Maid Skater - Ch. 1 - Maids Can Fly, You Know!
- Thread starter MangaDex
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Nice typesetting
This is such an unbelievably retarded comment, I am impressed. You have absolutely no idea how decent it was, you have no knowledge to even begin to consider what is and isn't a good translation, because if you had even the most basic level of understanding you would appreciate with a horrible move using mtl is. Take your monkey brain elsewhere. You disgust me.
Dex-chan lover
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You kind of just sound like a dick as other person was more getting it out they, and said its fine for others to take it, but you just Insulting them and this other person.
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Yes that is fine
Dex-chan lover
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I support being nice.
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Will somebody please think of the poor, checks notes, people who don't care about accurately translating manga.
Dex-chan lover
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Loved the credits page. Self-evident how much better a good team of translators compared to one person with MTL. I understand the acrimony, since no one wins if scanlation becomes a race to put out garbage quick-and-dirty jobs. Thanks for the effort.
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fuck MTL, good shit with the scans, cant wait for more maid skate goodness
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lol
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Please stop talking down to me about my own hobby, or "being nice," before i say something truly unkind and get banned for it. I've run into attitudes like "MTL is heckin valid" for so long, let me set the record straight:
Firstly, if you're not an MTLer, the message at the end wasn't meant for you. I've been planning to scan this since it was announced bc I'm a fan of the original artwork. I wouldn't expect an average schmuck to understand what it's like to spend years learning Japanese or gaining experience editing manga pages as a hobby. These days there are a constant stream of people who don't care to gain that experience, dont care to try as hard, or dont even care to understand why what they're doing is wrong, but still use MTL as a substitute for actually knowing the language anyway, without understanding why it's so bad.
There are too many flaws with individual MTL programs, so i'll stick to the fundamental, structural issues with using them for comics. MTL Is not a substitute for knowing Japanese. Even non-fluent humans checking words and grammar in a dictionary can't give you the experience of having read and spoken a language for the hundreds or thousands of hours it takes to understand your langs to the level that the TL will be good. Its one thing to read about a grammatical structure in a textbook, its another to see it hundreds or thousands of times, in different contexts. Every MTL is bound to make critical, story altering mistakes if it needs to translate complex things, to say nothing of it making an actual proper translation, preserving the actual substance and character of the dialogue. No matter how much you change the output of the MTL, you're still trusting whatever the machine told you, rather than being able to give a faithful, 1:1 experience, which is the entire point of translation/by extension scanlation. You have no way of knowing if what the machine told you is true! And all to often, the machine just makes shit up because it's got no clue.
Even human TLs make mistakes sometimes, but far to many machines can't even give you alternative translations, and none of them can even look at, let alone comprehend the pictures and text at the same time. Its a comic! Would you trust a blind guy to translate a comic if they were a black box and wouldn't take any advice, image descriptions, or feedback besides input and output? Hell the fuck no. A lot of MTL, esp the consumer-grade stuff, is destined with websites in mind first and foremost, and idk if you've used the google translate plugin lately, but in case you haven't noticed MTL fucking sucks even on websites! The machine doesn't even know what it means to be human, so the blind guy who doesn't do shit other than translate is already at an advantage, regardless of their hypothetical skills as a translator. Machine translation may be an ok tool if used by real translators, but the people who use MTL as a substitute for knowing Japanese are the biggest tools in my opinion. I ought to know, I've been there! Such people don't care to know simple concepts in japanese like how the passive voice is different than in english, much less read or speak enough to get a complete understanding of the structure of the language in context. You need to be exposed to a huge depth and variety of concepts to truly understand the language on an intuitive level, and make accurate output which is faithful to the original. The MOST you can expect of MTL is that there are no critical errors that totally alter the course of the story, and most MTL doesn't even come close to that abysmal standard. MTL's best day is an experienced, good translator's bad day.
MTLers aren't even necessarily bad people, or ill-intentioned, but the way they'll sheepishly see a manga not get a TL from a real group for ONE FUCKING DAY (many such cases) and decide for themselves that what the world really needs is the thousandth random to ever start making machine "translations." A constant stream of faceless, groupless people crash on and off the manga in this site like a polluted tide with their shitty ai tools, most only to duck out when they realize making a good scanlation is harder than it looks. They dont even need to be a TL to get involved in the scanlation process, or to do good by the manga they scan, but rather than join a group, or learn the language/how to typeset/redraw/ect and put long term effort into improving themselves, they just go with the path of least resistance and fizzle out before they capture lasting interest in the hobby.
Most people without experience with what it takes to make a scanlation dont understand what makes a good scanlation. Average Joe readers just know what they like to read, without understanding the techniques or effort required to make what they like to read so good. I have no respect as a scanlator for people who snipe with MTL, or try and scan manga without waiting for a real TL, esp if they never intend to commit to the hobby or improve their skills. My salt isn't even just directed at the other guy who posted to this manga individually, I'm pissed off by people who use MTL generally, because they miss the entire point of making a scanlation, which is making a good translation.
Even the most advanced AI is still just a blind, large language model that the MTLer can't audit. If you dont understand Japanese, the solution is not delegating your ignorance to an AI, especially considering the more recent, advanced AI (which most MTL is not) will confidently do stupid shit like say there are four letter N's in words with two N's.
I personally started out as a scanlator a lot like the other guy who posted a chapter to this manga, which is to say, clueless and unconcerned with how the language I was "translating" actually worked. Now that I do know better, and study the language, whenever I see someone making similar mistakes, without also expressing interest in improving, its really demotivating, because they're wasting their own time, and the time of the people who read what they post expecting an accurate translation. The fact that people will bother to say they're making an MTL but only on the last page, AFTER most people have finished reading the chapter, tells me even if they're not intentionally overlooking the flaws of MTL, they are at the very least ignorant of what makes it so bad, and what it takes to make a good translation.
I can't make any of the people who dont care to improve, care. If they want to change, that has to be something they want to do on their own, for themselves, and I honestly hope they do improve, because everyone will be better off. As a scanlator, I'm insulted by people who clearly don't care to know better, even if they're not outright malicious, because their apathy is damaging to everyone, reader or scanlator, whether people realize or not.
I can forgive clueless readers, you people can't be reasonably expected to care, but I can't forgive people who enter into a hobby space like scanlation and put out MTL garbage when they have no interest in improving, they're basically just readers at that point, except their ignorance is put into practice on other peoples reading experience, rather than confined to the comment section. I cant even remember the number of times i've been sniped, or had to compete with an MTL post over the years. At least a dozen. Most delete their scan, or grow out of being MTLs after a while. If I had a dollar for every characteristic MTL noob credits page with a simple white background, odd aspect ratio, wildwords or their main dialogue font as the only font, I'd be a rich man. Given this, and the rant above, I hope you can understand why I have so little patience for MTL, especially when its bad, or the MTLer doesn't seem to care to improve themselves, or know why what they're doing is harmful.
Even the other guy, while I didn't notice any massive story altering errors, if you flip between our two posts, its pretty obvious which is accurately recreating the raw in English, and which is guesslating. That's not an indictment on the person, hell, what they put out was better than my first solo scan, considering it's their first scan the typesetting and redrawing could have been worse, however, that does not excuse the MTL. If you're reading this @erati and you do want to stick with scanlation, I hope you try to improve yourself by sticking to learning how to redraw or typeset, and collaborate with a group/people who speak JP and EN, or learn Japanese for yourself. Your enthusiasm for manga would be better spent on those efforts! You are capable of much better things! Don't content yourself with being a cog in the wheel of MTL! No matter how good or bad someones first post is, if one applies themselves, there will always be more skills to gain and improve with.
The ignorance does not have to be inevitable, but with the never ending tide of one-and-done MTLers, it feels like it is. What little remorse I have for the unkind things i've said is less due to my ability to empathize with a name on a screen i've never so much as chatted with by text, and moreso due to a sense that to be angry at the MTLers would be like cursing at the rain that's beating down on you. Its not rational to yell at the sky. The rain doesn't know it brings people down, though it can cut through mountains given time. When a reader thinks they know better, thinks they've got it all figured out because they find an MTL program, and does the same shit that readers have been doing for years and years and years, without realizing they're repeating history for the hundredth, thousandth, god knows how many-th time, trying to get people interested in the hobby as peers rather than (figurative) cogs in the (literal) machine (translator) is maddening, as a hobbyist.
I'm writing a series of guides meant to cover everything anyone would need to know about scanlation, because there are few single, all encompassing guides, and as far as i know, no good ones. If any of you have an interest in learning or talking about scanlation, watch or read them, and please let me know what you think. I hope to make up for any deficiencies in area's that aren't to my strength (e.g. colored redrawing/ cleaning physical raws) with the advice and experience of other people. And since my guide is still a work in progress, (i've only completed 4 out of 28 total tutorials planned so far) I can wholeheartedly recommend browsing the guides on QuicksandScans in the meantime, theres a lot to learn from those guides, and good old fashioned practice. I've been having to focus on IRL, and competing with MTL/tying things up on the scanlation side, so i've not been making as much progress i'd like to be making on writing the guides, but i'm expecting to pick up the pace soon. Anyway, that's neither here nor there, thanks for reading. final thoughts:
Firstly, if you're not an MTLer, the message at the end wasn't meant for you. I've been planning to scan this since it was announced bc I'm a fan of the original artwork. I wouldn't expect an average schmuck to understand what it's like to spend years learning Japanese or gaining experience editing manga pages as a hobby. These days there are a constant stream of people who don't care to gain that experience, dont care to try as hard, or dont even care to understand why what they're doing is wrong, but still use MTL as a substitute for actually knowing the language anyway, without understanding why it's so bad.
There are too many flaws with individual MTL programs, so i'll stick to the fundamental, structural issues with using them for comics. MTL Is not a substitute for knowing Japanese. Even non-fluent humans checking words and grammar in a dictionary can't give you the experience of having read and spoken a language for the hundreds or thousands of hours it takes to understand your langs to the level that the TL will be good. Its one thing to read about a grammatical structure in a textbook, its another to see it hundreds or thousands of times, in different contexts. Every MTL is bound to make critical, story altering mistakes if it needs to translate complex things, to say nothing of it making an actual proper translation, preserving the actual substance and character of the dialogue. No matter how much you change the output of the MTL, you're still trusting whatever the machine told you, rather than being able to give a faithful, 1:1 experience, which is the entire point of translation/by extension scanlation. You have no way of knowing if what the machine told you is true! And all to often, the machine just makes shit up because it's got no clue.
Even human TLs make mistakes sometimes, but far to many machines can't even give you alternative translations, and none of them can even look at, let alone comprehend the pictures and text at the same time. Its a comic! Would you trust a blind guy to translate a comic if they were a black box and wouldn't take any advice, image descriptions, or feedback besides input and output? Hell the fuck no. A lot of MTL, esp the consumer-grade stuff, is destined with websites in mind first and foremost, and idk if you've used the google translate plugin lately, but in case you haven't noticed MTL fucking sucks even on websites! The machine doesn't even know what it means to be human, so the blind guy who doesn't do shit other than translate is already at an advantage, regardless of their hypothetical skills as a translator. Machine translation may be an ok tool if used by real translators, but the people who use MTL as a substitute for knowing Japanese are the biggest tools in my opinion. I ought to know, I've been there! Such people don't care to know simple concepts in japanese like how the passive voice is different than in english, much less read or speak enough to get a complete understanding of the structure of the language in context. You need to be exposed to a huge depth and variety of concepts to truly understand the language on an intuitive level, and make accurate output which is faithful to the original. The MOST you can expect of MTL is that there are no critical errors that totally alter the course of the story, and most MTL doesn't even come close to that abysmal standard. MTL's best day is an experienced, good translator's bad day.
MTLers aren't even necessarily bad people, or ill-intentioned, but the way they'll sheepishly see a manga not get a TL from a real group for ONE FUCKING DAY (many such cases) and decide for themselves that what the world really needs is the thousandth random to ever start making machine "translations." A constant stream of faceless, groupless people crash on and off the manga in this site like a polluted tide with their shitty ai tools, most only to duck out when they realize making a good scanlation is harder than it looks. They dont even need to be a TL to get involved in the scanlation process, or to do good by the manga they scan, but rather than join a group, or learn the language/how to typeset/redraw/ect and put long term effort into improving themselves, they just go with the path of least resistance and fizzle out before they capture lasting interest in the hobby.
Most people without experience with what it takes to make a scanlation dont understand what makes a good scanlation. Average Joe readers just know what they like to read, without understanding the techniques or effort required to make what they like to read so good. I have no respect as a scanlator for people who snipe with MTL, or try and scan manga without waiting for a real TL, esp if they never intend to commit to the hobby or improve their skills. My salt isn't even just directed at the other guy who posted to this manga individually, I'm pissed off by people who use MTL generally, because they miss the entire point of making a scanlation, which is making a good translation.
Even the most advanced AI is still just a blind, large language model that the MTLer can't audit. If you dont understand Japanese, the solution is not delegating your ignorance to an AI, especially considering the more recent, advanced AI (which most MTL is not) will confidently do stupid shit like say there are four letter N's in words with two N's.
I personally started out as a scanlator a lot like the other guy who posted a chapter to this manga, which is to say, clueless and unconcerned with how the language I was "translating" actually worked. Now that I do know better, and study the language, whenever I see someone making similar mistakes, without also expressing interest in improving, its really demotivating, because they're wasting their own time, and the time of the people who read what they post expecting an accurate translation. The fact that people will bother to say they're making an MTL but only on the last page, AFTER most people have finished reading the chapter, tells me even if they're not intentionally overlooking the flaws of MTL, they are at the very least ignorant of what makes it so bad, and what it takes to make a good translation.
I can't make any of the people who dont care to improve, care. If they want to change, that has to be something they want to do on their own, for themselves, and I honestly hope they do improve, because everyone will be better off. As a scanlator, I'm insulted by people who clearly don't care to know better, even if they're not outright malicious, because their apathy is damaging to everyone, reader or scanlator, whether people realize or not.
I can forgive clueless readers, you people can't be reasonably expected to care, but I can't forgive people who enter into a hobby space like scanlation and put out MTL garbage when they have no interest in improving, they're basically just readers at that point, except their ignorance is put into practice on other peoples reading experience, rather than confined to the comment section. I cant even remember the number of times i've been sniped, or had to compete with an MTL post over the years. At least a dozen. Most delete their scan, or grow out of being MTLs after a while. If I had a dollar for every characteristic MTL noob credits page with a simple white background, odd aspect ratio, wildwords or their main dialogue font as the only font, I'd be a rich man. Given this, and the rant above, I hope you can understand why I have so little patience for MTL, especially when its bad, or the MTLer doesn't seem to care to improve themselves, or know why what they're doing is harmful.
Even the other guy, while I didn't notice any massive story altering errors, if you flip between our two posts, its pretty obvious which is accurately recreating the raw in English, and which is guesslating. That's not an indictment on the person, hell, what they put out was better than my first solo scan, considering it's their first scan the typesetting and redrawing could have been worse, however, that does not excuse the MTL. If you're reading this @erati and you do want to stick with scanlation, I hope you try to improve yourself by sticking to learning how to redraw or typeset, and collaborate with a group/people who speak JP and EN, or learn Japanese for yourself. Your enthusiasm for manga would be better spent on those efforts! You are capable of much better things! Don't content yourself with being a cog in the wheel of MTL! No matter how good or bad someones first post is, if one applies themselves, there will always be more skills to gain and improve with.
The ignorance does not have to be inevitable, but with the never ending tide of one-and-done MTLers, it feels like it is. What little remorse I have for the unkind things i've said is less due to my ability to empathize with a name on a screen i've never so much as chatted with by text, and moreso due to a sense that to be angry at the MTLers would be like cursing at the rain that's beating down on you. Its not rational to yell at the sky. The rain doesn't know it brings people down, though it can cut through mountains given time. When a reader thinks they know better, thinks they've got it all figured out because they find an MTL program, and does the same shit that readers have been doing for years and years and years, without realizing they're repeating history for the hundredth, thousandth, god knows how many-th time, trying to get people interested in the hobby as peers rather than (figurative) cogs in the (literal) machine (translator) is maddening, as a hobbyist.
I'm writing a series of guides meant to cover everything anyone would need to know about scanlation, because there are few single, all encompassing guides, and as far as i know, no good ones. If any of you have an interest in learning or talking about scanlation, watch or read them, and please let me know what you think. I hope to make up for any deficiencies in area's that aren't to my strength (e.g. colored redrawing/ cleaning physical raws) with the advice and experience of other people. And since my guide is still a work in progress, (i've only completed 4 out of 28 total tutorials planned so far) I can wholeheartedly recommend browsing the guides on QuicksandScans in the meantime, theres a lot to learn from those guides, and good old fashioned practice. I've been having to focus on IRL, and competing with MTL/tying things up on the scanlation side, so i've not been making as much progress i'd like to be making on writing the guides, but i'm expecting to pick up the pace soon. Anyway, that's neither here nor there, thanks for reading. final thoughts:
Glad you liked it, the gang is enthusiastic about this manga so we'll 100% keep up with it going foreword.Thanks for this, you did a way better job than me.
Hope you'll continue with this series.
what a pointless comment , whats the point of speaking on something , you dont understand , just makes you look bad
Group Leader
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- Dec 29, 2018
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- 108
Yes, inject that drama straight into my veins!
On a more serious note, though - people seem to underestimate the effect of rushed out machine-translated manga on the longevity of a series. If a trashy translation gets pushed out faster than an actual one, that is an almost guaranteed death knell for that particular series since most proper groups wouldn't bother touching it anymore.
On a more serious note, though - people seem to underestimate the effect of rushed out machine-translated manga on the longevity of a series. If a trashy translation gets pushed out faster than an actual one, that is an almost guaranteed death knell for that particular series since most proper groups wouldn't bother touching it anymore.
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