There should be more fan translation.

[Steindrakgaterr]

I don't see the point in fansubbing anime these days, when most of it is available in legal streaming sites. I think it a waste of their japanese language skills. There are still like

hundred of visual novel left untranslated which most won't see a western release.

 

They should put there effot on translating a game. I'm the olny one hasn't thought of that?

[Nosebleed]

Your argument is basically the same as saying that there shouldn't be movie pirating because you can get your favorite movies at any store, physical or online so whoever pirates movies should do something else.

People fansub anime because, surprise, there's plenty of users who aren't able to spend money on it to watch it legally.

And most people fansub anime because they like it and want to share their passion with others who appreciate it as well but can't watch it legally.

Not to mention not every single anime is available legally (though most big ones are).

But the biggest difference in vns and anime is that anime is more popular so fansubbing anime is actually more rewarding in terms of popularity. It also consumes less time unlike vns which require a great amount of effort.

And more importantly, you can't just tell someone they should apply their skills differently because you think it's better. It's their choice to pick where they apply their skills and invest their time and effort.

And to be quite frank some legal subs are rather mediocre at best so there's that too influencing fansubs.

Would it be nice to have more translation projects for vns? Yes.

Would more free translators help? Yes.

But does that devalue other mediums they work on? No.

[Flutterz]

Problem is anime is ~100 times more popular in the west than VNs are, and you can't really expect fan translators to translate something they don't care about. Also I think an episode can be subbed in about a day, so about a month's work for a full season, while VNs can take several years to translate, and not everyone is ready to commit to something like that.

[Darkshine]

Why is it more difficult to sub VNs than to sub anime?

[Decay]

There actually aren't all that many people translating anime these days. Most major groups like Commie and Horriblesubs steal subs from sites like Crunchyroll and simply edit them.

 

Also, no, you're not the only one who has thought of that. It's just that such thoughts are kind of worthless, you know? It's not as if fansubbers have never heard of VNs or have never considered the possibility of translating something other than anime. It's just that they don't want to. There are a number of reasons for why not. Maybe they just don't like VNs. Also, VN translation is a LOT of work. Like, a massive time investment that is worlds beyond that of anime fansubbing. You have to put in huge amounts of effort before you see any sort of payoff. This is a daunting aspect.

 

And some anime fansubbers are also doing VNs. Commie is translating Mahoyo right now, for example.

 

 

Why is it more difficult to sub VNs than to sub anime?

 

There is many times more text to translate in your average VN than your average season of a show. Also, the text in a VN is often a bit trickier to translate than the spoken language of an anime. There are aspects like prose to consider.

[seventhfonist425]

Why is it more difficult to sub VNs than to sub anime?

Was about to mention that. Though, I'm not personally in a team or anything, I can say for certain that it's just harder to translate a VN over an anime.

There's a lot less to do for an anime. You don't need a hacker, and you don't need to spend time debugging. There's also the fact that there's less content in an anime to translate. I don't know if this is a problem for more experienced translators, from my experience, it's much easier to translate conversations that are all voiced over things like the main character's thoughts in a visual novel. Though, mainly the fact that it's 90% conversation that probably makes translation easier.

 

Probably the biggest examples of anime being easier to deal with are the fact that a single anime episode seems to capable of being translated in less than a day, while VNs, well, you know how long those take.

 

I'm not saying anime translation is the easiest thing in the world or anything. Just, VN translation has loads more work in it in comparison.

[Nosebleed]

Why is it more difficult to sub VNs than to sub anime?

Literacy level can be much higher.

Quantity of lines is many times higher (main reason probably)

Requires more than just a translator, particularly hacking which can be hard.

In an anime there's many scenes without words or just short sentences which makes the time to fansub it way shorter.

And then with proper software you can just embedd the subs.

A vn requires you to be proficient in reading both languages, requires someone to hack into the vn and make a patch and the vn is filled with text only, there's usually no big breaks so it's a workload of text to translate.

[Clephas]

The average VN takes a level of effort equivalent to four or five 26 episode series of anime combined.  Since most fansub groups barely manage one before going under (if that), why do you think they'd be able to do better with a much larger project?

[Steindrakgaterr]

Your argument is basically the same as saying that there shouldn't be movie pirating because you can get your favorite movies at any store, physical or online so whoever pirates movies should do something else.

People fansub anime because, surprise, there's plenty of users who aren't able to spend money on it to watch it legally.

And most people fansub anime because they like it and want to share their passion with others who appreciate it as well but can't watch it legally.

Not to mention not every single anime is available legally (though most big ones are).

But the biggest difference in vns and anime is that anime is more popular so fansubbing anime is actually more rewarding in terms of popularity. It also consumes less time unlike vns which require a great amount of effort.

And more importantly, you can't just tell someone they should apply their skills differently because you think it's better. It's their choice to pick where they apply their skills and invest their time and effort.

And to be quite frank some legal subs are rather mediocre at best so there's that too influencing fansubs.

Would it be nice to have more translation projects for vns? Yes.

Would more free translators help? Yes.

But does that devalue other mediums they work on? No.

 

Okay I see your point. There nothing I can arguer against. Don't get me wrong I'm not against piracy or anything like that. It was a simple thought in my head.

[Darkshine]

Literacy level can be much higher.

Quantity of lines is many times higher (main reason probably)

Requires more than just a translator, particularly hacking which can be hard.

In an anime there's many scenes without words or just short sentences which makes the time to fansub it way shorter.

And then with proper software you can just embedd the subs.

A vn requires you to be proficient in reading both languages, requires someone to hack into the vn and make a patch and the vn is filled with text only, there's usually no big breaks so it's a workload of text to translate.

 

Those are some pretty heavy differences between anime and VN subbing, I can see the difficulty here for VN translaters now that it's explained in such detail.

[SpecterZ]

Just some casual calculation

 

At translation rate of 30 lines per hour (I know someone will say it more of less than this.)

Medium-length VN is about 30000~ lines (about 1000~ per game-play hour)

That means a 1000+ of work hours you need to spend in translation progress only.

If you work about 4 hours everyday, it means you need to translate 250+ days without rest, less if you have more translators to share the load.

Other progresses are much faster but still take a lot of time

 

Not many people with sufficient skill have free times that much or willing to work for free.

 

PS: Sorry if my English is bad, I'm not native English speaker.

[babiker]

though the argument is mostly over, i just want to quickly point out that not all countries have access to sites like crunchyroll, or funimation. wich is why fansubs are, to them, the only source of anime. so if they decide to stop, no anime for us . its not just the "west, west, west" were talking about here, its the hole world.

[RusAnon]

People fansub anime because, surprise, there's plenty of users who aren't able to spend money on it to watch it legally.

But you don't need to spend money to watch anime legally. CR is legal and free.

[Tenkuru]

But you don't need to spend money to watch anime legally. CR is legal and free.

A lot of legal methods of streaming anime are unavailable outside of the US. CR, FUNimation and even their YouTube channels are blocked in a lot of countries. Don't get me wrong though, I'm not trying to justify pirating, but these are possible reasons why people want to pirate.

[Mr. Meogii]

The major reason is that VNs are just not that popular. If they were as popular as anime i'm sure the people translating would put up with all that hard work that goes into translating them. Basics of economics. If demand is too low suppliers would not want to supply at all because they would gain less in return.

[Life]

I think the problem is with how well known visual novels are. You can go outside and ask if they know what anime is and most people will know. Visual novels just aren't something most people think of when they say Japan. I think it is also a lot harder to translate VN's compared to anime. A lot of people who create translations for VN's take a very long time so I think many people are also put off by how long it takes.

[Decay]

A lot of legal methods of streaming anime are unavailable outside of the US. CR, FUNimation and even their YouTube channels are blocked in a lot of countries. Don't get me wrong though, I'm not trying to justify pirating, but these are possible reasons why people want to pirate.

I doubt that's actually why people fansub, though, which is what the conversation is about. I mean, a LOT of people living in regions supported by streaming sites download fansubs just because they're free.

[Nosebleed]

But you don't need to spend money to watch anime legally. CR is legal and free.

CR doesn't let me watch anything without premium not to mention i often am unable to watch stuff because of my location, that's just me though. Sorry if it's different for other locations i didn't know.

But that's not the main reason for fansubs to exist. Fansubs are from fans to fans, at least it used to be that way. It exists because it's quick access to anime for international viewers for free.

I watch fansubs because they're free, simple as that.

If nobody appreciated fan subs or didn't need them they wouldn't exist in the first place. Anime is possibly the most known medium in the west for Japanese culture, hence why fansubs are so much more popular.

[TheFantasm]

It'd always be nice to see new projects starting up, but because I can't contribute, I'm fine with whatever we get. I'm not the one investing the time, so I'm not going to criticize those who decide to translate anime over a VN. It's their perogative, and I don't think it's right for anyone to complain about how they use their time as they see fit.

[Clephas]

I just download the raws, in most cases... but yeah, fansubbing is a ton of work.  In addition, a lot of people think it isn't worth the effort anymore, because of CR and other streaming sites rendering them mostly irrelevant.  Only very minor series don't get official subs nowadays, and very few fansub groups are willing to do those in the first place (everybody wants to do the major stuff). 

[Mephisto]

Because VNs are absurdly long. 

[sm2345]

As a fansubber who is also a bit involved with fan translation, here is what I personally feel on this matter:

 

1. As Clephas and others rightly mention, a VN is much, much longer in terms of raw line count than your average anime. As an example, the DCIII anime had 3702 lines of dialogue in 13 episodes, whereas the trial alone for Fureraba has 5011 lines in the trial, with approx. 48000 lines in the full VN. This also means a lot more commitment than many anime. I feel that quite a few people are unwilling to commit to such a task.

 

2. The average length of a line is often more in a VN than an average line in an anime series. Usually, in anime, it's mostly a sentence at most. But for a VN, taking an example (from Irotoridori no sekai):

 

相手が自主的に話そうとしないことを、根掘り葉掘りと聞き出そうとするのは……何というか、綺麗じゃない。そんな気がするからだ。

 

(If someone is unwilling to speak out about the circumstances by themselves, interrogating them thoroughly about that is... how do I put it, not very elegant. That's how I felt.)

 

That is one "line". It's quite longer than your anime dialogue, and this is what struck me as most different when I started working on a VN.

 

3. This, while I find hard to digest, but is true, is the fact that anime seems to have a larger fanbase than VNs. Thus, it maybe so that working on a VN gives lesser recognition than say, speedsubbing a popular anime show and releasing it in 6-12 hrs after airing. 

 

This same reason holds for why people don't fansub older anime to quite an extent, in my opinion.

 

4. Another point would be that many people who like anime, cannot or do not find VNs very enticing themselves, and as such are not much enthusiastic about working on them. It's the variety of human nature. This should include fansubbers to an extent too. My best friend used to be an expert Translator of anime, but he didn't like even reading VNs, much less than working on one. When I asked him why, he said he preferred more of a "motion picture".

 

 

But hey, things might be changing, even if bit by bit and very slowly. I do hope people and especially fansubbers take more interest in VNs in future.

[Chronopolis]

How much translation has there been in total?

 

I got about 7000 anime series, so I'll round down to 5000 for fan translations. 5000*26 episodes*300 lines per episode = 39,000,000 lines translated by anime sub-community.

There are ~630 japanese VN's translated to English, but most of the earlier ones aren't fan translations. In the VN community, I think there are like 150 fan-translated titles? (real number may be between 100 and 150) 150*30,000 =4,500,000

Note: resubs happen often in anime, but almost never in for VN's

 

If we assume that the percentage of fans who vote on myanimelist to be comparable to the number of vn fans who cast votes on vndb:

The most popular couple of anime series have around 200,000 votes.

The most popular couple of visual novels have about 3,000 votes.

Anime (195 lines translated per vote)

VNs: (1500 lines translated per vote)

 

As you can see, the VN community is much smaller, and yet has a much larger text base. It's no wonder everything isn't done. There are probably about 450 VN's that people would like to be translated (triple the current number).