Porphy's Long Journey Episode 18 released!

In this episode, Porphy is spending his 13th birthday on a ship headed to Italy.  He meets some new friends on the boat.

My Annette Episode 7 released!

This episode demonstrates how to make cheese.  This episode is one of my personal favorites in the series.

We suggest that you do not use this episode as instructions to make Swiss cheese.  A good set of instructions to make Swiss cheese may be found here.

Porphy's Long Journey Episode 17 released!

In this episode, Porphy finds out what happens to Mina.

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

Fansubbing errors

It's been a while since I've done a fansubbing post.  With the fact that I've been going through health problems, it makes for a perfect way to talk about something that is hotly contested among fansubbers, namely the concept of "quality" and "errors".

Right now, I'm probably have about half my normal amount of energy to do things.  The main reason is that I'm currently on several allergy medications, and they have two effects.  One is that they tend to knock you out, and the other is that your mind gets a bit foggy sometimes.  When both of these happen together, I tend to do things like the following when I translate:

 

Luckily, my timer caught it and put a note in to have it fixed.  I try to not translate when I don't feel 100% able to do so (which is why we've had fewer releases this month), but sometimes I do, and I end up taking a risk of making mistakes.

The best way to not have an error is to not make them.  This has nothing to do with the amount of time you spend working on an episode.  It just means that you have to be focused and alert.  When you're missing one of the two (or in my case, missing both of them), mistakes occur.

There's heated discussion about quality control in fansubbing.  Typically, a group will designate someone to do quality control to prevent things like what I illustrated from happening.  However, anyone who has done any sort of work involving the publishing industry knows that there will almost always be something that will slip by, and fansubbing is no exception to this rule, no matter how much quality control is used.

Furthermore, in fansubbing, the person who you least want to notice your error will find the error, and will publicly ridicule you, claiming that your release lacks "quality" due to the error.  For this reason, many groups no longer do quality control because the reward simply is not worth the extra effort.  In a way, it's an application of Murphy's Law.

I won't go into whether it really is worth doing quality control in this post, because this is something that has no clear answer.  I wish there were a clear answer, but those of you who actually know what quality control really means knows that the anime fansubbing concept of quality control is not really "quality control", and "quality control" has a specific definition behind it.  This specific definition is backed by statistical analysis and tools.

For the purposes of this post, I think the main things to learn from what I said is that:

1. The way to prevent errors in fansubbing is to not make them
2. It's impossible to never make an error
3. Focus and alertness are critical to good fansubbing work
4. Quality control done in fansubbing is not really quality control 

My Annette Episode 6 released!

This is the first in a set of episodes that is not in the novel.  Annette's father takes Annette and Lucien up to a little cabin up in the mountains as part of the summer foraging for their cows.

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

This is a reminder that Licca Fansubs is recruiting translators, timers, and editors. Please contact us if you wish to contribute your skills.

Porphy's Long Journey Episode 16 released!

In interest of not spoiling anything, we will only say that Porphy seems to always be one step behind Mina.

Porphy's Long Journey Episode 15 released!

In this episode, Porphy and Mina end up taking drastic action after Porphy finds out that they would be separated.

Porphy's Long Journey Episode 14 released!

In this episode, Porphy and Mina continue living in the temporary shelter at the church.  Unfortunately, they have to deal with a few realities of their situations, namely that they potentially may be separated, or that they still have to overcome the grief of their parents.

This is a reminder that Licca Fansubs is recruiting translators, timers, and editors.  Please contact us if you wish to contribute your skills.

Status update

We apologize for not having released anything this week.  I have not been able to properly translate or work on the encodes due to illness.

I do have a few episodes of Porphy in the pipeline ready for pre-encode checks; I will get those out as soon as I'm feeling well enough to work on them.

Porphy's Long Journey Episode 13 released!

There is a reason why the novel is named "The Orphans of Simitra".  What happens in this episode gives the novel its namesake.

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

We have now reached the 1/4th mark on this series.  At this point, the story is literally just starting.  The majority of the next 1/4th of the series takes place in the temporary shelter around the church.  The story took a very sudden turn in an another direction, and it will be interesting to see how these sudden changes completely changes the characters.

Porphy's Long Journey Episode 12 released!

In this episode, several things happen at the same time.  The gasoline pump is delivered, but the concrete shell for the tank develops a crack.  No one could draw water.  The animals were acting in strange ways.

In total, all these signs point to something significant happening.

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

My Annette Episode 5 and 4v2 released!

"So," she remarked, "I have come. What I can I will do; what I cannot do you must do for me. Now, Annette, turn that baby the right way up and come and show me around the kitchen."

- Treasures of the Snow, Chapter 2

We would like to start off 2012 on a good note and release something (and officially go off hiatus early).

In this episode, Annette's great-aunt arrives in town.  Even though she is a bit cantankerous, she is actually very kind, and it doesn't take Annette long to warm up to her.

We have also released a version 2 of episode 4.  It turns out the anime adaptation uses "great-aunt", which is a deviation from the novel (which used "grandmother").  This fixes that issue.