How long have you been studying Japanese?

Roots said:

[...]towards people who have about 2 solid years of Japanese already.
[...]
be a translator. I've been seriously considering offering my services to Snoopycool Manga Scanslations over the last few days to help me retain my Japanese knowledge and at the same time help bring some great non-licensed manga to an English audience.

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Well... I've been studying quite seriously for 4 years, but still I think that a manga would be really hard for me to understand properly...
For instance, I tried to understand some pages from 電影少女 and H2, but I could just translate a few sentences...
It's really hard, you know...
Fansub is even harder, but at least I get to hear some spoken jap, that's good after all.

Yeah I know its hard, but it also depends on what manga/anime series you are trying to translate. I once watched a Gundam Seed RAW before it was fansubbed, and I understood 95% of the spoken dialogue. I was pumped after watching that episode

I think manga/anime that are more scientific are much, much harder than your average romantic-comedy. Especially the ones that invent their own words/terms for super-hydrogen powered biological reactor. :? I know that people with years of Japanese study still may not feel comfortable enough to take on this kind of task (heck, I don't feel confident either), but the point is you learn while you translate, and you'll get better at it. I once asked on the Animesuki forums about what it takes to be a translator out of curiousity and after listing my experience, I got about 3 offers from different fansub groups to bring me onboard. They said there typically its rough when you are starting out and an episode could easily take 12+ hours to translate, but after time you get better and you can do the same episode in 2 hours or less. Its alla bout practice people

Thanks for the info, Roots
I'd try and listen carefully to some comedy fansub, over and over again
(much easier to find than comics here...)