Two things make a post?

[telophase]

(1) If you attend A-Kon and have an iOS device, there's now an app for it! Search for "A-Kon" in the App Store, or click here for the iTunes Store. Official app page on the A-Kon site.

It's by myrialux, and feel free to send in suggestions for it. Known issues: the font size in the newsfeeds, and not having an Android version. We're working on both: trying to figure out how to control the font size, and talking to an Android developer.

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(2) Second thing: I got my info back from the Digital Manga Guild and, woo, I passed the Editor test! So ... have any of you passed the translator test and/or the lettering test? Wanna form a group?

Comments

[yhlee]

Re: (3) They must be doing them in batches or something! Sadly, I also passed as an editor. I am probably screwed at this point, but oh well, it was interesting to try.

[telophase]

Poking through the forums, there seem to be a lot of editors and typesetters, and not too many translators. :)

Although depending on how much time it takes to do each part, I suspect one translator could feed to one editor, who could feed to two typesetters, or the translator could feed to two editors, who each feed to a typesetter.

[yhlee]

Somehow those proportions do not surprise me. But I have posted there in case anyone is looking for an extra editor, who knows. :-D

[telophase]

I may be posting over there if nothing's coming up here. We're probably all fighting over the same few translators, though!

[franzeska]

Me! Me! I passed as a translator. Save me from the horror of wading through all of the "LOL, I'm a perv!" forum posts. D:

[telophase]

Yes! Yay!

I went ahead and posted last night on the forum and wow there were a lot of editors. XD And lots of I LOVE YAOI!!!!!

[franzeska]

\0/

I just saw your post. I'm going through all of them now. Some people have such great posts, and others...

Any thoughts on a typesetter? And do you want to be the contact?

[telophase]

Yes, I was wondering at some of the people who were, say, claiming they *could* do the editing properly while engaging in netspeak-type antics in their posts.

And did you like my attempt to code "I'm not a prima donna who insists that my wording is the ONLY WAY POSSIBLE, especially if the words don't fit into the speech bubble properly" with all that 'communication' stuff? XD I was a bit nervous after seeing some previous questions elsewhere in the forum, with people talking about working with others who refused for anything to be changed or questioned.

I can't remember if anyone else I know on DW/LJ did the typesetting test. I'll be poking through my f-list to see if anyone posts about it, then the forums are the last resort, I guess. :D (I did have vague thoughts of trying the typesetting test earlier, but rejected it because wow, that's a lot of additional work. OTOH, if there's nobody acceptable, then I could do it in the second round of testing coming up...)

ETA; Forgot to add - yeah, I can be the contact if nobody else wants to be. :)

[franzeska]

Oh god, the One True Way translators. I tend to translate pretty idiomatically in the first place, but some editing for consistency and flow never hurt anybody, even aside from making the text fit the bubbles and typo-hunting.

Hee. Your post was great. It actually gives some idea what you'd be like to work with. "Plz e-mail for details" is... not what I'd post in what's essentially a job ad. I feel about a hundred years old reading some of those ads. If I were 14, I think I'd still feel about a hundred years old. I need to get a cane to bang and a lawn to order kids off of.

Some of the typesetters advertising their services seem to have all this great background, but they also don't seem to have read the forum posts announcing that the typesetting will be done on some kind of proprietary system they haven't shown us yet, not Photoshop or whatever else people are used to using. (So I'm more worried about general flexibility and a lack of One True Way ideas from the person's previous scanlation experiences than super advanced skills.) I'd love to find somebody one of us at least vaguely knows or who's a friend of a friend or something given that money and deadlines are involved.

I keep searching LJ and DW, but I've barely even seen people discussing the digital manga guild, let alone talking about actually taking the tests or getting their test results. I get the feeling a lot of people are waiting to see if it takes off.

Did you have any thoughts on workload, even vague general preliminary ones? They haven't been all that forthcoming with details, but it sounds like we'll be able to choose between different packages of 3-5 volumes. I don't have any strong feelings about which artists or content we do (though if there's something with an interesting historical setting, I'd love to do that).

[telophase]

Yeah, I noticed the graphic artists and layout pros talking about their preferences and wondered about that, too.

I may post soon asking if anyone knows of someone who passed the typesetter test and is looking for a group. I'd like to have a group in which we can easily all go back and forth and check each other and make suggestions, and explain why we did something this way, etc.

As far as workload - I'd prefer to have a 3-volume set at first, just until we get a feel for how quickly and well we can do it, but I suspect there may be lots of other people with the same idea! It might rest on the shoulders of the typesetter - I'm assuming that that will be the part of the job that takes the longest, but I might be surprised. At any rate, if a 5-volume set seems to be the best and most available option, I'd be happy to go with that.

Interesting historical settings would be nifty! Other than that, no particular preference. I wonder if we'd be able to add a page or so at the end to explain historical things, or talk about cultural issues in the translation, etc.? That's something I always like to see in translated manga.