How would I go about getting someone to translate a Light Novel or two or three?

[STMPD]

So you know how Bubblegum Crisis has a bunch of fairly obscure written work, as of yet untranslated after all these years? The Toshimichi Suzuki Light Novels Silent Fanfare and Break Down-48, the silly manga Go Go Sabers, and the 2012 schoolgirl AU Hard Metal Guardians? I'm not counting the ADP manga, since those have translations but are just hard to find on the internet. (I know of a massive VK archive of BGC photos that had pictures of the ADP manga, actually, but you have to create an account to access them now, and I'm uncertain about doing such a thing in light of the Russian conflict.)

Well. I Have  Them. And at the pestering of one guy on reddit, and upon realizing that scanning itself shouldn't be that hard, I've decided to take a crack at getting these babies scanlated. Or, at least scanned. The problem is I don't know what to do about the 'lating side.

So... do I need to commission a translator? Where would I do that? I'm sure there's a process here and I was just wondering if anyone knows what that process is. Thanks.

[classicdrogn]

I'd guess you could put an offer on Fiverr or Craigslist? Places like that, anyway. That's to just get someone who (claims to) know the language to spit out translations, of course, getting a an experienced scanslator group interested would probably mean finding your way onto their forum/Discord/etc. and them having some free time as well as interest in processing obscure old stuff for an extremely small niche of a niche audience, with possibly a couple more layers of niche depending on how you want to count them.

Straight machine translation is iffy, but from what I understand there's a Google chrome/android app that can do it directly from phone snapshots, Google Eye I think it was? I don't have any compatible devices, so it was extremely annoying when "Just take a snapshot of the screen and use Google Eye" was the main advice for using the Disgaea 6 demo rather than someone bothering to transcribe more than the basic menu items, that anyone familiar with the series would be familiar enough with from screen position alone to not need translations for.

[STMPD]

I'd guess you could put an offer on Fiverr or Craigslist? Places like that, anyway. That's to just get someone who (claims to) know the language to spit out translations, of course, getting a an experienced scanslator group interested would probably mean finding your way onto their forum/Discord/etc. and them having some free time as well as interest in processing obscure old stuff for an extremely small niche of a niche audience, with possibly a couple more layers of niche depending on how you want to count them.

Straight machine translation is iffy, but from what I understand there's a Google chrome/android app that can do it directly from phone snapshots, Google Eye I think it was? I don't have any compatible devices, so it was extremely annoying when "Just take a snapshot of the screen and use Google Eye" was the main advice for using the Disgaea 6 demo rather than someone bothering to transcribe more than the basic menu items, that anyone familiar with the series would be familiar enough with from screen position alone to not need translations for.

So going to Baka-Tsuki is probably a bad idea, because of the hypernicheness of something like this. Dang.

Are there any machine translation systems that have a reputation for being better than Google, like something you'd have to pay for? Because maybe working off of a marginally non-shitty machine translation I could just take it upon myself to edit, edit, edit, and then maybe use a friend or two who knows some rudimentary Japanese to help when the model clearly has something wrong? Something like that? I'd basically be rewriting any given novel from scratch, and it'd take a shit-ton of time, but that might work...

[classicdrogn]

I mean, you can always try asking them first? Especially if you can offer even a small amount of compensation for the work, being super-niche is not necessarily a disqualifying factor if someone has a free space intheir schedule and wants to get the new hat lootbox for their WoW main, or just the fancy cup ramen instead of basic shrink wrapped blocks.

[STMPD]

Interesting update to all this: There exists, independent of me, a scan of Hard Metal Guardians.

I spent a few minutes in a Starbucks using Google Translate to translate the first chapter or so of the thing, and while much of said translation is muddled, the intent comes across clearly enough. It's quite bizarre, but if I were to just punch up the machine translation with my own prose... would that be sacrilegious, somehow? Even if I kept the weirdest parts of the story, like Priss trying to club a Boomer to death with a guitar and declaring victory in the name of Jimi Hendrix?

Because I looked at Baka-Tsuki, and it looks like the way projects are made there discourages commissions. You have to start translating a bit of any given LN yourself before any real 'project' gets off the ground. So, yeah, I guess I would have to work through more informal channels like Craigslist.

Maybe I should buy a second copy of the older LN's and dissect them for scanning just in case I decide to do this sometime in the future? Or maybe I should move on with my life. Heh.