Feel free to move this, mods, as I had no idea where to put it.

I'm interested in joining a scanlation team, but I have never done any work on scanlation, and i was hoping someone could help me find how and what i could do. As you may have gathered, I have no experience in any process of scanlation, but i am relatively good with using computers and am also taking A-level French (I hear A-level is like AP, but harder), and have read a few volumes of French manga in the past.

I would be willing to try anything, and hope I would take to it quickly. However, I would also prefer to use my French (to further my learning) but am unsure as to the required level to translate (if i'll be strong enough), and I know only a few groups translate French-English.

I would also be interested to find out how much time is needed to commit to scanlating, as I'd have to work it around school and other commitments.

Thanks, and sorry for the post being so long-winded.

*edit* I'm not necessarily looking for a team to take me on, just advice on which positions are good to take for newbies, and where I might find teams who take untrained scanlators or other ways to learn.

Last edited by samab at 7:53 am, Sep 11 2011

The time required for a scanlation job depends on a number of factors: the size of the group, the group's project load, deadlines, expected quality of output, your job, your ability, etc.

Basically, the busier a group is, the more quickly you will be expected to complete your task; the higher quality the group's releases are, the more work you will be expected to put in. As you improve, the work will go more quickly. If you have a low impact job, say proofreading or QC-ing, you can usually finish a chapter in an hour or two, but if you are doing something like translating or editing, depending on the difficulty of the manga, a chapter could take you from a few days to a couple weeks.

My advice is, if you are just starting and want to get a feel for how scan groups work, see what small groups are recruiting for positions that you might be suited to. If you'd like to try editing, familiarize yourself with PS/Gimp/your image editor of choice, try out a few group's editing tests to see if it's something you'd like to do, and then see if anyone is willing to take you on as a junior editor while you learn.

People are friendly, so ask around!

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