There is something that I've been confused and puzzled by, for a long time:
I don't get the notion of a certain group having exclusive rights to scanlate a manga. About how when a group starts to scanlate it, they are the only group that has the "right" to scanlate it, and that it is wrong, rude, and improper for anyone else to "butt in"...

Makes no sense, to me.
At all.
How did this notion come about? Why?

Sure, if there is already a group doing a good job of translating a series, it's kinda pointless duplication of effort, so it makes little sense for a second group to bother (if they feel the group is doing an bad or inferior job of it, however... that they can do better...), but I don't see any reason or justification for discouraging or criticizing anyone for doing so.
Be it by the initial group, or anyone else.

There are multiple facets that can lead to frustration in these situations.

- a group can be heavily invested into a series because they e.g. picked it up when it was unpopular or they spend a lot of time on it

- groups doing the same thing takes away from different series being worked on

- there can be the perception of a group "jumping on the hype train" of a popular series, which can also coincide with ripped/stolen translations

- groups tend to not cross each other unless they do intentional collabs, if they do it often results in drama, so those that do "steal" other group's projects are more likely to be less scrupulous and therefore less trusted

- the main factor for scanlation is sadly still time and not quality, so the "better" group can be pushed out because they did invest more time


However there are also positives but those are more uncommon:

+ might encourage the original group to continue working on infrequently released series

+ can catch some abandoned projects or even groups

+ respectful treatment could lead to collabs and increased work efficiency


Sadly most cases are not handled very well.

There's also the issue of the "better" translation being extremely subjective and unclear. It's not like people reading it would know who translated better... So a group basically saying "You suck, we can do it better/faster!" can feel rather insulting to the original group.

Some people also are quite fond of specific groups and dislike others.

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Due to the intimacy with which groups work on series it's inevitable to develop some feelings of possessiveness towards them. If a group is actively working on a series and regularly putting out updates yes it is pretty shitty for some random group to come in and snipe but if a group hasn't put out a release in months it's ridiculous for them to be upset over another group "stealing" their series. At the end of the day no group really has ownership of a series they are translating unless it's one of those few groups that gets permission from the author to translate and share it.

What it really comes down is a matter of respect I think. If you see group A putting out chapters for a series and group B just swoops in randomly to start putting out their own chapters unprompted it's kind of like spitting in group A's face. "Well we saw that you were already scanning this series but we think we can do it better / faster so we're just going to do it our way"

The scanlation scene wouldn't survive if everyone sniped everyone else. Often the following happens:

1. Group 1 scanlates series
2. Group 2 snipes series with faster but worse releases
3. They compete for a while
4. Group 1 drops series
5. Group 2 continues for a short time
6. Group 2 drops series

I'm just really tired of this. Sure, if releases are extremely slow, go ahead. But sniping a series that's being actively scanlated by someone else will just hurt the community and in the long run the readers as well. I don't think I've ever seen snipers that do a better job than the original group.

Another thing to add is sometimes groups may actually spend money to buy physical copies and pay to have it shipped overseas for higher quality images, so if sniping the project causes the original group to drop it later on then some money is wasted in the process as well. (which could also add up if it's a long series and they bought a lot of volumes in advance)

You can´t claim a manga for scanlation on this site and people just read what shows up in their updates or what they find at random. So the end consumer won´t care or even know that something changed as long as the quality doesn´t magically drop. Raise wa Tanin ga Ii post ch 14a is such an example and the worst so-called "scanlation" I saw in years as a machine translation and 2 languages the person who committed this trash to digital ink can´t read are involved. Aside from the bad lettering and the low-quality scans. Another group even jumped on the case to be even more up to date than DodgyFansub. Clusterfuck/10 BUT shitty scan groups never stick around, so just disregard such nonsense and wait it out. Such cases are thankfully rare of course.

"Snipe" away I say but better ask the old group first if you can join up with them instead so that the whole thing can be coordinated better. More hands-on-deck move faster but make sure that you know the languages you are transacting from. A shit translation is 100% worse than no translation. And just take the whole thing over even if it is for a short time if no middle ground can be reached. None of you own the manga after all. Only your translated text is yours but even that is rather complicated. Less so with comics than novels.

Last edited by residentgrigo at 8:00 pm, Mar 11 2020

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Sorry for the late response. Got kinda busy/distracted...
Well, I'll start by thanking you all for the responses. They've certainly cleared up my confusion.

Seems it's an issue of how things are viewed and how they tend to get handled...
Not actually a problem, in principle, but tends to be problematic in practice.


You've got a point there. Most people wouldn't be able to judge it, all that well, as most read scanlations, because they don't know any (or just a few words of) Japanese. (though some know some Japanese, but not quite enough to manage without any translation)

That said, a lot of flaws in translations should be obvious to anyone who is at least somewhat competent at the target language (English, in this case), as the flaws are evident in the translated text being unnatural/stilted/weird/wrong and/or doesn't make sense.

For example, I can't count how many times there has been mention of "laughing", when it is beyond obvious that there is no laughing ...due to translating "warau" as "laugh", instead of "smile". If you don't know Japanese, you can't know the reason, but it's still obvious that it's wrong. Not to mention the cases, where the translator has no clue about basic English grammar.
These flaws really annoy me.
I mean, how do you even manage to make them?

Well, in some cases it's because the translator is a rather incompetent Second Language speaker of the target language. (I've seen some scanlations, made by some Chinese person who barely knows any English... horrid)
It's certainly important to know the language you're translating from, but the most important language to know, the language you most need to be good at, when translating, is actually the target language ...which a lot of scanlators fail at.

Of course, there are many errors that aren't obvious to someone who doesn't know Japanese, or that aren't even obvious to them, unless they can compare it to the raw Japanese.
For example, AFAIK Tokyopop never published anything that didn't read as smooth and sensible English, but the quality of the translation...
Gods below...
(and then there's that obscure fansub group, whose translations seem to make sense ...as long as you don't know Japanese, and realise that they don't seem to have any connection to what is actually said. Hell, the groups may well have just made up some plausible dialogue, rather than actually translate)

In the case of "we can do it better", I'd say that's a good and valid reason.
Faster, however...

Yeah, that's just terrible
...but only because groups are pressured, to be the first.
If it weren't for that...

If only there was greater clarity, in regards to what translations exist for each series and chapter, which translation is by which group ...and proper ratings or something, on the quality ...with image quality/fonts/whatever rated separately from the actual translation.
There is some rating of subs on aniDB, but it's not uncommon for people to rate based on video quality and font, more often than actual translation quality...
(speaking of which, it's quite often for a group to release another groups translation, just with better quality video. E.g. taken from Blu-ray rather than TV-rip ...or just encoded better and/or more compact. I wouldn't mind seeing that, with manga, TBH. There are some translations that are decent, but where the scans could be better...)

And if only people cared more about proper translation, than whatever they can find first...

This is the summary of question that you've asked for.

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