Yes what we read in mangas is up to the translators. If one/some/all of them completely changes the story from the raw we'd never know. What would it matter if you suddenly find out that the translations for the manga you were reading are a complete lie? You'd been enjoying it up until that point, yes? So that is a moot point to me.
If a translator, intentionally or not, screwed up a bubble, page or chapter completely I would imagine it would look rather odd and stand out quite a bit.

Most of the manga I read are scanlated by very small groups. Those same mangas tend to have English grammar errors here and there. They stand out to me because of English being my native language; I still understand what was meant in the translation and it was translated for FREE in someone else's spare time. Plus I'm not their English teacher so I have no right to complain about their work. I just happy to have a manga translated into English, minor errors or otherwise, that I would probably never have the chance to read otherwise. For ALL of the mangas I read I wouldn't even know they existed with out the English scanlations.

That's what I voted because I didn't notice that "The pictures count" was part of the choice until after I had voted already. I'm a bit annoyed by that particular part of the choice. If the pictures account for so much over the translation everyone would just use the raws and the need for translations would be practically non-existent. The story and the pictures of manga go hand in hand with each other by design. I doubt very many manga would make much sense or be all that enjoyable with only one of the two. I'm sure some of "They're good" voters would choose what I did if it wasn't for the "The pictures count". I wish I could change my vote to "They're good" but couldn't find a way. I also wonder how many others wish they could do the change their vote the same way I wish too.

Japanese is not a hard language. If I'm not wrong, Icelandic or one of those languages is.

Thank you.

Let's work hard on improving our skills and to propel the leeching - whoops, I meant scanlation - community to greater heights!

[ I'm sure some of "They're good" voters would choose what I did if it wasn't for the "The pictures count". ]
^ This. To me texts do count a lot, so I chose "They're good" instead of "Minor errors, but who cares? The pictures count". I'm very grateful for what the translators have done for the community so far, so I won't utter a single complain, well maybe a productive comment or two wouldn't be too bad, all for the better

________________
Climb the mountains and get their good tidings.
Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees.
The winds will blow their own freshness into you,
and the storms their energy,
while cares will drop off like autumn leaves.
- John Muir -

As a member of the scanslation community, I'm rather happy to see that most, if not all readers are happy with the releases. I'm a translator and a proofreader; two positions mentioned in this post, one being at the stands.

Firstly, to the 223 people who voted 'They're horrible', let's just see you try producing a chapter on your own. It isn't easy to make sure that every last microscopic bit of conversation and content isn't lost in translation, which also includes Japanese / Korean / Mandarin word puns and cultural jokes.
If you're using English-translated manga by the publishing houses as your base of comparison, I'm truly at loss for words.

Lambchopsil, maybe you should have rephrased 'lowly people' to something more public-soothing.
There are many ways to interpreting words and phrases, and some may even misinterpret and take it the wrong way.
That goes for translating too; there are just so many ways to phrase a sentence.
One translator might have one way of interpreting and translating a conversation, another will have a different way of structuring the dialog.
Even with a side-by-side comparison, you will never be able to outrightly say that a particular group is at fault with their version of the comic.
That said, given that translators take pride in their work and would never intentionally churn a crappy script and risk ruining the reputation of the group.

It is irrefutable that there are many words and phrases in foreign languages that the English language just doesn't have an equivalent of, which in this case is Japanese, Korean and Mandarin.
Sometimes, it's rather hard to find words in English that produces a similar impact as the ones used by the mangaka / manwhaga / manhwajia in their native forms; that's when you get a lossy version of the manga, We do try to get 85, if not 90% of the original message through though, similar to a 320kbps version of a fix-bitrate MP3 file.
If you want a lossless version of the comic, might I suggest you learn the language and read the raw.

I prefer to read English scans even when I understand two of the languages because I'm just plain lazy to switch to multilingual mode, and I think most groups do a pretty good job in translating and editing.
At least they clean and substitute, if not side note, all the sfx. Take a look at the $8 manga you bought from the legal publishing houses and now, take a look at the scans. See my point?
And what's with all the eye-dialect and Yankee-talk? I don't remember the characters being gangsters and hoodlums or grammatically inept to speak properly.
As long as the editing is good, the characters are speaking according to their behavior / personality and the words flow seamlessly across the chapters and volumes, then the scans are considered good in my books.

That, my fellow readers, are my two cents.

________________

thank you very much naikan for being a translator. <= this a sincere compliment.

im a art major so i understand how long it takes to do any project (i consider translating an art but thats just me) and the hard work you put into it. i know many people think "oh they probabably stuck things together and it only took 5 minutes" and dont appreciate the time spent making it.
SO i just wanted to show my appreciation for your work and the time you spend slaving away and making us selfish readers happy.

BTW i pretty neutral towards this whole arguement. this is only for naikannnn~
so nobody bash me. u will get IGNORED.

"it's impossible for both"
Precisely! coz its impossible, some of the meaning gets lost along the way, and some manga aren't translated once, eg, from Jap to Chinese than to English or something!

i didn't misunderstand, i say u knew little about manga translating, i did not say u know nothing.

P.S i learn Mandarin & English my entire life, since e day i learn to speak, the differences in sentence structure and vocabulary is so different that it makes translation so hard. Because langauges are created by themselves, the people who created them didn't meant for languages to be translated, that's why translating is difficult, changing the sentences structure will inevitably alter the meaning of what is said

no, you still dont understand it...the point was that we weren't asked how good our japanese is. we where asked what we "think" about the translations.

and anyways. the meaning is hardly lost by changing the sentence structure. exactly that is what a translator DOES. he tries to convey the meaning as best as possible. and they certainly do that. what may be lost by changing the structure is the phrasing and the emphasis. that is what differs a masterful translator and a good translator. the percentage of the phasing that is beeing kept as original as possible. perfection is of course impossible since our language differs greatly from japanese.

if i know so little about translation i guess YOU shouldn't even start to talk about it.

what you "think" is very subjective, which is why some people voted "they are good".

yes now you get it. that was the whole point. and that is why people can honestly say "i think they are good"

this, all the other factors like trust, translators effort and the readers reading experiance, which allows one to differ from a better or a worse translation even without knowledge of the language by comparing several play a role in the answer and were all allready discussed throughout the whole comments. you might want to read them first.

what they "think" is subjective, so what they thought was good, may not be good, coz good is relatively.

But the qn is suppose to be an objective qn (like duh, why do u need to ask a subjective qn), so without know what is really good, how can one tell that their "it is good" is really "good"

P.S do u mind being less hostile

"But the qn is suppose to be an objective qn"
no it was not an objective question. we were asked what we are thinking not what we are knowing. "WHAT ARE YOU THINKING" IS A SUBJECTIVE QUESTION!
this is really getting dump. it seems you dont want to get it. i repeat myself again and again and you seem to do a great job at ignoring it. look 2 posts before this one.

PS: and do you mind thinking before posting?:confused:

You still don't get what im trying to say do you? Are ur comprehension skills so bad? Your "good" may not be really good, eg, if you have only drank tap water, you would think tap water is good, but someone who drinks distilled water knows distilled water is the good one, and not tap water. Apply the same analogy to manga, until u exactly know what is being translated and the translation, you wouldn't know if the translation is good. So that's why the low count of "don't know" seems illogical, if you still don't get it, i have no idea how to put it in a simpler way. We just can say this has become a senseless conversation because we are on different frequencies

P.S Maybe its my comprehensive skills OR you explanation skills.

You still don't get what im trying to say do you? Are ur comprehension skills so bad? Your "good" has nothing to do with an objective picture of good. we were asked for our subjective opinion.
and 7000 people honestly think its good. i dont repeat every reason that plays into this answers. if you would have read the comments you would know. thats why people felt insulted.
but it seem you are either the most ignorant person on earth. you wouldnt notice a slap in the face with a hammer it seems, or you purposely play dumb. your comprehensive skills really fail hard. it seems you have almost no knowledge about translation or semantics.

either way it's a waste of time talking to you.

PS: Maybe answering is too much for you OR do you take ages for answering a to a simple comments? good luck having a discussion in an old folks' home. No one reads this shit anymore anyways. This is old news and allready solved long before you ever posted, you just would have needed to READ. And i dont really care anyone if one ignorant person understands it or not.