Need some clarification about Yen Press
- Thread starter Rapidmovimentm1b
- Start date
- #12
Yay, someone else that know their shit. I don't feel have to feel alone in trying to explain all these things to these ppls, not that the majority of them listens anyways. T.T YP can be a serious ass by pulling MPAA-tier legal shenanigans (to those that don't think this can't happen, there was a site that hosts english works that got legally whacked by harpercollins for some seriously $$$ iirc), but they don't, they are just doing everything by the book without being zealous in going after everyone. They are in this as a business that's clean and clear about what they are doing, they bring over japanese works for people to read and try to make money in the process. A lot of people are just too used to getting their shit for free, or too young/sheltered to know how the work outside of their parents paying everything for them work. Sucks that a minority of fans (those that are willing to pay) gets the shaft as collateral damage as part of doing business.
Edit: To elaborate, there were publishers in the past that tried to rapid release volumes. There's a reason why they aren't around anymore.
Edit: To elaborate, there were publishers in the past that tried to rapid release volumes. There's a reason why they aren't around anymore.
- #13
They aren't that bad, overall, but not great either.
Translation speed varies, but is usually 4 months per volume (note that the time between licensing and the first release can be well over a year though). That's not horribly slow, but when the fan translation is already a lot faster than that, the delay can be pretty painful. There's also the problem when a novel already has something like 20 volumes, and it's not even over yet. In some cases, you're looking at 6+ years just to catch up to the existing translation, and that's assuming Yen Press is around that long and doesn't drop the novel. That's actually one of the biggest concerns, that the official translation might not finish, and by then the interest will have died down to the point that nobody is interested in picking it back up, so it's stalled forever. That hasn't happened much with novels yet (I can't think of an example at least), but it's happened countless times with manga.
In the past, I would have said that the translation quality is a little below fan translations and the writing quality is a little above fan translations (though there are outliers, like NGNL), but in the last couple years it seems that there's been a massive surge of horrible fan translations (and not just machine translations) that are barely readable at best, so YP is looking a lot better in comparison now. Granted, the novels they pick up often have above average fan translations (Skythewood is usually far better than Yen Press, for example, in both speed and quality).
Translation speed varies, but is usually 4 months per volume (note that the time between licensing and the first release can be well over a year though). That's not horribly slow, but when the fan translation is already a lot faster than that, the delay can be pretty painful. There's also the problem when a novel already has something like 20 volumes, and it's not even over yet. In some cases, you're looking at 6+ years just to catch up to the existing translation, and that's assuming Yen Press is around that long and doesn't drop the novel. That's actually one of the biggest concerns, that the official translation might not finish, and by then the interest will have died down to the point that nobody is interested in picking it back up, so it's stalled forever. That hasn't happened much with novels yet (I can't think of an example at least), but it's happened countless times with manga.
In the past, I would have said that the translation quality is a little below fan translations and the writing quality is a little above fan translations (though there are outliers, like NGNL), but in the last couple years it seems that there's been a massive surge of horrible fan translations (and not just machine translations) that are barely readable at best, so YP is looking a lot better in comparison now. Granted, the novels they pick up often have above average fan translations (Skythewood is usually far better than Yen Press, for example, in both speed and quality).
- #14
Man, I'm just jealous of the cheap printing cost down there But I guess it's just cheaper cause of the market down there. I pretty much explain the basic economics to someone else in the other yen press thread. It's generally the same everywhere, book price = production cost (paying the printer) + fee (royalties, license, registration, etc...) + markup (20-40% on top of production cost for publisher's cut) + markup (20-40% on top of publisher's markup+production cost for merchant/reseller's cut). The only exception is kindle publishing, amazon takes 30% with amazon doing some promo for you and taking care of the data cost, amazon takes 15%, you are responsible for doing your own promo and you have to pay all the data cost.
- #15
why does wanting honorifcs to be keep = weebs?
japanese culture are different from western. they put an emphasis on title, seniority etc. in fact most asian country do. asians don't call their father with his name. asians mostly don't call their elder siblings with name too. honorifics can differentiate between intimate/close relationship and acquantaince level.
there a scene in recent Mahouka volume where miyuki ask tatsuya whether she should call him tatsuya, or keep calling him onii-sama. if they (english publisher) change this to miyuki calling him tatsuya from the start, then what do you think will happen to such scene?
japanese culture are different from western. they put an emphasis on title, seniority etc. in fact most asian country do. asians don't call their father with his name. asians mostly don't call their elder siblings with name too. honorifics can differentiate between intimate/close relationship and acquantaince level.
there a scene in recent Mahouka volume where miyuki ask tatsuya whether she should call him tatsuya, or keep calling him onii-sama. if they (english publisher) change this to miyuki calling him tatsuya from the start, then what do you think will happen to such scene?
