...It's almost two in the morning.
You know, it's weird that I feel extremely tired even when I was used to staying up until 3 in the morning.
Yup, NS sure has taken away an unhealthy (according to my mom) habit of mine.
I just finished the proofer's test for J-Sis moments ago and shot the e-mail back to Roniz.
I hope I do pass, and I do hope that the current translators do not have the English skills of a six-year-old.
Oh my gawd, was that piece of script nerve-wrecking!
I spent half of the time scratching my head over what the translator meant when she wrote it!
The project I was proofreading was ホタルノヒカリ; genre is comedy, romance and josei.
I don't mind doing josei; heck, I don't even mind doing smut projects anymore.
For those of you who are in a state of blur and saying 'What the heck are you talking about', let me explain to you the organization which is known as a scanslation team.
A scanslation team is a team of people who scans a particular comic (mostly Japanese, Korean or Chinese).
It first starts with the raw providers or scanners; these are the people who will sacrifice their volume of tankoban in order to give joy to people like you and me.
Then, there is the raw scan preppers; they clean the scans and then pass it to the translators, which is the section that I'm in.
Now, translators are pretty much the bunch of people that makes all the alien looking characters into simple and plain English.
There are three main types of translators: J-E, C-E & K-E. If you don't know what those abbreviation means, you should go back to school.
After the translators comes the proofers or proofreaders. Mind you, this may seem like the simplest job in the whole team, but it is in fact the most mind-numbing and nerve-wrecking one.
It's easy when you receive a script from a translator that has a competent level of English; but when you meet someone like the one I did for the test, you'd be crying out loud!
Okay, after the proofers comes the editors. These are the bunch of awesome people who are Photoshop geniuses who makes the scans look all pretty and inserts the English scripts into the scans. Some of them are cloning ninjas too!
There are times when a scanslation team has typesetters; they are the masters of SFX. Without them, you ain't got no sound.
The last ones would be the quality checkers or best known as QC'ers. They make sure that everything is all right and perfect before the chapter / volume is sent out to the public.
There are people outside of the team who does contribute, like uploaders and updaters.
Updaters will inform the manga database about the newly release mangas.
This is done by the member of the team but sometimes, a really addicted and rabid reader just wants to spread the news to his / her other rabid fiends, oh I mean friends.
Uploaders on the other hand will upload the releases into a free server, the IRC or even a huge distributing site.
So far, I've been an uploader (in SMD but now could be considered as retired) and a Chinese translator.
Translating is a really fun job; it gives me a sense of fulfillment when I see my webname in the credits page. At least I can bring joy to people who doesn't know how to read Chinese.
I'm now trying out as a proofer and the job seems challenging, and I am up to it.
So if I do pass, I'll be working for two teams (since TKS doesn't have any openings for Chinese translators) and will have to revise my timetable.
I do intend to maintain the weight that I have lost and to do that, I have to go for physical activities instead of glueing my ass and fingers onto the chair and keyboard.
I'll see when to upload my NS pictures into Facebook. I know there are plenty who are curious how the prison of mine looks like...
Edit: I have just applied for the position as a proofreader for Ochibichan. I really do hope that the position isn't filled yet and that I'll get the job. I need to make up for all the effort the scanslation teams have put into the scans that I'm reading.
It isn't nice to only take but not give.
