How it works - Scanlations

The process of scanlating is a mystery to many people. I honestly had no idea how much work is involved in the process before I jumped in head first! So I've decided to write out how things go, at least from my experience. Leave a comment and tell me how you've seen it work differently. Try to follow along :)

1. The raw provider, a very kind, awesome, and generous person, buys the magazine or tankobon. They scan said item, usually destroying or at least severely damaging the book in the process. There are many ways to do this, with varying results. Better raws makes things easier for everyone. No raws means no scanlation. Period.

2. The raws are passed to the translator and the editors. The translator, well ... translates. Usually the translation is written in a specialized format, so it's easy to tell what text belongs where. This is a difficult job, not only because you have to know both languages, but you have to be familiar enough with each so that the correct meaning will come across.

3. Once the translation is complete, it is passed along to a proofreader, who looks for spelling/grammar errors as well as parts where it just doesn't sound like normal English. This process can be done in conjunction with the translator or completely separate.

3. As the chapter is translated/proofed, the editors begin the job of cleaning the chapter. I've heard it referred to as mopping as well. Cleaning the pages involves removing the text, making the black portions actually black (as opposed to dark gray), and removing the dirt from the page so the white parts are white.

3. The translation and the cleans are then passed on to the typesetters. The typesetters do simply that: set the type on the page. Now, before you go thinking that this is an easy job, remember that Japanese reads top to bottom and English reads left to right. (Well, most of the time.) This means that the bubbles are the wrong shape for English. There's also font changes and last of all ... sound effects. Some groups just put "sfx:...." notes on the sides, some replace the japanese sound effect with the english equivalent, and some completely ignore them.

4. Finally, the typeset pages go to Quality Check. The QC'ers look for errors of any kind: spelling, grammar, natural speech, cleaning mishaps, wrong font, etc. Problems are sent back to the appropriate team members, they are fixed, and everything goes back to QC again.

5. When everything has been okay'ed by QC, the chapter is released. Most groups have a website of some sort where you can directly download their scans. Eventually, someone will submit the chapter to an online reader and it'll snowball from there. If you want the highest quality scan always get it directly from the scanlation group. When you download a chapter, take a moment to leave a note of thanks. It takes a lot of time to do this stuff.

These roles and steps can be combined or split up between many people. Speed scans generally have more people involved. As for my personal experience, I've had two different set-ups.

On KWMS, there's our raw provider, a translator who also does QC, and then there's me. So I take care of proofreading, cleaning, and typesetting. It takes about an hour per page to get the cleaning and typesetting done. So with 30 pages, that's 30 hours!! Since we try to get it done in 4 days, that's over 7 hours of work per day ... in addition to my normal job as a teacher.

On Skip Beat, I'm one of two editors. Sometimes I clean half the chapter, sometimes I clean all of the chapter, and sometimes I don't clean at all. That's the wonderful part of being in a larger group: more flexibility. There's still just one translator, but there are generally two or more typesetters. We can get the chapter done relatively quickly, but it's still a lot of time for each of us.

So the next time you think of complaining that chapter X of manga Y is late, think about everything that goes into producing those pages for you. I actually started scanlating because I was tired of waiting for a chapter, but I have resolved to never complain again. We're lucky that so many people have put so many hours into the thousands of scanlations out there.