I am studying Japanese and as part of that I read manga and check other people's translation for parts I do not fully understand. However, in my experience, perhaps a bit surprisingly, even professional translation (i.e. actually published and sold) and translation by very well known groups (I shall not name any names) can be very shoddy, especially when it comes to difficult passages that I need to check (even rather "simple" passages are translated very poorly, or more accurately amateurishly, like by someone who just uses a dictionary like Jisho or something so things like slangs and special uses of words that differ from the usual, well understood meaning of the words themselves, are mistranslated very often). It'd be best if it's a group who has a native speaker who does the translation (i.e. a native's understanding of the text). Thanks for any suggestion.

Let's not go into criticizing anyone specific please, I just need some suggestion, I don't want to flame anyone.

Honestly, no one except yourself.

In the professional world, those that translate media are the lowest paid translators in the industry, going by all accounts that I've heard. Where the real money exists is in the translation of business material such as books and software. So, when a quality translator is offered a higher paying job, they immediately jump at the chance. This leaves the people translating media to be either people doing it out of passion or doing it because they're using the job to gain status, and, unfortunately, the latter almost completely overuns the localization business. It's infamously known that literally every translation company despises Japanese works, so they either do a poor job of translating it (Which would make machine translations come across as Shakespeare), or they end up rewriting the script to create work that's almost fanfiction and resembles nothing of the original series.

And, as far as fan translations...let's put it this way: if they try to make a song and dance out of why there's a moral reason that they refuse to translate a series like, say, Rapeman (When all 13 volumes of raws are sitting on archive.org), or try talking crap about fanservice and/or even censoring it themselves, or place "memes" into their script at any point, drop them.



Last edited by Transdude1996 at 12:08 am, Oct 9 2018

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You are asking an impossible question. People who can competently judge translation quality do not read scanlations. You would pretty much have to organize an actual study to answer this question. Of course, you would also have to agree on the criteria used to judge translation quality -- there are different translation schools that purposefully might translate in a way that would be labeled as a mistranslation by the opposing school (you know, the usual argument of staying true to the source vs. adjusting for the target).

I would trust pro tlers more than scanlation tlers. The average level in scanlation is depressingly low, and not just in terms of accuracy, but also in the constant rape of literary English. For example, no one even notices anymore, but "confess" has a different meaning in normal English than in scanlation English.

Overall, manga translations prioritize speed over quality. If you think of literary translation of high end novels, that had been the norm until recently, there were numerous proofreading passes and corrections made. In manga translation, no one, whether amateur or pro, has the time or even the motivation, to revise their work. And it is impossible to shoot out a perfect error free translation in one pass, unless you have god-like skills.

In summary: 1) The question is impossible to answer with certainty at this time; 2) The logic of the business suggests that absolutely no one can be trusted when it comes to manga translations.

Last edited by cmertb at 9:38 am, Oct 9 2018

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And then there's the separate fact that many scanlators, aside from their degree of mastery of Japanese, have very shaky mastery of English. Apparently lots of them have English as their second or third language, and it shows.

One of the most common ways it shows is that they've never mastered the endings on verbs that show past, present and future action, so they just stick in the unconjugated form of the verb and that's that. E.g. "He cheers for the team" (Or "He cheered" if the action was in the past) just boils down to "He cheer", in the translation, whether in the original the action was past or present.

Lots of other similar English mistakes are common.

You're more likely to have "better" translators in josei & seinen groups, since those titles are harder to translate and it's less likely for newbie translators to attempt them.

On the josei side, everything Stiletto Heels does is solid. I don't follow seinen as much, but check out Illuminati, Kotonoha's old stuff, and Hox. My own group (Lovely Strange Dark) is pretty solid on the translation side.

For the most part, as was mentioned, people don't check the quality of other groups' works. The above recs are based on knowing the translators in those groups. I actually barely follow other groups, so I'm sure there are plenty more out there headed by solid translators.

Thanks for everybody's comments. I understand quite well what you guys are saying. But as they say you might as well give it a shot. Who knows, maybe someone did do what I'm trying to do and have some experience or something - wouldn't be surprising that someone who likes manga and who wants to learn the actual language would do something like this I'd think. Some translators are apparently quite well known as being "good" (like Hox), I don't really know until I see it though.

I hope you find what you are looking for
self study can be a difficult exercise in discipline, kudos if you're able to make it fun to boot!

It is a fact nowadays that people do not know Japanese when translating manga, they do OCR captures and google translate to translate manga, there's a lot of "fake translations" around.

of course, nobody cares. It is the generation we live with.

I see that you're detailing your method to translating series. Bravo!

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Aww man, I wish it was that easy...but no....you are learning japanese, right? Okay, here's a fun game for you:

This was translated by Nao Takahashi, my paid translator, if you can do a better one, let's see it 🙂

２００９年
地球人類は、
初めて異星人と接触。
ゼントラーディという名の巨人
と宇宙戦争に突入し、
地球は滅亡の危機に瀕した。
その過程において、
「歌の力」を発見する。

２０１０年３月
戦争終結。
同年４月、地球人類と
異星人ゼントラーディは
「共存」を歩み始めた。
その体を地球人サイズに
かえることとなる。

２０１１年９月
地球政府は種の存続のために
「人類移住計画」
を立案。
翌年９月、長距離移住民船団
「メガロード１」
が出航した。

２０３０年９月
「メガロード」にかわり、
超大型タイプ
「新マクロス１番艦」が出航
１００万人規模の
移民船団となる。

２０３８年
「新マクロス７番艦」を
中核とする、第３７次移住船団
「マクロス７」出航
銀河の中心に向かい旅立った。

２０４Ｘ年
「マクロス７」は、移住の可能な
植民惑星を発見する。
直ちに調査隊を派遣するが、
３日後「プロトカルチャーの遺跡
を発見」という報告を最後に
消息を絶った。

そして１つのファイターが
マクロス７から飛びたって行った
ギターを手に…。
**********This is Nao's translation and edited by me, here we go***********************

Macross 7 "Let's take on the heart of the galaxy!!"


In the year 2009:
For the first time in history, mankind made contact with an alien race from outer space. When Earth got involved in a galactic war with the humanoid giants known as “The Zentradi” it was brought to the brink of extinction. However, during the conflict “the power of singing” was discovered and used.

In March 2010:
The war came to its end. In April of that same year, mankind and the Zentradi made peace and started coexisting and the giant bodies were micloned to be the same size of regular Earthlings.

In September 2011
The Earth government designed a “human migration plan” to preserve our species around the universe. In September of the following year, a long distance emigration “Megaroad 01” space fleet departed from earth.

In September 2030
A larger dimensional fortress ship that continued the mission of the “Megaroad 01” The emigration fleet “New Macross 01” with a capacity of a million people, departed to the stars.

In the year 2038
The 37th emigration space fleet departed towards the center of the galaxy with the “New Macross 7” as its core fleet.

In the year 204X
The “Macross 7” finally discovered a planet that could sustain human life. They deployed an assessment team at once, but three days later, they received a message that “historic ruins that belong to the Protoculture have been discovered” before the message was abruptly cut-off.

That’s when one red Valkyrie launched out of “Macross 7” with a pilot armed with nothing but a guitar in his hand….

****************************please write your own version underneath here, thanks*****************

The hardest things to translate are works with academic terms. Hard sci-fi and proper medical manga are the winners here. Archaic language is also challenging.
Jin combines the 19th-century setting with no-nonsense medical vocabulary that would demand research on your own before translating or at least having a dictionary/lexicon with you all times. Comparing the translation by Easy Going Scans with the official Patreon one (chap 1 and 2 are free) could be an interesting thought exercise.

Stiletto Heels is indeed a quality group, so I will mention the translations by HappyScans!. Whoever is doing Kamui Den entered a world of hurt. It´s a gekiga from the 60s, set in the 17th century, with a high reliance on political and philosophical ideas from the 19th and early 20th century. Mangaception!
You might as well translate a foreign language version of Das Kapital at this point.

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Manga-Masters, My ANN-Lists + Imdb

Well, challenge accepted, as they say. To be fair, I think the translation example is good enough, but you know, there are always nits to pick...

"For the first time in history, mankind made contact with an alien race from outer space." -> alien race from outer space? Where else would an alien race come from in a space opera? Department of redundancy department.

"When Earth got involved in a galactic war with the humanoid giants known as “The Zentradi” it was brought to the brink of extinction." -> 1) Earth is a planet, not a species, it cannot go extinct. The correct translation would have been "the brink of destruction". 2) 突入 translated as "involved", which is very weak compared to the image the word portrays in Japanese. I wold say "Earth was plunged into a war". 3) The term "galactic war" (literally, the original says "space war", so this is the translator's invention): by analogy with "world war", a war that involves the whole world, a galactic war would have to involve the whole galaxy. Is that even factual in the setting? I don't think so.

"However, during the conflict “the power of singing” was discovered and used." -> 1) The original doesn't say anything about it being used, only that it was discovered. 2) "the power of singing" is very weak. At least it should be "the power of song", analogous to "the power of prayer" (not "the power of praying" ). You should be going for a mystical vibe here.

Also, all this begs to be rewritten in the present tense (just like in the original) to give the reader a feeling of watching these events unfold live.

Well I'll stop here because this serves little purpose, but in general, any translator can be picked on over one thing or another, so I wouldn't try this challenge. 🙂

Last edited by cmertb at 7:16 am, Dec 30 2018

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Thank you cmertb, great additions here to be considered. The redundancy could be attributed to the Japanese language? dunno man, as I said, I don't speak Japanese and probably my translator doesn't speak much English either, we'll meet in the middle hell or high water 😛
But yeah, thanks for your additions. Now I know why companies employ like 2-3 translators and a few other editors 🙂 I appreciate your input a lot 🙂


Where else would an alien race come from in a space opera?
I saw it on "Pacific rim" they came from under the sea 🙂

The term in Japanese is simply 異星人 (iseijin), that is different-planet-person. In other words, an extraterrestrial.

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