namelessWrench

A Jeb With No Name

@namelessWrench

The Only Rotten Dollhart Webring

A hideous fruit, disgracing itself.

Allo-Aro

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namelessWrench
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iiotenki
@iiotenki

These people will do literally anything possible to avoid giving their translators a living wage and a sane working environment

Color me shocked that the anime subtitling company founded on paying people double digits to handle entire episodes (not double digits an hour, double digits in total) is as interested in AI as a supposed cost cutting measure as any of the other translation agencies out there frothing at the mouth over higher margins when they already make a killing off our backs. That this dude also cites demand for translations released as close to the Japanese airings as possible is another pointed reminder that simultaneous launches routinely result in work produced under duress. Because very few companies in most any of these entertainment industries will do the right thing and staff up and increase resources accordingly to fulfill such mandates.

A billion dollars changing hands to buy the site out and not a damn cent has been spent to improve the working conditions of the people most responsible for taking anime global. Just business as usual. So fucking tired of seeing my colleagues have to fend off these hyenas and justify their continued employment day in and day out.

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in reply to @iiotenki's post:

neckspike
@neckspike

It's totally possible to do simulsub/simuldub humanely IF the producing company is working with the localization company so they have access to scripts and other materials as they are making the source episodes, and the ONLY company I know is doing this is Tsuburaya Productions with Ultraman.

Since Ultraman Z the subtitle quality at least for English has been extremely solid and Blazar was the first series to offer sub and dub almost simultaneously (due to how youtube streaming works it didn't offer the alternate audio track on the premiere but did shortly after on the VOD so they're like half an hour apart close enough).

Totally doable if you give a shit about what you're making and pay people!

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iiotenki
@iiotenki

I hadn't heard that about Ultraman! That's legit cool to hear. I wouldn't have pegged a franchise as big as that getting it right, but ya love to see it! Yeah, a lot of my friends in games are understandably never thrilled to work on projects with global simultaneous releases, but I have worked on enough sanely managed ones to agree that it is possible. Like you said, it comes down to decision makers appreciating that it's a creative endeavor and giving us folks in loc the resources and material to work our magic in a timely manner.

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neckspike
@neckspike

Tsupro finally shook the Chaiyo lawsuit off their backs and came out swinging, they love their boy Ultraman and want everyone to look at him please.

Honestly my biggest criticism of the new dubs so far is that they sound very anime but like, anime and video games is pretty much all we dub in the US? Of course it sounds like anime! And they've given Okratron 5000 room to do some really good stuff with it, I love episode 5 where we find out Anri is from a village in Akita and she and some other characters repeatedly use Akita-ben and the dub nailed it with using Minnewegian slang and accent.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tb3laKioVks

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frenemymine
@frenemymine

I spent almost 10 years working as a subtitle editor and it’s so sad seeing how deskilled the field has become, it’s basically impossible to make a decent living. It wasn’t very good in my time either but it really bums me out hearing from industry vets how good of a job it was in the 90s and how you could really make great money

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iiotenki
@iiotenki

Yeah, as much as games are my first love as a translator and will probably always be my speciality for as long as I'm doing this, I'd absolutely love to branch out into other mediums, too. But the money just isn't there for me to be able to pay the bills and management of it all just seems so nightmarish and predatory at so many places. Not that things are perfect in games by any means, either, obviously, but it's just straight up the only media field that I'm able to feed myself and actually put some money away in savings. I can only imagine what it was like working in the 90s in those other industries; it's really damning that those industries had it in themselves to offer better pay and conditions when the market was demonstrably smaller by orders of magnitude, but now when it's flush with cash, the purse strings have to be tightened.

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frenemymine
@frenemymine

That last point you made is by far the most frustrating part, and by no means unique to the subtitling field. They were bringing in enough money to make it a win-win for both the companies and the employees, but they made a calculated effort to dismantle that system for a better margin.

I sometimes wonder what the field would look like today if it had been unionized prior to that point. I don’t know that it would have made much of a difference, but perhaps it would have softened the landing a little.

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