ETA: Sept. 15, 2010

Hello, everyone,

So sorry for the delay in update! For one, I have been sick (caught a bad cold) for a while, and could not make any update (yes, this was besides our main translator becoming quite ill this Summer/Fall.)
But further, our chief translator for the project, who had been on and off ill this Summer had to be hospitalized and hence was in no shape to produce any translations for a while. He is finally back, and slowly resuming the duties, and we hope to see the progress made as he gains better health. (And, we are very much committed in completing the project, but it is apparent that we do need more time to complete the project.) This has been a totally unanticipated & unfortunate turn for us also, and we are trying to coop with as best as we can, but meantime we apologize for all the delay!! So sorry!!




ETA: Aug. 12, 2010

Hello everyone,

We are currently still working on completing Japanese translations. It has been taking longer than we anticipated due to our chief translator catching a bad case of Summer flu and subsequent complications (is recovering now ^^) and hence we had been making slow progress for the past week or so, but expecting to finish all translations soon.
Also, we are waiting for the completion of the Arakawa Appreciation fanart contest so that all the thank-you letters along with Japanese translations, as well as qualified thank-you Arakawa fanarts will be mailed out to Japan together. Meantime, we appreciate your patience.

===

ETA: Aug 1, 2010

Hello everyone,

Thank you so much for your interest in our "send thank-you letters to Arakawa" program!

This project has now finished taking the Japanese translation requests for your thank-you letters to Arakawa. The submitted letters with the translation requests are currently being translated into beautifully written Japanese letters by our volunteer translation team!

Once the translations are done, our staff will automatically send your original letters along with the Japanese translations to the project mailing team, and then all the letters will be mailed together to Japan. We'll keep you updated of our progress.




A few years ago, members of the forum wrote fan-letters and sent them together to Hiromu Arakawa, the author of FMA manga, via the magazine that published FMA. We sent letters and drawings that time. Now that the manga is over, we could do the similar thing!
Let's send her our "thank-you" letters with short messages and comments from our members, and fanarts if any of you wish to submit those also.
It would be a way to express her how we felt reading her story, to thank her for creating such wonderful characters and making us a dream for so many years!!

ETA: June 17, 2010
Here are the details on how you can participate.
The deadline is now Saturday, July 31, 2010 11:59 PM

"Operation Thank-you letters to FMA/Hiromu Arakawa!"

Our board will be sending thank-you letters to FMA/Hiromu Arakawa, written by our members, to the author of FMA manga, Hiromu Arakawa, c/o YoungGanGan magazine. If you would like to participate, the following are the details:

----------------------------

Category 1. For members who wish to send ENGLISH thank-you letters.

Max length limit:
2000 chars. We will not be counting chars, but we reserve the right to reject any letters that are overly exceeding this limit.

Content:
Basically any content appropriate for the occasion, such as, your thank-you to FMA/Hiromu Arakawa, how much you enjoyed FMA, what the series meant to you, who was your fav character, etc.

Please close your letter by adding your board name, followed by, if you wish to add, (your real life name/nickname) then your country name (your country at birth, or the country you currently reside, or whichever/whatever the country you consider to be your country).

Note: Since the letters are sent as "from members of our board", the project manager (Valerie) will reserve the right to check the content of your letters and REJECT letters with content that is deemed offensive. Valerie will contact you if your letter may fall into this case.

Email address:
Send your participating English thank-you letters to our project email address: thankulettersfmadotcom@gmail.com

Due date/time: (Please note that the due date has been extended and we have a new later due date! ^^)
Your email with your submitting "thank-you" letters to our project email address MUST be sent out no later than Saturday, July 31, 2010 11:59 PM from you on your time zone, AND all participating letters MUST be received by the project email address ABSOLUTELY no later than Sunday, August 01, 2010 11:59 PM on French Daylight Saving Time.
We'll NOT be responsible for any emails with your participating letters that were sent out in time but not received by our project email address by August 01, 2010 11:59 PM, French Daylight Saving Time.

* Please limit to only ONE submission per member. If you participate in the category 2, then please do not send additional letters for category 1.
If you wish to send fanart also, please send your fanart submissions according to category 3.
All submissions from our members will be sent together, but your fanart will NOT directly accompany your thank-you letters.

The project manager, Valerie will then make a print-out hard copies of all submitted letters, then bundle them together with all English-Japanese thank-you letters from category 2, fanart submissions in category 3, and the cover letters from our board to Arakawa-sensei (in Japanese) then send them all together, to Hiromu Arakawa, c/o YoungGanGan magazine in Japan sometime during the week of August 02, 2010, from France.


------------------------

Category 2. For members who wish to send English thank-you letters accompanied by Japanese translations of your letters made by our volunteer board members.
(If you want us to "double-check" your Japanese translation, you can also submit the request in this category also. )

Max length limit of your original English letters to be translated into Japanese:
1000 chars (in English). We will not be counting chars, but we reserve the right to reject any letters submitted for translations that are overly exceeding this limit. ^^

Content:
Please limit the content to: Your thank-you to FMA/Hiromu Arakawa, and if you wish, the combination of any of the following: how much you enjoyed FMA, what the series meant to you/FMA in your life, who was your fav character.

Please close your letter by adding your board name, followed by, if you wish to add, (your real life name/nickname) then your country name (your country at birth, or the country you currently reside, or whichever/whatever the country you consider to be your country).

Note: Since the letters are sent as "from members of our board", the project staff will reserve the right to check the content and REJECT letters with any content that is deemed offensive. You will be notified from our project staff in such case.

How to get your thank-you letters to be translated into Japanese:
Post your original English "thank-you, FMA/Arakawa" letters on "Thank-you Fma/hiromu Arakawa" Letters Translation Request Thread (i.e. here ^^).

Our volunteer translators will then translate the submitted letters, loosely based on first-come first served bases, and when done the Japanese translations will be added to your original post. Once the final Japanese translations are added, our project staff will then copy and paste BOTH your original English letters and Japanese translations, and mail to our project email address.
(Please note that this part of the process has changed so that now, once you place your request letter on this thread, we will do the rest, and you do not have to do any further. ^^)
You will then copy and paste BOTH your original English letters and Japanese translations, and mail to our project email address.

* Please limit to only ONE such request per member.

Email address:
Send your participating original English thank-you letters along with Japanese translations to our project email address: thankulettersfmadotcom@gmail.com

For those who wish to make own Japanese translations, but would like our experts to check the accuracy of translation, please write your original English letters according to project details in Category 2, then post your "translation accuracy check request" along with your original English letter and your Japanese translation of the letter on "Thank-you Fma/hiromu Arakawa Letters" Translation Request Thread, with words "translation accuracy check request" at the top of your post, then our Japanese translation experts will check your translation, and make corrections if necessary. When done, corrected Japanese translation will be added to your post. Then, copy paste your original English letters along with the corrected Japanese translation, and send to our project email address: thankulettersfmadotcom@gmail.com.

* Please limit to only ONE submission per member. If you participate in the category 1, then please do not send additional letters in category 2.
If you wish to send fanart also, please send your fanart submissions according to category 3.
All submissions from our members will be sent together, but your fanart will NOT directly accompany your thank-you letters.

Due date/time: (Please note that the due date has been extended and we have a new later due date! ^^)
Your original English letters with the request for the Japanese translations must be posted on this thread no later than Saturday, July 31, 2010 11:59 PM (on your time zone)



The project manager, Valerie will then make a print-out hard copies of all submitted English-Japanese thank-you letters, then bundle them together with all English thank-you letters from category 2, fanart submissions in category 3, and add the cover letters from our board to Arakawa-sensei (in Japanese) then send them all together, to Hiromu Arakawa, c/o YoungGanGan magazine in Japan sometime during the week of August 02, 2010, from France.

------------------------

Category 3. For members who wish to send your original "Thank-you, FMA/Arakawa" Fanarts

Theme:
Thank you, FMA/Hiromu Arakawa

Note: Since the fanarts are sent as "from members of our board", the project manager, Valerie will reserve the right to REJECT any submitted art that is deemed offensive. Valerie will contact you if your submitted art falls into this case.

Size limit:
A4 size. Bigger fanarts will be resized to fit the paper size.

Email address:
Send your participating fanart to our project email address: thankufanartsfmadotcom@gmail.com

* There is NO Limit to the number of fanart submissions per member.
However, to avoid confusions, please submit each fanart separately.
* On each email submission, please include your board name, and your country name (your country at birth, or the country you currently reside, or whichever/whatever the country you consider to be your country)

* If you are sending thank-you letters also, please understand that all submissions from our members in category 1, 2, & 3 will be sent together, but your fanart will NOT directly accompany your thank-you letters.

Due date/time: (Please note that the due date has been extended and we have a new later due date! ^^)
Your email with your submitting fanart to our project email address MUST be sent out no later than Saturday, July 31, 2010 11:59 PM from you on your time zone, AND all participating fanarts MUST be received by the project email address ABSOLUTELY no later than Sunday, August 01, 2010 11:59 PM on French Daylight Saving Time.
We'll NOT be responsible for any emails with your participating fanart that were sent out in time but not received by our project email address by August 01, 2010 11:59 PM, French Daylight Saving Time.

The project manager, Valerie will then make a hard copies of all submitted fanarts, then bundle them together with all English thank-you letters from category 1, English-Japanese thank-you letters from categotry 2, and add the cover letters from our board to Arakawa-sensei (in Japanese) then send them all together, to Hiromu Arakawa, c/o YoungGanGan magazine in Japan sometime during the week of August 02, 2010, from France.

----------

For members of other FMA communities who want to take part in the project:
Rules will be the same.
You'll have to add in your mail from which FMA community you're from to help the project manager, Valerie to sort the letters and fanarts. If you're not registered in a board or in a FMA fan site, please tell it in your mail.
If you have questions about the project, please write to one of the two e-mail addresses depending the subject of your question. People who are not registered in this board can also simply join the project by registering and becoming a member.


Members and non-members who want to help in the translation's letters are gladly welcome (whatever their level in japanese). If you are interested, please contact Valerie using the e-mail dedicated to the letters.

If this was possible then I'm totally in. I think we, as fans, owe it to her.
I actually contemplated somehow sending her my thanks but figured it would be difficult to do on my own.

If there's a way to do it - I would love to be a part of it. Miss Arakawa's story has really captivated and inspired me, so the least I can do is say "thanks!"

If we could somehow do this, I'm in!

If it's possible, I'm in it too!*_* It would be wonderful ;_;

Yeah, that would be awesome. I am totally for it!
But...
Will Arakawa even read the letters? I guess she gets thousands of them. Do you think she would have time to read them? On the other hand, FMA is over now and she should have some free time
Is her adress still the same? Is it even known to someone? I think that Arakawa wouldn't want someone to find out where she lives, since it's really troublesome with the stalking fans.

I think I want to join too. But will it be in Japanese? Oh okay it really should be in Japanese. I hope someone will be willing to translate our messages no matter how long they are XD though I don't intend to make mine that long.

I was the one who organized that back then. There was never a reply but it was still a lot of fun to do.


I think it would be nice to do something similar again. Great Idea!

^ Gahaha, Kirara posted as I was writing this post, ^^


Note added on June 17, 2010: The following were INTERIM discussion/suggestions, please do not be confused with the finalized project details.
^ First off, waving "hi" to Valérie. Nice to see your post here again!! ^^
(By the way, please feel free to re-edit and change the thread title as you like. ^^)

For those who were not here when we had our last "send fan letters to Arakawa-sensei," a few years ago we had a chance to do this once, thanks to Kirara for organizing and others who participated, and sent our fan-letters to Arakawa-sensei, c/o YoungGanGan magazine, to the correct address that was printed in the magazine for sending fan-letters to her (thank you again, Kirara for all your awesome works you've done on this project!! ^^)

And, as we read the conclusion of the series now, yes, I think it would be nice if we can do this again and get the chance to express our gratitudes and appreciations for the series and the series' author, Hiromu Arakawa. Granted, we need some volunteers to put in some organizational works such as making actual print out of letters and bundle them and do actual mail-in, etc.

Here are some of my quick suggestion/two-cents:

Content:
For this, I suggest limiting the content to mainly "thank-you"s to Arakawa-sensei, how much you enjoyed the series, what FMA manga meant to you, and such. ^^ (Also, if you have some special drawings for the occasion, probably not the ordinary plain drawings of characters and such since I think those they probably get tons, but like, thanking Arakawa-sensei and such, that maybe nice to be included also?? ^^)
And, no application letters for the job as an assistant at Ushigoya studio please!! XD (Note: there are no such positions available, as far as we know XD)


Letter length:
I suggest making each letters short and crisp. No essay on your life story and how FMA has involved. XD
The organizer can probably decide on suggested maximum length of each fan-letters?? (like, max 500 char or whatnot ^^)?


Timing:
I suggest we organize this fairly swiftly and sending letters relatively soon, as I think, getting this (a bundle of fan-letters from FMA fans who are from, basically, around the world) NOW, as compared to getting them, say, 6 month later, potentially possibly has more impact to Arakawa-sensi.
Hence, my suggestion is to get the letters off in the mail no later than the end of this month.


Media:
We collect everyones' fan-letters on-line, but we mail-them to Arakawa-sensei as hard-copy printed letters.


Language:
Please write your letters in English. But, my fairly educated guess is that they ...editors at YoungGanGan mag who would probably read and filter our mailed-in fan-letters, and eventually, (hopefully ^^) Arakawa-sensei and her assistants at Ushigoya studio... are not quite as comfortable/familiar reading them in English as reading them in Japanese, and hence possibly less impacts than reading them in Japanese, and hence I suggest accompanying each fan-letters with Japanese translations. But in order to do that....

We may need a team of Japanese-English speaking volunteers who can translate everyones' fan-letters into Japanese
Could there be any volunteers?? ^^

Of course this depends on how much volume of letters we get, and of course I will try to chip in and help as much as I can, but I may get all tied up with other stuff as the board is preparing for the final episode of FMA:B and preparing for the upcoming "FMA Manga, re-read it from beginning" project, etc. etc. etc.. ^^


Mailing address:
Letters will be sent to Arakawa-sensei c/o YoungGanGan magazine, as this has been the address used throughout the time-span of FMA manga series.


And, that's all I can think of at the moment, for the considerations to the organizers.
Whoever would be organizing this, thank you in advance for all your time and efforts!!

Hi Tombow! Thank you for the link of the old project. I didn't remember the year the letters were sent.
Kirara thank you for having organized that last time!

Note added on June 17, 2010: The following were INTERIM discussion/suggestions, please do not be confused with the finalized project details.
I do not speak japanese so I wouldn't be able to translate the letters. I can however take care of the fanarts part. I will print the drawings and send them to Japan.

I created two e-mails for the projects. One for the letters and one for the fanarts
I'm not good at giving names so the emails names are not very original...
e-mail for the letters: fmathankyouletters[a]gmail.com
e-mail for the fanarts: fmathankyoufanarts[a]gmail.com

If we want to act fast, I'd say the deadline for the fanarts should be: 30 june 2010
She would receive them at the begining of july. Do you think it's OK?

If the letters have to be translated, I think the deadline should be earlier... I don't know how long it might take...

Vaerie, thx for wanting to moderate this all. But who's gonna translate it all in Japanese? You know, I'll write a letter and some other people will do it and then we'll have around 100-500 thank you letters? There's no way that we (and you) will manage with the translations till beginning of July. I mean, it would be very gross if someone would make it all alone. Too much work! Maybe the deadline will be kept and the translators can let themselves some time, so that we'll send the whole stuff in August or something?

Hi Valérie,

Note added on June 17, 2010: The following were INTERIM discussion/suggestions, please do not be confused with the finalized project details.
I would suggest closing it at the end of Sat. June 26, 2010, and then maybe that would give you that Sunday to get it all packaged and then mail it off on Monday, June 29, 2010??
Also, my other suggestion is, if including drawings, asking the participants to make them themed for this particular occasion, if possible.
But those are only my suggestion/thinking at the moment. ^^ You're the organizer, so of course you decide what you think is best, please. ^^


As for translations, here are my suggestions on possibly how to handle translations:

1. First and foremost, we definitely need an army of volunteer translators!!!!! Those who can write/read Japanese, you know who you are. Now is the chance to put in your contributions for fellow FMA fans. Even if you are not completely confident with your translation skills, as you see in my post bellow, I'll keep your back covered, so... if you think you're even half-way decent with your Japanese writing skills, hope you can volunteer your services. ^^
(This whole translation project is depending on if we could get any such volunteer translators. Don't let me post your names here and openly pressure you to volunteer. XDDD Hope I can get some kind and generous volunteer translators without further guilt-tripping. ^^)

2. If anyone wish to have his/her "thank-you" letters to be translated by the volunteers on our board:

a: The content of each letters have to be simple, so that the above mentioned volunteers can fairly easily translate your letters.
To be translated by our volunteer translators for the project, we ask the content to be limited ONLY to the combination of some or all of: your thank-you to Arakawa-sensei, how much you enjoyed FMA manga series, and what the series meant to you.

b: The content have to be short. Each letters (in English) no more than Max 500 characters in length (or some other specific char length. I don't have time to count chars at the moment, so.... if someone can take initiatives and post the sample paragraphs for 500 chars, 800 chars, and 1000 chars, etc. that would be appreciated. )

c: The letters-to-be-translated have to be OPENLY posted on the designated thread so that then in return any one of our volunteer translator team members can pick up your post, translate it then post the translations on the thread. Then each day I can quickly check for the translations as they get posted and if there is any really serious translation mistakes I can go ahead and quietly edit that post and make corrections, and then edit in the finished Japanese translations to the original post of that letter. The poster then can copy and paste the whole thing (original letters in English and Japanese translation of the letters) and email it to Valérie's email address for this project: fmathankyouletters@gmail.com.

(NO sending/handling of letters-to-be-translated to any of the volunteer translators on our board though PM or email. It must be all openly posted on the thread. Of course this may limit what you may like to put in the letters, but that also help keep the content simple and making it easier for our volunteer translators to translate.)

Note: Also, this probably means, your computer should be able to handle (copy & paste) Japanese characters.

e: Once any of the translators has picked up your post and posted his/her translations, NO CHANGING of content of your letters on your original post.

f: One translation service of letters-to-be-translated per member. Please don't hog up our services by posting multiple of such requests on the thread.

g: If anyone wish to find other translation resources and hence do not have to go through openly posting his/her letters on our "translation" thread and also forgoing all these accompanying restrictions, or just simply bi-pass our services and have your English letters sent, as is in English (then you can send that directly to Valerie's project email address) you're very much welcome to do so. In fact, if you guys can find other translation resources, please please use that resource so that our limited available resources can be used by those who have no other available translation resources.

h: Needless to say, this is probably going to be quite efforts for us, and this is one time "service (so to speak)" for this occasion only. Please do not expect us to do this again. XD

i: Last date to accept the "letters for the translation" post on "translation" thread is June 23, 2010 so that that would give us chance to get your letters to be translated in time. Actually, please try to post your letters as soon as possible so that we can start translating them as they get posted.



So...what do you guys think? Please continue adding your post with your thoughts/suggestions/inputs on this project here. ^^

Also, volunteers, now is the time to start posting and volunteering your name here... ^^

A couple questions/comments is this only going to be a project here or are you going to open it to any of the other large FMA communities? I am thinking mainly the live journal ones fm_alchemist & hagaren_manga since I think people there will be interested too (of course there is some overlap)


Although at the same time if you open it up to many places you might get too many replies which might be hard to translate. Looking at the letter I sent we had over 160 signatures and this was in 2005. I am thinking now there could be even a higher number then that since I think the fandom has grown.

Anyways because there was so many responses I had each person write what FMA meant to them and took that (and with the help of 3 other people in the fandom) composed everyone's ideas into a letter. And even that was long and a lot of work for someone to translate. All those individual replies would probably even take longer.

For anyone curious this is the old letter that was sent untranslated:




And then I sent a list of all the names and the person's country of origin. We sent fanart too.

I don't think I was around for the first letter (or I wasn't paying attention, one or the other) but I would absolutely love to participate this time around!! Thanks in advance to Tombow and everyone who is helping to organize this - I'm already excited!

I think we should add a list of short comments from the members. ie:

f1madman, UK: "Thanks for such a great story, you're awesome"

joebloggs, South Korea: "I love you thank you so much!"

etc etc

Whatcha think? Its short, snappy, and as a thank you punches home how adored the series was world wide.

Thanks for showing the old letter Kirara.

Note added on June 17, 2010: The following were INTERIM discussion/suggestions, please do not be confused with the finalized project details.
I first thought of it as a project here. That's the only FMA forum were I'm registered. I don't know the other communities so I won't post outside this board. If you know FMA fans who would be interested, they are of course welcome! The main problem is the number of translators... If there's no one to translate the letters, there will be maybe indeed more letters than translations... There are maybe translators among the members of the m_alchemist & hagaren_manga communities who could help us in japanese? I won't lie to you saying that I'm a bit lost, but I really want to believe that we'll manage to make it....
Like I said before, I can print and send the drawings. I guess that if I can print drawings, I can also print and send the letters ;-). I unfortunatly do not speak japanese so I cannot translate them...

Everything depends on the number of members who'd volunteer to translate the letters... If there are many translators, that would be easier. The more translators there will be, the more letters will be translated.

By the way, here is an example of a paragraph with 500 characters in lenght (including spaces and ponctuation).
Do not search any meaning in the text
Dear Arakawa-sensei,
Ullutpat dit wisim zzrilit nim iustrud eugait ut vel enibh eu facin utate exero euguero conum nisse miniam veniat wis exer il eugait vero con venibh et loreril ulla consequisi. Velis non henis nos nim vel essed dip eu facidunt aut ex euipsustie miniamet ute do consed miniamcommy nim irit lor sim nummy nummy nosto dolutIdunt in hendre eugue ming eraesequat. Do exer amet at wissi bla commolorper suscil eummolore dolortion eliquam commodo luptatisci tatem dolortisl utatis num il.

Here is an example of a paragraph with 800 characters in lenght (including spaces and ponctuation).
Dear Arakawa-sensei,
Ullutpat dit wisim zzrilit nim iustrud eugait ut vel enibh eu facin utate exero euguero conum nisse miniam veniat wis exer il eugait vero con venibh et loreril ulla consequisi.
Velis non henis nos nim vel essed dip eu facidunt aut ex euipsustie miniamet ute do consed miniamcommy nim irit lor sim nummy nummy nosto dolutIdunt in hendre eugue ming eraesequat. Do exer amet at wissi bla commolorper suscil eummolore dolortion eliquam commodo luptatisci tatem dolortisl utatis num il do conse facipit, qui blaorerit la adip esto eum zzriure commod tat. Nonsequisi blandia mconsequat aliquipsum qui tet er ate magnissim ating euguero dolobore tem vullame tummodio dio cor sum volummodolut lorperc iliscincilis ea conse ea conum in veliquissed te et aliqui bla feu facil in ut luptatue.

Here is an example of a paragraph with 1000 characters in lenght (including spaces and ponctuation).
Dear Arakawa-sensei,
Ullutpat dit wisim zzrilit nim iustrud eugait ut vel enibh eu facin utate exero euguero conum nisse miniam veniat wis exer il eugait vero con venibh et loreril ulla consequisi.
Velis non henis nos nim vel essed dip eu facidunt aut ex euipsustie miniamet ute do consed miniamcommy nim irit lor sim nummy nummy nosto dolutIdunt in hendre eugue ming eraesequat. Do exer amet at wissi bla commolorper suscil eummolore dolortion eliquam commodo luptatisci tatem dolortisl utatis num il do conse facipit, qui blaorerit la adip esto eum zzriure commod tat. Nonsequisi blandia mconsequat aliquipsum qui tet er ate magnissim ating euguero dolobore tem vullame tummodio dio cor sum volummodolut lorperc iliscincilis ea conse ea conum in veliquissed te et aliqui bla feu facil in ut luptatuer se dolorem dunt aliqui tat lum zzriurem dolortie te magnibh exerit lam, commolo reraestrud ex exer aliquiscinit aci et, venis am velesto dolore magniametum zzriusto exero et autate tet vel il dunt n.

--- Edit---
If we have no one to translate before the deadline, we can maybe do a letter like you did Kirara or do like F1manmad, wrote.

About fanarts, can we start sending them?*_*

If we're going to have problems with time for translations etc, I like F1manmad's idea.
That way we each have our own personal message to her, with our names attached. It would be a better option in that we wouldn't have to take so much time putting our own ideas in and condensing it into one letter.

^ Thank you, Kirara for posting that cover letter from the last time, and Valerie for the samples of paragraphs with different char length! ^^

Note added on June 17, 2010: The following were INTERIM discussion/suggestions, please do not be confused with the finalized project details.

QUOTE (f1madman @ Jun 14 2010, 01:05 PM)

I think we should add a list of short comments from the members. ie:

f1madman, UK: "Thanks for such a great story, you're awesome"

joebloggs, South Korea: "I love you thank you so much!"

etc etc

Whatcha think? Its short, snappy, and as a thank you punches home how adored the series was world wide.

Yeah, basically that's the same line of thinking as mine, except my suggestion is allowing members to add a bit more comments. ^^
Either way, if we can, I'm guessing that having individual comments will probably add more positive impacts than having a plain list of names, and probably best if we can accompany them with Japanese translations. Also, I like the idea of adding the LOCATION/County name very much!! ^^

As for expanding this to FMA fans in other FMA fan communities... I think for the spirit of "community," if Valerie does not mind taking care of that much volume, then... sure... But, to give a little bit of "individuality" for each community, can we request that letters and submissions from members of our board to be bundled together with possibly a cover letter from our board? (Possibly having like, different email addresses for each community, for example ...these are just examples ^^... thankUletters_FMAdotcom@gmail.com to submit letters from our board members, thankUletters_m_alchemist@gmail.com to submit letters for members of m_alchemist community, etc.??

As for the translation services on our board, my current thinking is that we'll open the services to all our board members, hence, as long the person is a part of our board (i.e. member of our board) and hence can post the request on the "translation" thread in our forum that would be fine, and we'll provide the services. Or vise-versa and if any other community can open up their help with translations of letters from our members and others that would be appreciated also.

...additionally, possibly, can we get some volunteers who have access to on-line translators such as Google translator, etc. and then even before our volunteer translators get to the letters, as the first step, put the posted English letters through these English translators and then post these on-line generated translations (those will be then corrected by volunteer translators) ... how does that help if they are known to be very much inaccurate, you may ask? The answer is that this will cut down on us finding Kanji and other Japanese characters, and cut down on our typing time for Japanese portion of the letters. I don't have time to go into specifics on how we type Japanese sentences, but just trust me that this will cut down our Japanese typing time... at least it does for me, greatly in my case with my slow Net connection, so... if any members who do not speak Japanese but can have access to those on-line translators and would like to volunteer your time for the "letters" project, please speak up and post here also. I will give you more specifics later on how we'll work together on the "translation" thread. ^^

And, as for the length of letters, again it's depending on the number of volunteer translators, but judging from Valerie's samples, I'm leaning towards expanding it to 1000 char limit???


Anyway, that's my current thinking...
Everyone, your opinions and inputs, please?

Well I don't know maybe it will be easier just this time to keep it to this board instead of opening it up to different places. If everyone is sending in a short message if we opened it up at too many places it might be too much work. And I know there is at least a little overlap between these boards and the live journal communities.

Nacchan, members can already send me their fanarts. I'll print them on an A4 paper size, so no need to send me something bigger since it will be resized to fit the page. I will only print the fanart and not add text or anything on it. So, you'll have to add the text you want to be read (name, country, age or whatever you want...).

Note added on June 17, 2010: The following were INTERIM discussion/suggestions, please do not be confused with the finalized project details.
I think that using an online translator to do a first translation is indeed a good idea.
Here are links of two online translators to start the english to japanese translation:
http://www.worldlingo.com/en/products_serv...translator.html
http://babelfish.yahoo.com/
I tried to write sentences and they seemed to be well translated.
(I cannot speak japanese but can read the hiraganas and some words/sentences, and it was the translation of these words). I can cut and paste some letters for a pre-translation while waiting for printing everything (not all the letters of course).
If so, how should we proceed?
I agree with Kirara for having the same thread for the letters.
Let's make a simulation. A member post his letter. An other replies to this thread with the pre-translation and then the translator replies with final version of the translation? That would do three posts for one letter?
Is this how we should work? If there are a lot of letters, this thread will be very long. Unless we delete the posts when the letters are translated? Or there is one post per letter which would be edited? I'm starting to think that it would be easier if the members could send me first all the english letters. I'd post the pre-translation... Or send the letters to volunteers who'd use the online-translators? Or directly send the pre-translation to the translator? I don't know what would be easier... Did I ever say that we needed translators?

Please, start thinking of your messages and writing them. 1000 characters max seems indeed to be enough. The earlier the messages will be written, the easier it will be for the translators if there are a lot of letters to translate. Thanks to that, I wouldnt have to print all the letters at the same time. Like that, when we've decided how to proceed, you'll post/send your text and it will just have to be translated.

I created new mails like Tombow suggested for the 2 others communities mentioned.
for the letters: thankulettersfmadotcom@gmail.com
for the fanarts: thankufanartsfmadotcom@gmail.com
for the letters: thankUletters.m.alchemist@gmail.com
for the fanarts: thankufanartsfmadotcom@gmail.com

If their members have questions or want to discuss about the letters, they'll have to post on this board because like I said before, I'm only registered on this forum and don't know what happens in the other FMA fan sites...
Their help in translating is also welcome!

Note added on June 17, 2010: The following were INTERIM discussion/suggestions, please do not be confused with the finalized project details.

^ Good points, Kirara and Valérie! ^^

As for the thranslation thread, maybe do it this way, then?

Work-Thread 1: Members who wish to have his/her letters post the original English letters. Max 1000 chars, consisting of the combination of "Thank-you" to Arakawa-sensei, how much you enjoyed the series, what FMA series meant to you, and your name (either real name, nickname, or board name) and the your country name. No "hello," and other greetings... please omit those, and include only direct comments. ^^

Work-Thread 2: Volunteer Google-translator will pick up letters from thread 1, put it through Google/other translators and post the Original letter and the Google translation with the reference post number & the link of the post where they took the letter (each and every post has the reference number and link at the Top Right corner of that post) and the member name of the poster of that letter.

Work-Thread 3: Volunteer human translator will pick up Google translated letters, make translation corrections, and post the resulting translated letter, along with the original letter , reference post number and the link for the original post for that letter and the member name for that letter.

Then I, or other translator team leader will check posted translated letters each day, make translation-adjustment (if necessary) and make some kind of signal that that letter is ready to be picked up. Like, making a post (possibly on Work-thread-4) saying
So-and-so, the translations of your letter is ready to be picked up... you can pick up the translation of your letter on this post here(link)
Like that? Or simply just post the completed letters on that thread?

The original writer of the letter can then copy-paste the translated letters and send it to Valerie's project email address for our board.

You guys think this might work???

^I think the work threads like that are actually a really good idea. Because then it means that all of the volunteers don't have to know how to translate from English to Japanese and helps significantly reduce the stress on the people who can.

But I think thread 2 might be a bit redundant. I think it might be easier if the people who right the letter feed it through the google translator themselves and post both in their post so that translators don't have to dig through posts/find reference numbers to compare translations.

Note added on June 17, 2010: The following were INTERIM discussion/suggestions, please do not be confused with the finalized project details.

QUOTE (tigerchic121 @ Jun 14 2010, 11:08 PM)

.... thread 2 might be a bit redundant. I think it might be easier if the people who right the letter feed it through the google translator themselves and post both in their post so that translators don't have to dig through posts/find reference numbers to compare translations.

Gahaha, come to think of it, that's probably true. XDD Good point, tigerchic121!

Please keep more inputs coming, and of course, if anyone who can write Japanese half-way decently is reading this thread, it would be nice of you if you can participate and help us. ^^

So to send our letter, we email one of the gmail accounts created? I just want to double-check and make sure I'm getting everything right. So many posts with so much info, it's a bit confusing.

No. Just post your English letters on "translation request" thread, and our volunteer translators/helpers will take care of the rest. Although, if you can add Google translations of your post with your original English letters that would speed up typing part for our translators.


------------------------

And, since I have been getting awfully lots of PMs by confused members about the possible use of Google and other on-line translators... for those who are getting confused why I'm even mentioning the use of on-line translators for this project, which happen to involve typing of Japanese sentence on computer, here is the LONGER explanation of why that might be useful: (warning...the following may sound almost like "bragging" ....another reason I was trying to avoid going into this... I merely want to explain. >.<)
For me, I don't need the help of on-line translation site for the project for translations AT ALL. Because, basically,for this type of simple translations, as I read the original English sentence, Japanese translations will more or less pop up in my brain simultaneously (i.e INSTANTLY) as I read English, and hence the actual "translation stage" does not take time at all. That is not the problem, for me at least. However...
Unfortunately, that's only one part of this "translating from English to Japanese -> then put the resulting translated Japanese in some kind of Media so that other can read it" process. For me, what would probably take up a huge chunk of my time is...TYPING up the translated Japanese sentence that's in my head so that it will be converted into electronically expressed Japanese characters. (In case of Japanese, it's actually much FASTER for me to just manually write it down on paper by hand because then I don't have to deal with clumsy computer program that will "select" correct combination of hirakana/katakana/kanji characters for each word in the translated Japanese.) In my case, for those simple translations, as soon as the Japanese translation pops up in my head, I can, more or less, instantly select the correct combination of hirakana/katakana/kanji characters for the whole sentence in my head. BUT, that's only in my head, and I have to TYPE it on my computer so that others can actually READ it. ..meaning, I have to TELL my computer which Japanese characters to use. And, since in Japanese we use 48 hirakana/katakana characters plus a few thousand commonly used Kanji characters in Japanese (and that's in case of limiting the "total number of characters used" to "basic common letters only" for common daily reading materials, like newspapers... depending on the kind of literatures I read, the number of character set can go several thousands, and upwards. ^^ ) and hence TYPING Japanese sentence is NOT like typing English which has only 26 characters plus a few more added characters and symbols. To type Japanese sentence electronically (i.e. on computer) we have to go through what's called "romaji-kana/kanji conversion process" using a specially designed computer program for that for EACH & EVERY SINGLE WORD in the sentence, and THAT is what will probably take up most of my time during the process, especially with my slow computer, and to speed up that typing process I was giving a suggestion to use on-line translators to pick up already electronically typed up Japanese characters to save tedious "character conversion process" for some of the words in the sentence.
...Hope some of you get a slightly better understanding of what I was talking about now. ^^
Anyway, for those who are not familiar with Japanese/Chinese characters this discussion is probably just way too confusing, and very very easily MISUNDERSTOOD, so I will just stop discussing about this on this thread. XD





Anyway... ^^ we'll decide on details and announce that officially later once all the details are worked out, but basically, in a nutshell, it goes something like this...

* If you want to send your thank-you letters in English, you write that in English then send that to thankulettersfmadotcom@gmail.com

* If you want to send your FMA fanart, with the theme as "conclusion of the FMA manga series/thank you, Hiromu Arakawa" then send the drawing of your fanart to thankufanartsfmadotcom@gmail.com

* If you want to send letters, written by you in English then translated to Japanese by members of our board, then POST your original letters, written by you in English, on the designated thread, and then our volunteer members will translate that into Japanese, and then you will send your original English letters, along with the Japanese translation to thankulettersfmadotcom@gmail.com.

That's what we are discussing and trying to decide on the details & what is the best way to accomplish this.

Hope this is clear enough now?


Gahhh... my Net connection is acting up so bad I'm having horrible time even composing this much... >.<

okay. I'll participate but I still dont get it =A=''a so the letters will be sent to where? thankulettersfmadotcom@gmail.com or fmathankyouletters@gmail.com? and fmathankyoufanarts@gmail.com for the fanarts?

We need to wait to hear from Valerie for the official announcement on the details, but for now, the following is my nut-shell sum-up.

* If you want to send your thank-you letters in English, you write that in English then send that to thankulettersfmadotcom@gmail.com

* If you want to send your FMA fanart, with the theme as "conclusion of the FMA manga series/thank you, Hiromu Arakawa" then send the drawing of your fanart to thankufanartsfmadotcom@gmail.com

* If you want to send letters, written by you in English then translated to Japanese by members of our board, then POST your original letters, written by you in English, on the designated thread, and then WAIT for our volunteer members to translate that into Japanese (when done, the translations will be added to your original post) and then you will send your original English letters, along with the Japanese translations to thankulettersfmadotcom@gmail.com.


Valerie, in order to reduce confusions among readers of the thread, I would take some of my discussions & questions regarding this to PM. Please check your PM.

Meantime, as posted before, anyone who can write Japanese, and kind enough to volunteer, please SPEAK UP NOW and volunteer by posting on this thread.

Sorry for answering so late. I didn't have time to log in the last two days.
Here is the official announcement! Thank you Tombow for the help.

Here are the details on how you can participate.

"Operation Thank-you letters to FMA/Hiromu Arakawa!"

Our board will be sending thank-you letters to FMA/Hiromu Arakawa, written by our members, to the author of FMA manga, Hiromu Arakawa, c/o YoungGanGan magazine. If you would like to participate, the following are the details:

----------------------------

Category 1. For members who wish to send ENGLISH thank-you letters.

Max length limit:
2000 chars. We will not be counting chars, but we reserve the right to reject any letters that are overly exceeding this limit.

Content:
Basically any content appropriate for the occasion, such as, your thank-you to FMA/Hiromu Arakawa, how much you enjoyed FMA, what the series meant to you, who was your fav character, etc.

Please close your letter by adding your board name, followed by, if you wish to add, (your real life name/nickname) then your country name (your country at birth, or the country you currently reside, or whichever/whatever the country you consider to be your country).

Note: Since the letters are sent as "from members of our board", the project manager (Valerie) will reserve the right to check the content of your letters and REJECT letters with content that is deemed offensive. Valerie will contact you if your letter may fall into this case.

Email address:
Send your participating English thank-you letters to our project email address: thankulettersfmadotcom@gmail.com

Due date/time:
Your email with your submitting "thank-you" letters to our project email address MUST be sent out no later than Saturday, July 31, 2010 11:59 PM from you on your time zone, AND all participating letters MUST be received by the project email address ABSOLUTELY no later than Sunday, August 01, 2010 11:59 PM on French Daylight Saving Time.

We'll NOT be responsible for any emails with your participating letters that were sent out in time but not received by our project email address by August 01, 2010 11:59 PM, French Daylight Saving Time.

* Please limit to only ONE submission per member. If you participate in the category 2, then please do not send additional letters for category 1.
If you wish to send fanart also, please send your fanart submissions according to category 3.
All submissions from our members will be sent together, but your fanart will NOT directly accompany your thank-you letters.

The project manager, Valerie will then make a print-out hard copies of all submitted letters, then bundle them together with all English-Japanese thank-you letters from category 2, fanart submissions in category 3, and the cover letters from our board to Arakawa-sensei (in Japanese) then send them all together, to Hiromu Arakawa, c/o YoungGanGan magazine in Japan sometime during the week of August 02, 2010, from France.


------------------------

Category 2. For members who wish to send English thank-you letters accompanied by Japanese translations of your letters made by our volunteer board members.

Max length limit of your original English letters to be translated into Japanese:
1000 chars (in English). We will not be counting chars, but we reserve the right to reject any letters submitted for translations that are overly exceeding this limit.

Content:
Please limit the content to: Your thank-you to FMA/Hiromu Arakawa, and if you wish, the combination of any of the following: how much you enjoyed FMA, what the series meant to you/FMA in your life, who was your fav character.

Please close your letter by adding your board name, followed by, if you wish to add, (your real life name/nickname) then your country name (your country at birth, or the country you currently reside, or whichever/whatever the country you consider to be your country).

Note: Since the letters are sent as "from members of our board", the project staff will reserve the right to check the content and REJECT letters with any content that is deemed offensive. You will be notified from our project staff in such case.

How to get your thank-you letters to be translated into Japanese:
Post your original English "thank-you, FMA/Arakawa" letters on "Thank-you Fma/hiromu Arakawa" Letters Translation Request Thread (thread will be opened shortly).

Our volunteer translators will then translate the submitted letters, loosely based on first-come first served bases, and when done the Japanese translations will be added to your original post.
You will then copy and paste BOTH your original English letters and Japanese translations , and mail to our project email address.

* Please limit to only ONE such request per member.

Email address:
Send your participating original English thank-you letters along with Japanese translations to our project email address: thankulettersfmadotcom@gmail.com

For those who wish to make own Japanese translations, but would like our experts to check the accuracy of translation, please write your original English letters according to project details in Category 2, then post your "translation accuracy check request" along with your original English letter and your Japanese translation of the letter on "Thank-you Fma/hiromu Arakawa Letters" Translation Request Thread, with words "translation accuracy check request" at the top of your post, then our Japanese translation experts will check your translation, and make corrections if necessary. When done, corrected Japanese translation will be added to your post. Then, copy paste your original English letters along with the corrected Japanese translation, and send to our project email address: thankulettersfmadotcom@gmail.com.

* Please limit to only ONE submission per member. If you participate in the category 1, then please do not send additional letters in category 2.
If you wish to send fanart also, please send your fanart submissions according to category 3.
All submissions from our members will be sent together, but your fanart will NOT directly accompany your thank-you letters.

Due date/time:
Your email with your submitting "thank-you" letters to our project email address MUST be sent out no later than Saturday, July 31, 2010 11:59 PM from you on your time zone, AND all participating letters MUST be received by the project email address ABSOLUTELY no later than Sunday, August 01, 2010 11:59 PM on French Daylight Saving Time.

We'll NOT be responsible for any emails with your participating letters that were sent out in time but not received by our project email address by August 01, 2010 11:59 PM, French Daylight Saving Time.

The project manager, Valerie will then make a print-out hard copies of all submitted English-Japanese thank-you letters, then bundle them together with all English thank-you letters from category 2, fanart submissions in category 3, and add the cover letters from our board to Arakawa-sensei (in Japanese) then send them all together, to Hiromu Arakawa, c/o YoungGanGan magazine in Japan sometime during the week of August 02, 2010, from France.


------------------------

Category 3. For members who wish to send your original "Thank-you, FMA/Arakawa" Fanarts

Theme:
Thank you, FMA/Hiromu Arakawa

Note: Since the fanarts are sent as "from members of our board", the project manager, Valerie will reserve the right to REJECT any submitted art that is deemed offensive. Valerie will contact you if your submitted art falls into this case.

Size limit:
A4 size. Bigger fanarts will be resized to fit the paper size.

Email address:
Send your participating fanart to our project email address: thankufanartsfmadotcom@gmail.com

* There is NO Limit to the number of fanart submissions per member.
However, to avoid confusions, please submit each fanart separately.
* On each email submission, please include your board name, and your country name (your country at birth, or the country you currently reside, or whichever/whatever the country you consider to be your country)

* If you are sending thank-you letters also, please understand that all submissions from our members in category 1, 2, & 3 will be sent together, but your fanart will NOT directly accompany your thank-you letters.

Due date/time:
Your email with your submitting fanart to our project email address MUST be sent out no later than Saturday, July 31, 2010 11:59 PM from you on your time zone, AND all participating fanart MUST be received by the project email address ABSOLUTELY no later than Sunday, August 01, 2010 11:59 PM on French Daylight Saving Time.

We'll NOT be responsible for any emails with your participating fanart that were sent out in time but not received by our project email address by June 27, 2010 11:59 PM, French Daylight Saving Time.

The project manager, Valerie will then make a hard copies of all submitted fanarts, then bundle them together with all English thank-you letters from category 1, English-Japanese thank-you letters from categotry 2, and add the cover letters from our board to Arakawa-sensei (in Japanese) then send them all together, to Hiromu Arakawa, c/o YoungGanGan magazine in Japan sometime during the week of August 02, 2010, from France.

----------

For members of other FMA communities who want to take part in the project:
Rules will be the same.
You'll have to add in your mail from which FMA community you're from to help the project manager, Valerie to sort the letters and fanarts. If you're not registered in a board or in a FMA fan site, please tell it in your mail.
If you have questions about the project, please write to one of the two e-mail addresses depending the subject of your question. People who are not registered in this board can also simply join the project by registering and becoming a member.


Members and non-members who want to help in the translation's letters are gladly welcome (whatever their level in japanese). If you are interested, please contact Valerie using the e-mail dedicated to the letters.

thanks! this's the best manga ever for me!

okay, understood

Right, got it. Thanks for the lengthy info guys, it really helped! I'll get working on my contribution very soon.
I know a tiny bit of Japanese, but not really enough to get grammar 100%, and some words are a bit iffy for me. I would have loved to help with the translating though.

The "Thank-you Fma/Hiromu Arakawa Letters Translation Request" thread for category 2 letters is now open.
Members who want to volunteer and help in the translation process, can write to: thankulettersfmadotcom@gmail.com
You can help us even if you don't speak Japanese.

Wow, this sounds like an amazing idea, and though I don't speak a word of japanese, I would love to help in any way I can, and hopefully be able to send a letter, or some art in too. :3

Ohh this is a great idea! I will keep my eye on this thread so I can add my thank-you letter once I'm done writing it! I could try my hand at translating it too, but if not then I will send it in to be translated by a board member.

I think I would definitely want to join in on this! Can fan art also be sent?

@Tennyo_night_elf - Welcome to our board! And, yes you can send fanarts also, but each fanart must be sent separately. For more info for sending your "thank you FMA/Hiromy Arakawa" fanarts, please check "Category 3" on Operation Detail on the first post of this thread.

<double post with justice. Mod, please merge this post later ^^>

Please note that the due date has been extended and we have a new later due date! ^^

Please check the first page of this thread for more details.

Also, we have volunteers lined up to help TRANSLATE your English letters to Japanese!!

(Thank you, our wonderful volunteers! Appreciated!! )

So I still can do a thank you fan art if I decide what to do? xD

@rinoaebastel - Yes you can!

The closing date for the project/contest is July 31, 2010. If you would like to participate, please create a fanart that's directly depicting your thank-you/appreciation to FMA/Hiromu Arakawa (author of FMA manga.)
You can use characters from any FMA series, in addition to your depiction of "Arakawa cow" figure. But, for this, your fanart has to be directly showing your thank-you, and not just a random FMA fanart (...except, if you're just entering in the GENERAL section of our "Arakawa Appreciation" FMA fanart contest, then you can enter with ANY FMA fanart... for this, please see # 3 below.) ^^



Then, here is what you can do, depending on which project/contest you would like to participate in (choose one of the followings ^^)......

1. To participate ONLY in "Send Thank-you letters/fanarts to Hiromu Arakawa" project:

If you just want to participate in this "Send your Thank-you Fanart to Hiromu Arakawa" project and have your fanart sent to Japan, but do NOT wish to enter the "Thank-you Hiromu Arakawa" Fanart contest, please send your submitting fanart that is directly depicting your thank-you/appreciation to FMA/Hiromu Arakawa, to the project email address, thankufanartsfmadotcom@gmail.com. For more details and info, please read "CATEGORY 3" of "Send Thank-you letters/fanarts to Hiromu Arakawa" project page.



2. To participate in "Send Thank-you letters/fanarts to Hiromu Arakawa" project AND enter your fanart to the Special "Thank you, Hiromu Arakawa!" section of our "Arakawa Appreciation Month" fanart contest:

If you want to have your fanart sent to Japan, AND wish to participate in the Special "Thank you, Hiromu Arakawa" section (with FMA items as the contest prizes) of our "Arakawa Appreciation" fanart contest, please submit your fanart that is directly depicting your thank-you/appreciation to FMA/Hiromu Arakawa, by posting it on this thread in our FMA Fanart forum AND, also please UPLOAD it to our Gallery (our Mods will be happy to assist you and show you how to upload to our Gallery...it's very easy, actually. ^^)

All fanart entries in this Special section of the contest will be automatically submitted to the "Send Thank-you Fanart to Hiromu Arakawa" project and sent to Japan after the contest ending.



3. To participate ONLY in the GENERAL section of our "Arakawa Appreciation Month" fanart contest:

If you do NOT wish to have your fanart sent to Japan, and do not wish to win FMA items as contest prizes, but just want to enter our GENERAL category of our "Arakawa Appreciation" fanart contest that do NOT come with FMA items as contest prizes, (for this, your fanart does not have to be directly showing your thank-you to FMA and/or to Hiromu Arakawa. You can enter any FMA fanart) then please post your fanart entry on this thread in our FMA Fanart forum AND, also please UPLOAD it to our Gallery (our Mods will be happy to assist you and show you how to upload to our Gallery...it's very easy, actually. ^^) The artworks of the winners of this contest will be displayed in our Gallery. ^^



(I personally recommend doing #2, because, I know they are actually trying to get AWESOME FMA items as the contest prizes!! )

Ok, thank you Tombow. now the hard thing is to think

Wow, it's been forever since I've logged on here. I'll try to be a little more active.

Anway, I am also sending a letter to Hiromu Arakawa-sensei. I hope Arakawa-sensei likes it.....

she is great I mean Hiromu arakawa a art work is really cool and there are many thing I learnt from the anime as well she is my inspiration even I want to become like her it is very hard to explain I just want to say
thank you very much!

This is my letter. But before it's translated, I kinda need a few people to critic it and see if it sounds good. I really don't want to make a fool out of myself with the letter

@InuNaruPokeAlchemist - Thank you for your letter. ^^ I think it has wonderfully heart-felt content, and I personally can understand which FMA series (FMA-1, FMA:Brotherhood anime, FMA manga) you're referring to in each of your sentence, but it may be little confusing to some others and if so may use some additional clarifying. Please wait for some others to assist you with your composition. ^^

@hand-made-city, or Rainshine, or some others, please give your helping hands to InuNaruPokeAlchemist's letter above. Thank you!

If you don't mind, I've edited your letter below to correct some spelling errors. Read over it and see if you think it is okay!



It's a good thank you letter! Just needed a few spelling corrections. I think it is fine now, but if you still want to re-word anything it's up to you.

If you don't mind, could you also shorten your letter of three or four sentences InuNaruPokeAlchemist?
There are indeed more than 1500 characters in the letter and it is a bit too long.
Thank you!

Then, when your letter is validated, you can post it in the translation request thread here.

(This post is time limited, and will be removed later on. ^^)
<Special Board Announcement>

News Flash!!!

Our board is giving away 1 copy of July 2010 issue (came out on June 11, 2010 in Japan) of Shounen GanGan magazine with FMA manga series final chapter (chapter 108)!!!!

Yes, the one and only, the issue with the final chapter of FMA manga!! This issue had been sold out so fast on the day it came out in Japan that not only it is no longer available from the publisher, many Japanese FMA fans who wanted to purchase this issue haven't had the chance to do so!! (Hence, the publisher is reprinting the entire chapter 108 again on the next month's issue of Shounen GanGan magazine, but this one is the one and only the original printing of the FMA manga final chapter, and we are even giving away, along with the magazine, the original bonus gift, the FMA manga series completion memorial digital clock also!!

This issue is HUGE! More than 1000 pages, with FMA final chapter alone covering 100 plus pages!!
I know some of you, even the one who normally do not order GanGan and prefer owing volume books wanted this particular issue of GanGan mag with the final chapter of FMA manga, even though don't speak/read any Japanese!! ^^

So... here is your chance to own this copy of GanGan mag with the final chapter of FMA!!!
(the following is the pic of the actual copy to be given away, except the face of "memorial clock" is kept "mystery" ^^)


Disclosure: Please note that the copy is already opened and hence in "previously owned" state, but please rest assured that it is in very good condition. ^^

And yes, we are giving away the original bonus gift, the "FMA manga series completion memorial digital clock" along with this copy!!

Please read on to find out what you need to do to win this prize!!!



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We are announcing the contest prizes for the "Thank you, Arakawa!" Fanart contest!!!

Up till now, the 1st, 2nd, & 3rd prizes for our "Thank you, Arakawa!" Fanart contest (jointly hosted by the FMA Image Gallery and the Fanart forum of our board) have been a mystery, but no more!! We are unveiling the 1st, 2nd, & 3rd prizes for the contest!!

Here are the prizes:

1st prize: 1 copy of Shounen GanGan magazine with the series final chapter of FMA manga (Yes, THE final chapter of FMA!!) along with the original bonus gift, "the series completion memorial digital clock."

2nd prize: FMA pencil case that was a bonus gift for the July issue of Shounen GanGan magazine.

3rd prize: Fullmetal Alchemist wrist band and FMA budge set that was a bonus gift for the November issue of Shounen GanGan magazine.


Here is what you need to do for the chance to win one of these prizes!!

1. Go and read July 2010 Arawaka Appreciation Fan Art Contest details.

2. Create your original fanart showing your "thank you" to FMA, or it's author, Hiromu Arakawa.
If you'd like, you can use any FMA characters from any FMA series (FMA-1, FMA:Brotherhood, FMA manga) for your fanart, as well as your depiction of Arakawa-cow figure.

3. Your fanart MUST directly show your thank-you to FMA and/or Arakawa-sensei.

4. However, no spoiler content for the FMA chapter 108 is allowed (it's because we'll have the board wide public poll as part of the judging of the winners for the contest, while many of FMA fans, including those in Japan, have not had a chance to read the final chapter of FMA manga. ^^) If you are not sure whether your fanart would be considered as "chapter 108 spoiler," then please send PM to Tombow and ask. ^^

5. Enter the contest, by posting your entry on July 2010 Arawaka Appreciation Fan Art Contest thread, and also upload the image to July 2010 Arakawa Appreciation Fanart Contest section of our Gallery by Saturday, July 31, 2010, 11:59 PM (on your time zone)


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Are you interested? Good, then get started!!
You have only 1 week to come up with your "thank you, FMA/Arakawa!" Fanart!!

Yeah I can do that, it's just I can't decide which ones to remove.

@InuNaruPokeAlchemist - I think all of your words are heart-felt and awesome, but, if need to be shortened a little, how about like this...??



Do you think this would be all right?? ^^