Just about all U.S. publishing companies have released projects that I have loved, and some that I've hated as far as translation, censorship, name changes, etc goes. 😃 Too much tampering with the original works does annoy me a little, but I usually just buy the original Japanese releases from a local bookstore or amazon japan, or have my relatives ship them to me in the end anyway.

As far as the contrast between professional translators and volunteer translators from scan groups go... Well in all honesty, and from the perspective of someone who's fluent in both languages, I think that as long as a translator can understand the language (and culture) and convey it properly in their native language, then I'm satisfied.

I'm a bit of a drifter between two countries

Quote from genre001

i mean when the raws are release, at any moment scans are ready, with good translation. but for some reasons, the english of those publishers sucks more than that of the scanlators. there's too much so called "censor law" applied. it degrade the quality itself. sometimes, the main thought of the story is lost because of this, which is bad for a mangaka, since reviews and comments are directed not to the publisher but mostly or ussually to the mangaka itself.

When Tokyopop is involved its always the publishers fault. They have one translator in particular that anything he touches turns to crap.

I voted sometimes. Viz's censorship doesn't bother me so much, post manga boom. Atleast they stopped taking out entire pages. Their translations as far as I can understand, which is close to nothing so I have to rely on how the dialogue flows rather than actual translation quality, seems fine to me. Atleast, its better than most scalation groups. Most of them couldn't form a proper english sentence to save their lives. There are people here talking about keeping a faithful translation, but what good is it when it's in broken english. On the other hand, there are certain publishers that, it seems, don't even bother with translating and just make it up as they go along. I"m talking about tokyopop; I've heard they ruined Battle Royale, and they definitely trashed ikkitousen. It was probably the same guy too, but it was just him. A good deal of what TP published wasn't that bad, so long as that man didn't go anywhere near it.

Dark Horse has been doing this for about twenty years now and they know their stuff. Stupid high quality. Great translations. They are perfect, but you gotta pay for perfection.
Del Rey is good too. They had the bright idea of licensing nearly everything animewaves was woking on when they started out, so it was like they already had a captive audience. 🤣 They actually listen to their readers and fix mistakes. Anybody remember the first two or three volumes of Negima. That thing was rife with mistakes. Everything from simple spelling errors to completely getting names wrong. They fixed them all. They are also faster and/or better quality than some groups who are also doing the same series. Or are doing titles that no one is working on or gave up on after the first couple of chapters.
Dr. Master has terrible all around print quality. Crappy paper, fuzzy printing, crooked binding, pages not centered, are expensive. You name it. They do however have two things going for them: They got some really niche titles, and their translations don't allout suck.
CMX: I don't know who they're trying to sell their manga to. They should figure these things out before they sell them.
Yen Press is so far awesome. they have some titles I have never heard of and some that I want to read more of but no scanlator group is currently working on also.

In closing, I'd rather have a book in my hand, with a decent translation than some fly by night scanlation with broken english. That only applies to speed scans though. A HQ NULL scan of One Piece is better than anything Viz could ever produce. Unfortunately, most HQ scanners are gone or take waaaaay too long to produce even one chapter. 😢

Sarcasm just doesn't work over the internet.

Quote from silent killer

In closing, I'd rather have a book in my hand, with a decent translation than some fly by night scanlation with broken english. That only applies to speed scans though. A HQ NULL scan of One Piece is better than anything Viz could ever produce. Unfortunately, most HQ scanners are gone or take waaaaay too long to produce even one chapter. 😢

I agree 😃

I'm a bit of a drifter between two countries

To many diffrent cases, but over all they do a good job. Its rare that they F-up something. Usually they succeed in translating it in a adaption for western audiences. For geeks like us who comprehend the japanese stuff, I think fan made translations are better.