Scanlation
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Scanlation (sometimes scanslation) is a term used for manga comics which have been scanned and translated by fans and pirates from its native language (usually Japanese or Korean) to another language, commonly English, French or Spanish. Scanlations are generally distributed for free via the Internet, either by direct download, BitTorrent or IRC. The word scanlation comes from Scan and Translation.
Like fansubs, their anime counterparts, scanlations vary widely in the quality of translation, grammar, and spelling. Because they depend on literary rather than spoken language skills, the comparative complexities of written Japanese can present difficulties. A related issue is the practice of scanlating from French or Chinese editions; nuances are lost through the layers of translation. Although, scanlating manga at the most basic level, i.e., replacing Japanese text with English, does not require significant editing skill, scanlation often goes far beyond the basics. Many releases undergo extensive retouching and cleaning before being distributed, though the effort may not be obvious. The written page also allows for extensive yet non-intrusive liner notes in the margins or in additions.
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[edit] Origins
At first, scanlations were undertaken as fan projects because there were few commercial releases in the West, and importing manga was difficult. Friends living in Japan would scanlate a manga for a friend. What may have started out as a favor became a project, and grew from there. Eventually well-organized manga pirate groups were formed, which usually had their own webpage as well as an IRC channel. The latter was arguably more important in shaping the nascent scanlation community because IRC allowed real-time interaction between the group staff and the target audience. IRC allowed the groups to easily recruit new staff and also provided a means to distribute the scanlations via fileservers (commonly called "fserves"). These fserves, which could be created by anyone in the IRC channel, helped reduce the burden of distributing the manga scanlations. This act has been recently called scanlation piracy.
The earliest organized manga scanlation pirates mostly had their channels located in the IRC network DALnet. Examples of these groups include Mangaproject, Mangascreener, Manga-Sketchbook, and Omanga. Network instability and a later ban on file transfers eventually forced a move to a new home, mIRCx. This period was notable for probably having the greatest centralization of manga channels, i.e. the vast majority of the channels were located here. A sustained denial-of-service (DOS) attack caused the network to close shop. This prompted a second move to the network Irchighway, where presently most channels are located. However a fair number are located at Irctoo, as well as several at Rizon.
The scanlation scene is younger than the anime fansub one; most of the older organized groups were founded after the year 2000. Recent years have been marked by an explosive increase in the number of groups and consequently, scanlated manga available. Several sites including Dailymanga, Manga Jouhou, and Baka-Updates list daily releases and maintain databases on projects and scanlation groups. These sites can be used for tracking releases, searching by genre, looking for synopses, and so on.
A few people today probably do scanlations simply because they want to see their favorite manga unedited (no missing scenes, flipped panels, etc.), which has occurred especially for manga that is aimed at a younger audience, such as the popular Dragon Ball series. The Dragon Ball portion of the manga released in North America is now released uncut due to fan demand.
Recently, most new anime is fansubbed, and much of it is also sooner or later licensed for distribution by companies around the world. However, due to the sheer number of manga series in Japan (which has the largest market for comics in the world), this will probably never be the case for manga. Scanlations are often done to translate manga to a language it never would be in otherwise. A dramatic example being the few groups who focus on alternative and/or adult oriented manga (seinen and josei manga) that tend to be overlooked by publishers in favor of more popular shōjo, shōnen, or manga aimed at anime otaku.
[edit] Legal and ethical issues
By the letter of copyright law (such as the Berne Convention), scanlation is illegal.
It is almost never prosecuted, and like fansubbing, scanlation is viewed by many fans as an acceptable way to read manga which has had no official translation published in their own language. Most scanlators, like fansubbers, stop distributing scanlations for manga that have been licensed, and advise fans of the manga in question to buy the official translation.
Historically, copyright holders have not requested scanlators to stop distribution before a work is licensed in the translated language; thus, scanlators have felt it is relatively safe to translate and scan manga. However, they do so at their own risk. The risk was accentuated on February 14 and October 31, 2004, when Kodansha, Ltd. sent cease and desist letters to the scanlator site Snoopycool. Of late, fansubbers have also received such notifications, like Media Factory's request to stop the translation of their works, such as Gankutsuou and Genshiken. This may signal a change in the attitudes of original copyright holders in regards to how much they tolerate fan-translated material.
On the other hand, licensing companies (such as Del Rey Manga, TOKYOPOP, and VIZ Media) have used the response to various scanlations as a factor in deciding which manga to buy licenses to translate. Said TOKYOPOP's Steve Kleckner in regard to scanlation, "And, hey, if you get 2,000 fans saying they want a book you've never heard of, well, you gotta go out and get it."[1]. Toren Smith (a long-time translator) is quoted in his blog as saying "I know from talking to many folks in the industry that scanslations DO have a negative effect. Many books that are on the tipping point will never be legally published because of scanslations."[2].
On occasion, some scanlators feel that certain manga series need to be translated by fans to preserve it from what is perceived as abusive or harmful censorship or editing. Some will continue scanlating regardless of licensing, while others will restart stopped translation if they feel professional translation companies are not doing a series properly. Most unhappy fans who with this feeling tend to follow the motto "If they don't do it right, then they don't have the right to do it (exclusively)."
Scanlators do not have access to the original editors, creators, or the artwork itself. Licensed editions have generally have a consistently high level of quality due to these extra options when works are translated.
In recent years, web sites have cropped up that attempt to profit from the work that scanlation groups do for free, by providing the more technologically challenged manga fans easier-to-use HTTP downloads for a monthly fee. Most people in the community regard this as highly unethical.
[edit] Censorship
Western cultural norms differ from Japanese cultural norms. In the early days of localized releases of manga, story editing and minor censoring occurred in some series, such as the original American release of Dragon Ball. While large scale editing is no longer a common practice of translation companies, it still occurs regularly on a small scale. Real story changes are not common and rarely occur at all, though name changes into a local vernacular do infrequently happen. On the other hand, visual editing is fairly commonplace, though its degree varies.
Many popular manga series, to varying degrees, will show topless nudity. Displays of female undergarments (namely bras and panties) are also very common. It is a regular translation company practice to simply white-out the nipples on exposed breasts or draw some cover over the showing undergarment.
Most fans that buy licensed manga from companies accept this unobtrusive censorship, usually because most licensed series are not of a distinctly strong mature theme. There are however marked exceptions.
In the American release of the manga series titled I"s by the popular author Masakazu Katsura, exposed nipples were censored, though not with traditional white-outs but instead by placing small five-pointed stars over the offending nipples. This obvious and obtrusive censorship received strong criticism by avid fans of Katsura's work.
Similar was the release of the Tenjho Tenge manga by DC Comics' CMX. CMX decided to heavily censor and alter the content of the Tenjho Tenge series due to its prevalent 'adult' themes. These edits mostly consisted of covering of exposed undergarments and mild nudity. This was done to enable a change in the target age group market. Without such edits the T (13 years and older) rating could not have been achieved. The previous equivalent rating in Japan would have been considerably higher if directly translated into American ratings.
[edit] Community
The scanlation community is similar to the fansubs community and the video game fan translation community, with various degrees of overlap. Many scanlation readers also watch fansubs, and were often introduced to scanlations some way or another through their interest in anime. A fair share of these people, who have the opportunity to directly compare the two media, often regard the manga superior to the anime of a particular series, although this is not always the case. This is often based on the observation that most anime tend to slow down the pace of the original storyline by using methods such as prolonging the "recap from previous episodes" period in the beginning of the show, the use of long holding, meaningless frames and the use of "recap episodes" in an attempt to stretch the length of the entire series. These "dragging" technique can often be seen in long running anime series such as Dragonball and Naruto.
Some scanlation readers fear their favorite series will be licensed and be poorly translated or censored by the licensor. Others hope that the fanbase generated by the scanlation will encourage licensing of the work so they can purchase English-language tankōbon of the manga.
Many fans, however, disagree with scanlations on the basis that there is a simple alternative that supports the creators of the manga: instead of editing the translations into digitized images, they can be placed online as a stand-alone text file which can be printed and used to read a legitimately purchased manga tankōbon. This was the norm in the earlier days of fandom; though it is still a copyright violation, it is a morally preferable option for many.
[edit] Process
The scanlation process involves several steps, starting with procurement of source material and ending with distribution. While the details of each step may vary from group to group, the basic procedures are essentially the same.
[edit] 1. Scanning
Scanning, simply put, involves scanning the manga, thus transforming the printed page into an image which can easily be manipulated. The scanner (as the person in charge of scanning is called) is often the one that purchases the manga, which is generally either a manga magazine or a tankōbon. Scanning from a magazine has the advantage that it can provide the very latest chapter of the series. However, since most manga magazines use low quality, newsprint-grade paper and a cheap printing process, those scans are often poor. Tankōbons, on the other hand, provide significantly superior scans, at the cost of waiting until they are actually available for purchase. Since most tankōbons are simply compilations of the serial magazine chapters that have been published so far, that wait can range anywhere from a couple of months to more than a year. Because of this, a group might release an early low-quality (LQ) version based on a manga magazine and later follow it up with a high-quality (HQ) tankōbon-based version. However, this approach is labor-intensive, so most groups stick with a single source.
In order to get scans of better quality, many scanners debind the magazine or tankōbon, i.e. separate the individual pages from the spine. (Methods include cutting the spine carefully, microwaving the whole book or ironing the spine, to loosen the glue.) This allows the pages to lie flat against the scanner bed, preventing the formation of shadowing artifacts that would normally occur in the middle due to the presence of a spine. One major advantage is that it allows better scanning of two-page spreads, so that they can more easily be fused during the editing step.
[edit] 2. Translation
The second step in scanlation is the key step -- translation. The scans of the manga are forwarded to a translator, who translates the manga to a target language. Typically the source language is Japanese, but Chinese is a close second due to the large Chinese manga market and often greater availability of Chinese translators. In recent years, scanlators who translate Korean manga (manhwa) into English have also emerged. The target language for most scanlations is English, followed by French. Scanlation groups in other languages such as German or Spanish exist but are of small number.
As well as being the most important step, translation is also the most difficult. Ideally, the translator is fluent in both the source and target languages so that beyond conveying the basic meaning, s/he can recognize nuances and subtleties and find appropriate equivalents in the target language. Particularly if Japanese is the source, the translator should be familiar with the Japanese culture, as manga often contain cultural references and allusions. To compound translation difficulties further, Japanese manga is loaded with puns and wordplays that are essentially impossible to translate. Given all of these demands on the translator, it is not surprising that translations vary widely in quality. Some translations are too literal and are said to be too "stiff", whereas some translations are too liberal and lose the original meaning. A good translation balances the two extremes; it maintains fidelity to the original language (not too lax) while being easily comprehensible at the same time (not too literal).
Translators are usually the scarcest resource in the scanlation process, especially Japanese to English (J-E) translators. Given the wider availability of people fluent in both Chinese and English, some groups translate from the Chinese version of a manga instead of the original Japanese. This form of translation is ultimately inferior to a direct Japanese-English translation since some meaning is invariably lost in the first translation. The use of a Chinese-based translation is deemed acceptable in many cases simply because of the lack of J-E translators.
To facilitate greater understanding among scanlation readers, notes are sometime placed on the pages themselves (liner notes) or as an addendum at the end of a chapter. Liner notes are particularly useful in clarifying puns & wordplays that are lost in the translation. Sound effects (SFX) translations are also a form of liner notes and are positioned to correspond to particular panels. End notes on the other hand have more space and allow longer and more detailed explanations when necessary. Most scanlations do not have end notes.
[edit] 3. Editing
After translation is finished, the text and scans are forwarded to the editor. The basic job of the editor is to remove the Japanese text from the scans and replace it with the corresponding English translation (this discussion assumes a J-E scanlation). This requires an image editor such as Adobe Photoshop (which is the overwhelming favorite).
Scanlation groups have different approaches to editing. Some groups hand the unedited manga scans (called "raws") to a single person (the "editor"), who then is entirely in charge of producing the final scanlation. Other groups have more specialized subdivisions. For example, the raws can be first passed to a "cleaner" who processes the scans to make them more presentable. Afterwards, the scan is passed to an "editor" who removes the Japanese text and processes the scans so that they are ready for the "typesetter", who places the translation on the scans. Combinations of these roles are common, for example the scanner might also be the cleaner, the editor is the typesetter; in extreme cases one person might take on all roles (including translation) and release scanlations single-handedly. The specifics of the process are unique to the team or editor but several basic approaches can be pointed out.
A raw typically first undergoes cleaning. This includes leveling, in which the gray artifact on white areas (mostly a product of the paper used in books/magazines) are corrected and converted to white; the black areas (which tend to be gray instead of black due to the printing process) are also adjusted to a purer black. An editor then corrects any unwanted rotation of the original artwork, aligning it to vertical/horizontal as well as possible, and possibly even corrects any skewing of the page. Adjusting the margins so that they are equal is also common practice. The raw can then be resized to the desired height and width, or be kept at original size throughout the editing process. After these preliminary steps have been completed, the translation can be edited in. Once the cleaning, the edits are saved in a specific image format. The JPEG format used to be the format of choice (and still is for color images) but it has been increasingly superseded by PNG, which compresses losslessly (however, small file size is obtained by limiting the available number of different shades to around 32, which is enough for most types of manga, except a few richer pages).
The last step is Quality Checking (QCing) in which all aspects of the edit e.g. grammar, spelling, font choices, text placement, and any simple editing mistakes such as over-leveling during the cleaning process described. are reviewed. The quality checker is often someone with experience in editing but is too busy to do a full-scale chapter. The end result is a final edit which is then packaged in a compressed format for convenience, usually either ZIP or RAR. Usually, an additional credits page is included but some place credits within the manga itself, such as in the title page or at the margins.
Scanlations differ very widely in editing quality. Some groups are content to release poorly-edited magazine-based scans filled with grammatical and spelling errors, while others release material of exceptional quality. These are often termed LQ (low-quality) and HQ (high-quality) releases respectively (the HQ label was originally created by Mangaproject to distinguish their scanlations). In this regard some general principles apply. First, LQ scanlations are typically released quickly while HQ ones are slower to come. This has mainly to do with the time it takes to do an HQ release, e.g. editing SFX, doing several proofreading cycles, etc., although using slower-released tankōbons is another factor.
Second, each group has its own measure of acceptable quality, which changes infrequently. That is why some scanlation teams can be consistently branded as "HQ groups" while others are regarded as "LQ groups." For some teams, it is probably not an issue of quality but speed that is their primary concern. This is especially true for multiple groups working on a single series. Here the goal is to beat others to a release, with quality only a secondary consideration. Using scans from manga magazines does not necessarily condemn a release to be an LQ one, well-made magazine-based scans can be edited to make them look as good as poorly made tankōbon-based ones. In summary, the factors that influence the quality of a scanlation would include the source of the scans, the skill of the editors, and the amount of time and effort the group is willing to spend on the manga.
One common misconception regarding the editing step of scanlation is that "it's easy and just about anybody can do it". For high-quality releases, this is quite far from the truth. Editing requires a variety of skills that are needed to handle the unique nature of manga. For example, Japanese text is commonly placed over artwork. Since Japanese characters are broader than average English characters (letters or numbers), placing English text over erased Japanese text will leave significant and glaring gaps. The editor corrects this by reconstructing the said areas, a skill often termed redrawing. Manga is also characterized by ubiquitous sound effects that often appear as large Japanese characters slapped over the artwork. Some groups translate and edit these SFX, but many do not because of the tedious nature in redrawing the backgrounds so obscured. Another example is two-page spreads, where continuous artwork is spread over two pages. Even if the pages of the spread are unbound from the spine and scanned properly, a perfect fit is almost impossible to achieve. The editor is then tasked to piece together the spread, using various tools such as the clone brush, bezier curves and pen tool, etc. All of these image manipulations can only be appreciated if the original scan and final product are compared. Since most scanlation readers do not have access to the original scans, they often underestimate the extent of editing involved.
[edit] 4. Distribution
The final step in the scanlation process involves delivering the release to the target audience (termed "leechers" in some cases, especially for the more popular series), and include direct download (HTTP), FTP, IRC, and Bittorrent (BT). Scanlation teams may offer direct downloads on their website or on mirror sites, and sites not maintained by scanlators also offer direct downloads. Since most teams also have IRC channels, they are utilized as an avenue for distribution via fileservers ("fserves") and bots. However transfers via IRC are often plagued by difficulties in sending and receiving, which stem from firewalls, hostmasks, and improperly-configured fserves. Manga scanlations are also infrequently available via FTP, but usually not as a primary distribution method. The information needed to access these FTPs is available only within IRC. Recently Bittorrent has emerged as a popular method of distributing releases and is advantageous in that downloaders can help by sharing their bandwidth. Given all these methods of distribution, manga scanlations are easily accessible to anyone with an internet connection and has the distinct advantage over anime in being much smaller in size. Single chapters may be as small as 2-3 megabytes and rarely exceed 15-20 MB; an average chapter usually falls within the 5-8 MB range.
[edit] References
- Scanlation Nation: Amateur Manga Translators Tell Their Stories - The Comics Journal
[edit] Footnotes
[edit] External links
- Manga Jouhou - Scanlation groups and releases, unlicensed manga only.
- Daily Manga - Scanlation groups and releases, English and French scanlation groups (mostly English)
- Baka-Updates Manga - Database containing information on scanlation groups and releases.
- Manglish: Manga in English - English translations of Japanese indie manga appear by mousing over word balloons.
- Manga editing FAQ - Page describing the editing process of scanlation.
- Wikilation - Wiki containing scanlation processes. (Now open for public editing)
