Man, three thousand releases. Nothing like an anniversary to give you a sense of how much time has passed.
I think this is cause for celebration. Few groups ever make it this far and I think we just get better as more time passes. We're always learning more, making improvements, gaining experience. In a world where there's so much unnecessary ugliness, I think it's really important to be doing something positive. Just do stuff to make other people happy once in a while. That's important.
I'm really proud of the work my collaborators and I have been doing. Unfortunately, I really think people give me too much credit for the stuff that comes out. Fansubbing isn't something that you can do really well by yourself. The collision of different ideas and collection of knowledge really makes the end result that much better.
Timers help get the project started off. Just having a script pretimed helps a great deal with efficiently going through and translating the material. We couldn't do all that we could do without them.
Typesetters give the subs that magical spark. If you notice it, it's probably too much, but overall, just a little creativity and a good usage of colors and fonts can really make a sub come alive. As a translator, I don't really think we should be altering the experience too much from how the Japanese experience the show, but if we can capture a feeling or enhance something that's there, then that's really good.
My fellow translators. That's right, I don't translate everything for this group. And translation is hard work. Capturing all the ideas in a Japanese sentence isn't a simple one-to-one swap with English.
Editors and QCers really fill in the other half of the script. They catch mistakes, offer improvements that usually make the translation a lot better. They offer ideas and insights that one person could never have thought of. If there's any group whose credit I take too much for, it's probably this group. The script is just that much better for it.
And in a few months we'll have cause to celebrate yet again...
3000 releases (Google Doc Spreadsheet)
Oh yeah, if you want to join up, just send me a forum PM and let me know what you'd like to do.