Baby Steps - Vol. 40 Ch. 385 - In Front of Me

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MC luck factor in action? This might give him that insight to break out of his current slump.
 
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Why continue to scanlate a series that is being actively scanlated with far better quality than you could ever offer?
 
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I'm suddenly thinking of this old Monty Python sketch where these aliens were turning everyone into Scotsmen because they wanted to win Wimbledon and Scots were notoriously bad at tennis.
 
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Yeah fuck the haters man you keep scanlating with trash quality for absolutely no reason fight the power
 
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what's the point since another, much qualified scan group, is doing this? (despite FA is "lazying" around). Just do another manga not worked, which you like.


from previous chapter, my post -
So..... there are plenty of dropped/unpicked mangas, but seems this person called "natosphere" like this manga, and seems this is his first scanlation work. But, the thing is that his work is pretty amateur - bad typesetting: "filling" the bubble (large words); no period (full stop); uniting two sentences in joint bubbles as one; one font for all, which is plain - not using 3-4 different fonts; lack of centering and not properly using of hyphenation. I would leave aside the translation and proofreading (plus cleaning/redraw) 'cause I'm not into this.

I would prefer FA Scans' chapters, despite that I don't like FA Scans group very much (as a group, not that they don't release on MD, I'm fine with the policy of some scan group to not upload on MDex). Just this guy natosphere would to be calm and patient over FA's releases.
 
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Thanks for the scans, Natosphere. I am able to understand your translations, and they are quite clean and readable. I remember back when you'd be happy to get a half blurry photocopier scan of the Japanese book with MS paint text in the bubbles.

I might also remind people of one of Mangadex's features; If you don't like seeing someone's uploaded chapters, you can just choose to block them so that you don't have to see their updates. As pointed out, this manga is available elsewhere, so reading it there will be a better option for you if you find these to be unsuitable. In this way, you won't get reminded to come comment here with copied and pasted complaints, and we won't have to re-read said complaints.
 
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FA's version of chapter 385 is out... https://manga.fascans.com/manga/baby-steps/385
 
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@darknesstouch09 what do you like about broken english and illegible typesetting? Is there anything in this translation that is accurate at all? Personally, I feel like a 10 year old would be better at crafting sentences than the translator for this release.
 
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@Bentoki Don't be ridiculous. Broken English and illegible typesetting? I've been reading manga online for close to 20 years, I know what broken English and illegible typesetting look like. Go read some old Chibi Manga releases sometime. This is fine. On typesetting, there's nothing wrong with the font as far as I can see, the cleaning is solid, the words fit in the bubbles fine, dunno what the hell you're looking for. On the quality of the English . . . There's a bit that's off here and there, like saying "the Wimbledon" in places where it would be better in English to just say "Wimbledon". But you're seriously working hard to trip over pebbles and claim it's because they were mountains. There's nothing like "broken English"; most of it flows fine.

I'm looking at ch 385 page by page between Fallen Angels and this one. IMO the overall quality is fairly comparable. Note that I don't have a clue what the original says so I can't tell which is more accurate. It does feel like Fallen Angels probably has slightly better comprehension. But their English is quite wordy and often actually stiffer, feeling less like dialogue someone would say, than the version here. It may be because they're struggling to get all information and connotations in, and can't find a way to make it flow. It's like, there isn't one English word directly corresponding to the one Japanese word, so they use a few. On the other hand, Lone Ricotta seems like they perhaps drop a bit too much sometimes to get a smooth, relatively colloquial piece of dialogue . . . but sometimes it's just smoother without really losing anything. Bit of a wash, really, I absolutely don't see where your overblown outrage is coming from.

If you have a problem with the translation and you can back it up, do so by making specific suggestions; as it stands you're just doing drive-by bullshit.
 
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One might object that Lone Ricotta is sniping. But not on Mangadex, they ain't--I don't see any of those FA chapters here. Presumably something to do with the Big Flounce a while back? Whatever, I don't give a damn about sniping if the people complaining won't put their stuff on the platform I use.
 
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@Purplelibraryguy I take it you've never scanlated? No group would find this acceptable. The centering, shaping, font size, kerning, leading...... EVERYTHING IS OFF. Nothing is correct, it's all absolutely horrible quality. The English is absolutely trash, I don't understand how you can think that they are comparable on any level without completely ignoring everything about it. Half of the sentences aren't even coherent. A 10 year old could make sentences that make more sense. The reason that it's "less wordy" is because the TL relied on MTL and didn't bother getting the nuance of the japanese through, it doesn't even work as a literal TL. It's horrible, there is no proofreading. EVERYTHING IS WRONG.

> I think it's lucky to face the 1st seed here

>because my match is the second match, 2 hours before it starts it's gonna be a practice court.

>wow.. everything is real...

>Listen up Eigawa... world tennis has higher opponents, but on the grass court your skills are better. <- At the very least, you can admit that they didn't bother translating this sentence? HIGHER OPPONENTS? COME ON MAN. At least use more difficult or something. Stop talking out of your ass, if you think this is acceptable you need to go back to school.

WHY ARE YOU DEFENDING THIS LOL
 
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Whether I've ever scanlated is somewhat beside the point. The purpose of scanlation is to get a result that readers will be able to read. I've read ten times as much scanlated manga as most people here, so I'm in a decent position to talk about the readability of scanlations.
Things about looks minor enough to be strictly inside baseball frankly don't matter a damn--if the audience can't see it, it is in effect not there. Whingeing about it is just snobbery. Not that it might not be worth it to show scanlators how to improve, but . . . I dunno, you've got an old person avatar, but if you think these imperceptible problems you're ranting about are bad you haven't been around manga very long. Looks of the average scanlation used to be bad enough that a normal person would actually notice problems; now we're at a stage like with computer monitor resolution--when it improves you just don't notice the difference.
Those examples of translation . . . yeah, not the best. But you don't help your case when you go all hyperbolic-chew-the-scenery. You see a sentence with one word wrong and you say "they didn't bother translating this sentence"--say what?! It didn't bother me at the time, I just took it as meaning higher ranked. Your second example, yeah, that's clumsy. Your first example is not that bad, really--it has bad grammar, but casual speech in real life often has bad grammar; you get the sense of it and it sounds kind of like something somebody would say. It's awkward, but workable. The third isn't actually bad at all. It isn't technically bad grammar. Out of context it sounds like a weird sentence, but in the moment it sounds very much like something someone would say/think in that situation--it conveys that sort of gobsmacked "OMG I'm really here" feeling. That one I don't actually see what your problem is. And I don't think the FA version sounds any better.
To be honest, there were other moments that would have made your case better. Probably the worst for me was when second-media-guy said "I'm sorry for being so busy"; that I had no idea what he was supposed to be talking about, and it sounds like a complete mistranslation. So I'm not going to claim there aren't flaws. But most of it's fine.

It's not like the FA translation is flawless either. "As we discussed yesterday, this will be broadcasted right before the match so give us a big shoutout for the match" OK, so minor grammatical error with "broadcasted", but more importantly I don't know what the guy is supposed to mean by "give us a big shoutout for the match". What is he even saying? I can't interpret that in a way that makes sense for the media guy to be saying to a player. The Lone Ricotta version of that may or may not be accurate, but at least it sounds like a more or less plausible thing to say. Still, FA surely made fewer mistakes.

Looking at it more closely, I'd have to say the FA version is on average better. But functionally, the difference in reading experience isn't big enough to make up for the fact that the FA scanlation isn't here. If they un-flounce maybe I'll read their version.
 

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