It is precisely because this isn't a business, and people are doing it in their own time for free (forget groups that do commissions and donations for a moment) that we should treat translators with some common decency and not reduce it to transactionalism.
Transactionalism that becomes maximalist and one sided when you consider that one party is only giving and not taking a single thing, namely the scanlators.
Why are you comparing capitalism with volunteer work? So they're volunteers, means they deserve no respect, no consideration? You don't pay them, so in effect you owe them nothing? In real money terms, sure. But a child could tell you that is abhorrent behavior (or I suppose these days, only children would think it is, given the increasingly toxic world we live in).
And yes, snipers are also doing 'free' work. But the others were here first. Even if the latter had better quality work (which they certainly do not, I find their version borderline unreadable), I would still advise prospective snipers to show some consideration. And it's not hard. Some idiot fool I saw earlier in the thread sarcastically described how snipers need to grovel and petition to get permission, but most scanlators, including Radeon, just expect a single DM. The problem isn't that it's so difficult to ask. It's that snipers can't take no for an answer.
To the rest of you clowns defending this slop, I hope you are all happy. It's for this very reason I quit scanlations years ago. If you're happy to have slop, then slop is what you will get. It's not like the higher quality work was denied to you. People say AI is the future. Sure, it's the future because you lower your own standards. And it's not like it cost you much to favor the higher quality work. It was all for instant gratification of having it now, now, now. Perhaps you think you were ensuring the continuity of the manga. Sure doesn't look like it when you make scanlators give up on the series.
Lets be honest, you didn't just choose slop. You chose to have nothing. You decided someone dedicated enough to know Japanese and do the careful work of translating this manga properly was less reliable than a mercenary who is actively sniping series for cookie points. Do you think they are a reliable group to work on this series? Folks like that have the attention span of a goldish. Ah yes, I guess you'll always have the option of holding google translate up to the manga then. These are some really genius choices.
I'm sorry for everyone else who doesn't buy into this, but in this new world where many of you treat volunteers like indentured workers and throw capitalist maxims at them, I'm infinitely glad I learned to read Japanese and can always fall back on reading the raw myself.
Last edited:
