Explain wat u kno bout subbing; how do I get an anime subbed?

[Jemcrystal]

Tell me everything you know about subbing. Who does it? Where do they do it? Do they get paid? Can they be encouraged with money? What happens if it's been three months and my favorite anime has not yet been subbed?

[Fuji]

Oops, pressed the wrong button there... ^^; Meant to press 'quote'...

Anyway,

Who does it?

For anime/drama/misc fansubs, it is usually a team of people consisting of:

1) a ripper/video encoder- procures the video in raw form, as well as embeds finished subtitles into the final video so you have 1 file instead of 2. (Can take anywhere from 2 - 24 hours per episode.)
2) a translator- translates the dialogue (Takes anywhere from 2 - 4 hours per episode.)
3) a proofreader- proofreads the translation to make sure it sounds okay (Takes about an hour per episode.)
4) a timer- matches the translations with the timing of the video (Takes about 1-2 hours per episode + extra for karaoke.)
5) a typesetter- changes the font and font effects (Takes about 1 hour + extra for karaoke.)
6) a quality checker- watches the entire video and makes sure everything looks great and is error free (Takes 1-2 hours per episode.)

^Takes are estimates based on adept people working on a 40 minute long video. Amateurs will probably take longer. Things can also always take longer because of software difficulties and time schedules. Some of these jobs are combined, but often they are different people, so it takes time to pass the files between people too.

Where do they do it?

At home on their own computers, I presume.

Do they get paid?

No.

Can they be encouraged with money?

If the file isn't illegal, sure. First to take care of the copyright issue, please go and purchase copyright permissions from the original producer. I'm not sure how much it will cost, but for a full season of anime... possible 1 million dollars? For a less popular series maybe only $100,000 can cover it...

Then you can pay the subbers. For the encoding/timing/typesetting jobs, which is a technical job, I'm thinking it will be about $40 an hour. For a translator, one episode is at least $500. Proofreaders are cheaper, you can probably get away with only $14 an hour for an amateur one.

If you want to offer that much money, plus you have the copyright to the video, then I'm sure you can hire people to subtitle it for you.

What happens if it's been three months and my favorite anime has not yet been subbed?

You can 1) fork out money and hire professionals (after buying the copyright license of course) (only cost roughly a million dollars) 2) learn Japanese (roughly 2-3 years in university level but only costs $3000) 3) find out which part is holding up the subbing process, train yourself in it, and join the fansub team (can take anywhere from 1 week - 3 years training, and then you need to commit anywhere from 1 hour to 1 week of your time per episode). 4) hire only a professional translator who will give you a word document script that you can read, not subtitles. (Only ~$500 an episode for a professional translation.)

If you cannot do any of those things, I guess you'll just have to be patient and wait.