JoJolion 53

Ok, so this month apparently they started doing same-day digital raws for Ultra Jump. So for now here’s a lower-resolution version using the digital raws. We may do a higher quality version later if we’re able. I worked really hard to 3:30AM to get this done in one day so some other group wouldn’t snipe it, but they did anyhow. Since now there’ll be publicly available raws as soon as the magazine goes on sale this is going to be something we’ll have to contend with every month from now on. I’m not sure if I want to continue working on this project anymore now. I’ve spoken on this before but sniping and trying to beat groups by like a couple hours HURTS the groups working hard to do it in high quality every chapter. People tend to read whatever comes out first and it demotivates the whole group working hard to do it well and quickly every time. Especially when they’ve been working years to do it to try to get it done with the best quality possible. A lot of sites only archive whatever comes FIRST even if it’s completely awful and it’s hard to maintain motivating for most groups in the best of times. Then all you end up with is the group that does a crappy job and then often they give up and no one works on the project. Please discourage people from doing this and explain to them why it’s damaging to the community. It’s not just my group, it’s other ones, too. I’ve seen many great groups fall apart because of this. I’m going to make an effort to keep going with this series for now but if our group is having to compete to finish before groups doing it in a few hours, probably not for much longer. I have other things in my life I’d like to spend my time on rather than trying to do several days of work in a few hours once a month.

Me and one other translator wrote more about it here a while back here.

I’d also like to mention that it’s happened to me TWICE THIS WEEK after I’ve been pushing myself super-hard doing this every day on one project or another. And it’s one of many MANY times it’s happened to me in the last few years. It must’ve been at least a dozen times at this point, all for projects I’d worked on for over a year. Recently I’ve been trying to get the rest of 3-Gatsu no Lion done, which has several hundred or more words I’ve been translating every single day because I need to free up time from translating to do other jobs or the series (and others) won’t get released. Sometimes I ended up having to give up projects I’d spent months or years on. Sometimes many hours a day every day for a very long time to overcome every obstacle despite lack of help, people making promises they don’t keep and trying to find people to fill in, or wanting to do a good job and just having to push other things out of the way. And then because I worked that hard the project didn’t fall apart and it was able to keep going, albeit taking a lot longer than originally planned. Almost every time it’s a day I want to sleep or relax, but I can’t because I know if I do then everything will fall behind and everything will fall apart. Either because staff loses motivation or isn’t willing to do the extra worth to catch up. And on top of that, I get people insulting me and telling me it doesn’t matter despite barely understanding the problem or understanding all the time and and passion I put into this sort of thing. Translating and organizing fan projects is a huge amount of work and a huge amount of stress a lot of the time, too. It takes tons of time and dedication purely out of the desire for recognition and wanting to do a good job so fans can enjoy something you enjoy so that they can as well. It requires dealing with people dropping out or any sort of logistical setback sometimes under very strict deadlines or else your project falls apart. And this can happen after you’ve set out to do something and worked on it consistently no matter what setback ended up in your way even if it means lack of sleep or having to divert time from other activities to fill in for jobs that people promised a hundred times they were going to do and never actually did. Largely for fans that don’t care about you at all and only want what you can give them. And it’s something I genuinely enjoy doing and it makes other people happy, and I know lots of fans do care, but it’s problems like these that make it very hard to continue.

I’ve had some of the worst luck I can imagine in that regard. I can’t count how many times somebody I trusted decided to screw the whole group over or lie or break promise after promise. But sometimes I’ve had good luck. I’ve had people who apologize when they can’t work and try to help me out when I’ve had problems. And people who’ve tried to push themselves to do better when they knew they were holding the group back. I’ve even had a few people that worked hard to help lead and I became a better leader or a better translator for it. And a lot of projects I’ve done have gotten finished all the way to the end point.

Though the problem is the stress that comes with this kind of thing makes you have to consider “is it worth it anymore”. Even if you’ve invested years into something you want so badly to see through to its end. And if that happens because people are sniping projects or because you don’t have the time to be making up for lack of help, then it just ends. There’s nothing more to it. Sometimes you drive yourself half-insane trying to fix it alone when it’s something that would realistically take 5 people working together to fix. So I’ll keep going the best I can with this and my other projects, all the ones I’ve got left now I’ve been doing for 4 or more years. But its days like today that make me very frustrated and feel like quitting. And for a lot of fan projects of all sorts, that usually ends up hurting the fans. So please, I know nobody can fix it, but please try to be aware of this sort of thing.

JoJolion 53
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Nick Dennis

the batoto link is to chapter 52, there doesn’t seem to be 53 on there yet

noname

Hello (sorry if there are any english mistakes)
I really don’t know what to say, this is really saddening to see you struggle because of some random groups that try to take all the merits. I could say “you shouldn’t push yourself” but I know you have objectives to meet but still, you shoudn’t push yourself too much 🙂
I hope the other groups will hear you and understand what you wish. That’d be really great and your mind would be at peace.
I also want to say that I am one of those who can wait patiently for the high quality scanlations because I’ve grown very fond of the team’s work ! I would be lying somewhere crying if there was nothing at all from the team that I like and trust for the quality of the scans ; ;

That’s why, thank you very very much for all your hard work, you’re really great.

(and thanks for this chapter of course.)

M

Man your work is great and I will really miss it if it will be gone in the future, but you should never push yourself this hard for people you don’t even know. This should be an healty hobby done in sparetime not an unhealty slavework done to meet irreslistic deadlines; it seems more reasonable to let people read inaccurate translation sooner and give those who care for it an accurate version when your group are able to, a week, a month, it doesn’t matter. Pretty sure that some will wait for your work and many will download and read it again (and more will enjoy the volume release, props for that too).
Thanks and take care!

Anonymous

I totally understand you, as someone who is also a part of a scanlation group. I understand exactly how frustrating and demotivating it can be. Our group’s releases are a little slower because we clean all the sfx, but they’re on schedule and they’re correct and they’re reliable. But people only read the first, incorrect, often Japanese->Chinese->English translation that pops up on tumblr. And if we were to abandon it, all these random translators popping out of nowhere would lose interest and change fandoms because it’s not a fandom that gets regularly scheduled releases anymore, and all the translations would stop, not just ours. So I totally understand if you want to stop if it’s not enjoyable anymore, and I think most people will understand and nobody will blame you.

Anonymous

As someone who’s fully appreciated the effort you’ve put into translating part 8 until now, I think you should honestly keep on doing it, even if you’re not the first group to release the translations, what matters the most is the quality of the translations, as apparent with the current bad translations of part 5. Even though we have sub-par translations there, people fully appreciate the newer, better translations, and I feel this will be the case for part 8 too if you continue.
Keep up the good work, we have you to thank fully for all the chapters we’ve gotten until this point, don’t let this demotivate you!

HiwamatanoboruFan

PLEASEEE don’t stop!!!!!!! Your version is great!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Orange

Thanks for all the hard work Kewl0210 and all of the HWMN team. I honestly mean that. I’ve been reading your scans for Part 8 since I blazed through JoJo a few months ago and I really appreciate the quality that goes into your work. You and the JoJo Colored Adventures guys are my favorite scanlating groups for JoJo because you spend the time and effort to make sure the scans look good before publishing.

I would read your scans before anyone else’s, because I appreciate the work your team does. Take your time. It’s a monthly series, if I’m waiting a month to read it anyways, then I can wait a bit longer to get a great scan.

The absolute last thing I would want to see happen is everyone drops out and we get Duwang-level translations again. 🙁

TreePeony

Well, I personally start to read only once the whole manga has been completed (except for strictly episodic series), so in the event that there’s more than 1 group I always pick the best. I highly value the high-quality work you guys do here, but I do get that I’m the odd one out and that most people care more about speed than quality – whether scanlators or readers. So while I’d be very sorry if you stopped scanlating this awesome series (as well as any of your other projects), I do understand your reasons; surely the other readers do, too.

Thanks very much for this chapter of Jojolion, as well as all the others you’ve done so far. Hope you’ll keep going, but even if you don’t, best of luck to you guys in your future scanlation endeavours!

I completely understand you being disheartened with this change of events. You should definitely not push yourself for people you don’t know, and if this feels like too much thankless work, you shouldn’t keep doing it anymore.

With that said, I would definitely not want to read a low quality translation just because it was the first one to pop out. The jojo fandom has a long history of subpar translations and just horribly sloppy work that really hurts the reading experience, and I refused to read part 4’s DUWANG scans exactly because of that reason, as I will with part 5. The good translation, provided it’s available and people are aware of it, the one that will eventually last in the public eye. You can see that with how many people criticize the awful Band of Hawk scans for Berserk and just prefer to go read Dark Horse’s translation.

Best of luck regardless of what you decide to do, and thank you for all the hard work you and HWMNB have put into Jojo so far.

GreatShadow

Thanks for your work! And thanks for being honest about how you’re feeling about this!
You’re awesome and I prefer your scanlation work, even when it can get a bit late, but that’s because you people give the best quality you can offer.
And even when these times trend is speed before quality, I really appreciate your team taking the effort to going the hard way and offering something awesome, because that demonstrate you love the artists work so much as us, and want to gives us the best experience.
Keep the good work, and even if you want to quit, we’ll understand. We’re all humans after all and we get tired from bullshit once in a while.
But I seriously hope this bad time will pass. You guys deserve to be happy!

Anonymous

First I’d like to show my appreciation and pay my respects for all the hard work you and your team have put in this project. Then as others have said it before me, there is no need to ruin your health or be overworking yourself to meet harsh deadlines, you don’t work at shueisha shounen jump, you’re just a fan same as us and what you are doing is amazing. Also, no matter what is out first I believe that you guys have a core of faithful fans who will always be there to support, thank and read your work, me included.
Do not give into frustration for that you are not alone, you may not see or hear about them but you have a lot of people supporting and eagerly awaiting your newest realeases .
Best of luck, do not give up-a random fan

D,Maula

You shouldn’t be upset about this, because your translations are really good. Even if another group translates the chapter faster and that a lot of fans read it because they want to know what happens as soon as possible, high quality wins. I save every month all the episodes you translate because it’s a fine work and when I’ll read this part again, I want to read Hiwa Mata Noboru version that it’s better translated,and the scans are clean and good. I’m always recommending your work and some friends of mine do the same. When Jojolion started, there were other groups scanlating it, but your version was the best. I’d like you to keep on offering a good work instead of being the first in sharing it. Thank you very much for your efforts.

Anonymous

Hey man keep up the good work. I love all the scans and translations you do. They are always great quality. I really hope that you don’t give up because there are plenty of people just like myself who just want high-quality scans and are willing to wait a little extra longer to get a hold of them.
You do wonderful work for JoJo’s fans everywhere. God bless

Anonymous

I’ll always read your stuff over others their quality is poor, I’m a Jojo’s fan so I suffered through Duwang and the old part 5 translation. (which oddly Duwang wasn’t nearly as bad as because it did at least retain the feeling of the part somewhat and wasn’t willful incompetence unlike the part 5 translation.)

Keep up the work!

(Sorry if my english is bad, i can read it, but i can’t write it or talk).
Don’t be sad! your work is the best in the sekaiichi!!!
I prefer high quality work that a poor, fast, bad translate, where many dialogues(or something) like that is lost.
Your translation is great and understandable, so… we continued reading your version, because is the most faithful to the native.
The decision what you choise, we respect it, but, don’t be sad, because, we love your work, and the all work fansub. Thanks for use your time in this awesome manga! see ya~

Tsehacla

Don’t worry about the race, the quality is where it’s at.
Many of us i’m certain would rather wait a couple days/week to get the best quality.
I’m part of a group ripping vgm, for a while we were about speed, then decided fuck it we’ll just do it at our own pace and guess what, we get more praises and grabs than ever because our rels always beat whatever rushed rip came out first.
Countrary to what it seems like, peeps will still go for quality eventually.

ralphdro

I’ve read the entire JoJolion translated by you, and it”s the best I’ve saw.
Don’t worry about speed, I think most peopleo who reads here are here for quality, not for fast releases. I don’t worry about waiting a few weeks to have a chapter in the best quality possible, instead than one made in hurry.
You could do a pool about what people prefer, and see if you want to keep this up.
I would totally vote for quality over “speed”.
Take a rest, and keep up the good work 😀
You’re the best!
(Sorry for the possible bad english ^-^)

mossy

Have you considered switching to tanks? Groups that focus on quality will never be able to beat the speed scanners, and no amount of pleading ever seems to change their minds. I suppose the reality is that most readers (and translators, even) would rather have the opportunity to read something now than to MAYBE read it later, which is what always used to happen back when people did more volume releases; so that’s a problem there.

I know most people these days use online readers (does anyone but me even use IRC anymore?), but I for one would be happy just being able to get good HWMN releases when they push out a new tankoubon. And it always seems such a waste to put so much effort into cleaning and editing magazine scans for the period until a new book comes out.

Anonymous

Yeah, I think it would be better if HWMN starts doing tankobon scans from now on, just to save time and effort in the future.

Ayin

Thank you for your hard work!!! I totally understand you!
Please, don’t drop the project, I can’t read JoJolion from any other group, I’d rather read it in japanese, with my crappy japanese and with crappy scans (’cause it would be the same), and I really don’t want to do it (’cause they’ll probably would drop the project some month later, and that would be all). You are the only one, and time doesn’t matter, but quality does!

PS: My english is also crappy XD, but I wanted to tell you that I love you (all of you).

My english is kinda shitty, but anyways.
I have to be honest, I never thought about you, the translator, about all the shit you have to go through to finish a weekly/monthly issue just so we can read it for free, and all the competition you have to deal with, but man, even though I only read JoJolion, your work is awesome, I seriously hope you don’t give up. I would donate you, but I’m a minor…