What is Scanlation? Part 1: Introduction, Raws, and Raw Providers

As you probably know, one of the goals of this blog is to shed some light onto how scanlation works. Of course, there are plenty of guides and whatnot out there, but they don't really get across how significant or difficult some of these roles are. It's my hope that I can elucidate the working of scanlation and make it easier for you guys to understand how much effort it takes to get this stuff out.

What is Scanlation?

Scanlation is the amateur run industry of scanning, translating, and editing manga from one language to another. We basically take this:

And turn it into this:

In this segment, I'll be giving a general summary of how we go from the monthly magazines to the finished product that you all read. So, here goes.

The process begins with the Raw Provider. Usually, the Raw Provider is someone who lives in Japan, since they'll have the easiest access to the manga magazines published there. Occasionally, people overseas will order them, but for the most part these people go out to their local store and buy a magazine every month to take home and scan. These scans are called raws. There are many different publications and magazines specializing in certain types of manga. Some of the ones I can think of off the top of my head are Weekly Shounen Jump, Weekly Young Jump, and Monthly Shounen Jump. As for funding, usually groups use the donations they recieve to fund the raws, though sometimes group admins know the providers well enough to get it for free because they're going to read it anyways, providing raws for another group, etc. Most of the time, being a Raw Provider is less of something you apply for and more just being someone that the group admin knows. 

And that's all there really is to it. It's a pretty simple job.

Though some people, like a certain Yakkul, still manage to be awful at it somehow.