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NEWS: Translation, Typesetting Company Amimaru Issues Statement Regarding Low Pay Rates

"all of our agreed compensation in an appropriate manner."

So they agreed to pay garbage, and people desperate to work in the industry accepted it. That doesn't make the pay okay.

A job is generally only worth what people are willing to do it for. I'm guessing there's a surplus of people willing to do it if it's a low paying gig.

It's definitely a low rate, but it's also a side-job, and a lot of the work is essentially the digital equivalent of unskilled labor (you can do a passable job with very basic Photoshop knowledge and a bit of practice).

It's definitely a low rate, but it's also a side-job, and a lot of the work is essentially the digital equivalent of unskilled labor (you can do a passable job with very basic Photoshop knowledge and a bit of practice).

ADVANCED type setting is an art, don't get me wrong, but the majority of the time, almost anyone can do it, and the pay rate reflects that. I'm sure they have higher-paid staff work on the more difficult pages (or parts of pages), and then have QCers go over the low-paid workers' results and clean up as necessary, because it is much cheaper to have a small handful of skilled employees fix the work of a larger low-skill, low-pay part-time force than it is to keep a full force of skilled employees.

I'm not saying it's fair pay, but it reflects the number of people willing and able to do the job in the market. It's one of the sad realities of capitalism. I work in graphic design, mostly advertising and brand management. It's a rough business, especially if you're independent.

CrypticPurpose wrote:

It's definitely a low rate, but it's also a side-job, and a lot of the work is essentially the digital equivalent of unskilled labor (you can do a passable job with very basic Photoshop knowledge and a bit of practice).

Yeah, you're wrong. It's not a side job, it's a full time job, and it takes skill. Typesetting isn't even the word, the term is letterer. It's not just randomly pasting words in a type box and picking a font. You have to make it look good, follow style guides, print rules, and do touchup work (basically redrawing and reapplying tones) that can can hours for a single page. A lot of letterers have background skills in art because of the heavy art touch up required. That's not even getting into the hand lettering some publishers require for sound effects.

And in our society no job is a side job. If there is a demand for the end result, everything at a bare minimum should be worth a living wage. You're like those people who believe fast food work should be worth less than minimum wage cause it's "for teenagers" but those places don't close during school hours.

What's worse is they don't allow people to allow things to their porfolio and claim credit, so you can't even really use this work a stepping stone into work with a better company.

littlegreenwolf wrote:

What's worse is they don't allow people to allow things to their porfolio and claim credit, so you can't even really use this work a stepping stone into work with a better company.

Is crediting translators a standard in any other field?

Anime? Manga? Video games? Live action foreign films?

Thinking about it, the only time I ever hear about translators themselves is when controversial stuff pops up and people need someone to blame. From stuff like Funimation script changes, Netflix's Evangelion subs, or those old Ted Woolsey translations back in the Super Nintendo days. I guess having a name available per series would let people be more informed if it's a translation worth reading or avoiding depending on the history of said translator.

On films the translator listed in the credits roll, or if the credits aren't translated then as a subtitle during the credits sequence.

nargun wrote:

On films the translator listed in the credits roll, or if the credits aren't translated then as a subtitle during the credits sequence.

This doesn't seem to be the case for anime. Crunchyroll doesn't list the translator listed anywhere on the episode page - or really any credited staff at all for that matter - and the in-video credits aren't translated either beyond whats already written in English. It might just be the physical packaging of a disk release that has all that information, but if someone just streams it's probably not available information.