translatoranon

[translatoranon]

Omg welcome back and congratulations on huge great news!

Also huge thanks again to you and everyone in fwpa for introducing me to my first 10/10, jitsu wa

jitsu wa was the work of our beloved T, i kinda looked at it from the side and shrugged

THANKS i can't wait to ora ora get pregnant

[translatoranon]

Dunno if you still check this but yo, I worked with you for a super short time as AnonPeach. Someone brought up Shugo Chara recently and it reminded me of FwPA. I've since graduated with a degree in Japanese/Linguistics, did JET way too long and am about to pursue translation/interpretation in Australia! Hope you're doing well!

AY YO THIS SLAPS????? HELL YEAH

so glad you decided to become a turbo weeb and are pursuing translation! feel free to dm me here, i'll add you on linked in :^)

[translatoranon]

not to sound rude or anything but, are you alive?

i am very alive! i just only remember tumblr every 2-3 years

I left the gaming industry and went back to anime, and shit is pretty tight. still working professionally, doing anime, manga, all that shit.

I'd say more but this is the internet, and I've done a good job at separating my professional life from my past degeneracy.

I got married a few years ago to my scanlation boyfriend. we're planning on having kids soon.

I met up with the Pretty Anon guys at AX this year. really glad to see everyone's still doing well.

[translatoranon]

PLEASE MAKE A DISCORD Server, I WANT TO BE ABLE TO TALK WITY YOU, AND THANK YOU FOR THE GUIDES YOU MADE. I LITERALLY STARTED WITHOUT ANY KNOWLEGE IN THIS NEW WORLD OF MANGA... GOING FORM A READER TO A SCANLATOR, THIS WAS ALL MADE POSSIBLE BECAUSE OF THE PHOTOSHOP SKILLS I LEARNED FORM YOU. I sincerely thank you.

fwpa has a discord server, but it is not for the unwashed masses, my apologies

you may thank me upon this post with your finest gifs, good gentleanon

[translatoranon]

So you figured it out everything yourself in 2008 about scanlating then went pro as a translator in 2014 to present. I'm just a typesetter who learned much stuff from your guide. Thank you Anon! I'm wondering where could I go pro as a typesetter?

Pretty much all the big-name manga/hentai companies are always looking for decent typesetters. You could also look into the comic industry, but you’ll have a rough time without experience. I bet there are free comic creators / artists that would love to work with an aspiring typesetter?

[translatoranon]

Hi Anonblack, how is life during those tiring times? All good? Family, job, free time?

America is falling apart, but at least I have a job.

Engaged to the guy I met on /a/. Picked up some more contracts with big-time entertainment companies. Looking into changing jobs pretty soon ‘cause I get paid like ass in the gaming industry. Managing my mental health as best I can.

Live your dreams, catboys, catgirls, and nyanbinary friends.

[translatoranon]

As a manga translator, are you paid by the page or by character count (like novels)? If it's either, what do you think is a fair rate to charge? I've often argued with people over the costs of this and just wanted to see what category a fellow pro falls into.

Paid by the volume.

Depends on the company, but most pay between $600-$900USD a volume.

and to think i did it for free all those fuckin years

[translatoranon]

Just happen to find your name through a series (collab with acme) that was listed as '7 years ago' on mangaupdates.. Woooow. I fell to temptation when clicking on 'helpful links' on your blog, but all the links are broken TT Any suggestions on where to go for reference/guide for a rookie scanlator?

use our guides :^ )

[translatoranon]

I miss your shenanigans on /a/ back in the day, really made the place better at times. I hope 2019 so far has been good for you. BTW, is FwPA dead now? I can't get on the site. ;(

As far as I know, it’s alive? I think they’ve had issues with the site though.

2019 has been fantastic. My career only continues to move forward.

I haven’t forgotten where I come from.

[translatoranon]

Happy 10th Anniversary,fwpa.

Ten years ago, I released the very first chapter of a manga I’d translated very poorly. It was well-received by a rabid fandom, which sparked my love of translation.

I named myself after Cure Black, a bad-ass magical girl.

Ten years later, I sent in the official subtitle script for the twelfth episode of a popular anime series that will have my name in the credits. Then, I got into my car and drove to the major game company I work for full-time.

A figurine of Cure Black sits beside my office phone and official business card.

Never stop following your dreams. Never forget where you came from.

Happy 10th birthday, Futari wa Pretty Anon.

[translatoranon]

presented without commentary or apology

[translatoranon]

Your font guide is so helpful ;_; Thank you so much for making it. I've been trying to find the name of the font in your Guide 5—the one with heart as dots for i's and which is typed "Special, Silly, and Fonts for Titles". I would be so happy if you helped me identify this font. I've tried all the font identifier websites but no luck ;_;

Sorry for the late reply-- I looked three separate times to find that fucking font and not even I can find it. I made it on an older computer, so there’s a chance the font didn’t make it over with me. Maybe someone else can find it for you -- sorry bruh!

[translatoranon]

Hello! I just happen to stumble upon your guide (actually... a lot of scanlation groups directs to your page).My question is pretty easy... How many years you've been doing professional translation work? (I'm just curious...)

Oh shit, sorry, just saw this.

I’ve been a professional (as in >not doing it for free) for four years now. While I can’t list the stuff I’ve worked on / companies I’ve worked for because of doxxing, etc, I can confirm that I’ve been an official translator for licensed anime, manga, and a few indie vidya titles.

It’s fun.

[translatoranon]

[translatoranon]

help him 

[translatoranon]

A really interesting article about how babies learn Japanese. Excerpt: 

Nissan, Toyota, Honda — three universally recognized car manufacturers, two of which are also common Japanese surnames. If you ask an English speaker to tell you which name is longest, they’ll say Toyota, with its three syllables. A Japanese speaker, on the other hand, will say Nissan. This difference reveals a lot about the underlying rhythms used in human vocal communication, says developmental neurolinguist Reiko Mazuka of the RIKEN Brain Science Institute, and also casts doubt on universal theories of language-learning that are mostly based on studies of English speakers.

So why is Nissan longer to Japanese ears? It’s all based on ‘mora’, a counter of linguistic rhythm that is distinct from stress (like in German or English) or syllable (like in French). Most people are familiar with this pattern of counting from haiku, the five–seven–five pattern that defines the classical Japanese meter. The ‘syllables’ in haiku aren’t really syllables but rather morae. Nissan thus has four morae of equal duration (ニッサン or ni-s-sa-n), rather than just the two syllables picked up by Western ears.

But Japanese babies are not born with an internal mora counter, and this is what got Mazuka so interested in returning to Japan from the United States, where she completed her PhD and still maintains a research professorship at Duke University. “The Japanese language doesn’t quite fit with the dominant theories,” she says, “and I used to think this was because Japanese was exceptional. Now my feeling is, Japanese is not an exception. Rather, what works for English is not universal” in terms of mechanisms for language learning.

Mazuka’s lab on the outskirts of Tokyo studies upwards of 1,000 babies a year, and she explains that infants start to recognize mora as a phonemic unit at about 10 months of age. “Infants have to learn how duration and pitch are used as cues in language,” she says. And Japanese is one of the few languages in the world that contains duration-based phonemic contrasts — what English speakers think of as short and long vowels, for example — that can distinguish one mora from two morae. Dominant ideas in the field suggest all babies, from birth, use rhythm as a ‘bootstrap’ to start segmenting sounds into speech, first identifying whether they are dealing with a syllable- or stress-based language. “The theory says that rhythm comes first, but Japanese babies can’t count morae until they’re almost a year old,” Mazuka exclaims. “You can’t conclude that rhythm is the driving force of early phonological development, when evidence from Japanese babies shows it’s not an a prioriunit.”

Read the whole thing.

[translatoranon]

[ẽ̞ẽẽ̝] - That’s the way you mumble ‘I dunno’, and it has implications for the nature of meaning

I always used to get into trouble with my mum for reducing ‘I don’t know’ into nothing more than a three note grunt. But, it turns out that this massive reduction of speech to something that is still meaningful says a lot about the role of prosody.

The transcription of this very very reduced form of ‘I don’t know’ is [ẽ̞ẽẽ̝]. Sarah Hawkins and Rachel Smith used this form to argue that we need a model of understanding speech that takes into account the individual sounds, and the intonation, as well as the way these are processed.

Personally, I just think it’s nifty that someone transcribed one of my bad habits and made it look rather impressive.

From the Hawkins & Smith paper arguing for polysystemic speech understanding:

“Most native speakers of English have an impressively wide variety of ways of conveying the meaning of I do not know. The most common forms probably range between I don’t know and dunno, both of which can be pronounced in a number of different ways. However, there are many other variants, the most extreme forms of which can only be used in particular circumstances. For example, it is hard to say the fully expanded form I do not know without conveying some degree of exasperation. An even more extreme form has pauses between the words (I…do…not…know) and (in most cases) is so rude that it can only be used when the listener does not seem willing to accept that the speaker really does not know. At the other extreme, it is possible— again, only in the right circumstances—to convey one’s meaning perfectly adequately by means of a rather stylized intonation and rhythm, with very weak segmental articulation, ranging between something like [ã̠ᵊ̃nːəʊ] and [ẽ̞ẽẽ̝] (intonation not marked). This type of utterance could allow successful communication between relaxed family members, for example when A asks B where the newspaper is, and B does not know, but does not feel that she needs to stop reading her book in order to help find it. Notice that the intonation pattern alone is not enough: at least the vowels must be there ([m]s will not do), and the vowels must start more open (and probably more fronted) than they finish, just as in the more clearly-spoken utterance, so that, at least in this situational context, [ẽ̝ẽẽ̞] is nonsense whereas [ẽ̞ẽẽ̝] is not.” (Hawkins & Smith 2001, p. 35)

Hawkins, S., and Smith, R. (2001) Polysp: A polysystemic, phonetically-rich approach to speech understanding. Italian Journal of Linguistics—Rivista di Linguistica 13, 99-188. [PDF]