Today Vivid Translations is as old as little Vivio was when we first met her way back in Nanoha StrikerS. That’s six years if you’ve forgotten. How time flies and it’s nothing short of amazing that this group is still alive and active after such a long time. Can’t be said of all scanlation groups.

In the spirit of looking back and seeing how far we’ve come and how we got here, I asked our team founder, saint king of Vivid Translation, Satsuki, to share with us the story of the early years of the team and how we got here.

Vivid Translations was built when Wings of Yuri was closing and they had to drop it after 12 episodes. There was someone in Mangafox (Dave/die_hard_RPGamer, already retired). He translated Vivid from Chinese to English and typeset everything, and he was getting flak for bad English and bad typesetting, so I took the time to message him and help him out. The process used to be taking the Chinese>English translation, and then by myself, I would check the translations against the Japanese raws, and then typeset them. I didn’t have much time to make any fancy typesetting because I was doing everything by myself. There were even drama with Paya-Paya Scans who were actually planning to pick-up Vivid from Wings of Yuri, and they got angry at us for not saying anything about picking it up, even got insulted for having bad typesetting… We just told them that we’ll do what we can and improve from the get-go, so we’ll be a team deserving of scanlating Vivid. (Darkest past, man.)

And then, I got helping hands of typesetters from nanofate.us, and then Drew (cthulhudpc), Kira (Khai), and Amy (CrazyHat), came along. I guess you could say that they’re the people whom I’ve been working the longest, and I’m really glad to still see them now. It was during that time everything got a liiittle, faster. And then, when the typesetters got busy, everything slowed down again, because I have all these scripts but I can’t typeset all these chapters, Dave also started to become inactive, so I had to look for a translator, and what a blessing Kinsei was! Up to now, I still feel very lucky to have Kinsei in the team. It wouldn’t be moving at all if it weren’t for him.

But after a while, I got a little busy and things became stagnant again, so I looked for a Project Manager, and of course, I decided to offer it to the person who always, religiously commented thanks on our releases. Of course, if you need someone to lead people, you gotta get the fan who loves the series a lot, yeah? And that was PrimeSonic. And then, we talked about needing a new typesetter, and then Setsuna came along. Then the team just grew bigger from there. We all talked about how a big team would be hard to manage, so we hesitated for a long time on how many new people to add. On the same note, it was really nice to meet everyone, and I want to say “Thanks for staying with this stuck up team leader for a long time.” Haha.

I guess it somehow became a message to the Staff instead, but that’s technically how Vivid Trans happened. I’m just glad I’m not a one-man team anymore. Haha.

Satsuki Takahashi~

That pretty much sums up the first three years of Vivid Translations history. We’ve come a long way since then. I went from a late-comer to the team, doing proof-reading and script polishing, to coordinating this world-spanning team. But thankfully, it was the most awesome team I could ask for. They stuck with me while I did all I could to improve our collaboration tools and (hopefully) make everyone’s lives a little easier.

Over time, we would branch out beyond just the Nanoha ViVid manga, filling in gaps when and where we could. We partnered with ZSS Scans for a time to help move the Nanoha Force scanlation along when their team needed a hand, establishing a great relationship with Tori in the process whom would later come back to help us out in many of the side-projects we’ve done. We even buried the hatchet with Payapaya and jointly released a few doujin chapters as well. And even now we have people dipping their toes into fansubbing!

Just looking at how much our Download Archive has grown is a testament to how much we’ve been able to put out there. All for the love of Nanoha and the fans. The number of projects we’ve tackled over the years still amazes me. It really has been wild.

What is most worth taking in is that as many scanlation groups may come and go, this group stayed together and kept the releases coming, even if things slowed down over time. People finished school, full-time jobs happened, and we weren’t just college kids anymore. This normally would have been a death sentence to most groups but not this one. The passion and dedication I’ve seen in this team proves that there is a genuine love here for not just Nanoha and her little Vivio, but also for the fans who also share in this wonderful world and the characters we adore.

Things are a bit different than they were three years ago. We’ve expanded the team once again, bringing in new talented and passionate members. And while we’ve had some rocky moments here and there, the show must go on. I do hope you will join us for the rest of the ride.

A big thank you to all the fans who have encouraged us over the years and shown us the kindness of the people we are making these releases for. And also the biggest thank you to this wonderful team who has held strong over the years and given their time, talent, and sometimes even more to Vivid Translations.