Tuesday, November 30, 2010

A Little Princess Sara Episode 10 released!


Sara's birthday is coming up, and Miss Minchin decides to buy Sara a birthday present after finding out the supposed truth of the diamond mines.  However, would Sara be happier with Miss Minchin's present or with Becky's present?

You can obtain this episode from your standard anime torrent indexing sites.

Monday, November 29, 2010

Les Miserables Episodes 26v2, 27v2

For those of you who were having problems with the audio for Les Miserables (mostly people using older players and people using QT/Perian on Mac OS X), v2 encodes have been released to address these issues.

Sunday, November 28, 2010

Les Miserables Episode 27 released!


This episode is an episode that does not go with any particular chapter in the novel.  Here, we find the Friends of the ABC, Jean Valjean, Cosette, and the clergy trying to find a little girl that ran away because she thought her mother did not want her any more.

You can obtain this episode from your standard torrent indexing sites.

A Little Princess Sara Episode 9 released!


This episode corresponds to the chapter where Sara finds out about her father's new business venture.  Here, Sara receives a letter from her father about diamond mines, and we see Becky treated in probably the worst way so far until she gets to Sara's room at night.

You can obtain this episode from your standard anime torrent indexing sites.

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Releases will resume on November 28th

Licca Fansubs staff members will be off for the Thanksgiving holidays.  We will resume our release schedule on November 28th.

We apologize in advance for any inconvenience this may cause.

A few things about working on Les Miserables

Now that the dust and excitement has settled a bit, I would like to discuss our thoughts and goals for Les Miserables: Shoujo Cosette, as part of the joint with Wasurenai Fansubs.

As previously mentioned, we are here to provide translation support.  This series, like most World Masterpiece Theater series, requires due diligence in its translation.  To translate this series properly requires several things:
  1. Reading the actual novel.  That is no small task, considering that most editions are over 1200 pages, and it is not used that much in your standard English class at school.
  2. Historical and cultural research.  In particular, French history tends to be very exciting, and oftentimes confusing as well.  Reading the actual novel actually will fulfill a part of the needed research, as the novel is known for its exposition of politics, philosophy, and the historical events of the time.
  3. Religious research and understanding.  Catholicism does feature prominently in the novel in some form.  Again, reading the actual novel fulfills some of this requirement.
  4. Careful matching of the meaning of the dialogue versus dialogue in the book.  What we mean by this is that the spirit of the novel should be preserved in the dialogue.  We admit this is rather subjective, but it is something that we keep in our back of our minds as we assist in the translation.
To make this series relatively kid-friendly, the anime does deviate from the novel in key places.  A lot of events are actually done slightly out of order, and there are filler episodes that do not correspond to any chapter.  Because of this, an exact match of the dialogue to the novel is not possible and is actually undesirable.  In fact, the version of the novel we are using uses a translation dated back to the late 19th century, and language structures have changed since then.

In terms of release speed, from the perspective of Licca Fansubs, we actually have no right to force Wasurenai to release at our speed.  What we do hope is that we will do our part as efficiently and precisely as possible.  That alone should allow releases to come faster than previously. 

As previously noted, things like editing, timing, styling/typesetting, and encoding are done by Wasurenai.  Our staff members are also standing by to assist in any capacity if needed.  It is actually better to maintain consistency between editing, typesetting, and encoding to ensure that continuity is maintained.

Feel free to comment on this.  If you need to make a criticism, don't direct it to other people commenting; do direct it to us.

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

A Little Princess Sara Episode 8 released!

 
This episode corresponds to the second half of chapter 5 of the novel.  By giving Becky a bit of kindness, Sara has earned a friend for life.

You can obtain this episode from your regular anime torrent indexing sites.

Les Miserables Episode 26 released! (joint with Wasurenai Fansubs)

So, this probably came out from left field.  We at Licca Fansubs have taken on a third project.



We will be providing translation support with Wasurenai Fansubs on their efforts to do Les Miserables.

You can obtain this episode from the usual anime torrent indexing sites.

Sunday, November 21, 2010

A Little Princess Sara Episode 7 released!


This episode is a filler episode that is not in the novel.  This episode goes into the entire concept of class representatives and how it changes people.

You can obtain this episode from your standard anime torrent listing sites.

Friday, November 19, 2010

A few words on release scheduling for A Little Princess Sara

Everyone has probably figured out by now that we're going a little bit slower on A Little Princess Sara, compared to our speed on Super Doll Licca-chan.

Currently, we are aiming for a release every two days.

There are two reasons why each episode takes longer.
  1. It takes us 4 hours to translate each A Little Princess Sara episode, compared to 2 hours for each Super Doll Licca-chan episode.  This is because it is significantly more difficult.  If the episode doesn't have French dialogue, typically we will have an episode translated in 3 hours.
  2. Since we are encoding both an XviD version and a h.264 version, the encoding time is increased threefold.
So, we apologize in advance if we don't sub this as fast as we did Super Doll Licca-chan.  We will do our best to finish this series.  It deserves no less.

A Little Princess Sara Episode 6 released!


This episode corresponds to the first half of chapter 5.  We introduce Becky, the scullery maid.  This scene here is probably one of the most moving in the series so far.

You can obtain this episode from your standard anime torrent indexing sites.

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

A Little Princess Sara Episode 5 released!


This episode corresponds to chapter 4 of the novel.  Here, we introduce Lottie and how Sara becomes her "mamma".

You can obtain this episode from your standard anime torrent indexing sites.

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

A Little Princess Sara Episode 4 released!


This episode corresponds to chapter 3 of the novel, where we introduce Ermengarde in more detail.

You can obtain this episode from your standard anime torrent listing sites.

Saturday, November 13, 2010

A Little Princess Sara Episode 3 released!


This episode corresponds to chapter 2 of the novel.

You can obtain this episode from your usual anime torrent indexing sites.

Friday, November 12, 2010

Our policy on softsubs

The policy here at Licca Fansubs is we do not use softsubs for any reason whatsoever.

Before everyone starts picking up pitchforks and torches, let me dispel some reasons for hardsubs.
  1. Hardsubs do not prevent subtitle theft.  There is nothing stopping another group/reencoder/person on the street from typing out the script, retiming it for whatever raw they use, and rereleasing it on their own.  In fact, this is the modus operandi for most of the non-English fansub groups out there, and there is nothing wrong about doing that.
  2. As a side note to #1, there is an OCR program out there that can extract hardcoded subs.  A little test of the program with some of our releases show that you can pull out our subs very easily.
  3. Hardsubs have almost as many limitations on what you can do with it as softsubs.  Softsubs can pretty much do everything that hardsubs did years ago, with the notable exception of some of the fancier karaoke effects.
There are two reasons why we stick to hardsubs.  Both of them are probably personal and petty, so we apologize in advance.
  1. Our editing and typesetting/styling is part of what makes each episode special to us and what we like to have pride in.  Every word, and font used is chosen to complement the series.  As part of our process, we try our very best to make sure everything looks aesthetically pleasing.  We also try to make our font choices so that you can read it on a reasonably decent TV.  (If I get into the mood, I should probably tell how I used to evaluate font readability several years ago.  I don't have any of that equipment now.)
  2. Most of us are much older than your typical fansubber these days.  As for myself, I actually got my start in fansubbing around 2003.  Because of that, my encoding methods and practices are very old-fashioned.  This also means that a lot of the rules I follow in terms of how I conduct the operation of this group is based on what people did back in that time.  My staff are okay with that, and that is what is most important.  Some of the really grizzled veterans will probably know, based on what I said, could probably easily guess a third reason why I stick to hardsubs, and they would probably be correct.
We also had recent comments on our choice of containers for our h.264 releases.  The only thing I can say about that is that I know how to deal with Matroska better than the MP4 container, so that was my main choice.  h.264 + AVI is a recipe for disaster that I try to avoid.

One last thing: if you want to comment on this, please attack just me and not your fellow commenters.  I would appreciate that very much.

A Little Princess Sara Episode 2 released!

 
This episode corresponds to the second half of chapter 1. 

You can obtain this episode from your standard anime torrent listing sites.

There is going to be a slight delay for episode 3 due to some logistical issues.  We apologize for any inconvenience.

Thursday, November 11, 2010

A few things...

If anyone is wondering about our source of our raws for this series, it's this:


This was very well worth getting.

There are a few things we would like to say about our goals for subbing A Little Princess Sara:

First, we would like to acknowledge the previous groups that did the first two episodes of this series.  They have set a really high bar on how well the series should be done and we will try to meet or exceed that standard.

Second, by doing this series, we will be attempting to fill some really large shoes.  This series deserves a quality presentation and treatment as all popular modern series get (maybe even better treatment), and we intend to do so.

Third, we will do our best to release episodes on a regular basis, and to release this at a reasonably rapid rate.  We won't be able to do this as fast as Super Doll Licca-chan (partially because this series is harder to translate), but we will go as fast as we can.  It has been too long that this series has been waiting for someone to sub it to its entirety, and we aim to complete it with the same efficiency as we did Super Doll Licca-chan.

A Little Princess Sara Episode 1 released!

For all of you wanting us to do a World Masterpiece Theater series, your wish has been granted.


This episode corresponds to the first half or so of Chapter 1 of "A Little Princess".

You can obtain this episode from your standard anime torrent indexing sites.

Note: The h.264 version encode is hardsubbed.

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

We have a surprise coming up!

We're going to release the first episode of one of our next projects really soon (like, within the next 2 hours or so).  We apologize for the wait and hopefully you all will enjoy our next project.

This new project will have two releases per episode: an XviD encode with AVI and a h.264 encode with Matroska.  Both will be released at the same time.

Saturday, November 6, 2010

Super Doll Licca-chan Episode 52 released!


We have concluded our subbing of Super Doll Licca-chan with this episode.  We hope you have enjoyed the series as much as we have.

Now, it's on to our next set of projects!

Friday, November 5, 2010

Super Doll Licca-chan Episode 51 released!


Remember Pierre's song? He finishes the song just in time!

You can obtain this episode from your standard anime torrent indexing sites.

Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Super Doll Licca-chan Episode 50 released!


Tomo has arrived in the Doll Kingdom with Vaya and Puru.

You can obtain this episode from your standard anime torrent indexing sites!

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Super Doll Licca-chan Episode 49 released


Well, Rui being in the Doll Kingdom is quite a pleasant surprise.

You can obtain this episode from your standard anime torrent listing sites.

Monday, November 1, 2010

Super Doll Licca-chan Episode 48 released


Someone mysterious saves Rika from certain capture.

You can obtain this episode from your typical anime torrent indexing sites.