Research Project on Scanlations

Fan Boy Joined: 11 Nov 2005 Posts: 4

Hi,

I’m currently an undergraduate at MIT, doing a research project on manga scanlations, specifically looking at how it propagates Japanese culture in non-Japanese markets. Since I’ve heard a lot of good things about your scanlation group around the net, I would love to ask Mangascreener a few questions about your work, experiences, and motivations. It can be via e-mail or IM-- whatever is most convenient for you.

I would really appreciate your participation in my project if you have time. I strongly support scanlation, and am hoping to expose people who have little experience with fan based communities to the type of networks developed by scanlating manga, and how it can help spread culture to thousands of people. If you wish Mangascreener to remain anonymous in my final presentation, I won’t mention the name.

If you have any questions or concerns about my project, please feel free to ask. Just reply to this topic, or shoot me an e-mail. I hope to hear from you soon,

.S. Kadam

Massachusetts Institutes of Technology
Aerospace Engineering Class of 2006

Street Musician Joined: 13 Oct 2002 Posts: 402

Just curious, what does scanslations and Japanese culture have to do with aerospace engineering? Confused

Fan Boy Joined: 11 Nov 2005 Posts: 4

Unfortunately, very little. This project is actually for my concentration--we're required to specialize in an area outside our major.

Posted: Sat Nov 19, 2005 2:58 pm

What kind of questions do you have?

Fan Boy Joined: 11 Nov 2005 Posts: 4

It's essentially a 14 question survey, asking about why you choose to scanlate, what some of your philosphies and processdures are, and what interactions you have with fans. It shouldn't take more than 20 minutets or so to fill out.

Posted: Sun Nov 20, 2005 6:48 pm

Post the questions and i'll answer them... I founded mangascreener around 1998 and it was the second group of it's kind on the internet (following mangaprojects if my memory is correct) A lot has changed in 7 years, but I can tell you the thoughts behind how it started.

Fan Boy Joined: 11 Nov 2005 Posts: 4

Great, thanks! Here are the questions:

1) Why do you choose to scanlate?

2) Is there anything is particular that got you into scanlating?

3) How do you choose your projects?

4) How did you get into manga?

5) What are your feelings about the scanlation of licensed projects? If a project you are working on has been licensed, what do you do?

6) What is your preferred method of distributing releases? Why?

7) Do you allow other websites to carry your releases? Why or why not?

Cool

What are your feelings about groups who release their scanlations in IRC only?

9) Is there any group-to-group communication between different scanlation teams?

10) Japanese can often be difficult to translate, especially since its structure is so different from English. What do you do when you hit a translating roadblock?

11) Do you interact with fans a lot? What kind of fan feedback to you get?

12) Do you purchase the official English translations of manga when they are released? What is your opinion about the quality of translation, pricing of these books, and the release schedule?

13) What is the hierarchy of your group (who does what and in what order)? What position do you hold within the group?

14) How long does the scanlation process normally take? What parts are the most taxing?

Is there anything else you’d like to say regarding scanlations to pass on to people who are unfamiliar with the process?

Thanks again for answering these questions, I appreciate it!

Posted: Thu Nov 24, 2005 1:19 pm

I DID NOT SPELL CHECK THIS:
MY MEMORY MAY BE FAULTY:
HOPE THIS HELPS:

1) Why do you choose to scanlate?
When I was in highschool I would take trips to Seattle and goto the Japanese bookstore and see so many comics that I had never seen before. Where I lived in Olympia there was a medium sized interest in Anime and Manga, but very little that wasn't being released by VIZ or ADV. So I started to search the internet for more obscure series, untranslated series... When i was in highschool I was active on irc.dal.net, when i first started going on that server there were only two anime/manga channels, out of the channel that i subsiquently joined grew another channel called #manga-scans or something along those lines... this was around 1997 or 1998... There were a few projects being done by independant people, like I"s and KOR, but the pickings were very slim as far as fan translations went... most of the scans we got were either of untranslated manga or english language manga from VIZ or Dark Horse. Then at some point a big change happened... Zlleh and some others formed what i can recall as the first manga translation group or team. Ie. Mangaproject. Instead of just translating one manga at a time like so was the standard they went and started several projects under the umbrella of one group. They did a few things i disagreed with though.
Firstly mangaproject used zip distrobution and only kept the newest chapters on their website, rotating because of the space it would take. Also they wanted to do everything in the highest possible quality.
I felt that this was negative because it would be creating an alternative for people buying the originals instead of leading them to do it. So i guess you could say that was where the basic fundementals of manga SCREENER came from. My original intentions

were to create a site where you could read many different manga, different genres, styles, authors... but not high quality, just something to wet the tounge and get you interested in those series. So I stubbornly rejected Zip distrobution (for years) as i thought it would lead to hording that never resulted in supporting the authors (which i still believe) for this reason the page size had to be very small so we could keep the comics on line... so the pages were all something like 460x800 pixels or something... really small, on a 800x600 resolution it wouldn't be so bad, but i look at those pages nowadays and they look like postage stamps.
I should also point out that mangascreener started as a subsection of a ezine, search engine and e-mail service that i used to run. Ryokurin.com and Ryokai.com. It was kind of funny, i started mangascreener to supliment readership of the ezine but it ended up being the only thing people really liked about the page... so it kind of got split off. That and the people we sent to AX in 99 got in big trouble for never actually writing the articles they were supposed to... so after some political presure we shut down the ezine and all that was left was mangascreener.

But that didn't mean that you got mangascreener as you see it today... that took a lot of work.
Originally most of our translations were done from Chinese, Thai and Korean. Actually... i don't think we translated anything from Japanese until I contacted a guy named Stephen Paul about using his one piece translations.
Mangascreener did a lot of projects which I must say, I don't brag about them... We were the first people to translate Love Hina into english (before the dual language manga, before the fansubs... mangascreener translated them from chinese ECHHH) Luckily when another group asked to do the project I willingly conceded it to them. We started slam dunk, samurai deeper kyo... but they never went anywhere. I guess you could say our bread and butter was Shonen Jump. One Piece, Shaman King... It's really strange to see them on television in english now... Only a few years ago there was barely any new shonen manga being translated into english, now it seems to be the only thing being translated into english.

It was later that i gave up some of my stubborn ideas about how manga distrobution should be done on the internet. I allowed better quality scans to be used, I even allowed zip files to be distrobuted (that took a lot of prodding from a lot of directions) At some point i felt like i was giving the site away... but what i've realized since then is that Mangascreener was always a group, even though i founded it and gathered some really great people to work for it, when i brought those people in, they became owners as well.... i'm really happy about how others have taken ownership of this group and made it their own, adding all of their talent and skill to make it what i feels is consistantly the best manga group on the internet. i think our quality rivals if not puts to shame the north american manga industry. I guess for a long time my own stubborn ideas of how to run this site stood in the way of its full potential. It's really beautiful to see something you were instrumental in creating take on a life of its own, something you can't control, but you can sit back and enjoy. I don't have children yet, but i feel that it might be something like that.
(hope i answered your question in a round about way)

2) Is there anything is particular that got you into scanlating?
I guess i was an instrumental member in creating what has been termed scanlating (I think it might have been aku-tenshi who first used that term, i still don't feel it gives full justice to what we do... for lack of better terminology) Fundementally it comes from wanting to share something... When i had found One Piece (which was our first real project followed shorly by Naruto *which we did a horrible job on* Love Hina, City Hunter and Ryuuroden) I wanted to share it with others... i mean... PIRATES... when i told people there was a Japanese comic book about Pirates with super powers, and fight with three swords and so on, they couldn't believe it... Some of my friends got tired of me sending them scans in Chinese and telling them what was happening, so I decided i would make it in english so they could enjoy it. That i think is the fundemental notion behind scanlation, an urge to share something.

3) How do you choose your projects?
When i started out there were two factors.... scans and people willing to translate them. There were several projects like Me Gumi No Daigo that i would have loved to do more of... but no one was willing to translate them. For example, I attempted to have three different people translate Monster before I met stephen, all of them gave up with the first chapter. People might take Stephen for granted, but he was always willing to do projects, no matter their difficulty, he really opened up a lot of doors, i was only restricted by my ability to get scans at that point. Katteni Kaizo is a good example of where stephen really shines, i doubt anyone could translate that series besides him. At least at the time we did it... I think there are more capable translators doing this now because Stephen, with mangascreener has set the bar much higher.

4) How did you get into manga?
I started collecting American comics in the 4th grade when my best friend gave me a Groo comic... I went through my whole X-men faze, but once that lost interest there's one one logical place to go if you're still interested in comics. Manga to me was interesting because at the time there was so little of it. But if you could get your hands one some Lone Wolf and Cub or old Tezuka Osamu stuff... man, that was good. But with the limited ammount that was available on the book shelfs of the local comic book shop or the price they wanted for it, i soon turned to the internet, even there there was very little variety, so i would download it in Chinese and stumble through it slowely.

5) What are your feelings about the scanlation of licensed projects? If a project you are working on has been licensed, what do you do?
Support the authors. Mangascreener may have changed some of its original emphasis, but we've never changed our stance on this one. You try to find a licensed manga in our channel, we'll ban you. We promptly stop projects when we hear they are licensed. Even though ethics among the unethical world of manga scans seems like the the idea of 'honor among thieves'
Mangascreener started as a way to show new and obscure manga to people who couldn't regularly access it. Now that so much is accessable they should access it through the normal routes.

6) What is your preferred method of distributing releases? Why?
We used to put up HTML based slide shows of the chapters. I think when we merged and unmerged with Band of the Hawks was when we switched over to zip distro. You can only put so many zip files online... there are a few projects that i've put aside space for from my personal site... but for the most part we distro zip files through irc and bittorrent

7) Do you allow other websites to carry your releases? Why or why not?
Absolutely, as long as they haven't subsiquently been licensed... spread the love!

Cool

What are your feelings about groups who release their scanlations in IRC only?
Good deal, just make sure to put up a website telling us where your channel is! Oh and move to irchighway....

9) Is there any group-to-group communication between different scanlation teams?
Absolutely.... for better or worse. There was a time when things were more mean spirited and competative. For example mangaprojects had their standard and some members of that group would regularly voice their opinion of our standard. Not very kindly. There was also always jabs about stealing projects. Aku Tenshi and Mangascreener were both doing Shaman King, we were like 50 chapters ahead, but they were doing a higher quality version... I asked AK_oftroy from Toriyamaworld if he was going to do Hikaru No Go... he said no. So i got a translator to translate the first three volumes. Then suddenly he was doing it. It didn't make politics between our pages very good, but I did have a big fight with AK over a small subpage he used to have where he was selling stuff, i felt that he was using his non profit manga site to provide hits for his for profit business, i called him out on it. Once again, things got cold between us and our sites for a while. Don't get me wrong, i really liked TW when they did manga, i loved their Naruto and often said they did a much better job with it than we would have. I think they did a better job of HnG than we would have also, but back then It wasn't as easy to see things that way. It always came back to three volumes of wasted translations.

A few years ago I was ready to leave the whole manga community, so i spoke with Gatsu from Band of the Hawks and he said he would take over management of our site's projects (well the ones he liked)... i backed out... but it created a strong and lasting relationship between our groups... we've done many joint projects. I also really like snoopycool and omanga. Zyph was actually one of my early members and i still joke with him that it was a mistake to let him go. I love their work and like the fact we have done things together. I like the fact that we're all on irchighway together. I think that omanga, snoopycool, band of the hawks and mangascreener stand apart as some of the best groups on the internet, and i think with the standards we have it makes sense for us to stick close and be friendly.

10) Japanese can often be difficult to translate, especially since its structure is so different from English. What do you do when you hit a translating roadblock?

We have a staff forum, and several Japanese translators, if they have any problems they can either ask eachother in the channel or ask in the forums, generally they help eachother though difficult translations. We have both Japanese native and non Japanese translators that work together for the best possible translations.

11) Do you interact with fans a lot? What kind of fan feedback to you get?

We're often misunderstood as agressive towards 'fans' and leaches... I think the crowd that runs with mangascreener are smart, discerning, in cynical. So our core members often come off as pompous or outright agressive. First and foremost this group is about sharing, our intended audience is of course likeminded discerrning people. But sometimes there are people who are either younger or not mentally tough who can get caught like deer in the headlights, there is no mercy for stupidity in the mangascreener forums or channel. That being said, we love fans who enjoy manga and aren't too green.

12) Do you purchase the official English translations of manga when they are released? What is your opinion about the quality of translation, pricing of these books, and the release schedule?

Support Stephen Paul, buy Beck from Tokyopop!

13) What is the hierarchy of your group (who does what and in what order)? What position do you hold within the group?

Translators tend to be tops. Followed by scanners and editors. Stephen Paul is THE leader. I am like the strange uncle that no one ever talks about... Stephen is great, he is a very charismatic leader and draws a lot of talented people to him. Our translators (sorry if i don't say all of your names) really create the heart and soul of the group.

14) How long does the scanlation process normally take? What parts are the most taxing?

Translation is the most difficult (except when it comes to editing my name is zushio) so its really dependant on the translators, and how fast we get useable scans... editors can slow down the process. shortage of editors can really slow down the process. But i'd rather have an excess of scans and translations then a bunch of editors sitting around with nothing to do.

Is there anything else you’d like to say regarding scanlations to pass on to people who are unfamiliar with the process?

Send Stephen Paul all of your money!

Amateur Musician Joined: 08 Feb 2004 Posts: 197

Okay, you've heard from the grizzled vet, Izumi, now for someone who's only been involved with Manga Screener for a little less time. This too is un-spellchecked.

1) Why do you choose to scanlate?
(I dislike the term, 'scanlate', but since there isn't anything better...) There's a lot of manga out there, far more than could ever possibly be scanlated but I like a challenge. It's nice to bring something to an audience that, whilst it was never intended for them, they will get a lot of enjoyment out of it.
I used to be of the opinion that the ultimate goal was to raise the awareness of a mangaka or particular series so that it would be licenced and available in english... however I do have many issues with many of the english language publishers.

2) Is there anything is particular that got you into scanlating?
Nothing special, I liked the output of MS and decided to help out.

3) How do you choose your projects?
As for choosing new projects, generally I don't. It's usually the translator that decides. (Vinland Saga was an excpetion, all the staff loved Planetes so when Makoto Yukimura's new series started quite a few staff members, including me, decided that we should do it.)
As for choosing projects to work on, (The staff of a project can vary, with different people translating/editing/scaning different chapters. Or the same people can stick with a series from begining to end.) I'm not really sure, nearly everytime someone's said 'can you edit this?' I've taken it on. I suppose it's all a matter of available time really.

4) How did you get into manga?
I'm not from the US or Japan, so with me it wasn't a case of DC/Marvel comics or straight into manga as a child. I've got stacks of Asterix and Tintin books from when I was a kid (some in French, from when my Mum was trying to use all means to get me to learn the language), when I was a bit older I started reading all the comics I could lay my hands on. Sitting in the libary reading 2000AD trade-paperbacks (Judge Dredd, ABC Warriors, etc) and of course US comics. And in amongst all that was the first manga I got Kung fu Boy (Tekken Chinmi), (which I recently found volumes 2-8 in a charity shop, now I only need 9-12 and I'll finally have the whole set, I've been looking to complete it for 10 years now!) I've always liked the start-middle-end style of storytelling, it's a tried and tested formula. That's one of the reasons why I tend to prefer manga over the endless style that most US comics tend to go for... as much as I like Batman you know it's never going to 'end', there never will be any proper resolution. I also prefer works where there is one creator (or set of creators) that handles the series from start to end. I suppose this is more of a 'why did you end up being more into manga than comics?', but those are the reasons. That and I knew as a child on Christmas morning that
there had to be better stuff out there than the Beano and Dandy.

5) What are your feelings about the scanlation of licensed projects? If a project you are working on has been licensed, what do you do?
Hmm, not totally as easy a question as it may seem. Of course if one of the projects we're doing gets licensed we'll stop it. (Anyone searching for licensed projects in our chanel gets kicked regardless of if it was one of ours or not.)
Scanlation is not done for money, if it were it would cross the thin line between what we do and piracy. The manga was never created with a non-Japanese audience in mind ('course there are exceptions that prove the rule.) So if we make it available in English nothing is lost for the mangaka, there is the possibility that it may raise awareness and get licenced, which is only good for the mangaka.
There are several licenced manga that I have no compunctions about reading the scanlations of, because the licenced versions are so shabby. But I wouldn't ever be involved in their creation.

6) What is your preferred method of distributing releases? Why?
I don't have any preferred method of distributing releases.

7) Do you allow other websites to carry your releases? Why or why not?
Fine with me, unless any form of payment is involved.

Cool

What are your feelings about groups who release their scanlations in IRC only?
Fine with me. *shrug* I don't think that distribution methods are really that important, it's an electronic file which anyone reasonably computer literate should be able to find if they look hard enough. It's not like having to choose between car, plane, and boat.

9) Is there any group-to-group communication between different scanlation teams?
Yeah, it's a secret society. We have a special handshake and everything. Smile

10) Japanese can often be difficult to translate, especially since its structure is so different from English.
What do you do when you hit a translating roadblock?
This is a question for a translator (I'm not). My Japanese is pretty basic, but one thing I would say to anyone who reads quite a bit of manga is learn hiragana and katakana, it's only a handful of characters yet 99% of all sound effects are written in them, in non-japanese language versions where sfx are untranslated (I prefer this as I consider the sfx to be part of the art, and that's something that shouldn't be changed.) it's nice to know what they mean.

11) Do you interact with fans a lot? What kind of fan feedback to you get?
I assume you mean of the manga, not us. The mangaka should get all the credit. As for our 'fans' I tend not to interact with the leechers much, for the most (though obviously not all) part they tend to be annoying.
Praise and complaints about the technical aspects of our work is always taken on board though.

12) Do you purchase the official English translations of manga when they are released? What is your opinion about the quality of translation, pricing of these books, and the release schedule?
Hmm, all those vary not only between publisher but individual series anyone particular publisher is doing.
The problem arises when the publishers who gain the rights for it in the US do a crappy job. US manga (and anime too) companies tend to try and change things for their new audience, changing names, context, and often even the art (flipping/cropping out bits/redrawing panels/and so on). And that's not including shabby translation, that often can be inconsistent. So when you've gotten into a series and hear that it's been licenced, and you've waited patiently for the english language release and it turns out to be horribly butchered, so much so that it's more of an 'inspired by...' than a proper version, what do you do?
The other problem (for me) is that here in the UK we only have a fraction of the english language manga that is available to those in the US. Whilst it is possible to import, the UK publishers do everything that they can to stop it, so that they can in turn licence the manga off of the American companies to sell in the UK.
End result, we get it with all the problems that the original release may have, plus far later and more expensive.
If a series I like is available in english but the publisher is doing a sucky job, then I'll just buy the Japanese version and read it very very slowly with my dictionary.
(Of course, I've been getting the english version of BECK...)

13) What is the hierarchy of your group (who does what and in what order)? What position do you hold within the group?
There's plenty of autonomy within the group, it tends to be that the translators are top-dog. As the first link in the chain they ultimately get to set the pace of a project (of course everyone else can slow it down).
I edit and scan. I'm a relatively new addition to MS, I've been with the group for about a year and a half (though I started reading it's projects back when Shaman King was being done in the 'slide-show' style that MS used to use). Since Kashi decided to call it a day, I also (shabbily) coordinate Manga Screener's Shojou department.

14) How long does the scanlation process normally take? What parts are the most taxing?
How long's a piece of string? It's very unusual for any one person to do all parts of scanlation in any one go, usually two or three people are involved, translator, scanner, and editor.
Scanning takes a few seconds per page, but it gets repetative, and you can easliy find other things to do, thus slowing the scanning process.
I can't speak on how long it takes to translate, but I'm guessing that amount of text and if there's furigana to aid reading in the originals all affect the ammount of time involved.
Editing all depends on the quality of the raw image, there's lots of steps involved, rotating (which can now be done much quicker with pnyxtr's rotating program), leveling, croping, cleaning, removing text, adding text, optimizing the final image, zipping the files to a chapter. Sometimes I do one stage of the process to each page of the chapter, sometimes I fully do each page one after another. It all depends on my mood at the time.
Usually I'll try and do a chapter of whatever a week, sometimes more, sometimes less. A few times in the past I've done large chunks in a day (100+ pages), but now I tend to try and do a little at regular intervals rather than huge ammounts in one go.
The chapter (or volume) is then looked at by various staff and mistakes are corrected.
Though I can spot other people's mistakes easliy enough, I'm physically unable to spot my own mistakes. This post will almost certainly have some spelling/grammar mistakes in it, as when I re-read what I've written my brain seems to correct the mistakes as to how I think I've done it rather than how it is. Therefore if I have to proof my own work, I tend to leave it a few days or weeks before coming back to it when my mistakes jump out at me and can be fixed.
We have the luxury of setting our own standard as to how good we want our work to be. Our internal quality control usually spots any mistakes, which are then fixed. And even if, horror, we do let something wrong get released as a scanlating group we are able to release a second version of a file. But that's not a common occurance, we do aim to get the releases right first time.

Is there anything else you’d like to say regarding scanlations to pass on to people who are unfamiliar with the process?
(I know this, to some degree, goes against what Izumi just said (regarding giving Stephen money), but after all this is a personal opion. I don't expect anyone else to hold to it.)
I frown upon people/sites/groups asking for payment/donations for whatever reason... If your server costs are too high, boohoo, don't distribute files that way. If you can't afford the book you want to translate, too bad. Asking people to contribute money that you've spent towards buying manga for scanlating, whatever, it's essentially profiting at the expense of a mangaka, who never asked to be in any way involved in what you're doing. (This isn't intended to those who are profesionally involved in the industry, just us lowly scanlators. Though if any company wants to hire me to edit...) Basically it should be done for the love of the manga, no money should be involved.

In an ideal world for all the scanlated manga you read you should buy the original. I'm sane enough to realise that that's never going to happen. Still it's my perogative to have unrealistic beliefs.

At the end of the day manga is a luxury, you don't need it to live. But it does enrich your life.

Posted: Thu Nov 24, 2005 6:02 pm

My last comment aboug giving stephen money was in jest... we have never asked for donations at mangascreener at great personal cost. The time is the most expensive thing, no one just reading this could understand the time that some of the staff put into this. Secondly is resources, we actually have to purchase the manga, debind it and scan it, scanners aren't free, neither is webspace (unless its donated... thanks intuity!!!) and domain names.

My comment was specifically aimed at giving the deserved respect to the staff of mangascreener... you can do that in many ways... some of the staff prefer virgin maidens over money... (that was a joke)

But on a serious note, it's nice to hear that you're doing a job, but the biggest thing that someone can give is their support, ie. providing us with space to host manga, hosting manga in the channel, offering to edit or scan manga (not projects you want to do!) or if you're fluent in japanese you can offer to translate. Or just hang out and be vocal in the channel and forum. Be part of the community, not just a reader of the manga.

Fan Boy Joined: 08 Aug 2006 Posts: 12

Silly of me to relive an old thread, but what you penned down there Izumi is worth gold. I find it such a shame I couldn't have been there from the start of this bizz and that the community changed so much over the years; well in good and bad ways at least.

MangaScreener for me has always been something I rely on to grant me a stroke of intellectualism in the form of mostly seinen and a bit of josei, and I actually feel somewhat proud that I can be part of a group that provides many - including myself of course - with this and that dates back to ancient times.

Izumi, you should come to IRC now and then, I'd love to have a chat with you. Smile

Posted: Thu Sep 14, 2006 8:59 am

I'm a trouble maker, its best that i'm not around, when i'm around we do series like Those Who Hunt Elves and Shinesmen... haha
As far as the tone and feel of mangascreener, I got the ball rolling, but i really have to say that Stephen, Summersoldier and others really created the atmosphere we know how...
Back when i was running it, One Piece and Shaman King were our biggest series' so the demographic was really different.
I did jump at the chance to do Beck, which I'm really happy about, and I tried to have at least three different people translate Monster before Stephen stepped up, so i do take pride in that =)

Fan Boy Joined: 02 Oct 2006 Posts: 3 Location: earth

question i'm writing an observation/interview paper on the whole scanlation - to leeching process so i was wondering if i could use some of these points? Confused

Posted: Mon Oct 02, 2006 5:12 pm

Sure, feel free...

Fan Boy Joined: 02 Oct 2006 Posts: 3 Location: earth

ah thankyou so much. Embarassed

too bad i'll probably bring shame upon the manga scanlating community with my sucky writing skills v_v