The "Add Translation" Feature

[keac]

Before I made a comic on Tapastic, I saw other comics with "Translation," and I saw that language was the original file (Especially Spanish).
I had a comic that was originally in my native language, and I translated into English.

But when I clicked "Add Translation" from my first episode, I was really disappointed when I saw this.

I said, "Why only these languages? Can't they just make a list of all languages like Google would?" I was very disappointed that time.

[UzukiCheverie]

I said, "Why only these languages? Can't they just make a list of all languages like Google would?" I was very disappointed that time.

Probably because Google has a much higher global demographic than Tapastic. I can only assume the languages they chose were the languages that belonged to their major readerships and their main languages. I don't know about you, but I highly doubt there are a lot of Tapastic'ers looking for comics in "Nyanja" or "Azerbaijani".

Plus, for once, Google is a bad example to use considering Google is just . . . horrible at translating. If you're using Google to translate your comics, they aren't going to read very well, and that's why it's such a big reason so many artists/creators choose to find people who actually speak/read/write the language than use Google, just to ensure an accurate translation that came from someone who actually knows the language.

[keac]

I know that Google Translate is horrible at translating.
I meant that Google has a lot of languages and I hope Tapastic would have a selection of many languages aside from major ones.
'Cause I have an original copy of my comic in a native language and the other one which translates to English.
That native language isn't included in the selection of "Add Translation" or "Original File."

[zelkats]

Inkblazers did have more language options, from Italian to Russian. I believe Tagalog and Malay (which surprised me) were included too. I don't think it would be that big of a hurdle for Tapastic to add to the list. Besides, the translation is already in the comic pages, written by the creator.

[keac]

My comic was originally Tagalog. I had no choice but to just put it in English, but at the same time I got disappointed.

[maximumthemokona]

Wow, I never noticed this. I was hoping to translate my comic to Italian eventually, so this is kind of disappointing.

[UzukiCheverie]

I agree that languages like Italian, Swedish, Finnish, and Dutch should be added, but that's only because those are major languages that happened to be missed on that list.

The only thing I'm pointing out is that those more minor languages (like the ones I've mentioned already), would probably end up not being used most of the time (and don't forget that the more languages you want to translate to, the more work you have to do to reformat your comics, and even if you "demand" for these languages to be added, you yourself may not end up using them in the future to begin with.)

[Silerna]

I wish too they would add more languages, I can't upload my native one either :<

[RiverKai]

I'm not sure if this is true or not, but could it be because they have to translate the entire site for each of these languages for it to be available? Or is that not an option?

[keii4ii]

@KaiLynx I don't think so? I've tried to bring a few Korean readers over, and they were super confused because they didn't understand English. XD Yet Korean is one of the available options. So I don't think the site has to be available in that language in order to have that language available as a translation option for individual comics.

[Silerna]

The site will remain english, however the translate can be only for the comics. It's still an option to keep it both english

[UltHamBro]

I don't think that changing the language of the site is that important: I once sent a friend a link for my comic, and just told her to click on the yellow button.

That said, since there is no option to search comics by language, it could be nice to let each author choose the language rather than selecting one. Imagine, for instance, that I want to translate my comic into Italian, which isn't in the list. I could just write "ITALIAN" when selecting the language, and it'd appear that way.

Btw, searching comics by language available would be a nice thing to add too. I wouldn't mind catching up with French, which I'm starting to get worse at, by reading webcomics..

[AndreZEvolution]

So you would say that it's definitely better to upload two comics with a different language each?

[sauropasquini]

I'm italian and I draw a comic about baseball (CasaBase). My main language is obviously italian, but I translated to english in order to join Tapastic, that I think is a wonderful, gorgeous comic portal!
All functions I found on Tapastic were great! When in the beginning I found the Add translation button I was amazed! I said to myself: "Great job! They care about non-english artists and readers! This is THE portal for me!".
Then I realized that only a few languages were allowed. Italian was not one of those. I wonder why ... I can program a site so I know exactly that is only a matter of only an additional field in the database, for each episode, to assign it a "IT" or a "UK" or any other couple of characters, and to filter them in the viewing portal. Simply as that.
Tapastic have not to manage or to take responsibility about translation quality. Artists only, will be held responsible. So?

OK, I can stand with this. I'll publish only in english, cutting away the possible italian readers.

Now I read that Translations are being cutted away. Suggestions: Create a new series for each language. Not a lot of work more, but why? I think Tapastic is ruining the system, here, instead of increasing functions, they are cutting them away.

What do you think about it?

[sauropasquini]

As I said somewhere else:

Tapastic sure has a table, in his database, about the series, and a table about episodes.
What you need to do is simply add a field to the database episodes, named language, where a two-characters code will identify in which language that episode is written: Example "UK" stands for english, "IT" stands for italian.
Probably you can add a field named main-language to the table series, so the artist can decide which language is shown at first when someone go to his/her series without specifying a language.
When searching a series, you can let the reader to select a language from a list of available ones (simply a filter on the database), so the results will return only series that has at least one episode in that language.
With this additional field, is also possible to add multiple languages to the same series, with almost no weight added to the database.

And when I read a comic in english, I can swap to another language by selecting from the list as it was before, with the "language" button.

[zetina]

I'm assuming it's because they don't simply let you publish comics in another language - the whole site's language changes?
I do believe they should let us so it your way.

[dglisson]

I believe the entire reason they cut it away, and this is in no way confirmed by staff, just my own guess, but I think it is because the "add translation" function meant that two files needed to be added for each series instead of one. This probably put a strain on the servers due to now each series was twice as big for the same number of subscribers/readers. If that is the case, it makes sense why they took it away.

However, I agree with all of you on this thread that this makes me pretty mad as it is one of the reasons I used Tapastic so much and was one of the main functionalities that drew me to the site. Now it is gone and I am not sure what the benefit will be to me to split my subscribers between English speaking and Spanish speaking in two series when it is really one.

[sauropasquini]

@dglisson :
If you post two separate series, one for each language, you post two files per episode, on the server.
Same exactly space if you post two images, one per language, under a language management site, like I suggested.
Same exactly space if you post the two different language images, on the same episode.
The server space cannot be an issue.

Moreover, a big, big slice of the market (comic readers) are coming from other languages. I can say spanish, french, korean, italian, japanize and chinese, are passionate comic readers and probably the overwhelm the english reader, in number ... why to cut there potential customers with such a decision?

[SpavVy]

Well, I found this by one of the mods in a forum post.

Unfortunately, we were unable to keep translations during the server migration.

We encourage creators to create a separate series and tag them accordingly. We will be assembling various collections that gather certain language comics together to make them easier to find.

I'm not so sure as to what they mean by "certain languages" but okay.
Is it only going to be certain languages or certain comics like the popular ones in whichever language?

I am a little miffed about the translation option being taken away as well, not only that it wasn't that big of an announcement from what I remember, it was just posted in a forum somewhere and I think it was only to reply to a question regarding the issue.
I spent over 10 minutes trying to find out what the hell had happened. >_>

One of the things that worried me and my translator was confusion, so after I made a series for the Portuguese version, I also made a click the banner if you need English/Portuguese in both languages and linked them together in case if people clicked on the wrong one.

[APM]

It's a very good idea, using the banner to change the language. It can be a solution for me too, but I wonder if there's people managing comics with more than 2 languages... ouch >.<

Doing separate comics for each, it will be good if Tapastic offer a filter or categories of different languages, being easier to find comics in certain languages.