Balancing rl and Fantranslation: it can't always be done

[Clephas]

Balancing fantranslation with the demands of real life is not always possible, a fact that had never occurred to me before the beginning of summer. Before this, whenever I got involved with a translation, I was able to make time to do my part. However, due to the conditions I'm currently working under, it is not practically possible for me to fantranslate.

This is not a particularly unique experience, from what I've seen. Lots of those involved with fantranslations eventually have to make the choice between real life and their work as fantranslators. The model I put up for working a fantranslation, where the project is designed to render any single individual as a replaceable part, was my logical recognition of this reality. The unfortunate part is that I didn't realize that real life could come up behind me with a lead pipe so quickly.

I'm glad that it seems the others are continuing the project without me, but as always I can't help but feel guilty that I don't have the time or means to help at present. After all, I am the one that proposed the project in the first place. At the same time, the most vital member for maintaining a project - the project leader - went absent almost from the beginning, a fact that left me somewhat at a loss, since replacing a project leader is supposed to be that leader's job (by picking a replacement before or as he has to distance himself from the project). Unlike a translator, an editor, or even a tlc, a project leader requires someone with decent organizational skills who is willing to NOT get hands-on with the project itself. In other words, his job isn't to be a quality control freak but to keep the members motivated and keep recruiting new people in to help with the project, even if there doesn't seem to be an immediate need for them at a given moment. In addition, his job is to assign parts for each member - what scripts for an individual tl or editor is to work on and the like. Currently Rus is working that role in a sort of de-facto state, but considering that he has a rl job and is moonlighting with several projects under his normal role as a hacker, having him in that role departs greatly from the original purpose of having a dedicated project leader with no other role but being the project leader.

In other words, people should take the current state of the project as a lesson about how vital it is to be able to replace any single member, no matter what his skill-set is. Fantranslator work lifespans are not generally long, and it isn't unusual for one to last less than six months before real life or general frustration makes him quit. For that reason, a warning to those who take on the role of project leader - you are key to the running of the project but you should be able to replace yourself and make the effort to do so. If you don't have the motivation to continue in your role, find someone who can. The continuance of the project itself should be more important than any single individual member.

PS: I'll probably have some translation time around the middle of August, but that doesn't lessen the importance of the object lesson of my experiences. You never know what life will throw at you, so don't assume you'll be able to continue until the very end.

[Time]

I got involved with that project, and I will do my best to help it be finished. I hope to have you back and get to interact more with you in translation.

[LordBlane]

Yeah, same here We are waiting for your return.

[neonie]

This topic is actually quite helpful to me. I'm trying to learn all I can about what is needed to get into doing this sort of thing. I don't actually have much (see: anything) going on irl, so learning more about what the role and jobs of a project lead are is quite helpful.

[Clephas]

This is the model I proposed:

Project Leader: Is a member not involved with any other step of the process. Primary jobs are recruitment, staying abreast of the gist of his members rl situations (just generalities), making decisions about what parts to assign what people, finding own replacement. Must have at least basic organizational skills and good communication skills (in other words, be able to talk to your fellow members without being annoying and keep them motivated). Preferred number is one, as projects with more than one leader are committees, and nothing gets done in a committee.

Raw translator- Basic job is simple, to translate basic Japanese into essentially corresponding English (or whatever other language they are translating to). Requires solid grammar (a weak vocab can be made up for with access to a dictionary but weak grammar is fatal to translation efforts). Preferred number (varies on game) but at least three. Five or six if you have a project the size of Grisaia or larger.

Editor- Transform the inevitably flawed translated text to real english that doesn't sound awkward inside a person's head as they read. If you can manage this while retaining the meaning of what the translator put down, you've done your job. Preferred number is two, but there should be roughly two for every three translators.

Translation Checker- Fix any translation mistakes without ruining the editor's work (including those caused by the editor's work). Requires translation skills in excess of those possessed by raw translators, must have english skills at least on par with editor. Ideally, same number as editors, but in practical terms the necessary skill-set for an effective translation checker is so rare that most projects will have to settle for one or two.

Hacker- Required personnel to extract text files, organize them, then use them to create a translated patch. Preferred number is one... obviously.

Basic process is hacker(extraction)>translator>editor>translation checker>hacker (patch). Ideally someone should do a few test runs of the patched game to make sure it isn't bugged beyond salvation. Never put editor after tlc, the results are... unfortunate.

[Joshyan]

"No one known what kind of future waiting for us."

I'm fortunate that I have solid work time and a lot of free time to put in FTL project. (4 hours per day)

I know that only few people have free time like me.

I agree that project leader's skill is important for successful project as their role to find replacement of missing member with new recruit and be the center of communication.

[neonie]

Preferred number of leaders is one, as more than one leader are committees, and nothing gets done in a committee.

I know I changed that slightly, but that's how it read in my head, and it might be one of my most favorite things I've ever read.

[REtransInternational]

Ideally someone should do a few test runs of the patched game to make sure it isn't bugged beyond salvation.

You should also verify the patch installation succeeds on a virgin copy of the game, and on the most popular supported OS configurations - we currently do XP, Vista, and 7. Post-release support is also important, to resolve any other issues that may have slipped through.

[SlashZero]

I think there is a contradiction in your ideal project leader role. To do a good job, this person would have to have a passion for the project in question, however that would usually imply they have the qualifications to do translation because they typically would have played the game already. That such a person would be project leader in absence of monetary motivations, but not work on translation in some facet is kind of contradictory to me. (Good translators, or even translators at all, are hard to find.)

[neonie]

That such a person would be project leader in absence of monetary motivations, but not work on translation in some facet is kind of contradictory to me. (Good translators, or even translators at all, are hard to find.)

Contradictory or uncommon?

I am currently organizing a project right now for a game I haven't played. I'm set to lead that project. But I admittedly haven't played the game, my interest in the game is due to other factors such as art style and characters. The reason I haven't played the game is because I can't read (and therfore translate) Japanese.

So my question to you then is:

Do you think it's uncommon that someone interested in a game without having experienced it first hand comes along to start a project.

or

Someone who is leading that project should have played the game, and someone who hasn't played it is unqualified?

[Sparkker]

In the end, a project leader should have interest in that game, has a will to lead and should keep the project alive till it's done.

"Time is Gold but it's hard to keep that Gold in your hands forever, because something/someone will try to steal from you." (PS: I don't even know why I quoted that nor do I know why I created that quote.)

[shcboomer]

I feel like this happens to the bulk of us. Everyone eventually gets swamped with something in real life, and sadly we have to deal with it. I can't speak with too much experience right now, but even the multiple parts of any project are bound to have real life things happen that either slow down progress or stop it entirely. This is a good warning though for anyone that plans to start.

[Joshyan]

Contradictory or uncommon?

I am currently organizing a project right now for a game I haven't played. I'm set to lead that project. But I admittedly haven't played the game, my interest in the game is due to other factors such as art style and characters. The reason I haven't played the game is because I can't read (and therfore translate) Japanese.

So my question to you then is:

Do you think it's uncommon that someone interested in a game without having experienced it first hand comes along to start a project.

or

Someone who is leading that project should have played the game, and someone who hasn't played it is unqualified?

It is hard to answer that question, but that isn't uncommon.

If you keep interesting that game long enough to finish FTL those game, I think it OK not to play that game.

My project leaders are as same as you

In the end, a project leader should have interest in that game, has a will to lead and should keep the project alive till it's done.

"Time is Gold but it's hard to keep that Gold in your hands forever, because something/someone will try to steal from you." (PS: I don't even know why I quoted that nor do I know why I created that quote.)

Time, resource and Man power are the things you need to do something

when something increase, another has to decrease.

nothing is free, even free food isn't free too (you have to get it yourself)

[Eri]

I've to say the broad aspects of this post are applicable to any sort of volunteer project. Those things are so often a labor of love (and under stressed conditions) that people forget to approach it in the same way they would any other long-term task. Not to mention that it tends to create drama.

Stretched further, it can even apply to coursework. Can't say how many times I've had people drop out halfway through a class only to be stuck with cryptic project notes and undecipherable lab work. Even when you've dedicated time slots for something, it doesn't make up for haphazard direction.

[Clephas]

My main reason for saying a leader shouldn't be in one of the other positions is fairly simple... the main reason most projects fail is mental and emotional exhaustion due to overwork, aside from getting the disease otherwise known as 'real life'. Translating, editing, and translation-checking are all positions that eat up time and energy, leaving little extra for other pursuits such as convincing other people to keep going in the face of their own exhaustion. To be blunt, translation and editing fry the brain. Someone with a fried brain isn't up to the clear thinking necessary to keep up with coordinating a project. Not only that, increasing stress factors unnecessarily makes it that more likely that the individual in question will experience 'burn out'. This is all the worse for the project if the individual in question is a translator or a tlc, both of which are hard to recruit in the first place. Editors as leaders is slightly less problematic, but the same problems pop up, if at a later date. Hackers are out of the question as leaders, not because they can't do it but because most hackers are moonlighting numerous projects already, and adding to their burdens unnecessarily is not exactly an intelligent choice.

Last of all, it is quite possible to be enthusiastic for a project even if you haven't played the game in question. Testimonials and reviews by those that have played the games, as well as the lust of those who don't know Japanese for more VNs in the genres they prefer lead to a degree of enthusiasm that frequently surpasses those who - like me - have no need for English patches.

[morisummer]

I think you're going a bit far with this. Not everyone who works on fan translations gets exhausted from TLing/editing/hacking. A lot of people in this community genuinely enjoy what they do. I personally am in the military working normally 45 hour work weeks, sometimes extending into 84 hour work weeks. When I come home, I play some DotA 2 with my friends, but there's a lot of downtime when it comes to playing with friends, so you know what I do to entertain myself during that time? I start working on the editing project, and it's quite frankly, relaxing. I get an hour or two of work done per day, which in comparison to many people out there, is quite a bit (though nowhere near what some people in my group do).

It's different for everyone. For you to insinuate that certain people can't handle certain tasks is a bit presumptuous. I've seen leaders of successful projects of all types. Some are exactly how you think a leader should be, such as being dedicated, fair, and all that. Some leaders are lazy cunts who show up once in a blue moon because they have managed to land the jackpot when recruiting members. I've never seen the role of the leader in the project as ever being a problem. Who cares if you're a hacker/editor/TL? If you are a leader that takes the time to make sure the project is a success, nothing else should matter. Hell, you don't even need to be passionate about the project. You just have to... well... DO it, and do it RIGHT. In my mind, that's the only requirement of a leader.

And this is all assuming that I think that assigning a leader is important. Which I don't. Rather than assigning one, I think having a leader naturally reveal himself as you work on a project is much more beneficial. I realize there might be internal strife if you don't assign a leader, but if there's that much conflict in the first place, you have bigger problems than not assigning a leader. We're all grown adults (hopefully). We don't need someone at the top demanding things from us when we're working for free. I want to be part of a team, not a hierarchy. Anyone can organize things. Anyone can recruit people. Anyone can receive people in IRC and see if they fit the bill. Over time, the people that can perform this task will reveal itself, and you can let them be the sole recruiters. You don't need to smack the label of leader on them.

Anyways, I said what I wanted to say. Please don't take any of this personally. I just think you're sending the wrong message to the community.

[Clephas]

I can see why you would see it that way. However, to be quite frank... most people who do this are doing it on a whim or at least start out that way. In addition, groups that don't form a strong leadership from the beginning tend to dissolve in mid-project or stall for months or years at a time. While I loved working with various groups in a friendly 'no one is in charge even in name' atmosphere, things tended to collapse the second someone who formed the core of the group dropped out. Exceptions are those where the group has taken on a life of its own over several 'generations' of members like m.3.3.w. (fansub group specializing in relatively minor series that would otherwise go unsubbed), but for every group like that one there are a dozen or more that collapsed early on or after a single burst of activity, when a core member burned out.

I'm aware that I'm a cynic, but I also care about those who get involved with a given project. No one wants their efforts to be wasted, and all too often, that is exactly what happens with this kind of thing. It's immensely frustrating to find you can't help while things sort of fall apart around you. Worst part is, I'm aware that I am not suited as a leader. I find the tasks of organizing others and making long conversations on what needs to be done at any given moment to be tedious enough to drive me to suicide, and I hate nothing more than repeating myself. Worse is that I found myself in a leadership position early on in my translation career (when I formed a fansub group of my own) and had to give it over to someone else when I realized I didn't have the right type of personality to manage it without driving everybody else insane or burning out from holding my frustration in. Imagine translating an entire series of anime, then seeing that translation sit around doing nothing for a year, simply because nobody is running things and you don't have the right skills to manage a team. An immensely humbling situation, to say the least.

Making it worse is that translators - including me - have an excessively high opinion of themselves once they have a few projects under their belt. Thus, frustration actually wears the average new - but somewhat experienced - translator down more than a newbie or someone who has been around long enough to get over themselves, relax and take things as they come. I simply don't like seeing people repeating the same mistakes over and over without someone who has seen it previously making an effort to inform them of the pitfalls.

My model is primarily designed to reduce the stress on individual members to the minimum, while giving them the freedom to go at their own pace without disrupting the project as a whole. Ideally, this reduces the vague sense of guilt a translator or editor feels when they realize real life is going to force them to give up their translation work while at the same time giving the enthusiastic the leeway they need to push things forward at their own pace. The leader's job in coordinating isn't so much to order people around as to ensure people aren't duplicating one another's work and keep them aware of the fact that the others are working, thus making certain they don't feel isolated, even if they aren't necessarily communicating directly with the rest of the team.

[morisummer]

I don't have a problem with anything you just said, really. I just have a problem with you telling everyone what you think a leader should be. Your standard of a leader, is quite simply, way off. You were pretty much implying that if you have a job other than leader, you can't be leader, and I'm calling bullshit. In fact, you haven't really defined what WOULD be a good leader. You've only given your thoughts on what MIGHT make a BAD leader. It's a silly train of thought that should stop early. Although I haven't ever been a leader of a translation group, I really highly doubt that it takes so much work to be one. Finding good members is the only real hard part about it, and that is something that people within the group can take care of without piling it onto one person named "leader."

[Joshyan]

I study some Art of Wars and I found something interesting.

"Winner find their object first then fight, Loser fight first then find their object."

In life we always have things that "Can't control" and "Can control". You have to know what you "must" to do "have" to do and "want" to do, that way you can plan how your life could be.

You need to live with thing you can't control, do your best with thing you can control, and don't regret when it fail. You still learn from the failure and improve yourself so you don't repeat the same mistake.

"Past is past, nobody can change that."

As I read your post, I see that you still regret about what you did and didn't in the past. But your experience is useful for another.

I think group leader's job is to give direction for the project, not to lead another people around, everybody are the leader of their own life.

I am not a good leader either, I'm good at "give" decision not "make" decision. but when I have to, I will do it with the best I can so I don't regret it later.

Sorry for my bad English

[Sparkker]

Heck with this Leader stuff, everyone has there own view of what a leader should be (Although it's blanketed with general characterizations)..

As long as the leader will be there to keep the project alive, I'll care less what it means. XDD

[Joshyan]

Heck with this Leader stuff, everyone has there own view of what a leader should be (Although it's blanketed with general characterizations)..

As long as the leader will be there to keep the project alive, I'll care less what it means. XDD

Agree

[XavierCross]

Woah. Look at the amount of drama here.

[Okami]

All this talk about the leader but nobody said a thing about most important things. And that it how do you actually menage thing as for example how do you separate witch translator will translate witch script, wath programs do you use to send thouse scripts that needs to be translated to translators and then once they are translated to editors, or were do you even keep those scripts etc. I think that thouse things are match more important to know than wath kind of relationship will leader have with other persons in the project as this really depends on many things. Thouse are the things bugging me the most when I think about starting a project as I feel like I need to think thouse things through before starting a project so we don't end up stuck once we usually gather people and need to start it.

[RusAnon]

All this talk about the leader but nobody said a thing about most important things. And that it how do you actually menage thing as for example how do you separate witch translator will translate witch script, wath programs do you use to send thouse scripts that needs to be translated to translators and then once they are translated to editors, or were do you even keep those scripts etc.

Nah, these things are pretty trivial, there's no reason to use any "programs" at all. You can stick with any approach here and it will work if leading translator actually has motivation to get things done. If you don't have leading translator or he doesn't have motivation (which is same thing as not having one at all) your project will not succeed no matter what tools you use.

I know groups which use MSWord for translating and just exchange files via email, and it works for them because their translator enjoys working on projects.

[Joshyan]

What Okami said is just a micro-management

I think the main factor for the project to be success is the translator.

The longer translator can maintain his/her motive, the higher chance that project will be success.

You can see Koiken Otome project as an example. (My project)

- We have translator who has too much free time and motive.

- Project leader usually lazies around and does nothing except anyone force him to do.

- We use Google spread sheet for all progresses, it is easy to use, easy to access, you can track somebody progress and you didn't lose any progress that M.I.A. people did as long as you have internet connection.

And this is my model for translation team

- Project leader/sub-leader : Their main job is team communication, coordinator for the project and morale support of the team as low morale and bad communication can cause some member to drop out or went M.I.A. . You give the role of recruiter to them if necessary.

*Minimum Requirement : Good communication skill, time to track another member activity.

*Number : 1-2 people

- Translator : Your job is basic but important for the project, it is to translate Japanese language into another language you want. Don't worry about the grammar if you are week at English, it is editor job to edit that Engrish line into English.

*Minimum Requirement : Japanese skill good enough to understand the meaning of those line. / High motive to do. / a lot of free time.

*Option Requirement : Good Japanese skill. / Good grammar in both language.

*Number : depend on the size of the VN / 1 per route

*Note : You should know that translator is hard to find because this is the hardest job in the project.

- Translator checker : Your job is to correct any mistake those translators make when they translated.

*Minimum Requirement : Good Japanese skill.

*Number : 1 per translator

*Note : You can put 1 or more TLC on translated line to double check it.

- Editor : Your job is to edit translated line into proper English sentence. If you have good Japanese skill too, you can double check those line at the same time.

*Minimum Requirement : Good English skill.

*Option Requirement : Good Japanese skill.

*Number : 1 per route

- QC : Your job is to check how editor edit those line and check character speak patterns are correct or not.

*Minimum Requirement : Good English skill.

*Number : 1-2

-Hacker : Your job is to extract text file and picture from VN and make patch file

*Minimum Requirement : Have some skill to do it

*Number : 1

*Note : You can an out-source for this position if you know who you should ask for.