We are always looking for new talented people interested in lending us a hand or even joining our little circle. Below is a list of available positions. You may direct your questions and/or application to kotonoha @ gmx.net.
Japanese-English translator(s) for series
As clichéd as it might sound, we (like every other scanlation group) need more Japanese translators. If you think you’ve got what it takes (a good grasp of Japanese, excellent command of English, enough time to spare) please contact us and we will discuss things out. We have a few potential projects of varied length that we would love to introduce to you. Of course, you could also suggest your own project. Generally, we focus on seinen and josei manga, but we wouldn’t mind picking up a good shônen or shôjo manga once in a while.
Japanese-English translator(s) for one-shots
You can translate from Japanese into English, but you have a rather busy schedule and don’t want to commit yourself to a long series? Then we might have the right solution for you: one-shots (”yomikiri” in Japanese). Those short stories (about 20-50 pages each) are ideal to test your skill and the best thing is you can choose to work at your own pace. When you finish a story, you are done. No long-term commitment. No worry about maintaining a “regular” schedule. Moreover, short stories mean flexibility and diversity. You get to read a wide range of manga which might prevent you from getting bored with them quickly. Most of our stories were printed in seinen/josei magazines such as Afternoon, Big Comic Original, Big Comic Spirits, IKKI, Comic Cue, Chorus, etc. and they cover all kind of genres: action, adventure, comedy, drama, erotic, fantasy, horror, romance, sci-fi, sports. We are confident that there’s something among them that will appeal to you.
Japanese-English translation checker(s)
To improve the accuracy of our translations, we are looking for one or more competent Japanese-English translation checkers to look through our scripts and point out any mistranslations. We do not expect you to do the translator’s job, just to call his attention to inaccuracies in the translation. Of course, improvement suggestions and assistance with tricky sentences are most welcome. To make your job as easy as possible, we will provide you with scripts that contain both the transcribed Japanese dialogs and the English translations and the original manga scans. Generally, our translations are done with great care (unfortunately, that does not mean that we are free from mistakes). Chances are, you won’t have to correct more than a small fraction of the script.
Applicants will ideally be fluent in both languages. However, native Japanese speakers who know a decent amount of English (enough to communicate) and/or Japanese learners with more than five years of instruction are definitely welcome to apply. Obviously, you should have an interest in manga as well.
Please note that some of our projects might contain mature/adult contents. If you don’t want to work on such projects, please state this in your e-mail.
English proofreader/copy editor(s)
If you know what a copy editor does without having to look it up, chances are you have the right qualifications for the job. To be more precise, we aren’t just in need of someone who is able to spot grammatical/spelling mistakes, but also possesses above-average writing skill and who can rewrite/adapt certain portions of the English dialogs to make them sound more natural and fluid (the copy editor is encouraged to make substantive changes or suggestions about content or style). Ideally, you’d be fluent in English, have writing as a hobby, read a wide range of literature and have good knowledge of linguistics. Being familiar with the use of slang/sociolects as well as the Chicago Manual of Style is a plus.
Our output is pretty low. You might not get a job right away. It’s also unlikely that you’ll have to check more than one chapter per week once things get into motion. You can choose to work off edited scans or the text script itself (using raw scans as visual reference). The ideal turnaround lies anywhere between 24 and 72 hours. Preferred communication methods include e-mail, ICQ and/or AIM.
Experienced image editor(s)
An image editor cleans the raw scans of a manga and letters them using an image manipulating program such as Photoshop or Gimp. Currently, we are not in dire need of editors, but we welcome applications. Experience in scanlating is definitely a plus. However, people with advanced knowledge of Photoshop who are willing to learn the ropes (you might want to study a few editing tutorials first) are also encouraged to apply.
If you feel confident enough and have a few minutes to spare, please take our editing test.
File mirrorer(s)
We use Bittorrent as our main distribution method. However, having people hosting our files on HTTP will make us less vulnerable in case our main tracker goes offline. You may choose to host an individual series or a selected number of one-shots. If you don’t have a specific preference, you could leave it to us to upload files to your server by granting us access to one of your empty folders. Please tell us whether hotlinking is allowed or not.
