by et443 » 19 Oct 2011, 03:00
Hi there, thanks for your suggestion.
At the beginning I considered using a streaming site to put our subtitles. However, in the end decided against it for several reasons. First of all, you need to maintain the videos online, which means having to check they are still available and reupload them if they were taken down. If they are taken down, it means someone from the AKB management decided to take it down, and I am really against that cat'n rat game of reuploading when it is obvious management didn't want it online. Same with ddl sites. I got better things to do. Then, hardsubbing usually means typesetting, and I am in general against it since it is, in my point of view, completely worthless. Some will complain the letters are very small, others that they are big, others that they can't follow the flow and want comments in the top, etc. So, we provide the subtitle so that you can use them in the video you downloaded, in TV, PC or mobile phone. That brings another issue, if you hardcode in a stream, the users are limited to that resolution.
I always leave a door open, though, so maybe one day you might find our subtitles in streams, but I am not that interested in that for now.
I guess we could raise the awareness of this site if I were to contract Google Ads for a couple of months too, but truth be told, the overseas AKB48 fandom is not as big as some might believe, and there aren't that many people subbing AKB48, so anyone interested will eventually find us. Contrary to Stage48, Nihongogo, Everyday48, Aidol and others, I am not trying to build a community here. I am not interested in moderating posts, posting news, etc, etc, and I think none of the ones working with us wants to babysit a forum either. People are free to come and post stuff, of course, my goal isn't to do that. You can see our site is extremely simple, and I like it that way.
A collaboration might happen, we are collaborating polishing the English version of KSK48 subtitles after all. However, for now I don't see that possible.
And you don't have permission to upload the videos with our subs in (although I know there are some who don't care about what we say and upload them anyways, or add typesetting and then upload them as if they were theirs, etc). The English version of the subtitles are to be downloaded from here, it is the only condition we put for people to enjoy them, and I hope people respect it.