EPT
What is the Translation Team?
Here's the catch -- there is no such thing as the "Translation Team". The translators are simply normal users who choose to contribute to the site with their translations. The people with the Translator icons are simply users who have contributed to TeamLiquid with their translations over some period of time. It's the site's way of awarding translators who provided consistent and quality translations.
Simply put, go to a website, find something cool, translate it for the rest of us -- and congratulations, you're a translator!
What's there to translate?
There are a lot of material available regarding the Korean e-Sports scene. The most bread and butter task of a translator is to provide translations of the news and interviews that are featured on many Korean websites. Many of us translate because we're huge fans of certain teams and players, or we find something fascinating that we want to share.
Past the news and interviews, there are articles posted on various websites, whether they be opinion pieces, comic strips, or analysis of games done by progamers, or photosets, to even video clips made by Korean fans. There are a lot of material out there if you know exactly where to look.
Where do I look?
While there are many sites that have e-Sports related news, there seems to be only a few that focuses on them.
- Fomos: Fomos happens to be the main e-Sports news portal that most of us tends to use. It's also the primary source for many of the interviews, and the fastest source for after game interviews.
- Daily E-Sports: DES takes a more personal approach with the players, as they feature articles that feature fun factoids about players or little happenings that Fomos usually does not cover. One of the writers even gets Progamers to do really awkward poses! It's definitely worth checking out, although DES does not cover Starcraft 2 related events.
- There are also other news sources, such as OSEN and ThisIsGame, but they aren't e-Sports specific. You can normally find a compilation using Google News or Daum or Naver.
The main community sites are as follows
- pgr21: One of the oldest community boards, known for their extremely high standards of posting.
- PlayXP: PlayXP is currently the main Starcraft 2 community in Korea. While it normally compiles news from other websites for the most part, it often has a lot of neat original content. This and Fomos will be your main source of information if you're into Starcraft 2 related News.
- DCInside Galleries: DCInside's forums are called "Galleries". While their galleries are very chaotic, there are many "industry insiders" who posts stuff on these galleries. This happens very often on the team specific Galleries, where players and coaches will make direct posts on those galleries. The Galleries also often organize "drops" to the players and teams, getting the players snacks and gifts.
A Few Guidelines and Tips
- Don't be afraid to use a dictionary. In fact, most of the translators use them! The one that I recommend is Naver's dictionary. However, if you have to use Google Translate or any related programs for any reason other than to look up a definition of a word, it's a sign that you shouldn't be translating.
- If you don't understand something, leave a Translator's note, denoted by [T/N: Message]. Don't be afraid to admit you're not sure of how to translate certain phrases.
- The rule of thumb is to translate things that aren't easily accessible to the foreign community. This means that there isn't much demand for most of the pre-game posts and after-game reviews made at Fomos, nor will there be much demand for a large portion of Fomos' SC2 related posts.
- Sometimes you will encounter rumor threads, whether they be within the news site or at a community site. However, the rumor threads often differ -- some of them will be based on solid facts and some of them are actual rumors. It's important to distinguish between them when bringing people news since most people will not be able to distinguish between them after you translate. Making the context clear is important.
- Daily E-Sports leans anti-Blizzard, while Fomos leans Pro-Blizzard. This means that Fomos will never report anything that makes Blizzard look bad. However, while Daily E-Sports may report these things, try and avoid their op-ed pieces, as they swing terribly anti-Blizzard. Make sure you grab facts so that you can paint a better picture of what's going on.
- When doing after game interviews, however, your best bet is to use the DES interviews, or to merge the Fomos and DES interviews. This is because Fomos is notorious for editing interviews -- they will often omit a lot of personality from the players and they will reorganize answers into different questions. DES tends to capture more of the personality for the players and the people being interviewed and keeps things fresh.
- Avoid "spicing" up interviews through exaggeration. Korean Progamers often take extreme caution to not say anything extreme -- respect their wishes.
But wait! I'm Chinese!
Sadly, I am not Chinese and cannot help with matters relating to Chinese sites. Thankfully, Carnivorous Sheep has stepped in to help me out.
The main Chinese sources are
- Wfbrood: A site that produces very few news items of its own, but they do a good job of organizing articles/posts from various other sites into one place. The frontpage is BW dedicated, but it also has a SC2 section that is just as active. A good first stop to get a general sense of what articles there are. Note: They will say the name of their source site, but they don’t link to it. If you want to find the original article, you’ll have to go to the site and dig it out yourself.
- Playsc: A forum, where a translator by the name of wooyeon is the source of a large majority of the interviews/articles related to the BW scene.
- plu.cn: A forum, where a translator by the name of 活着就是希望 also does many translations, though it’s usually of a condensed sort.
- As with Europe/America, countless sites are trying to jump on the e-Sports bandwagon with the advent of Starcraft 2. There are probably more sites, but the following sites seem to be the biggest/most active ones respect to Starcraft 2 content right now: s.163.com, sc2.178.com, and sc2.17173.com
Some specific tips for Chinese users
- Having a good knowledge of Chinese slang is necessary, especially with regards to Starcraft (player nicknames, unit names, build names, etc.). Sometimes Chinese slang is substituted in when translating from Korean, so a familiarity with how interviews generally are can help discern what the original Korean says.
- Very rarely do Chinese translators link to the original Korean articles, usually only when it’s some special one-off article; if you want to hunt down the original Korean articles, you’ll need to navigate the Korean sites, like fomos.kr, yourself, possibly with the aid of Google translate.
- Chinese sites love rumors. Try to discern which articles are rumors; it’s usually a fairly straightforward process, but does sometimes require your best judgment/further investigations on your own.
- When not sure what the translator meant, ask someone who can read the original Korean source article. Do the same when something sounds wrong.
Sources, Format, and Images
Generally, translators are free to use whatever format they wish to use for their interviews, assuming they're trying to make their interviews readable.
The only thing is that you should mention your sources somewhere on the translation. When using a Chinese source, then make sure you tell us both the Chinese source, and the Korean source the Chinese source used. This keeps things organized.
One last thing is that you should avoid hotlinking images. Use the "Upload Image" button to upload your images to imgur.com or you can use your preferred image host. But hotlinking in general is frowned upon.
Well, that's all for now. We'll be looking forward to your contributions! Good luck and have fun! If you have any questions, feel free to ask around! And please, please don't burn out.
