Field Notes
Short observations
Translation choices that stopped us cold. A forum thread from 2007 that explains something about today. A glossary term that everyone uses but nobody defines. Published occasionally, when there's something worth noting rather than on any schedule.
Reading Japanese onomatopoeia as a translator
Sound effects in manga are drawn, not typed. The translator's job isn't to look them up — it's to understand what kind of sound they're representing and find an English equivalent that has the same visual and emotional weight. This turns out to be harder than translating plot-relevant dialogue by some margin.
What "raw" means in scanlation, and why it matters
A raw is the untranslated source material — usually a scan, sometimes a digital rip. The quality of the raw determines the ceiling for everything downstream. A soft raw produces soft text. A mis-cropped raw produces mis-cropped panels. The word gets used casually, but what it refers to is the foundation of the whole pipeline.
The difference between a translator and a translation editor
These are two different roles that often get conflated. The translator converts Japanese to English. The editor takes that English and makes it read naturally — fixes awkward constructions, smooths register inconsistencies, catches phrases that are technically accurate but sound wrong in context. Not every group has both, and you can tell.