creamyhorror

Hmm, that seems like a good possibility, but I don't have time to do more research on it (I've got to get some sleep before I disappear for a few days of RL commitments). The CCs had ゲロしやがって, but that might not be as appropriate as 披露. The basic meaning doesn't really change either way, though.

Well, turns out I don't have the time after all. Maybe in a few days' time, sorry folks.

It just needs to be made part of your workflow. Whoever downloads the TS raw (your encoder I presume) should just be assigned to extract the CCs and upload them every time (it's not particularly hard, not at all). But that's for you to work out. That reflects your group's priorities in subbing, I guess. We focus on subbing two shows intensively and quickly, and it's really nice not to have to wait for someone who's been dawdling for weeks on the work or has been busy, etc., since it's all over quickly. The hard part is finding people who can commit to the same time period each week, but it certainly pays off in terms of satisfaction. From the comments here, I'm sure you have quite a few people waiting Indeed. Fancy typesetting being the only really "good" typesetting is a school of thought that I don't agree with. Nothing wrong with nice effects and jaw-dropping matching, but sometimes the increased time that such TSing requires can lead TSers to put off their work and cause big delays. (This isn't even an issue in gg since we dislike doing anything hardcoded anyway - karaoke, signs, everything is softsubbed in .ASS.) In terms of encoding quality, I don't think most people notice anything at all, since they happily download blurred-to-hell-then-overwarpsharpened stuff.

I checked with Suzuran, and it apparently literally means "spewed [out]", as in said out loud. Deserving of a rephrase, I do agree (and I'm not quite sure why Alto would spill it all out anyway, though I might've missed something). I don't think the political speeches meaning of enka is much used outside of academic contexts; people seem to use it to refer only to the folksy oldies of decades ago. Thanks, we appreciate knowing this. Mm, true enough. "Oldie" would've been more correct, I guess, but it's still a little vague since it could refer to a few different genres. I guess "enka" with a translator's note would have been the best option. It's not the reason, but I'll try to get a slightly corrected script up in a few hours' time. Thanks for asking.

Yes of course, I wouldn't dream of translating from a script directly, that would really be a recipe for disaster. In that case, I think you're squandering what's probably the most useful aspect of TSs. Why would you not extract them, since they're embedded in the TS anyway (right?)? I know a few Shinsen folk and they certainly know how to extract captions. If it's really merely out of a simple resistance to change, then that's really a waste and someone should do something about it. I can't really fathom translators *not* wanting something as helpful as CCs, anyway (are you a TL?). I know how groups like yours work, and it's pretty much a normal workflow. The difference simply lies in the time commitment level that members have agreed to. Our members know that they're required for an intensive bout of subbing in the hours after a show airs, so that's when they turn up. We also have redundancy so others can fill in roles when someone is not around (e.g. backup translator, editor, encoder, and a gaggle of QCers). If the translator goes on holiday, we might get another to fill in his role, but it hasn't happened yet in the short time I've been with them. I think Eclipse dubbed this sort of practice "intense subbing" (as opposed to speedsubbing) because it aims to leave no gaps between each phase of work, while preserving all the basic requirements for a decent sub. The necessary requirement, of course, is people who are addicted to and energized by the "speed is life" mentality, which has to be balanced by taking pride in releasing a good product. Something of a negative factor is the perception that a group will be better because it takes longer, so how can a fast group really be any good? (Equivalent to the price-quality assumption in economics/marketing) In some cases, however, we *might* stumble where a slower group might not, but we'd put out a v2 a day or two later at latest. Suzuran (my fellow translator whom I split Frontier with) actually bitches me out for taking my time on translation and QCing, but actually the bastard's just too fast

No, Fire Bomber is certainly not enka. I believe Alto was just referring to Ozma's lines, which sounded like they came out of an oldie. You're not alone But I can't do much about that, it's kind of the group's defining trait (along with doing everything in softsubs). Maybe grab one of the re-encodes made from our subs?

Well, some corrections. We encode our releases from the transport stream, clearly (otherwise they'd be 3GB in size) and our encoders are pretty experienced. We run an edit pass, then we have simultaneous QC by 3-6 people all perusing the script, including another translator to guard against translation errors. Finally, our release usually comes at about 6-8 hours from airing. I don't understand why you don't cross-check against the closed captions. Is there some danger in doing so? Have you found errors in the CCs?

You should not be using VLC to watch fansubs, because it doesn't handle soft subtitles right. One good player to use is Media Player Classic, which comes in the Combined Community Codec Pack (www.cccp-project.net). We certainly know how to make a fansub properly, and we wouldn't actually make comments visible in subtitles because that is just not cool. As noted above, it's not meant to be seen. If you have some particular criticism of our work on Frontier, I honestly hope you'll state it. Considering that Chihiro/Kei is a rough speedsub translated from Chinese subs, I would find it a bit boggling if you actually prefer them for, say, translation quality or editing. I was deciding between "enka" and "folk oldie" for this line. I went with "folk oldie" because it comes close to being a cultural analog of enka, and as far as I could tell, the reason Alto said "enka" was that Ozma's heroic lines were in that vein (proclaiming that he wouldn't be a man if he couldn't protect his women), and that would also be something you'd expect in a folk oldie (possibly). You think I should've said "folk western" or "country", or just gone with enka? I have to apologize for the slightly wonky phrasing on some lines in our release this episode. Most of our QC team was missing (including me), etc. <excuses>. I'll go through the script later today and see if it needs enough reworking to justify a patch.

True enough (though I don't consider myself in that category). Generally, though, groups with access to closed captions generally are the more established ones and have better translators.

Normally, if I see an official spelling given in a series' video or official website itself, I'll use it, but otherwise I'll go with the current spelling/romanization systems of the whatever language is (ostensibly) being used. In the case of Frontier, I saw there were two common spellings, and picked the one closer to normal Chinese romanization. I guess this might offend Macross purists, but I don't think it's particularly out of line.

I'm sorry that the message spoiled the scene for you. It did come pretty fast after the end, I agree, and I see why it had that sort of effect for you. I'm personally one of those people who dislikes Ali Project's music, but the real reason for the message was our frustration at trying to decipher the lyrics. Our ethos as a group is simultaneously serious and tongue-in-cheek, so we're not above pulling the occasional stunt (in moderation, of course). Probably not in Macross, though, unless it's pretty harmless. You might want to wait for Aone-Menclave's releases for archiving, since they apparently aim for the highest quality, although they do take their time. Lunar seems to have made a few blunders of late (e.g. 'Remation Eater', presumably because of a lack of closed captions), although their earlier releases are apparently good. I've been made aware of about one flaw per episode in our subs (no outright mistranslations of course), with the exception of our ep 9, but we started midway as you probably know. I have to stress that we actually do intensive editing/quality checking, so we're not "rough-and-ready speedsubbers" (IMNSHO, anyway). If there's demand for it, I might do a series of patches to correct any flaws in our releases, released in a pack that can easily be applied on Windows PCs.

It's pretty strange that your sound is lagging behind your audio instead of the other way round (audible lines are being spoken long after the corresponding speaking animation, right?). It sounds like some sort of codec conflict, but not being an expert, I recommend that you go to http://www.cccp-project.net/, click on "Chat", and ask for support - there's a troubleshooting process that any available staff will walk you through. If there's no response, try again later. Your Athlon 1.8GHz CPU might be a little too slow to play HD H.264 video, but that might not be the problem since the sound comes in late (and since you have problems with SD H.264 as well).

"Blue day" has a much wider scope of meaning in English than in Japanese. I don't see why you think it's a double entendre though - it just seems like a term borrowed from English for one of its possible meanings, and then narrowed down to that meaning in Japanese. For example, "saabisu" in Japanese often specifically means "throwing in an extra" or "free gift", which is of course not at all how it's usually used in English. This sort of thing happens a lot with Japanese borrowings, and English-speakers sometimes wouldn't recognize much of a link between the Japanese term and its original English expression. (edit: "saabisu" being service, as sketchley noted.) Also, thanks.

The Japanese expression "blue day" means "menstrual period" or "time of the month." (See Gendai Yougo or Kenkyuusha's Dai Waei) It makes sense, given how strong Nanase's reaction was.

I replied to you in the Ep 16 Talkback thread. In case you missed it, here's my reply again: So what CPU does your PC have? The CPU's the key determinant of the maximum level of complexity in the videos you can play.