[X] My Assistant

Over the past week or two, I've been thinking about how active EH Cove of Translators have been, churning out translated doujins almost on daily basis. In the past month alone, we've seen 38 translation bounties completed (104 in past 3 months). That's as prolific as major doujin scanslation groups like SaHa, LWB, Team Vanilla, and others.

In a sense, EHCT is already a major doujin scanslation group, as it meets several common criteria that such groups share:

* We have a central site for visitors to go to for downloads (EH Gallery) and discussion/feedback (forums)
* We consistently try to help each other improve our works with guides, and are always looking for more translators and editors
* Even though all of translations and editing are funded by bounties using fake money, it's not really that much different from doujin comission groups like SaHa and DesuDesu
* We cover a surprisingly good range of genre and themes, even some stuff that lot of people wouldn't feel comfortable with
* The bounties have already produced some notable doujins, like Bloodmare's Black Dog doujin bounties, Red Piotrus' Sailor Saturn and Dragon Pink series, and even several complete manga were done (via G Just G's bounties)
* Granted, there may be issues with translation and editing quality, but we strive to produce best quality possible (feedback, proof-reading, translation assistance, and so on)
* Translators and editors come and go, but that's same for any doujin groups so there's no difference
* We've also done few non-English translation bounties
* We've even attracted attention of some doujin scanslation groups

Unfortunately, we really aren't considered as a scanslation group, because we don't really function as a group. We're just basically group of individuals who's trying to get their works translated - even though we work surprisingly well as a group in a manner of speaking. Because of this, we suffer from lack of recognition - whenever our works are released, they're perceived as an individual work and thus treated as such and don't generate much awareness or appreciation on behalf of the individual.

That's why it's difficult for us to try and recruit new translators or editors, because we don't have the recognition that a group can grant. When a potentially interested translator and/or editor looks between one of our individual releases and a doujin group's releases, I'm sure he'd be far more likely to be interested in approaching the doujin group than one of us simply because of increased awareness of the group and community.

So if we can re-brand EHCT as a doujin scanslator group, we would immediately gain greater awareness among readers of our works. Our advertisements for new translators and editors would be more effective as well, especially when we can show visitors our collective efforts of our past works.

The one of the major benefits of re-branding of EHCT would be advertising, when various English-language doujin hosting sites such as Fakku, #Doujin-World, and Hentai.net groups our releases under a common name. Any visitors from those sites interested in finding out more about our releases would then come over to EH Galleries and its forums for more. EH Gallery already gives many doujin scanslation groups advertising as well by tagging their releases with their names, so it would benefit us all to have the opposite done as well.
We can even get listed on Mangaupdates (many doujin groups already do).

More incoming visitors means more potential translators and editors, and since we offer a form of incentive (bounties) to get our works translated and/or edited, there's no reason they can't take advantage of them to get what they want translated/edited for free (relatively-speaking).

What are your thoughts on this topic?


EDIT: EHCove was agreed upon as our tag. Done.

This post has been edited by lightshader: Nov 4 2011, 06:42

A while ago I suggested something similar; the response was lukewarm, but even back then - a year ago - we had a majority supporting the idea. We just never acted on it. Nonetheless, I think that was the point we started having more credit pages, pointing back to our site. Whether we can credit that with an increase in popularity that I think has quite visible in the past years, I'll leave up to others to decide, but I'd like to think the credit pages with links back to our site play some role in that.

I agree with light that we are a translation group in all but a name. And since this has been brought back, yes, I fully support the idea of creating a new group, with a tag, and such. The only qualm I'd have about [EHCT] is its similarity to [EHT]. Perhaps [EHCOVE]?

The only change to our current activities would be to agree on a standardized text for the credit page (I think the latest one as written by SS for the GS dojin is pretty good - see it here). Add our new name to it, perhaps a mention of the cove subforum, and we would be all set.

On the subject of attracting more translators/editors, check any of my recent uploads, and note the many, many plugs for the forums and the bounty system I put in them. I'd highly suggest that all of you who upload galleries consistently, and care for the bounty system (LS, SS) consider a similar ad.

Few questions for further consideration:
* should we rebrand (rename) our past releases (easily done from the maintenance section)?
* should we create a thread listing our releases (we would likely end up with over a hundred...)
* should we have some official place people can join, and some official quality requirements? To avoid somebody posting a crappily translated/edited gallery under our name, just because they got it done through the bounty?

Just merge them

Just merge them

Merge with EHT? Not without EHT people's consent, which was not forthcoming last year.

Also, EHT team is, AFAIK, not very involved with the bounty community, not even with our discussions here, outside their own sticky thread or two. I am sure we (the bounty people) would love to have them more engaged with us, but it seems they chose not to

For the record, I am not sure if EHT is still alive under that name. The peak of their activity was in 2008 (going by their tagged releases), and I see nothing tagged EHT since 2010. Now, I am well aware there are some people like Phantom Renagede and N04h who are actively posting in their threads and the galleries, but note that their releases are under the [Trinity Translations] tag, with no mention of the EHT, or even the site/forums (sample release).

This post has been edited by Red_Piotrus: Oct 28 2011, 12:39

There's like, 6 of us, if that.

There's like, 6 of us, if that.

Ah, sorry, didn't realize you are part of that (note my edited post above, I was clarifying some things).

I would certainly be interested in hearing more about the merge, but this is not something we (the bounty hunters) would like to impose on the EHT veterans, if they would want that. And if they (you) would like a merge, well, speaking just for myself, I'd like to see some joint projects (as in, EHT people helping with translating/editing bounties). Otherwise, what would be the point of the merge? As LS noted, we are talking about creating a formal group for those who are involved with the bounty system... through perhaps I am misunderstanding something?

A while ago I suggested something similar; the response was lukewarm, but even back then - a year ago - we had a majority supporting the idea. We just never acted on it. Nonetheless, I think that was the point we started having more credit pages, pointing back to our site. Whether we can credit that with an increase in popularity that I think has quite visible in the past years, I'll leave up to others to decide, but I'd like to think the credit pages with links back to our site play some role in that.

Truthfully, I never considered adding advertisements to my finished bounty releases until I saw one of your own ads that you added to yours, and after that I realized the potential so I started adding ads to mine as well. This proposal that I thought of is basically an extension of that, trying to bring the Cove past the ad stage and making it more unified group as opposed as group of individual members.

I'm sure that the reason why not much was acted upon your suggestion when you brought it up back then was that we haven't really become a cohesive group (translations being far and between, with too many varying levels of quality and such). But with all feedback and guidelines we've been gradually improving ourselves so I think we're ready to finally re-brand EHCove as group.

I agree with light that we are a translation group in all but a name. And since this has been brought back, yes, I fully support the idea of creating a new group, with a tag, and such. The only qualm I'd have about [EHCT] is its similarity to [EHT]. Perhaps [EHCOVE]?

I think that's good idea, EHCove as it would encompass both translators and editors.

I think EHT could be considered as an unofficial sub-group, because technically they do have a presence in the Cove forum, but function independently of the bounty members so we have no say over what they do, nor the vice versa. But they're still part of EH, so I think it wouldn't hurt to offer them some free advertising. If our group brings in more potential translators or editors, some of them might even be interested in joining them instead of EHCove - and that could motivate them to be little more productive on their part. Win/win for us and them, I'd say.

The only change to our current activities would be to agree on a standardized text for the credit page (I think the latest one as written by SS for the GS dojin is pretty good - see it here). Add our new name to it, perhaps a mention of the cove subforum, and we would be all set.

On the subject of attracting more translators/editors, check any of my recent uploads, and note the many, many plugs for the forums and the bounty system I put in them. I'd highly suggest that all of you who upload galleries consistently, and care for the bounty system (LS, SS) consider a similar ad.

If you've seen credits/ads in my recent releases, you'll notice that I've expanded mine to include the gallery + forums, but if we officially agree to form EHcove, I'd love to have our standardized credit page text to include the name as well.

And yeah, I've seen your ads, but truthfully, I think they're too much. Too wordy, which can turn off viewers. And also, EH Gallery aren't the only source of our releases; alot of EH members put up torrents of new releases, which may not always be on EH tracker. Those torrent files can be reshared elsewhere like TokyoToshan or Nyaa.org, effectively losing out on potential viewers. That's why our credit pages are important. Re-branding our group would give us another way to tag our releases, by including our name in filenames like [EHCove] which can be easily preserved.

Few questions for further consideration:
* should we rebrand (rename) our past releases (easily done from the maintenance section)?
* should we create a thread listing our releases (we would likely end up with over a hundred...)
* should we have some official place people can join, and some official quality requirements? To avoid somebody posting a crappily translated/edited gallery under our name, just because they got it done through the bounty?

We can have a sticky thread for our releases. Any bounty releases listed on our sticky thread can be considered as official EHCove releases, and if anyone tries pass off their bounty work without being listed on that wouldn't be considered as EHCove release, and we can use the rename forum to remove that tag. And furthermore, we already have an automatic 7-day claim dispute so we can use that time to collectively check over any of works. I for one, don't automatically approve any claims for newcomers until I've had time to check over the translated script and compare to the source (context). If I'm still bit unsure, I try to ask for a second opinion whenever possible.

As for quality requirements, probably we could have a stipulation that new members complete at least 2 bounty projects (translation or editing) with quality verified first to be considered a probationary member. Those with 5 verified bounties completed (rank C) automatically induct that person as EHCove member.

However, with bounties being what they are, unlike official doujin groups, we don't really have a dedicated quality checker (or are always willing to afford one), so there's no guarantee that our translations are on par as other groups, so that's certainly something we have to take into account if we form EHCove. Perhaps a disclaimer somewhere?

Just my thoughts.


EDIT:

As LS noted, we are talking about creating a formal group for those who are involved with the bounty system... through perhaps I am misunderstanding something?

Yes, that was my intention, creating a group specifically for the bounty system members. I'm already aware of potential quality issues that bounty system brings, but I do want to bring the system some wider recognition for its efforts, so having a separate group not directly associated with EHT or other doujin groups would allow us to increase the awareness of the system while at same time take quality control more seriously. If a bad release goes through, the damage would be contained to the bounty group only, not EHT or others thus minimizing the harm to doujin scanslation groups - and that'd be a strong incentive for us to pay attention to quality control.

This post has been edited by lightshader: Oct 28 2011, 13:37

Disregard this post.

I literally meant just use the name if you want.

...right. Silly me, that's what I get for trying to stay up late to do a lengthy thread while half-asleep.

Of course, we could always just remain an informal group - after all, we don't really decide on what's translated/edited, but rather on what we feel like doing or for rewards.

Just simply using EHCove as tag would be enough for our purposes as a group; we already share common advertisement and desire to bring greater awareness of bounty system, so giving ourselves a common name would merely consolidate individual efforts under same banner.

This post has been edited by lightshader: Oct 28 2011, 13:53

Regardless of what you guys do, keep on doin that work that you do so well.


I don't ever have time to translate/edit anymore, because classes and work are a huge time sink.

Okay, now that we've established a tag to use for our future releases, I think we should consider its future. EHCove won't mean a thing if all we release are crappy stuff. So the next step I think we should consider is some sort of quality control (QC).

The biggest advantage of the Bounty System is that anybody can participate as long as they have credits and/or hath (which can be earned in many ways, including fulfilling the bounties themselves). However, that means QC is strictly up to the person making the bounty.

And that's where the biggest problem with the bounty system lies - not everyone would be informed about that stage. Anybody can claim a translation bounty as long as script is provided. That means rewrites, machine-translation, or crappy translations potentially can be accepted simply because the bounty poster is clueless because he/she has no knowledge of the the source language, and assumes them to be real translation.

This becomes a catch 22 situation: the bounty poster wants a translation because that person can't read the source material, but has no way to verify the translation as actual translation unless he/she has some familiarity with the source language.

So if we want to expand EHCove, we need some form of QC control. If there isn't form this, the image of EHCove could suffer, and I'd rather not have that happen if possible.

That's why I wasn't too keen on including all of my past releases under the tag, when the idea was brought up earlier, because there's some that I'm not too confident about the translation quality. Some of them were done by first-timers or don't have many translations under their belt. So whenever possible, I try to have their scripts checked by other translators - especially when the translator's English is ESL.

Even so, there are few others that I haven't been able to find someone to vet for their quality, and recently I had one of my bounties claimed with a translation by a newcomer. I wasn't too sure about the quality, and the newcomer PM'd me reminding me that he was trying to claim my bounty - so I replied back that I wasn't too sure about it and wanted to discuss it more in detail with him. He never responded and being preoccupied with editing I forgot about it and he was able to force-claim it once the dispute time limit had expired. So I have a script that I can't vouch for quality, along with few more (which is why some my older bounties haven't been edited yet).

Sorry for digressing... if we want quality control, we can't just automatically tag every doujin translation from the Bounty System as EHCove material (even though that's what EHCove is supposed to stand for, doujins translated via Bounties with help of various members using it).

Dragon Pink was perfect for EHCove's debut; we even had a QC (peeps) which helped spot some errors that original translators and editors had made or overlooked. Unfortunately this won't be the case for everything that come from bounty system. So we need to figure something out that we can accept as form of quality control that readers can be confident with.

So for now, let's see if we can come up with something. EHCove is still young, so we have time to learn and flex our muscles.



tlr;dr - EHCove should have some sort of quality control in its releases, or its image could suffer.

Those who cannot read Japanese should still be able to proofread the scripts so that we end up with improved English grammar.

That is the only thing I can do, outside organizing and sponsoring bounties... once I am satisfied that English is good and all reasonable parts have been translated, I'd say the material is [EHCOVE].

We could agree to exclude/delay release of all work by people who have not been vetted by an established translator, but for that we would need to have at least one translator come forward and offer to vet the work of all n00bs.

EDIT: also, I've been thinking about clearly marking the JCE translations. How do you feel about [JCE@EHCOVE] for them?

This post has been edited by Red_Piotrus: Nov 4 2011, 08:09

My personal opinion is as follows: I think for all the little random bounties that get done by the misc members that participate here should just be by them and their trans/editor. That way if something is wrong with it, it won't hurt EHCove. And even as good as it is to have a PR, that can only do so much as far as fixing engrish but won't mean shit if theres actual mistranslations, even in a well worded script.

I think the problem with having just any willy-nilly translator come along and is given a background check about the quality of their work (for EHC) is that the way the credit advertisement was worded making it sound like theres open arms to anyone new with T/E skills (that was probably my fault).

With all that gobbledy goop I just said, I think the EHC should only focus on large scale group effort projects like Dragon Pink, or even Silent Saturn (I guess if anyone knew how far that would go, starting an official group then would've worked out pretty well) or anything like that.

This post has been edited by Super Shanko: Nov 4 2011, 11:54

If you want some quality control, you have to make sure that people can't just claim to have your approval. Within the galleries, we'd have the support of the expungers, no doubt, but in general it would be a good idea to have a central location with a definitive list of official, approved scanlations.

The easy thing to do is create a thread to list the official works, and only one person (also the creator of the thread; call him the Grand Poobah, or Keeper of the Chronicles, of EHCOVE) can edit the lead post (or further posts linked from there) to update the list of official works. Then, in each credit page, we can also give the address of the thread.

People might still try to claim EHCOVE's approval in any number of ways, but that's a problem any group could have. At least we'd have a controlled list not unlike established groups with their own website.

As for translator quality, I agree that's the biggest quality control problem. Why not basically have an independent thread to validate translators? The most useful form would probably be to have a list of tested translators, maybe in groups like, Reliable, Could Use Improvement, etc. Of course, some people may not like being "called out" as a subpar translator...still, using names would cut down on people repeatedly asking for a test of the same translator. There could be all sorts of age-out and retest conditions for those "below the bar", but that sort of thing can be decided once (or if) it's started. Thoughts?

Or we could have releases in private galleries, posted in a thread here, that await approval by one of the Established Translators. Only once such an approval is granted, the gallery would be allowed for pubic display with EHCOVE tag.

Of course, work by Established Translators would be fine by default, and getting one (two) translations approved would automatically make one Established.

Downside to this is, again, the need for translators to review the work of others. I am afraid of a potential bottleneck (like we need one more...).

Should we also have a review by Established Editors?

Here's a time saving idea that would probably work. Take People's idea of making a thread, but instead of an EHCove membership like thread (remember this), just have a simple introduction thread for new trans/editors. In said thread, some of the people that already frequent around here can give a brief introduction and summary of what they can do, past works, and any little thing like that.

Along with that, instead of giving newcomer translators the 3rd degree, just give them something like this: Hey, welcome to the forums(Cove), you're probably new around here and wanted to offer your skills as a translator, because of a rise in Engrish translations littering the galleries, how about a brief summary of your abilities and maybe post a fresh translation to let everyone know you've got decent skill. Then give them something simple to translate like [gelbooru.com] this or some other single (but wordy) image, and alternate it when that one is done.

The reason I say that the thread should be a non EHCove thing is to not ward off newbies (or regulars) thinking this is some recuitment thing. If that were the case I would imagine that just about every T/E would flock to just join EH's actual translation group if that's what they wanted to do, while letting them know what the Cove is about (see below) and just a way to influence people to be more active in the forums/bounties like the advertisements suggest.

Maybe mention that the Cove is (I'm guessing) just a subsection with a ragtag group of freelancers that all share the common interest of wanting to translate, edit, scan and share various works, and with the help of the Cove, make it more accessible to anyone to get/give help with any of these things.

And as for new editors, that's an easy one. Just do it like with the translators and if they're new, give them a doujin page with the script for it and tell them to edit it (with a watermarked logo to aQuvoid bastard thieves). From there give them pointers to improve their abilities (same for translators).

This post has been edited by Super Shanko: Nov 4 2011, 23:19

what i want to see place for freelancer translator editor proofreaders,not a union just for a talking sharing place helping place each other,i know couple of translators around but thats it,i just learn some of them with luck like see their names on their work,under going 1 flag most of times is a bad thing imo,so freelancer place better then anything,people ned to know there is a place like that and they will coming,and ofc when i mean freelancer like rookie84 super shanko and like couple others they need accepted hv curreny :s or its blow,i know its sounds free but its have own value as always.

How about, instead of EHCOVE being a strict mark of approval only usable by the select few, "EHCOVE" can be used freely by anyone scanlating through the bounties, and EHCOVE+ (or Plus) is "From those of us who go the extra mile to bring you the very best of H scanlations." Like I said above, too, the EHCOVE+ credits would also incude an address to a controlled release thread.

So anyone can use EHCOVE if they want (or not)...could even use EHCOVE+ if they didn't care about permission...but in order to be included in the controlled thread, they'd have to meet our standards.

This sounds a little less like class warfare/elitism to me than what I suggested previously.

How about, instead of EHCOVE being a strict mark of approval only usable by the select few, "EHCOVE" can be used freely by anyone scanlating through the bounties, and EHCOVE+ (or Plus) is "From those of us who go the extra mile to bring you the very best of H scanlations." Like I said above, too, the EHCOVE+ credits would also incude an address to a controlled release thread.

So anyone can use EHCOVE if they want (or not)...could even use EHCOVE+ if they didn't care about permission...but in order to be included in the controlled thread, they'd have to meet our standards.

This sounds a little less like class warfare/elitism to me than what I suggested previously.

As much as I like + symbol, I am not seeing anybody criticizing the current implementation for being too restrictive (in practice)...

This post has been edited by Red_Piotrus: Nov 5 2011, 01:58

The best way to work is in secrecy so that no one can steal your works, you might need private threads.