Fansub editor applicants suck ass
For the gg editor test, you are given a real, un-timed script that a translator turned in (bless your drunk soul, mandoric), a postage stamp sized video, and an online writing collaboration pad to simulate the speedsubbing environment. Then, they’re told to edit the script for sense-making, flow, grammar, spelling, etc, and are also told that asking questions is okay. I graded like 25 editor applications last week during Jaka’s emergency editor recruitment. With confidence, I can say that 99% of them would fucking suck at editing fansubs.
The large majority of applicants didn’t bother to ask questions about lines that made no sense in English. This is obviously a pretty deadly flaw. The same ones also didn’t bother to try and reword these bits that made no sense in English. This, to me, shows a serious lack of common sense. Why would I want a person who thinks terribly written and nonsensical lines / discussions can be left in the script?
Now, on the other hand, there were some applicants who asked too many questions. It was like they were unable to use their brains to interpret / figure out basic context from visual clues or just by reading the script. Not every line in the script was garbage. Some questions could be answered by simply reading the lines that came directly before or directly after the lines the applicant didn’t understand. These people had to be babysat and had to have their hands held the entire time. They were a complete polar opposite of the previous type. Why would anyone want a person like that? (I mean, haven’t you ever been to a job interview where they say they want a “self-starter” who can “hit the ground running”?)
Some applicants basically claimed to be a super amazing English student and/or some kind of amateur writer. Yet, despite this, they continuously stuck to the same rigid, comma-heavy structure of the original text and barely made attempts to reword things for flow. Do, people, in, English, talk, in, constant, commas? Ironically, many of them complained about the script being full of commas, yet did little to try and fix the lines. This pretty much shows that you would be shit at this job since the job includes fixing those types of things instead of just complaining about them.
As mentioned above, many applicants complained about the script used for the test. They said it was “unfair.” They should get a 2nd chance now that they “know” what to do. They said it was less of an example of what an editor should do, and more of an example of what a translator should not do.
I pretty much ignored all of these comments. “Unfair” my ass - this is a real script that a real translator really turned in. You can’t get much more fair than that.
Feeling that you had no idea what to do is definitely not a complaint I care to listen to either. The editors who ended up “passing” don’t seem to have any idea what they’re doing either, so clearly we aren’t being picky in that category. I even asked people at the beginning if they had knew anything about fansubbing or not. I put more time/effort into answering questions from people who had never fansubbed before and I was incredibly lenient when factoring in how many questions they asked and how stupid I thought those questions were.
WRT to the 3rd point, uhm, I don’t know about that. valerauko translates 3/4 of the shows gg is subbing. While he isn’t nearly as drunk as Mandoric (the translator “responsible” for the script used for the editing test), he isn’t exactly T.S. Eliot (I actually hate Eliot) or Shakespeare when he’s up at 2am in the morning translating, and he’s also ESL (He’s not even anywhere near their level when he took his time with Joshiraku, hah). Going back to the first point, “unfair” would be giving someone one of my Highschool of the Dead scripts, telling them to edit that, then laughing hilariously at how hard they struggle when they pass the test easily and suddenly have to edit something garbled and Engrishy written by valerauko, and tell them they’re fucking bad. Now that - that would be unfair.
Perhaps the biggest flaw with all of these applicants is their ignorance. A lot of the feedback I got was, “This is way harder than I expected it to be.”
In other words, they thought it would be……….. easier…..? “Unfair test, gg trolling me!” Waaah.
