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.