36 replies to this topic

[Goobera]

Info beforehand: This is not about real full Kubera translations! If you wish to contribute to fully translating the Kubera Webtoon into English or Spanish, please contact
The Company (English) or Prince Scans (Spanish/Español)
 
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So back to the topic on hand, after I started the thread about Currygom's health I thought it would be probably equally as urgent to have a designated thread for all the QUICK and SPEEDY translators of the Korean Kubera releases.
 
Especially Speedy Gonzales Translation Goddess Mizura, who up until now provided 95%-99% of all quick translations is very likely suffering form too much stress/overwork, or at least the strain to have to translate the Webtoon on Monday after midnight (in her area), despite having a day job, where she has to stand up in the morning the next day
 
So first of all, I hope all translation related updates (not the actual translations - those go to the Kubera Raw thread) can be now gathered in one single thread, and no one has to search for them all over the place, and possibly miss important facts...
Like the fact that Mizura is on shore leave for the NEXT 2 WEEKS
 
Kind as she is she promised to help out with some of the translation/Korean typing - despite her appointments - but this or that way she will be ONE DAY LATER the coming week, and COMPLETELY GONE the week after that!
 
So my ideas are:
 
1. Focus on finding as many quick translators and people who can type Korean text from the Webtoon as possible. Any little help will really HELP
2. Collect all those interested/willing to help in this thread, so we know who is who, and WHEN they actually CAN help/have time left
3. Discuss who can do what, and what is possible and when.
4. Gather information about upcoming "bottleneck" situations, and try to find solutions or workarounds
5. Build a Shrine for Translation Goddess Mizura, where we all can gather to pay our respect, and offer gold and silver donations in big amounts
6. In the future having enough backup translators so we can find out who is having time, and so we have quick translations and access to all Kubera goodness, without any translator collapsing or losing their jobs/failing exam, or similar collateral damage..
 
Well, anyways, I will start with a report on the current situation (15.May 2013):
 
We have a bottleneck coming up. The next 2 weeks Mizura is either not here, or barely able to help a little, and with 1 day delay. We have to start gathering up any ideas or help offers.
 
This Monday there is a holiday in my area, so I will of course be here and helping as much as I can But unfortunately my brain is not as good as Mizura's, and there is no way I can translate as fast or type blind Korean. At least not right now and not in any near future... So all I can do is to translate small parts, sentences, if I can translate 30% of the Webtoon in less than 7 hours I will feel like a speed champion
 
Dried Seaweed, who was up until now providing the Korean typed text using tesseract also has other appointments coming up, and likely will not be able to help out at all anymore
 
Therefore, anyone who is interested and waiting eagerly for the quick translations, and in ANY way able to help out, is now asked to speak up if possible
 
I think Liverspread was willing to help with some translating/typing Korean, are you still interested?
 
Aside of that, anyone who can type at least SOME Korean, or knows how to use tesseract, please come forwards and answer in this thread if you have time to help speed translating and when ^^

[2hot4you]

First off all, you guys have my utmost gratitude for working so hard for us peons, second i would love to help, but i know nothing of korean >.>. I can, however, help build a temple for u guys . if there is anything else beside translating that could be done, i can handle english, let me know

[Gizmos]

I can type korean text but my google translate guesses are bad--> usually having wrong info :/ And I can read the names and some kuberian words. 

But I have an exam on monday when kubera comes up(5 pm for me) so I can't really promise anything...

And I am not really fast xD

[Liverspread]

Maybe...? :x

 

I can't translate next week, since I won't have an internet connection at that time.

I might be able to translate a few sentences the week after that. (I have a 1 hr. lunch break, yay)

 

(Please be aware that I translate really really slowly, say, 5-6 (short-medium)  sentences in 45 mins, and that they may be inaccurate)

 

Sorry I'm not that helpful ;n;

 

I think I'll practice over the summer...

Edited by Liverspread, 15 May 2013 - 09:29 PM.

[Hopelessly_dreaming]

Bah bad timing, in one of my classes there was a nice Korean guy sitting behind me I could of asked but school ended a week ago  -.-

[Mizura]

... ?_?

 

So after a "Currygom Status Alert thread", now we have a "Mizura Status Alert thread"?

 

You know, you Could just wait half a day (for the first week) and wait for The Company's scanlations to come out (for the second week).

Or if you Really can't wait, you can just start with the bits that you find most interesting.

 

Doing these summaries doesn't really wear me out, I can type out most raws in under an hour now and do the summaries in 1~1.5 hours. I'm just not too thrilled about the Monday night timing (where I am), because it has me starting out the week tired, and while everybody start discussing, I'm sleeping.

[Kaiein]

I hear you. I'm always late to discussions and whatnot anyway cuz I do my best to go to bed before 2am my time and that's often when the new raws come out anyway (for me). I say do what's best for you cuz I know what it's like staying up early Monday morning just to do something that's "due" the next day, and then the rest of the week is basically crap.

[smthFishy]

Minor correction: it's not tesseract but a professional OCR tool (Abbyy Screenreader). Yours to download for $150 USD.

 

If there's enough interest, I don't mind putting in some hours to get the text out but I personally would prefer to let the chapters build up interest. Let's take a quick vote: if you CANNOT wait a week or so for either Mizura to come back or for the Company translation to come out please p/m me.

Edited by Dried Seaweed, 16 May 2013 - 04:57 AM.

[Kaiein]

You just made this ^ sound akin to a Facebook "likewhore" status, even though I know that is not your intention. Just sayin'. ^^

[Dreamingflower]

I can wait for the translation summaries and I like the idea of building a temple XD filled with candy so Mizura can nibble on it all she wants. 

[Goobera]

... ?_?
 
So after a "Currygom Status Alert thread", now we have a "Mizura Status Alert thread"?

 
=D Yes, so from now on we expect you to frequently report on your blood pressure, heart rate, iron and cholesterol levels, endurance test results, and any similar facts that we need to evaluate your current status In order to make informed choices, and decide if we prescribe forced shore leave or not
 

You know, you Could just wait half a day (for the first week) and wait for The Company's scanlations to come out (for the second week).
Or if you Really can't wait, you can just start with the bits that you find most interesting.

 
Yeah, I know some guys here are like totally sure they can wait I am like that too, each and every damn week, but as soon as the new Kubera chapter is out... well......
 
So I am certainly planning on translating as much as I can, and hope the one or other Korean typing Kubera fan will also be dying from acute curiosity interested in helping/pitching in I have no doubt that your quick translations will be better, not to speak about The Company, being also faster and faster recently with the full transactions o_O;; The fully translated Webtoon is now out in less than 1 week D=...but one week is still one week, full of pain and not knowing what really happens to Leez and her pals D=
 

Doing these summaries doesn't really wear me out, I can type out most raws in under an hour now and do the summaries in 1~1.5 hours. I'm just not too thrilled about the Monday night timing (where I am), because it has me starting out the week tired, and while everybody start discussing, I'm sleeping.

 
I thought as much D= I wish I would be faster at Korean typing, so I could help out, since the release is around 05.00PM in my area, and not int the midst of the night D=
 
...but that leads me to my most recent research and development I got tesseract to actually work in my computer After a lot of trial and error.. well, I also tested virtually all free open source OCR software out there, got also a graphic fronted called OCRFeeder, and... It allows to adjust the images, and cut out the text only, at least partially.
 
Well, the results are mixed, but at least it does work with Korean, and it does recognize most of the average text (printed letters, black on white or white on black) ^^ The problems start when the text is inside semi-translucent speech action bubbles, or even hand written
 
I post below an example of the tesseract translation I got, the first 30% of the most recent Kubera chapter:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
Leez: Too peuda.

Leez: Anything number ttakhal one sonrak too peunte.

Leez: Me die without eoah geolkkya.

Leez: But nothing came up with that nothing.

Leez: Uncle is not, why you're here, I'm not a dream.

Sagara: The... If you... You ppenang yeonui??

Arc 2 Chapter 41

Crack (1)
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
Not something to be euphoric about, and no comparison to Mizura, but... It was super fast, it took me maximum 15 minutes, all in all, inclusive the adjusting of the extracted Korean, and the translation from Korean to English.
 
Better than nothing I hope, plus, I can afterwards still type the missing Korean letters, that were recognized wrongly...
 
I still think typing the letters directly is the best/most accurate (or using a professional software, like Dried Seaweed). And Mizura is having a certain advantage, being half Chinese and already used to the Asian way of speaking/writing/thinking and forming sentences/building words... Plus, Korean was developed based on Chinese once, at least partially, the 2 languages are definitely more related than Korean and English (or German or French, the 2 other main languages I understand)

 

So even if I could become as fast at typing Korean as Mizura, I would still be stuck with the crappy Korean to English Google translations >_> For me the entire Korean syntax is completely alien and bizarre - while Mizura already knows the very similar Chinese syntax, so this is a big advantage for her ^^

Edited by Goobera, 19 May 2013 - 06:13 PM.

[Frozen Ice]

I can help a little. But my korean typing is quite slow, and when the raws are out, it is usually later in the night and I will be sleeping.

[Readingfish]

 
 Korean was developed based on Chinese once, at least partially, the 2 languages are definitely more related than Korean and English (or German or French, the 2 other main languages I understand)

 

So even if I could become as fast at typing Korean as Mizura, I would still be stuck with the crappy Korean to English Google translations >_> For me the entire Korean syntax is completely alien and bizarre - while Mizura already knows the very similar Chinese syntax, so this is a big advantage for her ^^

Well... from all I've heard regarding the two languages, Korean and Chinese are probably more different than you think? The sentence structure, word-order (Subject-Object-Verb ) and stuff like that are all different.  The similarities between the two languages come from a lot of Korean vocab having Chinese character counterparts.  The best analogy is Latin roots in English words - you don't know latin if you know a lot of English words, but you can notice the roots when you notice that related words share a prefix or suffix.  

There's definitely an advantage to learning other East Asian languages if you already know one + have the basic hanzi/hanja/kanji down in one language, but ... I dunno. >_<;;   

 

I've heard that machine-translating Korean->Japanese->English sometimes works better than Korean->English, so perhaps people might want to give that a try, just for comparison's sake.

[Goobera]

Well... from all I've heard regarding the two languages, Korean and Chinese are probably more different than you think? The sentence structure, word-order (Subject-Object-Verb ) and stuff like that are all different.  The similarities between the two languages come from a lot of Korean vocab having Chinese character counterparts.  The best analogy is Latin roots in English words - you don't know latin if you know a lot of English words, but you can notice the roots when you notice that related words share a prefix or suffix.  
There's definitely an advantage to learning other East Asian languages if you already know one + have the basic hanzi/hanja/kanji down in one language, but ... I dunno. >_<;;   
 
I've heard that machine-translating Korean->Japanese->English sometimes works better than Korean->English, so perhaps people might want to give that a try, just for comparison's sake.

 
"Korean is the official language of South Korea and North Korea as well as one of the two official languages in China's Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture. Approximately 78 million people speak Korean worldwide. For over a millennium, Korean was written with adapted Chinese characters called hanja, complemented by phonetic systems like hyangchal, gugyeol, and idu. In the 15th century, a national writing system called hangul was commissioned by Sejong the Great, but it only came into widespread use in the 20th century, because of the yangban aristocracy's preference for hanja. (...) The Korean language is agglutinative (like Japanese) in its morphology and SOV in its syntax (like Chinese)."
 
This means, Korean was build upon Chinese once, so one could say it is like French when compared to Latin. If someone knows Latin they will not have much difficulty learning/translating French, and if someone knows Chinese they will not have as much difficulty as a European to translate Korean ^^ The other way round would be harder, if Mizura would speak Korean and try to translate a Chinese manhua (instead of a Korean manhwa), then she would have more trouble.. Probably ^^ I am no linguist, just citing stuff I found online >.<
 
But anyways, virtually anyone says that Korean is damn difficult, even for other Asians But they have at least some advantage over other language groups, when trying to translate it. Therefore I presume that the only really successful quick translators in this forum all have an Asian background...
 
Btw, the translations do NOT get better if I would try to translate Korean > Japanese > English
Just that the translation from Korean to Japanese is "more accurate", because the Japanese letters can convey more meaning to a NATIVE SPEAKER And then the native or experienced Japanese speaker is INTERPRETING the Japanese words, using the brain alone If you do not understand what I mean just try translating Korean > Japanese > English - you will see that way you get more gibberish, unfortunately Only if one would be able to understand Japanese (or Chinese, as those translations are  probably also more accurate), then one could interpret the sentences and words better...

Edited by Goobera, 20 May 2013 - 01:40 PM.

[Readingfish]

 
"Korean is the official language of South Korea and North Korea as well as one of the two official languages in China's Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture. Approximately 78 million people speak Korean worldwide. For over a millennium, Korean was written with adapted Chinese characters called hanja, complemented by phonetic systems like hyangchal, gugyeol, and idu. In the 15th century, a national writing system called hangul was commissioned by Sejong the Great, but it only came into widespread use in the 20th century, because of the yangban aristocracy's preference for hanja. (...) The Korean language is agglutinative (like Japanese) in its morphology and SOV in its syntax (like Chinese)."
 
This means, Korean was build upon Chinese once, so one could say it is like French when compared to Latin. If someone knows Latin they will not have much difficulty learning/translating French, and if someone knows Chinese they will not have as much difficulty as a European to translate Korean ^^ The other way round would be harder, if Mizura would speak Korean and try to translate a Chinese manhua (instead of a Korean manhwa), then she would have more trouble.. Probably ^^ I am no linguist, just citing stuff I found online >.<
 
 

Ah, see, the part that I was feeling uncomfortable about was the phrase "built upon" and "derived from", due to the distinction between a language and the writing system used to transcribe that language.   I'm no linguist either, but as far as I've heard, linguists are still arguing/confused about where Korean (and Japanese) popped up from:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_language#Classification

The hyanchal, gugyeol, and idu described above are phonetic systems, by which spoken Ancient Korean was transcribed using Chinese characters.  This would be like writing Japanese using the roman alphabet ('arigato') instead of hiragana.  The twist, of course, is that written Chinese characters do not have any indication about how they ought to be pronounced, so they don't really know what ancient Korean sounded like.  The things written in these systems used Chinese characters, but because they were phonetic representations of not-Chinese, they were pretty much gibberish if someone tried to read/interpret it as Chinese.  (Same as how someone who doesn't know Japanese can read 'arigato' written in the roman alphabet, but it would be pretty meaningless to a English/French speaker. ) 

So I guess what I was trying to go for was, English is definitely influenced a lot by Latin, but one wouldn't say that English is derived from or descended from Latin itself.   (In contrast to French which is influenced and can be said to be a family member of Latin.)    In this analogy, Korean and Chinese is more like English and Latin than French and Latin.

 

But I guess it's all semantics XD;;; we're in agreement about how machines don't do a good job (yet) of translating between Korean and European languages, so.. >.<;;

 

 

 

 Btw, the translations do NOT get better if I would try to translate Korean > Japanese > English

 

That's too bad. I hoped it would work.

[Mizura]

Em.... no, Chinese grammar is more like European grammar than Korean ones. It uses a SVO grammar, and doesn't have all those gazillion particles. :S

On the other hand, I actually wish the webtoon would use more Chinese characters. Then I'd know exactly what it means, rather than one out of a dozen possibilities. *cough*

[Readingfish]

Em.... no, Chinese grammar is more like European grammar than Korean ones. It uses a SVO grammar, and doesn't have all those gazillion particles. :S

 

That's what I thought! I wasn't sure though, because people have alternatively told me that Chinese was SVO and SOV, and even the article quoted by Goobera says that Chinese is SOV.. O_o;;

 

 

On the other hand, I actually wish the webtoon would use more Chinese characters. Then I'd know exactly what it means, rather than one out of a dozen possibilities. *cough*

 Yeah, there's definitely a place for Chinese characters for added clarity. >_<

Even now, I think that the chapter title that the Company translated as 'Border' should have been something like 'Wariness' or 'Warning'.  The dictionary shows at least 3 different Chinese character combos for the homonym in Korean:

http://dic.daum.net/word/view.do?wordid=kew000004103&q=%EA%B2%BD%EA%B3%84

[Mizura]

Chinese is mostly SVO. Though, it is possible to structure certain sentences as SOV.

If you say "I am Chinese" for example, in Chinese the sentence structure will be SVO: "我 (I) 是 (am) 中国人 (China person)."

 

If you want to say "I read the book", for example, you could write:

"我正在看书" = I am reading a book = I (我) am reading (正在看) a book (书)"

(看 = look or read. 正在 means the action is in progress)

 

But you can also structure it as SOV for the past tense:

"我把书看了“ = I read the book = "I (我) the book (书) have read (看了)"

In this case, the emphasis is on the book, not on the action. (了 is tagged onto any verb to indicate past tense)

 

It's still quite different from Japanese or Korean though. Korean particles tend to be After the words, not before. Also, as shown by these examples, China doesn't use certain grammar particles. In Korean, "I" would be followed by the 는 subject particle, and "book" by the 을 or 를 object particle.

 

 

Yeah, there's definitely a place for Chinese characters for added clarity. >_<

Most people when faced with sudden Chinese characters: D:

Me when faced with sudden Chinese characters:

 

Chinese language in particular is homonym hell. A single syllable can have 3~4 different meanings (with the tone), or even over a dozen (if you ignore the tone: Chinese syllables have 4 tones: flat, ascending, descending or descending then ascending. The meaning changes a lot depending on the tone used - which makes it total hell when you're talking to someone with strong regional accents). The written character, however, has no such ambiguity.

 

Unfortunately, countries such as Korea and Japan have decided somewhere along the line to borrow some words from Chinese. Except they often leave out the original characters when writing, and rely only on the pronunciation. And they also leave out the accents. D": And that's how China "exported" homonym hell to other languages.

Edited by Mizura, 21 May 2013 - 06:27 AM.

[Readingfish]

Thank you for the detailed explanations!  I know that I'll have the most trouble with the 4 tones part if I get around to studying Chinese properly >_<;

 

Ah ha ha, homonym hell.  At least Korean has lots of consonant/vowel combinations to deal with this stuff... but Japanese with their so-called 50-sounds in their alphabet/language has it worse, it seems? XD;;; 

[Goobera]

Quick translations recap :
 
1. You guys are super awesome Thank you so much for deciding to help out, my health is actually generally pretty bad (has something to do with my brutal past and certain Half hunters), but if no one would have translated I would do it (super ultra slow, my best time so far were 7 hours of ultra focused typing, only to get maximum 30% of the Webtoon typed and somewhat translated - after that I collapsed, and only barely avoided collapsing this Monday)
2. We have now many people who are known to be able to type Korean or use OCR software or translate very accurately, or even all at once The list includes (in order of speed and accuracy):

• Mizura (who is a native Chinese speaker, works as a professional translator for Chinese at least, and is generally very knowledgeable about Asian languages, and also good at blind/speed typing - the bad part is that she is forced to type for 2 hours in the middle of night )
• Readingfish (who is at least studying Chinese and/or other Asian languages, and is able to translate/summarize as fast as Mizura - however has work/appointments, and does not know when and if able to help)
• Dried Seaweed (using professional OCR software at speeds faster than the Company o_O;;, and can also translate/interpret Korean very well due to speaking Chinese - but has usually work and appointments, so it is not known when and if he can help)
• Chris Rosenkreutz (nearly as fast at typing the entire Korean as Mizura o_O, then we could all try to Google translate together, some people seem to be better at interpreting and tweaking, knowing the Korean syntax)
• Gizmos (pretty fast at typing bigger parts, and also able to translate using Google translations)
• Liverspread  (who is willing to type and translate smaller parts if time/workload allow it)
• Frozen Ice (who offered to help if necessary, but only slow typing of some sentences, and not here exactly at the time when the Webtoon is out)
• Goobera (very slow at typing, but can type a few sentences or use mediocre freeware OCR software, only able to help out when not working on Monday, since I come back home after the Webtoon is released, and usually too exhausted for anything due to my usual illness related pains - last Monday I had a holiday)
• LovelyLuvLuv (who was translating some of Currygom's blog posts recently, so she seems to be good at translating/interpreting Korean - but have no idea if she is willing or able to help out with the speed Webtoon translations)

3. So basically we can hope that we make it during the time when Mizura is fully absent (NEXT week!), but she seems to be the fastest/most accurate of all people willing to help so far (and amazingly enough she did contribute over 95% of all quick translations and summaries up until now!). Nevertheless gathering up as many helping hands as possible is generally very important, since Mizura does need a break sometimes, and it is very harsh to expect her to sacrifice her sleep each Monday She has to work too during the day

 

So, please do not hesitate to help out if you see others struggling on Mondays, especially if you are faster or more knowledgeable. Please also do not compare the outcome of someone's translation efforts to your (superior) abilities, for me for example it is super hard work for endless hours, and I usually collapse afterwards - and yet only mange to type a small part, and my translations are only basic Google translate >.< I am not "lazy", and I do not give up if I am still able to help, I am just not as well educated/less healthy/more struggling than you, and will not be able to get much faster in near future >.<

Edited by Goobera, 21 May 2013 - 09:25 PM.