Little Tangerine

[MangaDex]

 

[Izaya_Onisai]

Hm, that is a cute group name~

 

[MostlyHumanTLs]

Let's start from the conclusion: Little Tangerine uses machine translations while dishonestly claiming not to and doing everything in his power to erase all evidence.

Now let's move on to proving this statement.

I was contacted by a paying supporter (who wishes to remain anonymous and will henceforth be named Anon) on his Ko-hi page, where he was ahead by around 100 chapters in the translation of the web novel. You can get access to everything for as low as $1 a month, so I actually find that quite fair. At least compared to the bullshit I've seen on Patreon where prices rise with the amount of chapters you want to read ahead, but I digress.

He released around 2-4 chapters every day, which should make alarm bells sound in the head of every experienced translator. That's just not a pace you can maintain when doing manual, high quality translations. Unless you literally have no life.

Anon was able to take some pretty interesting screenshots due to still having the tab open and cached before the shitstorm of bad decisions by LT (Little Tangerine) happened.



As you can see, LT slipped up and copied up to the last part of the response from the chat bot without noticing.

Here is a screenshot of the text itself, but beware spoilers:

Spoiler: Original text

What was LT's response? He deleted the whole post itself to remove the comment and cleaned up the slip up. Here's Anon's response on the reposted chapter 301:



Here's the same text after the repost:

Spoiler: Text after repost

Here's the release order of the posts. You can see that 301 was deleted, then posted after 302. After that he released 303, 304 and 305.



But notice those v6c25 and v6c41? Anon suspects that LT panicked and tried to release more chapters to somehow bury the reposted 301, ultimately messing up and posting those two future chapters.



In fact, they were public posts that anyone could access. Notice how they're not "Unlocked" compared to 305. How panicked does one have to be to screw up so royally?

And by the way, it's insane how much further ahead he was in his private chapters. I reckon even he felt that posting more than an average of 3 chapters per day would look too suspicious to be done by a human.

[Breaking it up in two due to a limit on attachments per post.]

 

[MostlyHumanTLs]

Now, here's the fun part. Anon decides to double down.



Also pointing other readers to 301 to find about the whole thing. Here are the comments on 305:



And these are the comments on v6c25:



An hour goes by, and what was LT's response? He doubled down as well.



In fact, he doubled down so hard, even Confused Bystander caught a stray bullet. The comments were still visible since it was a public post.



A bit later, LT removed the two public chapters, and everything went back to normal. Crisis averted...or so he thought. LT made the mistake of blocking Anon's access to the chapters, leaving them pissed enough to send all this to me.





Anon couldn't even message LT. It's funny how it still showed that Anon is a supporter.

There was a reply to one of Anon's comments, but it was inaccessible.



Seems at least someone there kept commenting about it.

From this point on, LT decided to change how he does releases, most likely to do more damage control from more commenters and to "fix" the release order screw up.



And that's the Saga of LT the Disingenuous TL. Anon was annoyed enough to send all that to me since Anon saw me arguing with LT about his MTL.

Following is some of the context for those interactions.

My first comment, that started my back and forth with LT. Keep reading that thread for more context. In short, he kept ignoring my points and defending himself against claims I didn't make, basically gaslighting me. He really beat that strawman good.

There's a thing he said there: Please don't make baseless accusations! Well, if all the evidence I provided beforehand is not enough, I hope this is.

Finally, LT posted a 3 hour video of him "translating" a webtoon chapter. This is my response. Long story short, the video was useless for clearing him of my suspicions of him using MTL. In fact, there were a lot of signs that pointed to him using his phone while translating. I actually downloaded that video since he said he would be deleting it after a while and still have it.

In that last response from me, I give him three examples of errors in his translations that make no sense for him to explain how that happened. All I got from him was silence. So I just took that to mean I was right and moved on.

But Anon gave me a really nice Christmas present. Took me a while to notice the message, but at least I got this written in time for New Year's. It feels great to be proven right.

Happy new year, everybody.

PS. Since LT has proven himself to be ready to remove everything he can about him using MTL, I made sure to back everything up. I'll keep reposting this until LT grows some balls and apologises to me for trying to gaslight me and to Anon for the horrible treatment.

Anon said they were willing to continue donating as long as LT becomes honest and unblocks Anon so they can keep reading. They were basically left on a cliffhanger, which ultimately made Anon angry enough to actually send this to me.

 

[jojoseph-stalin]

Yo Mostly human! Why are you deleting your translated chapters? There were 15 and there are only 10 now

 

[TheLaidBackMan]

Yo Mostly human! Why are you deleting your translated chapters? There were 15 and there are only 10 now

Looks like the rumor is true, the LT lied about tl-ing this themselves and not an MTL

 

[jojoseph-stalin]

Looks like the rumor is true, the LT lied about tl-ing this themselves and not an MTL

Yea but still, deleting the translations is annoying.
I don't want to learn Japanese and do that shit myself.

 

[TheLaidBackMan]

I don't want to learn Japanese and do that shit myself.

Unfortunately, it's a Chinese a.k.a mandarin

 

[MostlyHumanTLs]

Yo Mostly human! Why are you deleting your translated chapters? There were 15 and there are only 10 now

Hi! I was confused about your phrasing, which implied that I deleted chapters. But I looked at the webtoon and I see what you mean. Just to be clear, I have no power over this series.

It seems that Little Tangerine tried to use the same tactic as described above, where he deleted the chapters to remove the comments attached to it. Apparently he wishes to continue trying to cover it up instead of being honest.

I predicted he would do something like this, which is why I posted directly on his group page, which I assume one can't delete without deleting their whole group.

But something that LT probably doesn't know is that even if you delete the chapter, the forum post still exists, it's just detached. And I'm pretty sure they can even be combined together, as I've seen done when spilt chapters were re-uploaded after being joined.

And, just for posterity, here are the two comments where I link back to this thread. Chapter 14 and chapter 15. No clue why he deleted 13, 12 and 11, since I didn't post there. LT probably panicked again.

Where I did post, is on the first chapter, just for new readers, and on chapter 5 and chapter 6, since that's where my interactions with LT were.

I've looked around, and it's possible to find chapters 14 and 15 on other sites that repost from MangaDex. There's even another group that's on chapter 18 already. Seems lower quality than LT, but at least they're honest that it's MTL.

One interesting thing is that on chapters 14 and 15, LT stopped adding his name to the credits and changed the link of his Ko-hi page to another one. This tells me that he was trying to rebrand after the whole fiasco with Anon. No influence from me since I posted the above after the release of the chapters.

Or, chapter 14 and 15 was actually done by another group. I sadly didn't screenshot the manga page with the chapters so I don't have definitive proof of who uploaded them. And the Wayback Machine fails at taking snapshots of MangaDex. What I can say somewhat certainly, is that only the moderators and the uploader/groups who uploaded the chapter can delete it, which means that the one who deleted chapters 14 and 15, and chapters 11, 12 and 13 at the same time is the same person, barring some huge coincidence. Also, the scanlation quality is exactly the same as the previous chapters.

It's sad that LT won't be honest about it. He did a pretty good job, creating what I consider a high quality MTL. I've seen his translation quality improve with each volume of the web novel. It's just that I wanted him to iron out the errors brought in by the fact that it's a machine translation. But he would have to acknowledge that fact before addressing any of those issues, which he clearly doesn't want to do, as can be seen from all his deflection and actions.

Welp. I'm interested to see what LT does next.

 

[happypurple]

Barkeep, a round of meds for the whole thread on me.

 

[MostlyHumanTLs]

Barkeep, a round of meds for the whole thread on me.

I get that you're joking, but I'd be interested to hear what exactly you find worthy of taking meds in anything that was written in this thread.

Assuming you're only referring to what I wrote, I was trying to be as objective as possible, providing references where I could. Do you find the fact that I tried to expose someone's lies crazy? Or is it just the fact that I bothered at all that is crazy? Is the desire to discover the truth crazy? Or is it simply crazy to take pride in your work and enjoy being proven right?

I'm curious, since I find all that to be fairly natural human behaviour.

 

[MostlyHumanTLs]

Update. LT decided to delete all of his webtoon chapters.



Additionally, he changed his name to just T on his Ko-hi page, though the URL is still the same. You can see what it was before in the screenshots above.



But he's still releasing his translation of the web novel.



So, from the fact that LT chose to delete what he could to hide as much as possible, we can see that he won't apologise nor admit that he uses MTL.

I reckon he just wants to keep earning money while he can, hoping that this whole thing will blow over if he just separates himself from his work on MangaDex, where I posted this.

After all, he has 168 paying subscribers (though I'm unsure of how accurate that is on Ko-hi), even if they pay a minimum of just one dollar, that's about equivalent to the earnings of a crappy part time job where he's from. Considering that Anon was willing to donate 10 dollars a month, I reckon LT's earnings are significantly higher.

Now, here's a bit more information for posterity. If you want access to LT's comments on the chapters he deleted, you can find them under Postings on his profile. That's another way to find where to read our interactions.

I looked at the comments on LT's blog and found someone who commented right about that time Anon exposed him and he panicked. I decided to leave a little present for him there, too. He'll probably delete it as well.



When it comes to clarifying who uploaded chapters 14 and 15, I've found those chapters under this group on MangaUpdates. So I can confirm that they were uploaded by a different group. But. The translation style and quality are the exact same as what LT produced. Plus, barring extreme coincidence, only he would be able to delete both 14 and 15, and the seemingly unrelated 11, 12, and 13, at the same time.

So I conclude that this other group was his attempt to rebrand on New Year's Eve. He just didn't know Anon had a present for him for Christmas that got delayed in shipping.

Anyway. I don't think anything more will change. LT will just keep being the disingenuous bastard that he is. It's in his nature, by now. He won't improve his character. I was hoping he would, but I expected this nonetheless. He really did everything he could to prove my initial claim on this thread.

Don't know how long he'll continue to work on the web novel, but he will probably try to rebrand and work on something completely unrelated next time. Maybe he already is. I don't really care any more since he's hopeless.

 

[MostlyHumanTLs]

Update. LT rebranded to XiaoGuang and moved to Bato, where he's continuing his translation of the webtoon.



He also re-uploaded the translations he did under Little Tangerine.



And he got rid of his previous branding in the credits and added his new Ko-hi link to all of the chapters. This is the same link that was on chapters 14 and 15 while they were still on MangaDex.



This is how that new Ko-hi page looks now.



I'm not sure why he used such a long name with no spaces. Is this an attempt at...something? No clue, but it's weird. Literally goes off the screen on mobile.

I'm kind of done with this whole thing. Lost interest a while ago and keeping the updates just because the news reach me one way or another. He already proved what kind of person he is, so any more is just a waste of time and effort.

 

[JusrKora]

Now, here's the fun part. Anon decides to double down.

View attachment 13575

Also pointing other readers to 301 to find about the whole thing. Here are the comments on 305:

View attachment 13566

And these are the comments on v6c25:

View attachment 13590

An hour goes by, and what was LT's response? He doubled down as well.

View attachment 13584

In fact, he doubled down so hard, even Confused Bystander caught a stray bullet. The comments were still visible since it was a public post.

View attachment 13587

A bit later, LT removed the two public chapters, and everything went back to normal. Crisis averted...or so he thought. LT made the mistake of blocking Anon's access to the chapters, leaving them pissed enough to send all this to me.

View attachment 13569

View attachment 13572

Anon couldn't even message LT. It's funny how it still showed that Anon is a supporter.

There was a reply to one of Anon's comments, but it was inaccessible.

View attachment 13578

Seems at least someone there kept commenting about it.

From this point on, LT decided to change how he does releases, most likely to do more damage control from more commenters and to "fix" the release order screw up.

View attachment 13581

And that's the Saga of LT the Disingenuous TL. Anon was annoyed enough to send all that to me since Anon saw me arguing with LT about his MTL.

Following is some of the context for those interactions.

My first comment, that started my back and forth with LT. Keep reading that thread for more context. In short, he kept ignoring my points and defending himself against claims I didn't make, basically gaslighting me. He really beat that strawman good.

There's a thing he said there: Please don't make baseless accusations! Well, if all the evidence I provided beforehand is not enough, I hope this is.

Finally, LT posted a 3 hour video of him "translating" a webtoon chapter. This is my response. Long story short, the video was useless for clearing him of my suspicions of him using MTL. In fact, there were a lot of signs that pointed to him using his phone while translating. I actually downloaded that video since he said he would be deleting it after a while and still have it.

In that last response from me, I give him three examples of errors in his translations that make no sense for him to explain how that happened. All I got from him was silence. So I just took that to mean I was right and moved on.

But Anon gave me a really nice Christmas present. Took me a while to notice the message, but at least I got this written in time for New Year's. It feels great to be proven right.

Happy new year, everybody.

PS. Since LT has proven himself to be ready to remove everything he can about him using MTL, I made sure to back everything up. I'll keep reposting this until LT grows some balls and apologises to me for trying to gaslight me and to Anon for the horrible treatment.

Anon said they were willing to continue donating as long as LT becomes honest and unblocks Anon so they can keep reading. They were basically left on a cliffhanger, which ultimately made Anon angry enough to actually send this to me.

If possible, if you still have the video, could i see it?

 

[MostlyHumanTLs]

If possible, if you still have the video, could i see it?

Here you go (it'll delete itself in 6 days, or earlier if someone deletes it): https://filebin.net/fr2skvhapblv8fak

Didn't wanna share it initially, but it doesn't really have anything too incriminating. You can analyse it heavily and make conjectures, but it's hard to use it as definite proof of anything.

Though it definitely doesn't prove that he did a manual translation, like he intended. He could've easily had the translation already done off screen. And I'm pretty sure he used his phone to translate the SFX in the moment. It just proved that, at least for that chapter, he put some effort into cleaning/"redrawing" and typesetting. LT's original title was spot on: 3 hours of boring activity.

 

[JusrKora]

Here you go (it'll delete itself in 6 days, or earlier if someone deletes it): https://filebin.net/fr2skvhapblv8fak

Thanks lol

Didn't wanna share it initially, but it doesn't really have anything too incriminating. You can analyse it heavily and make conjectures, but it's hard to use it as definite proof of anything.

Barely analyzed it, but they're definitely not Chinese or know the language whatsoever. It's pretty clear from his accent alone lol. His whole translation process is hella shadey imo. Like for example: my entire translation process is just getting all my words down on a google doc and check back on it the next day and try to fix the flow or reword stuff since my first draft always sounds super direct. During my script checks, I reread the english out loud back to myself (it helps me hear what it'll actually sound like and helps fix any flow issues) since translations should flow correctly onto the next bubble (if connected). You can't translate each bubble in isolation, especially if it's apart of a bigger conversation.

Though it definitely doesn't prove that he did a manual translation, like he intended. He could've easily had the translation already done off screen.

it's definitely done off-screen or on a seperate monitor. A real translator would definitely read the actual sentence IN IT'S ORGINAL LANGUAGE and NOT the translated ver instantly, think for a bit (or not if it's a commonly used phrase), and then write their translations down.

And I'm pretty sure he used his phone to translate the SFX in the moment. It just proved that, at least for that chapter, he put some effort into cleaning/"redrawing" and typesetting. LT's original title was spot on: 3 hours of boring activity.

A normal person wouldn't slow down on sfx translations either since
1. It should be basic knowledge
2. You should've probably seen it to the point where it's instant

E.g. sfxes like 啪 (slam, wack, bang, bam, plop, thud, pop, and etc.) being used so much i can look at it and instantly pop out the correct english equivalent depending on what's happening in the panel
(Yeah the sfx 啪 really does mean all of that lol)

Damn, he spent 3 hours typesetting? Weak. I had chapter 1's typesetting and redrawing done within 2.5 hours. Mind you I actually hand-write each and every sfx, use different fonts, get the text effects about right, and makes sure the shaping looks good

 

[JusrKora]

Here you go (it'll delete itself in 6 days, or earlier if someone deletes it): https://filebin.net/fr2skvhapblv8fak

After my not-so-careful analysis, I believe their "proof that I don't MTL" literally points them to be MTL, lol.

1:03:00 about there in the footage, you can see that he took a whole 2 mins to translate the sfx 滑动 (Huadong) or "slide," but with the panel, I'm sure any tl would've instantly seen it and got "scroll," not exactly "scroll down," since it's not present within the Chinese sfx.

When he pronounced that sfx in 1:04:18~, he pronounced it wrong lol. It's Huadong, and he said "huagong."

The entire tl is suspicious because wym you took 2 mins to tl a single sfx, a normal tl would glance at and jot down the correct eng equivalent, but then instead process and start typing out bubbles that would've taken me a good 2-5 mins to word properly in my mind and not even start to type it out.

In the video, at 1:04:30~, he says, "I think it's either slide... or scroll." Which is super fucking weird because what kind of tl says, "I think it's" there's no "I think," especially if the panel is literally a person scrolling on a menu. The "slide" they came up with first makes it extremely suspicious since "slide" wouldn't even fit in this context.

His "translations" are awkward as hell. Especially since he either doesn't add a period at the end of each bubble if it ends in one, or he uses nonexistent english punctuation (e.g. --). The first rule of translating is to not stick to raws punctuation, but chatgpt loves to do that apparently. You can see the "--" (which should be changed to an em dash "—" but in english a question mark should be used instead since it's a question) in 2:47:00

In about 1:16:00 you can hear background shouting, and it's not mandarin chinese; otherwise, i would've understood.

In 1:38:00 you can see him taking another long break to translate the sfx 拉起

Anyways, yeah, after 20 mins of skipping around in the video, he only "speaks" chinese with sfx and never really fully says a single sentence in chinese, but instead he basically reads these sentences out in english. There's no way he's actually processing tls in his brain while actively speaking english. Somewhere in the video he yells and curses while typing out translations, which is weird because I would've written down what i said irl instead of what i was supposed to tl.

Honestly, their way of "redrawing" is valid since i kinda do the same. It's okay since ik i can fully cover wtv i CAF (content aware fill / spot healing tool) with handwritten sfx.

 

[MostlyHumanTLs]

Barely analyzed it, but they're definitely not Chinese or know the language whatsoever. It's pretty clear from his accent alone lol.

I actually know his real life information, but I won't share it since that's a scummy thing to do. Probably illegal, too. Though it's not illegal to find out. More like, it's exactly due to being a legal process that one's real life identity ends up leaking. Won't share the method, but if you know, you know.

All I can say is that he's a young male from Indonesia. I didn't want to share even this amount of information at first for fear of scaring him off. After all, the "I know who you are" types of statements are scary, especially with proof. But at this point, it doesn't matter. He'll keep ignoring it all forever.

His whole translation process is hella shadey imo. Like for example: my entire translation process is just getting all my words down on a google doc and check back on it the next day and try to fix the flow or reword stuff since my first draft always sounds super direct. During my script checks, I reread the english out loud back to myself (it helps me hear what it'll actually sound like and helps fix any flow issues) since translations should flow correctly onto the next bubble (if connected). You can't translate each bubble in isolation, especially if it's apart of a bigger conversation.

Good work ethic. What I personally did, was translate a chapter in one go, do an editing pass right away, then do a proofreading pass right before publishing it. That gap in time is really important for catching weird wording that makes even your own head tilt in confusion.

After my not-so-careful analysis, I believe their "proof that I don't MTL" literally points them to be MTL, lol.

1:03:00 about there in the footage, you can see that he took a whole 2 mins to translate the sfx 滑动 (Huadong) or "slide," but with the panel, I'm sure any tl would've instantly seen it and got "scroll," not exactly "scroll down," since it's not present within the Chinese sfx.

When he pronounced that sfx in 1:04:18~, he pronounced it wrong lol. It's Huadong, and he said "huagong."

The entire tl is suspicious because wym you took 2 mins to tl a single sfx, a normal tl would glance at and jot down the correct eng equivalent, but then instead process and start typing out bubbles that would've taken me a good 2-5 mins to word properly in my mind and not even start to type it out.

In the video, at 1:04:30~, he says, "I think it's either slide... or scroll." Which is super fucking weird because what kind of tl says, "I think it's" there's no "I think," especially if the panel is literally a person scrolling on a menu. The "slide" they came up with first makes it extremely suspicious since "slide" wouldn't even fit in this context.

His "translations" are awkward as hell. Especially since he either doesn't add a period at the end of each bubble if it ends in one, or he uses nonexistent english punctuation (e.g. --). The first rule of translating is to not stick to raws punctuation, but chatgpt loves to do that apparently. You can see the "--" (which should be changed to an em dash "—" but in english a question mark should be used instead since it's a question) in 2:47:00

In about 1:16:00 you can hear background shouting, and it's not mandarin chinese; otherwise, i would've understood.

In 1:38:00 you can see him taking another long break to translate the sfx 拉起

Anyways, yeah, after 20 mins of skipping around in the video, he only "speaks" chinese with sfx and never really fully says a single sentence in chinese, but instead he basically reads these sentences out in english. There's no way he's actually processing tls in his brain while actively speaking english. Somewhere in the video he yells and curses while typing out translations, which is weird because I would've written down what i said irl instead of what i was supposed to tl.

This is what I meant. There's a lot that can be deduced from the video. But none of it I could call "proof", so I only mentioned it briefly.

For it to be proof, it would have to be on the level of something like him accidentally Alt-Tabbing into a ChatGPT window where the response shown is just the bot giving him the full translation.

Like, if what was shown was him asking the bot to clarify what something meant, it wouldn't prove that the whole translation was made by a machine, just that he was using ChatGPT intelligently to investigate something he didn't know, since chat bots are basically a better way of googling something. It would kinda prove the opposite.

Honestly, their way of "redrawing" is valid since i kinda do the same. It's okay since ik i can fully cover wtv i CAF (content aware fill / spot healing tool) with handwritten sfx.

Didn't say it wasn't valid. It's just that AI-assisted redrawing wasn't around in my time, so I feel jelly that it's so easy nowadays.

But yeah, I hope you had fun looking into that video. I certainly did find some amusement from doing investigative work and coming up with conjectures like you did.

 

[drEJ]

Well, this whole saga was really interesting. I kinda noticed your squabbles with him earlier on, but didn't understand too much so I just ignored them. It's really sad he just keeps avoiding the issue instead of owning to it; trying to cover up everything just takes so much effort that I wonder how big of an ego he has that makes it seem worth it for him. Literally, apologising and carrying on doing what he's been doing but being truthful about it would be so much easier; there was no shame in what he was doing besides lying about it. It kinda makes no sense yet makes sense at the same time that this is how human behaviour can be sometimes, it's really sad. Good on you for exposing him.

 

[kiby]

Bro came back and reposted High Level Priestess, using the nuoer username.