What’s the point of an “Official Publisher”

[somenut]

Not posting this as a jab at official licensed publishers in general
some licensed publishers are better than others
when a series gets a licensed “Offical Publisher” what should you expect, and what do you expect
what value do you expect to get for paying for the series vesus the free translations?
faster updates? Higher quality translations? The peace of mind that they wont just stop translating leave a series high and dry?
and to add to that, what publishers fail at some of your points and do any exceed your expecttions?

 

[ZeeVee]

Given how many official publishers have ditched titles in the print era (ADV Manga brought out a huge swath of different titles and abandoned nearly all of them almost immediately (Kids Joker, Noodle Fighter Miki, etc.), IIRC Tokyopop did a bunch of shifty things and then abandoned a bunch of titles, Viz brought out a bunch of Volume 1s of titles which they never followed up on (such as Lycanthrope Leo), Dark Horse has apparently stopped the only title I was buying from them, Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service, even though the original has continued, etc.…) I don’t think there’s any peace of mind that ‘official publishers’ won’t just stop translating. In fact, I’d argue that it’s worse with most of the current digital publishers: at least with the print publishers you were guaranteed a whole volume of it, and when they decided to cease operations you still had the book. If any digital companies decide they want to get out, they can stop at any time and readers lose everything immediately since it’s all on the web. Plus you have to pay more to “own” the title than you did with the print versions (at least, after they stopped trying to print super-premium enlarged editions as Viz was doing for so long) and you have to use the annoying official websites which still show you ads. It would be better for the readers if digital publishers at least had an option to get PDFs equivalent to tankoubons but as of the last time I looked — which admittedly was quite a while ago — that wasn’t available. I’d love to get PDF editions of long series; no need to have a working Internet connection, they would be readable on essentially everything, and it would be pay-once-access-forever like print.

 

[MilkDrinker]

Sometimes scanlators don't translate, instead they make things up and write fanfiction. If you don't know Japanese you're fucked and get your impression of a series from what someone made up as he liked. It's also very frustrating to discover this and it makes you lose trust in fan translations. Some rare groups are so nasty they'd tell you to pay them money if you want accurate tls, and they might still not deliver even if you commissioned them.
And not to mention stuff that is low quality in general or is lazy machine TL.

With official stuff there's hope for a standard of quality and faithfulness to the work. And sure it sometimes may not be as good as what a passionate and experienced hobby team release, but at least it'll never be as terrible as the bad type of group's work.

Official localizers aren't always great, maybe once Manga gets big enough they'll also start liberally rewriting things like they do with Japanese videogames in the west. For now I think Manga's safe...
Fan translations usually are a good thing because it's passionate people wanting to share a thing they like, just that the few bad ones are extremely shitty.

It's mainly the translation faithfulness for me. Is it stirring up drama, if I posted specific examples? Fuck it, right. I really don't like what Wildfang did with Baki. This is a fun rabbithole you could dive in to read all the stuff the translator pulled out of his ass
Also it's a minor thing, but Narehate scans are annoying with how stubbornly they pick synonyms just to stand out from /a/nons that also translate Made in Abyss. Their images are higher quality, but the text ends up being stroke inducing to read. I'd rather read the official Made in Abyss English version because it shouldn't read like it was written by a spastic

 

[BzzBzz]

Sometimes official publisher don't translate, instead they make things up and write fanfiction. If you don't know Japanese you're fucked and get your impression of a series from what someone made up as he liked.

Fixed that for you.

With official stuff there's hope for a standard of quality and faithfulness to the work. And sure it sometimes may not be as good as what a passionate and experienced hobby team release, but at least it'll never be as terrible as the bad type of group's work.

Seriously? Go check https://global.bookwalker.jp/de7cf79699-9470-4b05-b379-5943011fe38b/ typesetting. It's so fucked up...

And I won't even mention x1200 image resolution in 2023.

 

[Remocracy]

Sometimes scanlators don't translate, instead they make things up and write fanfiction. If you don't know Japanese you're fucked and get your impression of a series from what someone made up as he liked. It's also very frustrating to discover this and it makes you lose trust in fan translations. Some rare groups are so nasty they'd tell you to pay them money if you want accurate tls, and they might still not deliver even if you commissioned them.
And not to mention stuff that is low quality in general or is lazy machine TL.

With official stuff there's hope for a standard of quality and faithfulness to the work. And sure it sometimes may not be as good as what a passionate and experienced hobby team release, but at least it'll never be as terrible as the bad type of group's work.

Official localizers aren't always great, maybe once Manga gets big enough they'll also start liberally rewriting things like they do with Japanese videogames in the west. For now I think Manga's safe...
Fan translations usually are a good thing because it's passionate people wanting to share a thing they like, just that the few bad ones are extremely shitty.

It's mainly the translation faithfulness for me. Is it stirring up drama, if I posted specific examples? Fuck it, right. I really don't like what Wildfang did with Baki. This is a fun rabbithole you could dive in to read all the stuff the translator pulled out of his ass
Also it's a minor thing, but Narehate scans are annoying with how stubbornly they pick synonyms just to stand out from /a/nons that also translate Made in Abyss. Their images are higher quality, but the text ends up being stroke inducing to read. I'd rather read the official Made in Abyss English version because it shouldn't read like it was written by a spastic

My two cents is that both official publisher and fan groups can be shitty, but fan groups do not have the power to sue other fan groups that try to correct their work

 

[MilkDrinker]

Seriously? Go check https://global.bookwalker.jp/de7cf79699-9470-4b05-b379-5943011fe38b/ typesetting. It's so fucked up...

And I won't even mention x1200 image resolution in 2023.

Huge textboxes are huge
But I think Wildfang outdid even 4Kids localization in rewrite bullshittery with Baki, much much worse than just the jelly donuts thing.

My two cents is that both official publisher and fan groups can be shitty, but fan groups do not have the power to sue other fan groups that try to correct their work

Absolutely, but I don't think fanfiction translation happens with official, certainly not intentionally like it can with scanlators being egomaniacs.
I don't know much about the lawsuit part. I'm just mainly bitter about awful translations.

 

[solstice258]

I kinda like the unprofessionalism of fan scanlations tbh. I'm a huge weeb so I prefer if they keep the honorifics (though, some fan scanlators drop them which drives me nuts) or keep the original wordplay/proverb and just put down a verbose ass TL-note (this might be a hot take xd)
With official publishers, they have to make it accessible to everyone and sometimes they get all high and mighty and tone down some stuff or add their own ""interpretation"".
I agree with Remocracy, if the fans are dissatisfied with a scanlation, at least somebody else can redo it and there won't be any takedowns or something.

 

[MilkDrinker]

I thought of another thing. Scanlators often don't translate Omake. Sometimes bonus content is lot of fun that you're missing out on. If you're a fan of a thing why not have the everything of it.

 

[Soyokaze_]

I kinda like the unprofessionalism of fan scanlations tbh. I'm a huge weeb so I prefer if they keep the honorifics (though, some fan scanlators drop them which drives me nuts) or keep the original wordplay/proverb and just put down a verbose ass TL-note (this might be a hot take xd)
With official publishers, they have to make it accessible to everyone and sometimes they get all high and mighty and tone down some stuff or add their own ""interpretation"".
I agree with Remocracy, if the fans are dissatisfied with a scanlation, at least somebody else can redo it and there won't be any takedowns or something.

Yeah, this is probably the most distinguishing thing of fan vs official translation. Some might prefer the professionalism of official translation, but they frequently tone down some translation, making some conversation's meaning lost in translation for the sake of making the translation more accessible to everyone (like, by omitting honorifics or reinterpreting japanese wordplay), which is fine and we need those to get more people interested with manga.

However, I prefer to preserve those linguistic and cultural nuance in the translation, which is what fan translation has done pretty good job at. I appreciate TL notes and "unprofessionalism" like some TL personal reactions commonly seen in the fan-translated manga. Those notes and reactions really remind me that the work is translated by fellow fans who (generally) genuinely love the series instead of someone who are paid by the corporation and need to follow their rules.

Don't get me wrong, I own physical copies of series that I really like, but even for each copies I own, I also read its fan-translated version.

P.S. of course, some fan translations are horrible because nobody forces them to meet certain standard, but what I said before has been the general experience for me.