I don't really like posting here, because I'm a loner and there's a lot of politics in this community. However, when I think about the number of sub-par translations that have been released lately, I've come up with something that most people haven't really considered. Everyone here can even try this at home, if you're bored.
Get a friend who doesn't write English very well, and ask him/her to write a short story. Then, edit it on your own to get rid of all the mistakes. Afterwards, send the edited copy to a third person, and ask that person how good it looks. My experience is that the edited version usually looks worse compared to if you had wrote it yourself. I think that's what the underlying issue is when it comes to translation quality. Many people in this community think that a "native English speaker" or someone who is good at writing is also the type of person that will solve all their problems. Hell, I've even seen a fanTL group looking for such a person recently. In reality, when you're editing a script where many of the sentences have some kind of mistake, you're constantly asking yourself "does this look good?" "what about this?" "or this?" and so on. Because let's face it, whether a sentence feels natural or not isn't always a black and white issue.
I don't mean to say that this approach can't work. Copyediting is a real profession, the people at NekoNyan are experienced, and I don't know what their translation process is like. It's just that when I'm reading Konosora, Hoshimemo, Libra, Sakusaku, Tayutama 2, etc. that's exactly what I'm imagining. One person translating, and the other person editing the hell out of it. I'm just wondering when someone here will realize that this is one way of churning out an awkward script.
