Contributed by an Anonymous Scanlator to the Scanlator School (thank you!!) Start:
I’ve been MTLng both KR and JP for over 2 months. I have some tips and techniques to MTL accurately as possible and not give the PRs a headache. In exchange, MTLers would spend a considerable amount of time to do so. Especially those who completely don’t understand the language. These recommendations are purely recommendations. No need to stick to it.
KOREAN:
1. TRANSCRIBE. (Optional) You can do it with capture2text, but I do it on phone then I just open gdoc file in laptop and translate everything on my laptop. Rationale: So you can skip lines that don’t make sense at first and go back to them. Dissecting them will also be a lot easier since it’s saved.
a. Download Google Translate(GTL) and Papago(PPG).
Recommended for SCANNING: GTL
Recommended for TRANSLATING: PPG
Recommended for KR SFX: There are certainly lists online but not all and usually its translated to Chinese. So I couldn’t find a significant source.
b. Make gdoc on phone.
c. Scan text either using GTL or PPG.
d. Copy paste to gdocs.
Tips and Reminders: Make sure that EVERY LETTER IS COPIED CORRECTLY. Spacing, lines, or even punctuations makes a huge difference at times. If the scanned character is hard for them to copy, then use the HANDWRITING option wither in PPG and GTL.
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2. TRANSLATING. Here are a few techniques.
a. CROSSCHECKING. Most of the time, PPG gets it right. Sometimes, you can merge them both because there are times when GTL retains some words while they are lost in PPG and vice versa.
b. CORRECT PUNCTUATIONS. Sometimes, w/ or w/o a dot, or other punctuation marks, the tl becomes different and sometimes, some words that didn’t appear initially will appear when punctuations are present.
c. DISSECTION. In PPG, they dissect each word for you. So sometimes you can also see that maybe a certain word is weird and you can substitute with another that actually makes sense.
-You can separate them first like per phrase
-If that doesn’t help, you split it per word like so. Both work in GTL and PPG
-but usually, I highlight them instead and the meanings are shown and I prefer PPG
-For example:
-The word “sentence” is kinda weird if I were to tell you the context of the story. So when you HIGHLIGHT the KR “Sentence”
-Browsing through the words, the correct word would be “Crest” because in the story, the MC will acquire a crest. “sentence” doesn’t fit anywhere in the said story. So you see, definitely need common sense and critical thinking ahaha!
d. SEARCH THE NET. Ok so sometimes no matter what you do, you just don’t get it. Like this for example.
-Then most likely it’s a slang or an idiom. TIME TO SEARCH THE NET. Sometimes you get lucky LMAO
e. When all else fails, CALL A FRIEND. Sobs would be better if friend could tl everything for you.
MTL quick and short using PHONE:
a. So you already have GTL and PPG on phone. This is like how I read novels while MTLng. Still so time consuming. I use GTL as the main for scanning because sometimes I use “select all” which ppg doesn’t have.
b. Once ppg mini appears, no need to press the 3 dotted line anymore and find “Translate with ppg”, you can just click “copy” instead and it gets automatically tled in ppg mini
Japanese:
1.TRANSCRIBE.(optional) Just like the KR one earlier.
Recommended for SCANNING: PPG
Recommended for TRANSLATING, ROMANJI READING, KANJI HANDWRITING: GTL
Recommended for DICTIONARY, KANJI HANDWRITING and SEARCHING: JISHO
Recommended for JP SFX: http://thejadednetwork.com/sfx/
2. TRANSLATING
a. The tips same as KR but,
b. DISSECTION. PPG doesn’t dissect them like in KR.
-For this, Jisho can dissect them like the one below and just click on them to know the meaning.
-GTL can be highlighted to show meaning of kanji.
A Helpful Loli 