×
  • remind me tomorrow
  • remind me next week
  • never remind me
Subscribe to the ANN Newsletter • Wake up every Sunday to a curated list of ANN's most interesting posts of the week. read more

Forum - View topic
Why does it take longer to fan-translate manga than anime?




Anime News Network Forum Index -> General -> Manga
View previous topic :: View next topic  
Author Message
Samuknight



Joined: 25 Mar 2015
Posts: 35
PostPosted: Sat Sep 15, 2018 8:27 pm Reply with quote
I notice manga takes much longer time to get translated than anime does. Granted (at least in the United States) there is far more demand for the latest hits in Japan to be subtitled and uploaded online than for manga to be scanlated and very few casual anime viewers would even read a manga unless its the source material of a show they finished and fell in love with.

But still I noticed the availibility at least in the English language online is disproportionate for other medium. For example many hit or classic anime adaptations cana lready be found online in complete episodes. Even those currently translated gets more episodes on a monthly bases than manga gets new scanlated chapters on a yearly bases. To use a specific example the entire Rose of Versailles TV series have been availible online back as far as the early 2000s. While the manga only got the first 3 volumes translated prior to to 2009 and new chapters only began to be scanned in 2011. It took until this year for the very final chapter to be released!

Saint Seiya is another example. As early as 2003 new episodes were being subbed on a VERY CONSISTENT basis. The manga was being scanned too but inconsistently. Even though Saint Seiya has a much bigger fandom than Rose of Versailles, comparible to Dragon Ball internationally, scanlations remained dormant until 2012. Even now the manga is not yet availible in its entirety in English online. Granted Saint Seiya is a much more complex case in which copyright issues went at odds with scanlations and its the very reason why the final Hades ac was scanlated and released online first before new chapters came and to this day scanlators are nervous about releasing new chaps because Viz still holds the license.

But come on! Even small 2-volume series seem nonexistent online. I can find more complete "obscure" anime episodes online than I can find complete English translations of even manga that have big fandoms in the States but were not yet officially released in the United States.

What is the reason for this? WOuldn't manga be quicker to translate as opposed to anime because anime involves putting matching texts with to match the scene (VERY ******* HARD TO DO!!!). Furthermore manga is still pictures with KANJI on it. I doubt most subbers could find raw anime vids with kanji subtitles so they would need fluent understanding of verbal Japanese to even hope to translate a sentence. This alone makes manga far easier to translate.

Can anyone explain the logic? Christ many classic obscure stuff such as Hana no Ko Lunlun got a tleast an episode or two or a movie or OVA subbed but there is no single chapter scanlation availible (Hana no Ko Lunlun is one example-good luck even finding raw manga scans).
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message
Brand



Joined: 30 Jan 2006
Posts: 1028
PostPosted: Wed Nov 14, 2018 2:09 pm Reply with quote
I think it has a lot less to do with the difficulty of translating the materials and more to do what which medium is more popular. And by far anime is way more popular than manga in the states. I used to be a manga moderator for a DB website. And the stats (at the time I was still a moderator) show was anime was way, way more active and used than the manga.

I will use "One Piece" as an example and the number of users that have it on their lists.
Anime - 775,591 users
Manga - 226,400 users

The top rated anime on the same site has 1,300,924 (Full Metal Alchemist) users. The top rated manga (Berserk) only 210,073.
(The FMA manga (which it has been officially translated into English and complete for years) is #3 on the Top manga and only has 160,511 users.)

So, I would infer there are more people interested in translating anime since there are just more people watching anime over reading manga.

Plus, I would also guess while some people do translate for themselves they would still like people to actually see their work. And some manga just ends up not getting that well read.

There is another reason I can think of that does come back to difficulty. While in the last few years the digital distribution of manga has taken off and from what I can see most scanlators use the digital files. But before the advent of digital distribution for manga required someone to actually scan the manga (hence the term scanlator). Which would require owning the manga and taking the time to scan it. One you generally destroy the manga in the process (it is taken apart to scan). Two scanning is tedious and requires just enough attention to be annoying. Where ripping a Blu ray/DVD can be a much more passive process.

There are a few other things I think affect this situation but I think these are the big reasons you see way more anime translated into English vs Manga.
Back to top
View user's profile Send private message Visit poster's website My Anime My Manga
Display posts from previous:   
Reply to topic    Anime News Network Forum Index -> General -> Manga All times are GMT - 5 Hours
Page 1 of 1

 


Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group