Well, I wasn't expecting an update to come so soon, but here I am. A major update to my ToranSubs project has just been finalised, and it's good news for both myself and those of you who are eager to see a fully subtitled Japanese Deltora Quest during this year. My previous non- responsive translator has been dropped for a new translator who is also willing to handle subbing and timing at a fair price. He works very efficiently compared to the last translator (who led a very busy life), and he works at about the same speed as I do when it comes to subtitling, yet with added monetary incentive. Previously, I was handling the subbing and timing on my own, and I will continue to do that for episodes 8 and 9 considering that I do have transcripts for those episodes from the last translator, but episodes 10 through until 65 (if things go well with the new guy) will be translated, subbed and timed by him. What will I be doing from that point on you ask? I'll be handling proofreading and ensuring that everything is book- friendly. Needless to say, this guy isn't in any way familiar with Deltora Quest, so it's very important for me to have a hand in the final product. I'll also be fine- tuning various aesthetic aspects to the subtitles as well, but the major point is that the big job of writing up everything into the subtitling software and timing it to the speech of the characters is no longer needed of me. I will instead be able to jump in and make edits to text that has already been written and timed, and while I do feel a little sad that I won't have such a personal hand in the project (because the time allocation for subtitling and timing is massive), the written text will still be my end product (as his English isn't perfect, so I'll be making lots of grammatical / sentence structure changes), so I do still have that going for me. Plus, it's hard to resist the temptation to have that huge workload lifted from my shoulders.
The previous rate that the project was moving at was horrendously slow, to be honest. 7 or 8 episodes in two years is far from acceptable when you have a total of 65 to work on; we'd be here waiting until 2025 or something. What it means to have this person on board with the project is that episodes will be 'completed' within the span of 7 days, 14 at the absolute maximum, which translates to a reasonable estimate of the project being done by late 2019. That is phenomenally attractive to me, and I'd like to think that it is for you as well. Once again, for those of you who are interested in being updated immediately when it comes to this project and who use or are willing to use Discord, then click the link in the post above to join the ToranSubs server. At worst, we'll be able to chat about Deltora Quest together anyway
Good times ahead!