Forum - View topicAnswerman - How Do Franchises Keep English Translations Straight?
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Sakurazuka_Reika
 Posts: 527 |
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A similar method is used when it comes to such franchises with multiple spin offs (for example a multi-film franchise with books on minor characters). In the script-writing world I believe such a document is called a "Bible".
Funny story with Star Wars - back when it was at its peak, "Bibles" were not so common-place, which led to some...questionable events in some of the old Star Wars books. The biggest was when Luke spoiler[slept with Leia] in one such book. This happened before it was revealed in the films that spoiler[she was his sister]. |
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ParkerALx
 Posts: 194 |
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Well... at least there was a method in 4Kid's madness!
Thanks for another informative article, Justin. That line about Pikachu not being allowed to frown sounds about right. If corporations were ever to take over the world, I'm sure none of us would be allowed ever stop smiling! It would be just like the Doctor Who serial "The Happiness Patrol." Only with less candy. Last edited by ParkerALx on Wed Sep 14, 2016 12:21 pm; edited 2 times in total |
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Brand
 Posts: 1028 |
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Some companies can't get it together at all. I remember my friend playing Oppona on the Wii. It is pretty obvious that at least more than one person worked on the translation (at least a few in all likelyhood). And it seems like they didn't to much editing to the script once they put it together. Because even within the game there is a lot of discrepancies on what things are named or called.
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zrnzle500
 Posts: 3767 |
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Wait, they care that much about Naruto's hair spikes? I mean I guess that could be taken to mean "Don't position him such that the top of his hair is cropped out" so that he is placed fairly front and center in any materials. But still it seems oddly particular about his hair.
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AceLuffy4Ever
 Posts: 322 |
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I love how there is a picture of Ash next to a picture of Sora and Kari. Nostalgia overload
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CorneredAngel
 Posts: 854 Location: New York, NY |
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One thing to keep in mind about this entire article - what do you think most of the employees of The Pokemon Company International actually do for a lot of their time at work!
Last edited by CorneredAngel on Wed Sep 14, 2016 1:04 pm; edited 2 times in total |
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AtoMan
Posts: 161 |
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This is true, though. Same thing applies to Sailor Senshi hairstyles. |
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invalidname
 Contributor Posts: 2441 Location: Grand Rapids, MI |
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Interesting recent counter-example: Muv-Luv Alternative: Total Eclipse got subbed by Crunchyroll while being simulcast in 2012. The franchise had effectively no other English-language presence otherwise, this being a year after the ugly fallout of a failed attempt by Mangagamer to license the Muv-Luv source visual novel. Part of that fallout was the fan translators releasing their English patch into the wild, once the deal with Mangagamer had fallen apart.
Apparently, the Crunchyroll translators, and the Sentai sub/dub translators a few years later, relied on the fan translation for some of their jargon choices. Maybe it was all they had? It's not a bad idea, because the fan translation is literal to a fault. One thing it does, for example, is that it sticks with the literal Japanese term for pilot, eishi, to describe all mech pilots, world-wide. So those subs and dubs use the term "eishi" all over the place, even in an episode title. Thing is, Muv-Luv went legal this year, thanks to that big kickstarter, and the translators of the official version decided that "eishi" didn't make any sense whatsoever in-universe, so they've adopted the term "surface pilot". We have to assume that the legit version of the source material is as canonical as can be, but that in turn makes Total Eclipse weirdly anachronistic in its translation choice, and everyone saying "eishi" instead of "surface pilot" all over the place may now be a source of confusion or annoyance to viewers who watch the anime after playing the VNs. |
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explosionforgov
 Posts: 80 Location: United States of America |
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It's a little harder to find official merch of Pikachu frowning, posing in a battle stance, wearing a costume, or a female Pikachu, but they do exist. I have a figure of Pikachu frowning and standing on all fours, but it did take me years to find one. The only major name inconsistencies I've seen in anime tend to either be something like Sailor Moon (where the names were Americanized at first, and then the anime was re-released with the original names), or something with a large gap between adaptations/the series changing hands, like JoJo's Bizarre Adventure (which resulted in Boingo going from Voing to Mondatta, Avdol/Abdul, Jean-Pierre Polnareff/Eiffel/Jean-Pierre, Vanilla Ice going from Iced to Cool Ice, etc.) |
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John Thacker
Posts: 1006 |
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Jojo's is a special case, with all the "we're going to try to avoid literally translating all the things named after American celebrities and rock bands" issue. Well, not that special, I guess, since Bastard! is the same way. It leads to more of a problem because then the "official" or preferred Japanese translation can't be used consistently. I can remember a couple other problems with katakana words; in particular, confusion over whether something should be "volley[ball]" or "ballet" (both バレー) has tripped up a few translators without context. (I think I recalled Azumanga Daioh getting this wrong in one of the manga or anime, and right in the other.) For some reason, the recent Arslan TV series switched some romanizations halfway through the first season, at least in Funimation's online streaming. Partially I think it involved an attempt to stop putting macrons on a bunch of long vowels. Another one I can think of is Gunsmith Cats, where the main character is definitely called "Larry Vincent." People thought that was obviously a mistake and used "Rally" for the name, but Keiichi Sonoda has indicated that "Larry" was certainly intended, and was a pseudonym adopted to hide her gender. |
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Primus
 Posts: 2758 Location: Toronto |
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Here's a look at one of the Beyblade style guides: https://www.behance.net/gallery/4968921/BEYBLADE-Season-6-Style-Guide
Imagine how big a Pokemon one must be ... |
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Lord Oink
Posts: 876 |
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Ironic choice of example since Pokemon's dub has a lot of inconsistancies and mistakes.
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yuna49
 Posts: 3804 |
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That's become an annoying trend. For instance, the Aniplex translation for Kill la Kill uses Matoi Ryuko instead of Matoi Ryūko. If they want to get rid of the macrons, they could at least double the vowels so we'd get Matoi Ryuuko. I guess they figure that's a subtlety that English-speaking audiences don't care about. |
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Suena
Posts: 289 |
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I hate when a character gets their name spelled differently mid-stream. I have a hard time remembering names period, which gets doubly harder when I have to learn that now their name is supposed to be spelled differently. I never remember which is the 'canon' one.
Also, spellings are especially important for certain sites where character tagging is involved. Once there's more than one name out there for a character, you have to start using both spellings every time you want to tag them, because you don't know which name other fans remember best. I remember one Magi character started out having a reasonably-spelled name, but then the next season (on Crunchyroll) it was changed to something that would be a lot harder to remember how to spell. Apparently Japan didn't like how they spelled it originally. But yeah, this happens a lot (for stuff smaller than pokemon) and it drives me a little nuts. |
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peno
Posts: 349 |
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I see no one yet mentioned The Legend of Thunder Pokémon special, where the main characters were originally named Jimmy, Marina and Vincent, only to be renamed to Yoshi, Dani and Jackson in the main anime dub, both still done by 4Kids. 4Kids had some other franchise inconsistency issues, like some flawed move names or wrong Pokémon name pronunciations. And we rather not mention infamous "Pokémon Trainer's Choice", which was probably created to be Pokémon franchise inconsistency
But 4Kids is not the only one faulty here, as there were some other inconsistencies in Pokémon franchise. Some actually even in Japan (main R/B game rival's sister being renamed in some manga, though here, one may actually argue that she was meant to be a character unrelated to the game character).
Edit:
That reminded me how Funimation switched from Bandou to Bando in Cheer Danshi!!, Speaking of which, I always prefer "U" or macrons in romanizations, but sadly, a lot of translations doesn't contain either, which creates quite a problem to identify the original name in translations, where you don't have the original Japanese audio available. |
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