Quote from mogiks
I've dabbled somewhat in typesetting, not much of an expert, but here's my suggestions. Which turned into an essay. Sorry. I mainly looked at the first image you posted.
-Typos
Two typos in "have you already eaten a bunch of those chocolate you recieved yesterday?" They should be chocolates and received, respectively. Also the "We are most of them, right?" should presumably be "we ate most of them, right?"
Of course you can't be blamed if you're replicating typos from the script the translator/proofreader gave you, but it's quite important to be vigilant about typographical errors because if you add in typos, either a) someone working QA will notice it and it'll have to be retypesetted, which is a hassle or b) the QA doesn't notice/there is no QA, and it will end up being released with typos intact. If it's noticed after it's been released and they want to do a v2 to fix it, that's even more hassle.
-Pixelated font
The "We are/ate most of them, right?" is really pixelated. It may be your graphics program got some settings mixed up to make it pixelated, so have a look around in the text/font menu - you seem to have used that font elsewhere without the pixelation problem so it's probably that. It's important to be familiar with your graphics program of choice so you can rectify problems like that. It's happened to me before, seemingly at random, but it's quite easily fixed.
-Poor font choice
"You have no intention of giving anything back, do you?" is in a very skinny font which becomes difficult to read at small sizes. (In any case it is best to use as few fonts as possible otherwise the constant variations are distracting - so I would have advised using the other lowercase font you used elsewhere.) It's a wide, short font which I don't think fits manga very well. Usually comics fonts are quite tall and kind of... compressed. They use space very efficiently so they can remain legible (having the main text in all caps plays a particular role in keeping things legible, so it's more the lowercase text you have to worry about) and fit well into bubbles and other small spaces, while also being aesthetically pleasing. Which leads me to...
-Aesthetics
I know you replicated the layout of this particular bubble from the Choco Banana scans page you linked to, but I think this is valuable advice.
One thing about the aesthetics is that it's nice to have some white space all around the inside of a speech bubble, and for the text to be widest in the middle of the bubble and narrowest at the top and bottom (i.e. conforming to the shape of the circle) - for that reason the "have you already eaten a bunch of those chocolates..." line is not very pleasing to the eye because it doesn't conform to the bubble shape and there's a lack of white space at each corner.
There's not always much you can do about that - firstly you can try rephrasing (e.g. to "You already ate all the candy you got [yesterday]?", possibly leaving out the word yesterday or hyphenating it because it's a pretty long word to have at the end), then if it's not possible to slim it down further without losing essential info, you might just consider using a smaller font size, or using your graphics program's text menu to alter the gaps between letters or lines, though you need to be consistent with that or it sticks out among all the other text. Sometimes translators don't take into account the bubble size and might give you dialogue which won't fit in the speech bubble, so that's something you'll have to take into account.
Note: just some general advice about hyphenating: it's best not to hyphenate in the middle of a syllable. So, yester-day is ok, since the hyphen is between syllables; yeste-rday or yesterd-ay looks weird. I didn't notice you do that wrong, but it's something I see a lot of typesetters do.
-Stroke
I see you've used a white stroke/border on some of the text which runs over parts of the art. That's very good! A lot of amateur typesetters don't use stroke which makes things hard to read. However, the stroke you used is very thin. It's ok for the "You have no intention" line because it's only a grey screentone in the background. But the stroke on the "Well, even if you say that..." line is not thick enough because it overlaps the black panel lines and makes it somewhat hard to read. It's particularly notable on the "if". A slightly thicker stroke would make that more legible.
Clone tool and typesetter vs. cleaner/editor
The example on the Chocobanana scans has used the clone tool to replicate the screentone beneath the "Well, whatever" line. You just erased the text, leaving a conspicuous white mark in the middle of the screentone. I'm actually kind of surprised that Chocobanana expect you to erase the text yourself - that's usually a cleaner's job. A cleaner or editor would also do any cloning and redrawing. Those are more complicated jobs than typesetting, and take more skill in your graphics program of choice and far more patience in yourself. (Redrawing and cloning are what I hated most when I was doing scanlation, and most of the reason I gave it up.) I would be leery of any team that expects you to do both because redrawing in particular is very difficult, and it doesn't look like the tests you took really required you to do either. If you want to learn to clone/redraw etc., there are some teams that will teach you or tutorials you can look at - or you can just find a group which has both cleaner and typesetter positions and then you won't have to worry about that, but you should make sure they also send you the uncleaned page as well as the clean one so you can see where the text goes and perhaps replicate the text and SFX styles, otherwise you might put the text in the wrong places.
-Sharp text, blurry art
I did glance at the MRS test pages - the most apparent thing is that text you've inputted looks very sharp compared to the art, which is typically smoother or blurrier. You can use your graphics program's text options to make the text a little less sharp so it fits in better. Hopefully if the scans are very good that shouldn't be a problem.
-SFX
Oh, and typically, writing "SFX: boom" instead of "boom" is usually reserved for asterisk notes placed outside the panel, or beside the Japanese SFX (though different groups have different policies on that really, follow theirs above my advice). If the Japanese SFX have been erased, you shouldn't really include the "SFX:" part, just the effect itself. The better typesetters will actually try to replicate the way the Japanese SFX were written, with a huge variety of fonts that give certain impressions - smooth, round fonts for soft sounds like water, big jagged fonts for loud sounds, crunching, etc. This will often mean using a stroke, and if it's a large enough sound effect it might include using a screentone for the body of the font and a solid colour for the stroke, or vice versa. It may also include text distorting effects to make the text narrower at the end or bulge in the middle or whatever. I know I said it's best to keep it to as few fonts as possible, but that's only mainly true for dialogue/monologues/etc. Sound effects are a whole other matter. A lot of typesetters hoard tons of fonts for that purpose. Your scanlation group might recommend certain fonts, or you can look for some yourself on free font sites.
In any case, I think you've done a good job for a beginner, and the fact you've even done these tests shows good motivation. A lot of groups are really lacking staff so I'm sure if you wanted to help many of them would be grateful to accept you - and as I said before, some groups might teach you to become a really good typesetter/editor. However my absolute number one advice is: you need to find a group that you like and that has deadlines, standards and methods that work for you, as well as other team members who have good communication skills and respect your skills, needs and opinions, otherwise you risk getting burned out or frustrated.
Your happiness is the most important thing, so don't be afraid to take a long time looking at different groups, or to leave a group that isn't working for you. I joined a group on a whim just because I wanted to see one of the manga they were releasing before it was released, and I ended up finding that they had terrible quality standards, ruined my translations without even discussing it with me, and communicated very poorly... it was a disaster.
I hope if you do decide to join a group that you find a great one and find typesetting a fun experience. Best of luck!
Thanks for pointing out the weaknesses in my typesetting and also the mistakes I've made. Those are some very good pointers.
