First of all, we would like to extend a huge thank you to everyone who commented on our previous announcement about our future. There were a lot of comments, debate and support across our platforms, and though there were too many to respond to, we did try and read each and every single one of them.
Opinion was rather split, with people overall expressing their wish to see us continue our human, high-quality translations. And we are pleased to announce that we will still continue to do our human translations.
However, a big concern in all of this is the time commitments we can put forth towards them, with our release pace currently averaging about a chapter a month. That is why we are delighted to say that we have merged with Heretic Translations – a group that provides edited machine translations of Re: Zero. They will become a new branch in Witch Cult Translations called the Heretic Division, and thus become part of WCT. This will allow us to conduct a hybrid release system where we can release edited machine translations and human translations at the same time, with the former being provided for those who do not wish to wait the longer wait times for the latter. Edited machine translations will be clearly marked on our website, both with advisory text on the chapter, and a popup, in a similar vein as we use on our Low Quality Translations.
Our aim is to use the resources present at Heretics, combined with a multi-process step involving Japanese to English checkers and proofreaders to make the chapter as accurate as possible while still focusing on speed. For the sake of transparency, we will detail the process.
First, we will use a pre-processing script to fix some common DeepL mistakes before our machine translators feed the chapter to DeepL. Then we have our machine translators making the base of the translation and marking anything they find that needs a second look, as well as sometimes using dictionaries like Jisho to improve the base. A Japanese to English translator (a new recruit who goes by Averitius, separate from those working on our human translations) then looks over the chapter looking for anything that looks out of place, as well as things our machine translators took note of, or inconsistencies. Sometimes this process can be very detailed, and can involve line-by-line comparison of the two texts. Proofreaders then look for grammatical improvements as well as keeping to a predetermined style guide. Then there is a final merge of proofreader suggestions before release.
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We are also delighted to announce that with this announcement, we will also release the human translation for Arc 7, Chapter 21, as well as our heavily edited machine translations of Arc 7 Chapter 22 to Chapter 28! You can find the chapters by browsing to our table of contents.
Following this release, work to catch up to Re: Zero’s latest chapter with our edited machine translations shall take place; and once we have caught up, we aim to release edited machine translations within 96 hours of a new chapter release. Of course, work on our human translations will still take place concurrently, with the core of our Japanese to English translators remaining committed solely to that.
Please let us know if you have any questions or thoughts about this merger, and the compromise we are offering between the quality versus speed tradeoffs!
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