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Answerman - Why Do Subtitle Styles From The Same Company Differ?


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maximilianjenus



Joined: 29 Apr 2013
Posts: 2857
PostPosted: Mon Dec 12, 2016 2:29 pm Reply with quote
Quote:
They also require that, as the general level of fan knowledge changes, and new words start to find favor among anime fans, they be kept up to date.


haha, nakama; like several years nobody cared how it got translated until one piece exploded.
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Actar



Joined: 21 Nov 2010
Posts: 1074
Location: Singapore
PostPosted: Mon Dec 12, 2016 2:32 pm Reply with quote
Honorifics are love, honorifics are life. Though, being mostly fluent in Japanese, the omissions don't bother me that much anymore. What does bother me is silly attempts at over-liberalizing and Americanizing the script in an attempt to make it sound more "natural", or worse, "better than the original". In the end, more often than not, these attempts come across as cringe-worthy and cross the line into script-writing. Thankfully, official translations aren't subject to horrible fansub politics that drove me to the point of near-insanity. Seriously, when the English dub is more literal than your fansubs, you know something is wrong.
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Lemonchest



Joined: 18 Mar 2015
Posts: 1771
PostPosted: Mon Dec 12, 2016 2:36 pm Reply with quote
Speaking of name changes in the subitiles, I like how the Stardust Crusaders subs just pretend a certain two characters are being called Zenyatta and Mondatta.
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PsychoPearl



Joined: 27 Oct 2016
Posts: 152
PostPosted: Mon Dec 12, 2016 2:41 pm Reply with quote
Lemonchest wrote:
Speaking of name changes in the subitiles, I like how the Stardust Crusaders subs just pretend a certain two characters are being called Zenyatta and Mondatta.


Also Vanilla Ice is Cool Ice. Meanwhile every stand introduced in DiU gets a new and terrible name.
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_Quasar_



Joined: 10 May 2015
Posts: 51
PostPosted: Mon Dec 12, 2016 3:10 pm Reply with quote
And this is why I'm glad fansubs still exist.
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Parsifal24





PostPosted: Mon Dec 12, 2016 3:14 pm Reply with quote
Changes in the style of subtitles are interesting I can remember when Crunchyroll announced they would quit subtitling Honorifics and than people threatened to cancel their subscription. Or the Funimation subtitles for No-Rin which became some sort of "most prominent example" of badly translated Subtitles. even this year the first couple episodes of Magic of Stella that is on Daisuki got pilloried for what felt like an overly "loose" translation.
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_Quasar_



Joined: 10 May 2015
Posts: 51
PostPosted: Mon Dec 12, 2016 3:48 pm Reply with quote
Parsifal24 wrote:
Changes in the style of subtitles are interesting I can remember when Crunchyroll announced they would quit subtitling Honorifics and than people threatened to cancel their subscription. Or the Funimation subtitles for No-Rin which became some sort of "most prominent example" of badly translated Subtitles. even this year the first couple episodes of Magic of Stella that is on Daisuki got pilloried for what felt like an overly "loose" translation.


For me it was funimation magical Index sub that made me suspicious of funi subs from then on. The whole translation of onee-sama to sissy really rubbed me the wrong way.
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Actar



Joined: 21 Nov 2010
Posts: 1074
Location: Singapore
PostPosted: Mon Dec 12, 2016 3:56 pm Reply with quote
_Quasar_ wrote:
Parsifal24 wrote:
Changes in the style of subtitles are interesting I can remember when Crunchyroll announced they would quit subtitling Honorifics and than people threatened to cancel their subscription. Or the Funimation subtitles for No-Rin which became some sort of "most prominent example" of badly translated Subtitles. even this year the first couple episodes of Magic of Stella that is on Daisuki got pilloried for what felt like an overly "loose" translation.


For me it was funimation magical Index sub that made me suspicious of funi subs from then on. The whole translation of onee-sama to sissy really rubbed me the wrong way.


Yeah, Funimation's subs are far more awkward than Crunchyroll's.

PsychoPearl wrote:
Lemonchest wrote:
Speaking of name changes in the subitiles, I like how the Stardust Crusaders subs just pretend a certain two characters are being called Zenyatta and Mondatta.


Also Vanilla Ice is Cool Ice. Meanwhile every stand introduced in DiU gets a new and terrible name.


Those were particularly annoying because the original dialogue is still clear as crystal. For what it's worth, those were changed to avoid copyright issues with the actual artistes.
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zrnzle500



Joined: 04 Oct 2014
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PostPosted: Mon Dec 12, 2016 4:29 pm Reply with quote
^Luckily, CR will be handling subtitling for (most of) the shows they and Funi license.
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Zoneflare



Joined: 11 Mar 2015
Posts: 521
PostPosted: Mon Dec 12, 2016 4:35 pm Reply with quote
What's bothering me is when a character refers to someone by their family name and it's just translated into the first names the subtitles. Makes me feel like I'm being treated like a moron who can't understand such concepts.
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SilverTalon01



Joined: 02 Apr 2012
Posts: 2401
PostPosted: Mon Dec 12, 2016 6:10 pm Reply with quote
_Quasar_ wrote:
For me it was funimation magical Index sub that made me suspicious of funi subs from then on. The whole translation of onee-sama to sissy really rubbed me the wrong way.


The Raildex translations are objectively bad even aside from that. According to them, Touma can reflect attacks back...

Though on that specific issue, I don't think there is anything they could do that would have made everyone happy.
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Yuvelir



Joined: 06 Jan 2015
Posts: 1529
PostPosted: Mon Dec 12, 2016 8:21 pm Reply with quote
PsychoPearl wrote:
Lemonchest wrote:
Speaking of name changes in the subitiles, I like how the Stardust Crusaders subs just pretend a certain two characters are being called Zenyatta and Mondatta.


Also Vanilla Ice is Cool Ice. Meanwhile every stand introduced in DiU gets a new and terrible name.

Just who the hell has the copyright over the word "Echoes"?
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Jake Jung



Joined: 10 May 2016
Posts: 23
Location: Japan
PostPosted: Mon Dec 12, 2016 8:39 pm Reply with quote
A distributor's style guide may allow for a certain amount of translator discretion when it comes to honorifics. For example, it may make a lot of sense to keep them in a show with a highly-stratified setting (e.g., a Japanese high school). In such a show, you could easily get a line like, "He might get angry if you don't call him "san." On the other hand, keeping the honorifics might add very little—or rather simply be a distraction—if you have a show set in outer space where the characters aren't even culturally Japanese, for example. The most important thing is to make a choice for each title and stay consistent with it. (Without citing a specific style guide, I say this as a professional anime translator.)
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Paiprince



Joined: 21 Dec 2013
Posts: 593
PostPosted: Mon Dec 12, 2016 10:13 pm Reply with quote
I am glad there are still people here who prefer to keep things as authentic as possible in translations and not opting for something more "natural." Like someone said, we're not morons. We're going to find out if the sub script is totally different from the dialogue one way or another.
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#861208



Joined: 07 Oct 2016
Posts: 423
PostPosted: Mon Dec 12, 2016 10:22 pm Reply with quote
Zoneflare wrote:
What's bothering me is when a character refers to someone by their family name and it's just translated into the first names the subtitles. Makes me feel like I'm being treated like a moron who can't understand such concepts.


Not.... really? There could be reasons for that - most likely that the subtitler was working really fast to try to get the thing out, made a mental note about which character the character was talking about, and accidentally typed the wrong name.

Why does everyone always assume someone's looking down on them or trying to insult them whenever something happens that they don't like?
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