| For the past 5 years I had been trying to get manga that hasn't been completed or just plan dropped to be picked up. I'm basically the one who PUSHED for pumpkin scissors to get picked back up to the point of doing everything besides the translation myself [which proved to be a nightmare] and had to go around asking people to translate one chapter. I even went on manga helpers and PMed MANY people. Until, one 'beginning' translator picked it up. It's HARD to learn the Japanese character language. There are three. I was trying to learn it at some point, but my tablet broke, so the app I was using was useless. and I ended up forgetting most of the characters. --- I even made a group to start doing scans for dropped, which picked up enough publicity to get quite a few members, and even other scan groups to take over our stuff [which is a good thing, we weren't there for ourselves, we were there to get mangas to be picked back up, because no one wants an incomplete story] There's the group: http://kappa-scans.blogspot.com/ Unfortunately, it fell apart, because I don't have regular access to the internet [not even a smart phone] and some of the members were on different time clocks so it was semi-difficult to work together. We did get a few chapters out though, and some people sent some already translated English book scans [because some manga in volumes get released in english here in the states]. ---- Anyway, to the point: Why a great manga hasn't been scanned: Lack of funding for the group: Manga costs money for someone. From my experience, if you don't have a way to access the manga in your country, you have to get an import from the original country. It cost me 26 dollars for two volumes of manga which only cost 1 yen used in japan. So the shipping was ridiculously expensive. And you can't expect scanners to have a ton of money to work from, they're doing everything for free. It's not exactly 'legal' what we're doing. So, we can't MAKE people pay to read our stuff. That would result in a lawsuit or going to prison. To the point: Please, if you want a manga scanned, request it to a few scanners you know ARE ACTIVE and do actually specialize in that specific genre of manga. For example, MangaArt, specializes in 'shoujo' manga. http://mangaart.us It will HELP IMMENSELY for you to donate to a group that is WILLING to scan your manga. Either that, or FIND a RAW from the internet [I've found countless from raw manga websites]. And last resort, get it imported. Make an account on 'amazon.jp' and buy it from there, it'll take a month to get to you and cost a lot in shipping, but if you have the volume, you can scan it and give the scans. Lack of interest by 'Active' groups: This is another problem. There are many groups just scanning 'popular manga' like Naruto and Bleach [which is ridiculous because we don't need 50 groups doing the same manga]. Also, if it doesn't sound 'interesting' enough from one description or look like some 'good art' then they won't pick it up. The manga has been put on hold by an 'active' group: Scanlators put manga in their 'plan to scan' list and other groups tend to not scan those because they know that one scanner will actually eventually scan the manga. Anyways, just know these are VERY VALID reasons. I also know it takes a lot of effort to do something so time taking for free. People could be making money with the skills that it requires to do a good scan. Another point: According to what I've seen on baka updates manga, There are less than 900 groups scanning. This is harshly low. You can argue that this is a big amount, but some of these groups only do a chapter a week of only 'one manga'. Which pushes out the possibility of your manga getting translated. |
dakotasapphireMar 21, 2015 12:00 PM
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| I am sure you are trying to help the community just as well as I am (by bringing awareness), however there are a number of incorrect information in your post: 1) You DON'T need to buy a manga if you want to scanlate it. You can acquire raws from public Japanese sites as well as P2P clients such as Share or Perfect Dark. Sure, these may be limited to magazine scans, but honestly, people don't care as long as the quality is decent and the translation is above par. If you don't know where or how to access these, English equivalent sites exist as well as jcafe. 2) 'Why ___ hasn't been scanned?' - If it is a new or old manga that was never started, it hasn't been scanned because there simply isn't ENOUGH interest from the community to provide an English translation, let alone a full scan. As for manga that were incomplete, the core community have moved on because of life. On the rare chance, you may find groups or individuals who still have interest, there is a possibility of finishing it if that group of people collaborate together - this is quite common on LiveJournal and Tumblr. 3) Donating doesn't help AS MUCH as you think. For manga that cannot be acquired publicly and need to be bought, it helps offset the cost of the book and shipping, sure. But that is as far as things go. Donating doesn't help speed up the translation* or the cleaning/typesetting, etc. 4) The reasons to why there are 'hundreds' of groups or individuals doing popular manga like Bleach or Naruto is simply because those are interesting. Everything else, in their eyes is garbage (or hard to acquire - whether that be the translation or raw). It also doesn't help when translators even to this day provide free translations on MangaHelpers for popular manga (which again goes back to my point of those manga are interesting, while everything else are not as much). As a side note, popular manga like Naruto or Bleach tend to also be much easier to translate because it is easy to understand and read (as the magazine, Shounen Jump caters to a wide range of audience than something specifically targeted towards an age group or gender), save for manga made for children. The best way to make or see something scanlated (or increase the speed) is to help the current groups or individuals working on it. If you don't know the language or cannot learn it for whatever reason, learn how to clean and typeset. There are hundreds of tutorials online on how to use the tools as well as the process specific to manga scanlation. It is much easier now to get into it than five to 10 years ago. Translations or getting translations, however is the hard part and honestly, this requires time and making friends online and in real life via school or organisations. Forums such as MangaHelpers have a vast list of translators. Some are still active, but most are not and may not reply to you at all. Getting in touch with the community on LiveJournal and Tumblr is a better step towards making friends. Joining university/college/high school clubs that cater to anime or manga is really beneficial. Who knows, maybe on the off chance you may meet a person who knows Japanese. That said, a lot of translators on the internet tend to lurk (on 4chan or rizon/irchighway) and really won't mind helping anyone if they can provide a good pace of release. If you start of doing a manga that is already being scanned via free translations at a good pace, translators that lurk may try to help you with something else (provided you advertise for that manga too). *When all else fails and if you are desperate, paying a translator for translators is the easiest way to get translations. Finding translators for this method is quite easy as translators will come to you if you advertise in the right place. The downside is cost. Some translators charge by the English word, Japanese character or page and a typical 20-30 page chapter can be as much as 20-50 dollars. I personally think now that Crunchyroll has a manga division, some of the non-Shounen Jump manga will be available in English. Most shoujo manga are excluded. There was once an American company that focused on shoujo and yaoi-type manga, but ceased operation because of the lack of subscribers and in the end didn't make enough money for their investors. |
| Team Leader & Manager of ray=out. A non-profit independent Japanese and Chinese anime/manga translation and subtitle provider. http://rayout.org/ - Browse through our site to get to know us better. |
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