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Answerman - Who Are Subtitles Written For?

I've even seen parents see unfamiliarity in media as a threat, and try to protect their kids from it.

For at least a couple of generations, if an average American read a word or saw something happen that they didn't understand, and there weren't enough contextual clues to figure things out, they got frustrated. It would take them out of the story, and depending on how insecure they were, they would get defensive. "This is dumb. Why am I watching this?" I've seen this happen SO MANY TIMES over the years, especially with anime. Once a certain level of non-comprehension has been exceeded, they withdraw.

Yeah, this has been a well-known phenomenon in education circles for ages. (And it still is, sadly.) Justin's comments about how this is changing for media viewers makes me wonder if that change might gradually be starting to creep into education, too, or if perhaps that's something we need to encourage/force along.

For at least a couple of generations, if an average American read a word or saw something happen that they didn't understand, and there weren't enough contextual clues to figure things out, they got frustrated. It would take them out of the story, and depending on how insecure they were, they would get defensive. "This is dumb. Why am I watching this?" I've seen this happen SO MANY TIMES over the years, especially with anime. Once a certain level of non-comprehension has been exceeded, they withdraw.

Sometimes I think they use computers to do the official subs sometimes instead of humans. There are also the editors who don't edit, or whose idea of editing is little more than running the text through MS Word to see whether it can catch any typos. For some official translators, this is just a job to them & they don't care much as long as they get paid.

Many people do it with a "no quality standard beyond whatever gets the job done" mindset, there is no demand for quality from above because the average customer doesn't care and/or can't tell the difference, and some people they hire simply don't have the technical competence to be doing it. That the pay isn't precisely the best doesn't help attract/keep the best people or motivate them to put effort into the job, either. It varies fairly wildly, though, just as fansubbers would, in the olden days, range all the way from mass naked child events to essentially flawless releases.

I guess this is ultimately the main problem with pro subs: the people in charge of that job do it like drones. Some do it that way because they can't be arsed to do it any other way; others do so because they have no other choice. This is the difference with fansubs: you can actually do it the way you like, rather than trying to make as much money with as little investment as (in)humanly possible. This leads to the pursuit of perfection and to competition in product quality, two very important things that aren't easily found in a landscape filled with monopolies over things.

For at least a couple of generations, if an average American read a word or saw something happen that they didn't understand, and there weren't enough contextual clues to figure things out, they got frustrated. It would take them out of the story, and depending on how insecure they were, they would get defensive. "This is dumb. Why am I watching this?" I've seen this happen SO MANY TIMES over the years, especially with anime. Once a certain level of non-comprehension has been exceeded, they withdraw. I've even seen parents see unfamiliarity in media as a threat, and try to protect their kids from it.

There are some things that should never be translated

attack names are one.

let's not get started with pro translators pushing thier political agendas, instead I will say that this reminded me of a manga that ahd the following translator note "if you don't undertand those honorifics why are you even reading this manga", which is fun because you can learn a lot of japanese by absortion by watching anime, since you are still listening to the japanese audio , so even if the subtitles don't keep the san/chan, change names to him/her, or even translate stuff like "this humanity" to "the humanity" (thanks for ruining the clue for peopel ho don't listen) you can still make do.
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