I see a lot of people who're involved in the translation scene whinge about how difficult it is to typeset manga, but what exactly is difficult about painting over the old text in bubbles and sticking new text into them?
I see a lot of people who're involved in the translation scene whinge about how difficult it is to typeset manga...
Nathan Adams
Charles Moore
>noooo i have to think of which of the ten different fonts i have to use in the bubble
everybody in the scanlation scene is a lazy asshole
Chase Baker
If you want it to look good, I can see at least a couple of extra curveballs. Not only do you have to carefully chose a font that doesn't clash with the rest of the page (imagine a really edgey gorefest manga where everyone speaks in comic sans) but you are working with speech bubbles that are vertically aligned and trying to fit into them a written language that is horizontally aligned. On top of that, you also need to color-match your new font to the lineart of the page: most scanned pages are not actually black and white, everything is some version of grey that will change from document to document and might even change from page to page. If you don't get the color mix right, the new text will stick out like a sore thumb, especially on pages with more dynamic paneling where the text bubble is in the middle of the action.
Cameron Ross
Scanslators mostly do it for attention, so most of them are attention whores. Whining on the internet is another way to get attention.
Ayden Lopez
>everybody in the scanlation scene is a lazy asshole
yet they have time to ruin shit with their anglo sfx
Isaiah Sanchez
They all have sick mothers that they have to take care of so its difficult to typeset with one hand
James Bell
this is it i'm never typesetting again and removing all my work from mangadex
Mason Cruz
Yeah then you end up with this
Easton Ward
>Not only do you have to carefully chose a font that doesn't clash with the rest of the page
Wouldn't it be enough to choose a few fonts at the start of the project that you're going to use throughout the entire translation and produce a reference sheet for comparison with the original text?
>On top of that, you also need to color-match your new font to the lineart of the page
Select the middle of some image border on the page with the colour picker tool?
Joseph Walker
Well scanlators are obsessed with using a million different fonts so that probably adds a bit of trouble. The bigger problem is the cases where text is outside of bubbles and you have to erase it and redraw it. In some cases if it's short you might be able to just put it in the margin but other times it's a block of text over art.
And if you're a massive faggot you also have to erase and redraw the sound effects so you can emulate Viz.
Brandon Thomas
kek is that the kirei cake faggot? or has he started using some other names nowadays
Cameron Brown
I claim a 70% improvement in two minutes.
Kevin Lee
This, I've never seen a single scanlator that wasn't a whiny bitch who puts themselves on a pedestal
Jayden Cox
When it comes to whining, you guys surpass them by a league.
Parker Martin
One man TL group here: Typesetting is the biggest pain in the ass and easily takes twice as long as anything else. Assuming you aren't half-assing it. There's so many minute adjustments that nobody besides other typesetters will ever notice, and once you become a decent typesetter, so many translated manga become unreadable because you're constantly distracted by how lazy a job they did. When I first started out, somebody told me typesetting is the only job that takes longer the better you get at it. They're 100% right. People worship translators, but that shit's easy after you've finished your 10,000 hours of reps. Typesetting is endlessly tiresome.
Justin Miller
Don't you dare belittle our precious history
Robert Sanders
>There's so many minute adjustments that nobody besides other typesetters will ever notice
See, that's the thing. You're spending a heap of effort on adjusting a line of text that most people will only ever look at for one second at most before moving onto the next one.
The most important part in any artisanal craft is to recognise when diminishing returns kick in hard and stop there.
Matthew Richardson
I've thought about joining a group as a typesetter since I've had enough experience just fucking around in photoshop, and "translating" some h-doujins for my personal use.
Henry Wilson
It takes like 5 hours to do one chapter properly, dumb fuck.
Oliver Brooks
Who gives a fuck? I'm putting effort because it's my hobby and because I want to present manga series I want people to read in best way possible, even if I have to waste a lot of time in the process. Shit job is out of the question.
Dominic Flores
It's not "difficult" in the sense of being super hard to figure out or whatever, it's that it's just time-consuming and dull and a nuisance.
Dominic Gutierrez
Whiny bitch here. Typesetting is my least favorite part of the scanlation process. It's a thankless task, too, because the point of good typesetting is for it to look natural and effortless.
The biggest problem for me is bubble shaping. Good typesetting follows the shape of the bubble and guides the reader to the important parts of the sentence. Unfortunately, most bubbles weren't made with English (a horizontal language) in mind, so you often end up with bubbles that are too narrow for what you're trying to fit in there, or sentences that are broken up awkwardly across two different bubbles.