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.
Vivid Translations 
happy birthday you guys are the best.
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Oh nice. Good on you, and best of luck in the future endeavors.
It is really interesting to me that you (as a group) started by translating CHINESE versions of Vivid to English. I would have thought it would have been easier to find someone who knows Japanese and find the issues in Japanese than to use Chinese. But you use what you have I guess. I do wonder if there were many/any misunderstandings that areose because the text was translated twice, through two different cultural and linguistic prisms.
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Happy Birthday you guys, and thank you for bringing us this entry in my favorite franchise.
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Congrats and good luck with the group in the future.
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I would like to congratulate VIvid Translation for faithfully translating the most wonderful series that truly mean a lot to me. It has been six years ever since I know you all, and you never once disappoint me. You promised and delivered. Even when Nanoha-franchise seems to be not as famous as before (Force went hiatus T_T), you guys still deliver Vivid, Vivid Strike, anthology and partnering with Arite Drop to scanlate Innocent and InnocentS as well.
Nanoha series as whole has been my beacon of light, a precious companion that cheer me up when I am down at work, home or even trouble situation. Nanoha in particular has inspired me to never give up and Vivid Translation Team has also inspire me on how to make the impossible becoming possible.
Thank you very much and I truly cherish you all dearly from the bottom of my sincerest heart.
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Thankfully, even in that era, Satsuki did provide a small knowledge of Japanese. Perhaps not enough to fully translate but enough to do a little double-checking.
Overall, things worked out.
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And thank you for the constant support! 😀
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Actually, it tends to be easier to get access to Chinese scans than Japanese for some strange reason. If you don’t have a scanner or, well, the financial leeway to buy your own copies, it can be a viable alternative. Especially if you have someone proficient with that language over the other close at hand.
If it’s any consolation, though, I don’t speak or read a lick of Chinese (I’ve had to do a ton of research for the Lufen arc, believe me), so we definitely don’t do it that way anymore. =P
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Well if there’s anything China tends to get done right it’s to get things done quickly and then get it all over the place . . .
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Congrats!!
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i love you es genial tu trabajo me has hecho muy feliz …
muchas gracias very thanks espero que puedas seguir traduciendo esta historia me encanta :3
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feliz aniversario no tengo como pagarles lo que hacen soy muy feliz leyendo y es gracias a ustedes muchas gracias lo repito no sé que seria de esto sin ustedes
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You are reading this english translation yet you seem to be unable to compose that reply in English. You seem to either really like the series, or are really bored, if you are going through all that trouble. 😉
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Reading in english is far easier than writing something yourself
Vocs you don’t know can be guessed from the context when you’re reading something but finding vocabs that fit your sentence is quite hard
Also tense of the verbs, sentence build, etc are a pain
He’d go through a lot of trouble by trying to write on his not native language 😀
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I know about that trouble, since English is not my native/mother tongue either. I would have thought he might have tried using Google Translate to translate simple sentences into English and posting those, since those were more likely to be understood than Spanish? language. I can understand his written form since I know some Itallian, but I don’t know about the others.
Also it’s still a whole lot of trouble for something that I’m not sure was ever translated into his original tongue. So I was also interested how he came to watch the franchise.
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Gracias por las palabras de aliento. Realmente apreciamos los fans que nos comparten su pasión por nuestro trabajo. Nos da ese extra de motivación para seguir.
Mientras siga ViVid, seguiremos nosotros, no solo por que nos gusta si no también porque tenemos gente por todo el planeta esperando con ansia saber como sigue. 🙂
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Thank you so much for the hard work and translation, and keeping the Nanoha series alive for us english readers!
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Thank you very much!
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Thank you so much for everything you’ve done to keep Vivid, and all these other works, coming for us. I don’t know what we would have done without you, and I’m very glad we haven’t had to find out.
Thank you again. 🙂
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congrats, vivid…..
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