So one of my friends ran into some trouble with an elitist fansub group so I figured I’d post some fangirl rage on her behalf. My long time friend, who actually helped me fansub Trouble Chocolate and Kodomo no Omocha 10 years ago, and also does translation as a real job at a company that’s not some animu company, decided she wanted to fansub again so she offered her services to an elitist Japanese drama fansub group.
They made her take a stupid test I guess to prove her translation skills and so she did. However, they rejected her with the response
We could see that you have an impeccable background and an excellent understanding of Japanese. Unfortunately, we believe translating is more than just being able to understand the language. Some of the things we looked out for are, among others: good dialogue flow, grammatically correct yet easy to understand English, and putting things into context for an international audience. The team felt that these elements were missing from your tests, so unfortunately we would have to give yourself a miss.
Wut? This is a native Japanese person, who is offering for FREE her services to you and you can’t even get a fucking QCer to “fix” whatever English problems she has? Btw her English and Japanese are excellent as far as I am concerned. Sorry for going into oldfagsubber mode here but back in the day we’d be THRILLED if someone came out of nowhere and provided us with translations! Like shit man I couldn’t even keep people doing translations on time, I had to harass them over & over and I even began doing translating myself just to have them fill in the gaps I couldn’t catch. And here we got these douches, who are fansubbing stupid Arashi TV shows (Johnny’s fandom is so 5 years ago for me) who just look a gift horse in the freaking mouth. 
Hell I’d be pissed off too if someone told me I’m not good at translating between my two native languages lol. (Well maybe not with Russian cause I’m starting to forget my russian ^^;) Anyway I don’t even watch fansubs or give a damn about them, but I’m just surprised at how stupid and elitist these idiots are. Fansubs aside, when someone offers to help you, say thanks and accept it you douches. You should be ashamed of yourselves.
On the topic of dramas, looks like D-Addicts received too many C&D’s and had to shut down their tracker now only linking to dramas off Nyaatorrents. Man that sucks, who even cares about drama? I thought all the hubbub was over anime. And if the problem is with raw torrents vs fansubs, stop uploading fansubs, I just wanna see the raws! (But that’s just a selfish request from my side lol.)
Learn2fansub:
“I…WHAT…WHO…EVEN AT AT TIME LIKE THIS!” is the correct way to translate things.
Obviously she made the mistake of not leaving “YATSU”, “KISAMA”, etc. as is, since clearly their meaning is too difficult to translate into English.
I love elitist fansubbers. <33
Why did they kill d-addicts!? Because they’re missing out on all those US DVD sales of translated J-Dramas? WTF?
Didn’t fill the TL note quota.
What a humiliation… They don’t know that native japanese translators are so precious…
Need her for my french fansub group if she agree. She can mail me whenever she want. ^__^
I get what you mean — from fansubbing and scanlating myself, I treasure whoever even offers to help out the team. Since staff is so hard to come by if you’re not working on something like Naruto/Bleach/One Piece, everyone willing to volunteer is amazing in his/her own right.
Also, a fansubbing group should definitely keep QCers on board at all times — they provide a net to catch any minor mistakes that the translator might have made (since everyone is human). Leaving things up in the air like that without a QCer is kind of stupid. Sure, going through the QC process might mean more time before releasing, but it sure as hell is better than releasing something without a proper checkup. Plus, piling everything on the translator is a bad idea. I’d like to give the group leaders some food for thought and make them translate something (if they could) at around 200-300 lines of dialogue per episode, especially for a long-term project. That in itself is stressful enough. If timing that stuff’s a dizzying task, then translating is just that much harder.
I’ve done QCing on top of my regular duties for both fansubbing and scanlating and even if the translation needs a few lines edited, it isn’t that huge of a hassle. One of my best translators, for example, isn’t a native English speaker. However, through the QC process and giving some pointers, little by little, I’ve seen her English become amazing over the 2.5 or so years that I’ve worked with her so far. Even if translators aren’t going 100% the way you want them to, a ~little~ bit of effort might just pay off and you’ll find yourself an invaluable friend along the way.
That drama group confuses me… They have no editors on their staff list, but one of their projects lists “checking” and “editing” steps. (;ﾟДﾟ)
Stormy_team is one of those that force you to kiss their ass hard if you want to watch their stuff, you should read their rules to join ¬_¬
your friend chose the wrong team to give a hand to but please tell her dont give up > < there is never enough fansubber you know D:
Hello, longtime lurker first time poster =)
after visiting their site I see it says “Primary qualification: MUST BE A HUGE ARASHI FAN.”
This MUST be the reason she failed. I mean, come on, she obviously forgot to proclaim her undying love for Arashi. Tsk.
How can they throw away a translator so easily when they’re in such high demand in other places? >:O
Hahahah, what? If the translator can do all that, they almost don’t need anyone else on their “team.” Timing is pretty easy once you try it a couple times, and you don’t NEED to encode anything. I’m sure there are raws out there that are sufficient enough to just mux a script onto.
I would totally jump on a translator with creds like your friend if she were to apply.
thanks for all the comments guys, I directed her to this post to let her know that she just ran into a bunch of elitist douches and that her efforts will probably be appreciated elsewhere
TimelesSub is a nice group I think she might fit there, and they’re doing Bloody Monday
I say let them wither in their elitist tower of ivory…
There are loads of fansubber groups out there begging for translators, offering bribes, sake and lolis/shotas to join…
WAS going to comment but need to organize thoughts better. The initial draft was quite vitriolic and full of hate.
You know, I don’t have any interest in doramas, but for some reason after reading this post and taking a quick look at the fansubbers’ site wiki, I have a strong urge to download a bunch of their releases and upload them all to YouTube and Google Video for everyone to share…
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What stupid asshats!
I’m sick of stupid Arashi fans being such freaking douches.
Instead of rejecting her, they should have count their blessings, thank her for the offer and put her to work immediately, instead they come up with some half-assed excuses and pretty much tell her to GTFO!
She unfortunately offered her services to a bunch of idiots, but she’ll be welcomed in another fansub group so she shouldn’t give up.
Oh, so that’s what the change was about? I didn’t really pay attention to their news so I had no idea. I guess I’ll be selfish too, and say that I only care about the raws. xD
I think a lot of Johnny’s fans are douches in general which is why I left the fandom 5 years ago
Disregarding all the notions of actual translation work… …. … …
WHAT. THE. FERGIGGLY. FLYING. FUCK.
Native Japanese. Volunteer. Will translate for free.
I’d kill, maim, and purge for a native Japanese translator and they let one slip by?
WHAT. THE. FERGIGGLY. FLYING. FUCK.
I call for a general boycott of their stuff just because of that.
Oh, and your friend? Tell her to move on. VN TLs need all the help it can get. :3c
Hinano rage posts always make the WP top posts of the day :p
Morons will be morons, what can ya do~
I know right? Kinda makes me think that unless I have something to rage about there’s just no more point in blogging!
I watched a drama that the douche team fansubbed a few years ago — Maou. While my knowledge of the Japanese language is just enough for my own understanding and not for translating/fansubbing purposes, I guess they did a good job. But I was so annoyed with all the warnings to not upload their releases at any streaming sites etc in bold, caps and red. Lol.
Tell her that she deserves to join an even better group.
Heh, they’re so BAKA.
Seriously, they MUST be elite if they can toss away an obviously well-qualified candidate like that.
Never, EVER go near Stormy subs. They’re all douchebags. Full stop.
Maybe she wasn’t an Arashi fan XD jk
Seriously Stormy_Team are douches even with Arashi fans *me included…wait don’t put me on fire yet
* their questions to enter their “community” are ridiculous and a lot of people are banned (i just reminded “The Soup Nazi” from Seinfeld now lol) for apparently no reasons so yeah your friend was unlucky to ask them to join in and worse they were dumb to reject her but fortunately for her there are a lot of good non-elitist fansubbers like “TimelesSub” (and a lot more) mentioned here before.
I’ll say let’s see Stormy continues to shoot themselves in the foot until they realized they have no “team” to translate s**
lol i sound bitter because i still “need” their subs *hate myself for being a fangirl, maybe i’ll see the “light” someday XD*
I don;t suppose she would scanlate yaoi doujinshi for a hobby? The ones with bishounen art I mean. :B
“Unfortunately, we believe translating is more than just being able to understand the language. ”
Then maybe they should go get a dictionary and update their beliefs?
Those subbers are the stormy petrels of elitism.
Sherlock Holmes, you made me use a weird english term.
Ah, dorama. I really don’t know about the differences between live action subbers and anime subbers (having only seen the latter at work) but my thoughts are that there’s something else that causes them to say no. I mean, you just don’t turn down native speakers. Put them in reserve, use them for side projects or as backup translators – but a flat-out no?
okay, old post is old, but:
“so unfortunately we would have to give yourself a miss.”
THAT’S GRAMMATICALLY INCORRECT AS FUCK. %_% Their use of “would” in that context is iffy, but “yourself” is definitely wrong. The correct word there is definitely “you.” Anyone with a high school degree should know that (and I’m sure your translator friend spotted that too ^^)
Elitist bitches… at least they’re good for LOLing at.