well, for me it is like this:
If English translation is bad I try to find Russian (and hope it isn't a second-hand translation from English), if both are bad or no Russian exists, then I just read bad one, for the most part my understanding is enough to correct in my head the obvious mistakes at least. It still better than staring at raws when I can understand only like 10-15% of Japanese.

I guess it all depends on how bad the release actually is.
If it's terrible, I won't read it. Even if the series itself is good. I'll wait for somebody else to pick it up.
If it's bad, but the series itself is good and there hasn't been a better quality release for months (6-8), I might give it a try.
For series I particularly enjoy, I might even offer up my editing services in order to improve the scanlations' quality.

I choose "Agree" in case all or some of the mentioned "poor quality" (bad translation, editing, raws, etc) can be seen in a release.
But, it depends. If there is only one of those faults and it's a good Manga/Manhwa/Manhua, I tend to ignore it as much as possible.
No release is NO GOOD really. As me being one of those overly curious guys, I tend to go raw hunting. No quality scans still works better for me than no release. I can always read the HQ releases whenever it comes out.

Great question, and hard choice (kind of...)! Ultimately, I feel like it's better to have something than nothing at all. It's probably not the case in reality, but it always feels like there's a shortage of manga of my preferred genre.

I ask myself what all the unbothered MU members are even doing here?
I certainly hope that they will stop any criticism forevermore just to be fair to us "sensible types". The gore numbers are also quite low. Fiction can barely work without a catalyst of conflict but "gore" discussions are a constant presence. True torture porn is admittedly rare in the ongoing scanlation scene and none pointed out that more than half of our options were of a sexual variety. The internet is for porn certainly had a point.

The specified bad translations or unfinished ones are utterly pointless to me so i agree and i will never rely on such. Everything else though is luxury in my eyes and i would gladly give up on cleanups, crazy resolutions and whatnot else to have more content hitting the web. Freedom of information and all that.

Nope, keep your crappy work to yourself. If you don't even have the pride in your work to spell words correctly then WHY should I give you buttpats and thanks for releasing the chapter? And I certainly am NOT going to waste my time or "hurt my brain" trying to figure out what you're trying to say.

If I started reading a bad scanlation, chances are I won't finish it.
Especially considering I'm a bit of a grammar nazi >.>...
If I'm really desperate and do (which rarely happens), then I will be literally auto-correcting everything in my head, lel.

For the previous poll, I didn't vote because...literally all of the choices drive me up the wall, except the language and gore ones. I wish that there was an "all of the above" option XD.

I don't mind bad scanlations, however it needs to be readable. It may not be so bad that they just place the english text without cleaning the Japanese text. If you really want it perfect then you need to buy the paper version.

No release is better.

Well ... the only reason why I say this is because of bad translations/no proofreading/no localization.
Reading something with typos, or doesn't make sense in English ruins the manga for me.

As for bad quality scans, or something like that ... well, that doesn't bother me much unless the picture is cut off in places.

The only valid reply is "Depends on how bad it is", and there's no such option available.

If it's unreadable, be it due to absolutely shit quality or translation, then screw that. If only the image quality or editing is sub-par, then that's often much better than no release.

If what makes it be "bad quality" is stuff like bad editing, raws, cleaning, proofreading or the like...
That's definitely better than no release.
Especially editing, cleaning and typos. It's better to get those right, but...
Reading a scanlation which doesn't do those well, isn't really a problem.

As to translation, however...
A mediocre translation is okay
...but a shit translation is worse than none.

With both manga and anime, translation is paramount. (unless, of course, you're fluent in Japanese)
Everything else is secondary.

If the question was about poor quality of editing and the like OR translation, then my choice would be clear.
As it is, however the question cannot be answered.

I hate bad. Bad is bad, so I skip over bad. Which in turn means I skip over the majority because bad is more or less all that's left nowadays.

Sadface indeed.

It depends how bad is BAD but generally I agree for the pull.

I agree with others have said, it depends on how bad the scanlation is. If the translation is so bad that I am constantly confused about what's happening, then there is no point in having it scanlated. If I notice during the first chapter that the scanlation is really poor then I'll quit reading it. However, I have read manga that have switched scanlators during the series (one group starts working on it and drops it, then another group picks it up). Sometimes I'll start a manga that is good quality, then the next group that picks it up does a really poor job of scanlating. At that point, I'm already invested in the manga, so I will keep reading the poor scans because I want to see how the story turns out.

No release is better than a low quality release.

In the world of scanlation, where often times only one group does a series at a time, and where "doing a new chapter" is always valued more than "re-doing an old chapter"... releasing a shitty version of a chapter will pretty much guarantee that that's the only version you'll be able to find for quite a long time, or perhaps forever.
That's no good.
Put some effort into your releases, or don't do it at all. That's what I say.

Few years ago I would have agreed but not now. It's meaningless to read a bad translation as it greatly reduces the quality of original work.

Damn, I wanted to click "Disagree" and clicked "Agree" instead. But I suppose it doesn't really matter, because my actual answer would be "it depends". When I'm desperate to know what happens in a manga I like, I'll take everything, even just a written description instead of scans. But on the other hand, I've seen scanlations that were so bad that I was thinking "If you can't do this properly, don't do this at all!".

I can bear bad quality scans, but I detest lazy translation. I've seen scanlations where half of the speech bubbles were just left blank, some words were just written in romaji instead of translated (something like "are you daijoubu?"), and the stuff that was translated was very hard to understand. It was worse than reading raws. Seriously, if you can't speak Japanese well, don't try to translate from Japanese.

Oh it matters greatly, since it is directly linked to whether the experience of the manga will be positive or negative. So I voted disagree and I'm surprised so many people actually voted agree.

I must say I wouldn't care so much if the cleaning, raws, font etc. are quite poor. But a bad translation is an absolute no-go for me. Words in manga are just as important as the expression of the art. If that doesn't go well together, then I'd rather not read it at all.

I'm surprised at the outcome of the old poll, too, and a bit shocked, really. Kinda shows how indifferent and insensitive many people, especially young people, are today. Sad and unsettling, really.
But well, there were still many people who are bothered by certain things, and that gives hope.

The new poll... I clicked "Agree", though a bad quality scanlation is definitely not something I'm happy with. Generally, I think that if you can't produce at least a medium-quality scanlation, then don't even try.

I have yet to finish Part 5 of JoJo because of [Old Scans]

They are horrid. No offense to whoever did them but just no. I'd rather grab a good looking raw and use a kanji dictionary.

I prefer reading good raws (if I can find them) over a bad scanlation. I can't read any Japanese. Some genres it doesn't work and thus the series has to be skipped but in things like generic shounen or scenic slice of life the text might be a distraction from the artwork (sadly).

.

If an entire series is translated badly, it's worse than nothing and I won't read it. If a few chapters are badly done, but the rest are fine, it's better than nothing.

I voted "disagree." A lot of scanlators are hesitant to redo chapters that have already been scanlated, no matter how bad the translation is. Bad translations also tend to have a lot of clunky phrasing, and things like that really drive me up the wall.

The amount of non-scanlators responding to the poll shows in its results. Poor quality work is NOT better than no release at all. Shoddy work means distractions everywhere and the inability to enjoy what you're reading.

Disagree. There has to be a line/standard even for those who speed scan.

Even those where the intent is to simply host raws and provide a method to transpose the raws with a translation e.g. raff, one should have standards as well (good quality raw scans and grammatically correct translations).

It's really out of respect for the manga, the mangaka, and the others who worked to ensure the raw publication of the manga....anything less is a demerit. I cringe at terrible grammar/translation. Crappy scans are really a pain too.

Sad to see that nearly 2/3 don't see it that way.

Depends on the series and just how bad the scans are... Poor translations tend to irk me more than scan quality.

If it's a really popular one with spoilers all around the net, and for some reason or another only sub-par scans are available, I'll read them.

TheLittleE already mentioned JJBA part 5; I only made it halfway through because I have high hopes better quality scans will be available later. Plus, all the major stuff has already been spoiled for me so I can care less about trying to experience said wonders first hand.

Usually, if it's a new series I'm picking up, I'll drop it and move on to another if all the scans are horrible.

My Japanese is poor, so I rarely ever bother with raws, unless I know the series has been dropped and just want to see end relationships. Even then, I'd rather just read summaries on some random blog/ wiki page if they're available.

So yeah, in the end I'll abstain from voting because it's so situational. I'd disagree if the poll asked about official translations or dubs though... I like to pretend plenty of dubs don't even exist.

I guess we have a vocal minority here. And I'm gonna add to that, bad translation will always be worse than no release in my opinion. It doesn't even matter how bad because it's the translation, bad will never work in translation. Might as well be looking at raws.

It's interesting how the dominant opinion in the comments is the opposite of the dominant opinion in the poll itself.

I just thought of something.

This reminds me of the movie industry ... You know, how they keep making awful crappy movies, and when they make something not as bad people just go with it, instead of demanding better quality movies.

"Oh hey, I'm okay with poor quality scanlations. Just keep giving me something to read."

*sigh*

It's a slap in the face to the mangaka, and is just ... isn't the whole point of scanlating to make people support the mangaka in the long run? I don't see how that works with poor quality releases.

I voted "agree" in the last poll, but I don't intend for it to come across as being indifferent to the scanlators work. I was referring to how some nervous groups will stall a release til they either disband or give up on it because of relatively minor qualms like they can't localize the puns, the redrawer is having a tough time with the textures, a typesetter is struggling to find fonts that match the originals style, etc. I've seen these things happen more than a few times in smaller, new groups, and committed one of them myself (I was quite a slow typesetter...).

As long as the group or individual is doing the best they possibly can, I'm okay with a slight drop - or rather, deviation - in quality, and it's silly for me to refuse a release on the basis that a more seasoned scanlation crew would have done it better, especially when I'm a freeloading consumer. It doesn't help that most of what I read would never be picked up by a publishing company like Viz due to their short length and/or non-existent popularity, so I'm grateful to everyone who is genuinely interested in sharing their passion.

I didn't mean that the groups who couldn't give less of a shit about accuracy are fine and dandy. When there are multiple teams competing for one series, I'll gladly wait for the one that puts the most effort into their work. Can't say I've ever read a translation based on a summary, but I probably wouldn't be crazy about that either unless no one was going to pick up the series anyway, there are no twists that have subtle referencing early on (Pandora Hearts), and the person writing the dialogue rivals Stephen King. Actually, even then, I'd most likely avoid it. Sorry.