Sunday 14 October 2012

Episode 1 (Version 2)

http://www.nyaa.eu/?page=torrentinfo&tid=362479

I've made a huge mistake which involved not attaching the fonts. I've done my typesetters a huge disservice, and given you an incomplete release which even after my sad-sack post makes me only want to genuflect twice as much.
Last week was exhilerating for me and I know how I could've avoided this mistake, I hope never to make so critical an error again.

(In addition, translation of episode 2 is underway. If anyone can still help out with the other critical early stages, we still need help...)

Saturday 13 October 2012

Help Wanted

We require, in order to make episode 2 and onwards the best it can possibly be, individuals with experience in:

-Raw Providing
-Encoding
-Editing (of either of the above)

Last episode, we were very lucky to have found someone to do the above for us on a one-time basis only. I do not feel we'll be so fortunate this time.

Being a fan of Jojo's Bizarre Adventure is an asset, but not a requirement.

Fire us an email at getbacksubs@gmail.com or pop into our IRC at #jojo-staff on rizon. If your group likes Jojo, and would like to collaborate; we'd be happy to talk about it.

Friday 12 October 2012

Episode 1 is released

http://www.nyaa.eu/?page=torrentinfo&tid=361654

orz

EDIT: I am sorry if you felt let-down by this. It's a 10bit release, which I'm not upset about. the unknown encoder did it that way by default. I'm not going to damage-control by saying how good it looked for me. If you can run 10bit and it looked bad enough for you to be upset, then I have failed you.

I am sorry if a small amount of British English, or the diction of some of the lines, turned you off to the script. I hoped I'd found a way to more flexibly translate by having some Victorian-era grammar to use in awkward-to-translate lines such as Erina's admonishing of Jojo's carving. This is my own gross inexperience talking. If my script made you angry about deviating from modern grammar, then I have failed you.

My typesetters did a good job, in my opinion. I'm very lucky to have had them. I also had issues at 12:31 with the typesetting on the small logo, I asked that they typeset it the same as they did the main title wordmark. At least one person had their player crash. If this was an issue, I hope it can be rectified by unchecking the "Auto-load subtitles" box in MPC's Options -> Playback; or updating xy-VSFilter. If you dropped us because of playback problems, then I have failed you.

As leader of [GetBack], I didn't expect to make everyone happy. But I wanted to make the best possible release, one worthy of archiving, even if only by a small margin. I hope everyone was not as disappointed as some.

Thursday 11 October 2012

We aren't dead and I've been very bored

Status of episode 1 is still below in the strike-out zone in the last posting. I thought that since I have nothing better to do besides maybe QC my own amateur timing that I'd share some stuff I was going to enclose on the credits.txt file:

Let's talk... British English.

I actually had a small rant here about you-know-which-group. But since we're on the cusp of episode 2 and I haven't managed to even release yet, it'd hardly be my place to bring up self-respect or professionalism. Two traits that have nothing to do with that group. If you enjoyed it, that's fine. Jojo isn't that serious a series and the story in Phantom Blood quite weak. But for new viewers who have nothing at all about it imbued into them but that garbage release is something that haunts and drives me to keep this group going even if I have to do everything myself.

Where was I? Yes, the English-variety English.While I didn't have enough time to make sufficient research, I do know that there is a wide variety of slang from the period that could be used in some scenes. An "authentic" reproduction would be very challenging to write and to read, but not necessary. The Japanese used throughout is mostly typical. To drown it with atypical translations for its own sake is pointless and only serves to distract from the story and action.

So I've elected to go with more modern grammar with a few Victorian expressions and diction added for flavor and sometimes necessity. You won't get an over-the-top experience that distracts you from actually watching the show. Some of them you may not even notice. If I can somewhat reflect things like class difference while adhering to this, then I'll be satisfied.

For example, and this ties into a story fact. The lady with Dario at the start? That isn't Dio's mom. It might be, but nothing to my knowledge has been stated about any mother of Dio unless you count Diego's in the world of Steel Ball Run. In fact, and this is something that the earliest scanlated chapters of Phantom Blood neglect to mention, she's a woman from a pub that Dario chanced to meet and was walking with before spotting the crashed carriage. Maybe after George I gave Dario some money, he caught up with her and they got hitched and had Dio soon enough for Dio and Jonathan to both be of the same age? Your guess is as good as mine.

At any rate, I translated her referring to Dario "旦那" (danna) as "Guv" for old London slang "Guv'nor". That is very nearly a 1:1 translation in the context of Victorian-era British English, and I'm disappointed nobody caught onto that and assumed she was just Dario's wife.

Let's talk... SFX.

SFX, and the SFX of the Jojo manga specifically, are one of the first things I took it upon myself to translate. I was doing proofreading for Steel Ball Run, and it struck me that leaving the (ballooned) SFX romanized probably wasn't a good idea. So I found a database for them and the rest I couldn't look up, I tried my hardest to find out how to understand.

If you've read an SFX glossary in a manga, and I haven't bought much manga in recent years so I can't really tell you what one to look this up in (I read it in Excel Saga from Viz), you see a ridiculous variety of effects. Not only that, they're not all literally SOUND. A lot of them are there to stand in as expresions of condition, like standing up suddenly or floating dead in water or how bright the sun is. These aren't things that translate easily as though they're sound effects in a comic book, and even the sound effects themselves can be a challenge. They can even overlap.

It is a challenge. You need to have read a lot of manga, and pretty much be at or near native-level in your aptitude, to comprehend the tens and tens of SFX in each chapter of a manga. Not understanding isn't necessarily an issue. Someone with good eyes and good reading comprehension can usually discern the context of a piece of FX for themselves. Is the character crying? Laughing? Making a sudden motion? Comics are a flexible medium despite their static nature, and trying to understand SFX will drive you up the wall.

Which is why I'm glad I only had to translate the ones that were ballooned (that is, enclosed within a balloon indicating the FX's source). Because the majority of the time, they were sound and not depiction.

Point, point, point; again. We're not typesetting the SFX in the Jojo anime. Anime is not a static medium (though it uses static stills verrrrrry much). This SFX is carefully selected for certain scenes, and I suppose meme value as well. As such, there's no way to mistake what it's indicating. There are sound effects put in, not necessarily the sounds the SFX indicates. The SFX is even colored particularly. There is no way you can mistake the context of each SFX in this anime. This decision did not come lightly. In all this week that I've had free time not devoted to episode 1, I've thought about why or why not to translate and typeset them.

And relating to my great walls of text, these are general panel SFX. A lot of them are indication, and not sound. Some of the SFX in Jojo, particularly ones that have meme value to the Japanese fanbase and will likely be included, are entirely made-up by Hirohiko Araki. That's not something unique to Jojo. But Jojo is well-known for its ridiculous variety of SFX, to go with its variety of character designs/super powers/ways of using super powers/settings/[pick anything to do with the series], hence their being included in the anime at all.

I do not want to make up a translation if I am forced to. I have mediocre Japanese aptitude, but I have scruples in excess. They do not allow me to guess at translating. They force me to listen to the same line dozens of times if need be, and exhaustively trawl the dictionaries until I find what I'm looking for. The scruples, beware the scruples.

Oh, and here's some other stuff.

 -Dario, the low villain that he is, makes lots of gutteral sounds. I'd love to have been able to translate them.

 -I wanted Dario's use of the same insult (まぬけ: manuke) to carry forward to Dio. 'Imbecile' is a bit too high for Dario's class, but 'fool' works in either case.

 -Danny the dog is able to eat grapes even though they should kill him. His Stand (not featured because nobody in Phantom Blood can see Stands), "Gin and Juice", allows him to be eat anything except fire. I am kidding. Danny can eat grapes BECAUSE ARAKI.


Oh, and the raw's ready. We could only get a provider and encoder for episode 1, but it's ready. It's ready. Almost ready. But ready nonetheless. We're not dead. Our day is nigh. It's probably tomorrow. I really want to get this out before episode 2 airs. No more word from me until it does. Thank you for standing by us this week. Thank you for stumbling onto us if you haven't. Download Commie early, download Duwang for laughs, and we hope you'll decide that we're worth archiving in the end.

Sunday 7 October 2012

(Another) progress report

Current status: Second draft of translation being written.done. Transition editing and third draft in progress.done, barring any issues with timing. Timing to commence as soon as raw is ready. Timing needs some adjusting, but the bulk of it is done. I even borrowed Rock Band 3 to get Roundabout's official lyrics. Then I returned it. All we are waiting on now, is our kind but very busy raw provider/encoder. Work raw is now being uploaded for the rest of the team. Adjustments of timing, and the actual typesetting work to start soon after. Timing done, then redone and finalized. Typesetting is going down.

I planned to make a special announcement for today, but things haven't exactly worked out the way I hoped. I can't clarify too much, but involves a hasty decision on my part that I am trying to make up for.

The translation is complete, but not finalized. I'm working a little on the raw first. Timing and typesetting are pending depending on how bad a project head I have been.

If everything goes well, it may be 24 hours before episode 1 is out (with a script out sooner). I hope some of the pressure for us to release is off, now that a release of satisfactory quality was released today by another group. At the same time, I hope people are still anticipating our efforts. We want this release to be as good as it can get.

Friday 5 October 2012

Ongoing progress report for Episode 1

Current status: Rough translation nearly finished.Virtually. I'll call it finished for now. Second and likely third draft most likely ready later tonight.

Our competition definitely does not disappoint for speed. I anticipated this. People are finding faults with both groups, I anticipated this too. The reason for our group's existence is to provide an alternative. I'd like to thank the persons telling people to wait for us, but you are doing too good a job. I cannot promise a finished product within 24 hours, so I'm making a progress post. Don't get angry until Sunday night at least.

I just got off work as of this writing and was hoping that a .ts rip would have leaked so we could include the commercial for the "Jojoten" exhibition. Featuring an animated Josuke, Okuyasu, and Koichi. Josuke's voice is performed by Wataru Hatano and Okuyasu is I-am-99%- 49% sure Shigeru Chiba (or Wataru Takagi, because I am stupid).

We wouldn't want to release a product that's 99% complete. If in the meantime, we finish before we can find a different rip; we'll at least be able to say we tried our best with what we had. Nobody is giving up halfway through regardless of how much expectation there may be.

Thursday 4 October 2012

Jojo anime Promotion Video (Trailer)

This PV is actually over a week old, and the work on it almost as old. It shouldn't necessarily be indicative of our work to come (besides translation), since it was only worked on by myself. To say nothing of the video, which was ripped from Youtube in its highest available quality.

However, I wanted to get the word out that we're subbing this show. If you saw this trailer subbed on Youtube already, the timing and translation have been reworked. I hope everyone gets as hyped for Friday night's debut as we are!

[GetBack] Jojo's Bizarre Adventure - PV (Torrent)

Wednesday 3 October 2012

Jojo's Bizarre Adventure is finally a television anime

We are a small group of Jojo fans who wish to offer our efforts to subbing the Jojo series, and only that. Although it's inevitable that larger, more experienced groups will be working on the show; we wish to bring a Jojo-fan's touch to something we've waited many years for. In other words, by Jojo fans for Jojo fans.

At present, we intend to release in softsubbed mkv via torrents and with a script file offered here (more on that in another post). The script file will be up as soon as it's finalized. Links to the torrent will come when it's ready for distribution.

Please consider initial releases to be as "Version 1". If I, as translator, make a critical mistake I'll post a corrected script file (Version 1.1). Should a more experienced translator join our group and fix past scripts, their work will be included in a batch torrent once Phantom Blood and Battle Tendency each run their course.

And on that note, we are seeking an experienced translator who ideally is also a Jojo enthusiast. While we've made inquiries, no one has volunteered as of yet. An excellent grasp of English to go with their Japanese accumen is an asset; This show will have jumps in period setting as well as changes in main characters, and we hope to reflect that somewhat in the translation's grammar.
Our contact address is: getbacksubs@gmail.com

We hope our efforts will please you. Until then,