Forum - View topicSub-watchers: do you prefer honorifics?
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naninanino
 Posts: 680 |
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In most cases they should be left in, because they are very important in defining the characters relations to each other. It is not just a japanese or anime thing either, even if it may seem exsessive. Not everyone in the world is going to appreciate it, when you call out to them as if they were your pet dog or something.
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EireformContinent
 Posts: 977 Location: Łódź/Poland (The Promised Land) |
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But most of the languages have various forms that can mirror the emotions and skilled translator should know them. I wonder if rooting for honorific would also advocate for various diminutives and other forms made up just to reflect emotions relations while reading translation from Russian.
Honorifics aren't anything saint our unique, they are part of the language code, known for Japanese, but everywhere else available just for a handful of hobbyists-much like said diminutives in Slavic languages. So leaving them doesn't make book more true to the original, but give additional unnecessarily layer. While I understand leaving them in historical works, I would not put them into fantasy -unless it's clearly based on Japanese mythology like Inuyasha, but not Berserk. And it look completely odd in series set in Western lands like Black Butler or Emma. |
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vanfanel
 Posts: 1243 |
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I believe that English translations should sound as natural as if they were written in English from the start, so no weird linguistic hybrids, please. Honorifics aren't used in literary translation or in subtitles for films aimed at general audiences; a good writer can get across the subtleties by taking a less literal approach. Varying the politeness of the English phrasing is usally plenty to get the relationships across. And if we're told at the beginning that the heroine is the hero's childhood friend, we don't need to be told again every time her name is spoken. She still is! That hasn't changed!
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Alan45
 Village Elder Posts: 9860 Location: Virginia |
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I can cope either way. However, as long as the anime is set in some version of Japan, past, present or future, leave them in. You are already dealing with a different society with different customs to begin with. Coping with honorifics shouldn't be that much of a strain. In any case, if you are sufficiently into anime to be watching a show subtitled, you should be familiar with what you are seeing.
If I wanted all the Japanese cultural aspects sanitized from my shows, I wouldn't have bothered with anime in the first place. |
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Touma
 Posts: 2651 Location: Colorado, USA |
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I am not really a sub watcher because I almost always listen to the dub if there is one. But I do watch quite a few shows that are not dubbed and I do prefer that the honorifics are used in the subtitles. Sometimes they are significant and I consider them to be part of the name so I like them to be left in. On a slightly related subject I also prefer that the Japanese name order is used in the subtitles.
I even prefer that the honorifics are retained for some dubs. If the dub is highly localized, such as Case Closed then honorifics would definitely not be appropriate. But I think that it is better when the honorifics are used in the dub for shows such as Lucky Star and K-On! Sometimes the honorifics have significant meanings that cannot be translated. Of course honorifics would not work in the dub if the viewers do not understand them, but I think that most people who watch the shows where honorifics would be most useful would probably know what they mean, or would be interested in learning. |
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Shiroi Hane
Encyclopedia Editor
 Posts: 7580 Location: Wales |
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There was something of a storm created when Ken Hoinsky (then of MX Media, which created a lot of the subtitles for Crunchyroll and is now owned by them) announced that his company was dropping honorifics from their subtitles as a matter of policy. The resulting debate is all still there on MX Media's timeline.
Chris Beveridge ran a poll and the result was 56.80% against having honorifics. |
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larinon
 Posts: 992 Location: Midland, TX |
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I agree with everything Dessa mentioned, but I wanted to highlight this point in particular. When I hear the family name in the audio but then read the given name of a character in the subtitles this annoys me. Knowing whether one character addresses another by their family or their given name can give some crucial insight into the relationship of the characters, not to mention whether or not they use an honorific and which honorific they use. Now as I stated I can hear how they're being addressed in the audio, but I know that not everyone is focusing on that aspect. I would like for subtitles to convey as accurately as possible everything that it can in just a written adaptation. I thought it was significant and welcome when Del-Rey made the decision to include honorifics in their manga since we don't have any audio to fall back on. Something else that bothers me is when companies such as Funimation take creative license with how characters are addressed. In A Certain Scientific Railgun, for instance, Kuroko refers to Misaka as Onee-sama. This is then translated as Sissy, which I find utterly ridiculous. I realize I may be in the minority in this, but if I'm choosing to watch the subtitled version when a dub is also available, I want them to keep that over-Anglicized BS out of it. |
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Zalis116
Moderator
 Posts: 6872 Location: Kazune City |
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I don't mind if they're present or absent, though I almost prefer that they be ignored instead of awkwardly translated. And at least in the fansub world, subs that omit honorifics tend to have better-written, more liberal English, which to me is a good tradeoff. Still, I believe you can have a good English script with some Japanese "flavorings" like honorifics, as long as the underlying content is phrased naturally and flows well.
Some official subs manage to combine the worst of both worlds -- stiff, overliteral phrasing and overlocalization.
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yoshiyukiblade
Posts: 305 |
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Most of the time it's not a problem, but it does distract me very briefly from time to time. Of all the words that I, as a non-native speaker, can pick up from the Japanese language, names distinctively stand out of their speech by far. It's easy to identify and remember, especially since they're frequently spoken as 1-liners. So when I hear a name spoken while reading it in the subtitle, a reverse order can throw me off a little, but years of sub watching experience quickly pulls me back in. I think the worst reversal of the name/honorific order for subs, that I've seen, was the NA DVD release of Rurouni Kenshin. Once in a while, when a character would say another character's full name, he'd pause dramatically between the family name and given name. To complement the dramatic timing, the subs would write it out in 2 consecutive lines. However, it looks utterly silly when the name order is reversed. Example, Kenshin says: "Shishio... Makoto..." But the subs say: Makoto... <break> Shishio... I'm thinking, "You know, I can clearly hear him saying it in the other order. I'm not so dumb that I can't understand the names unless I read the subs!" That's an extreme case though and I haven't seen subs done that way anywhere else. |
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TsunaReborn!
 Posts: 4713 Location: Cheltenham UK |
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If they are not included in the subs it would not stop me watching a show (as I can usually pick them up) as long as they do not try to translate it, as reading big brother in every sentence annoys me after a while. I do prefer that honorifics are kept in as I feel it helps the subs keep a closer match to the dialogue. It's also easier to tell their familiarity from the first time you see two characters interacting with each other.
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vashna
Posts: 1313 |
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I actually like when they write out honorifics, because I work with a few people from Japan via email. They have always stressed a very businesslike relationship, and they actually prefer to be addressed with Japanese language honorifics even when being written to in English. As a result, I've sort of gotten used to them even though I realize that some people on Anime News Network have suggested that they should not be used in the English language.
I don't mind when they're translated as "Mister ____" or something like that. It isn't too big of a problem. That being said, excessive use of terminology like big brother can get very annoying if it continues for a very long period of time. |
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Gatherum
 Posts: 773 Location: Aurora CO |
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I'm rather neutral about it, but if they do include them, then I prefer them to be in italics, as is proper when writing non-English words, phrases, and/or modifiers in an English sentence.
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Chiibi
 Posts: 4829 |
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We explained this: it's distracting when the ears are hearing something that the eyes are not seeing.
This. |
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Gatherum
Posts: 773 Location: Aurora CO |
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Not necessarily: I do not find it difficult to follow when the honourifics are omitted. In some cases, the English transliterations ("sir", "ma'am", "Miss", "Mr.", "brother", &c.) are quite adequate in highlighting a given relationship. In others, the very context of the situation will serve this purpose. To address the general nature of your statement, also not necessarily true: such is what we have our mind's eye for. I don't need to see the door when I hear it creaking in order to know that it is creaking. My imagination does that for me. |
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Zalis116
Moderator
Posts: 6872 Location: Kazune City |
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So do you get up in arms if subs translate a sentence like "Misaki-san wa ima kaerimasu ka" as "Are you going home now?", rather than "Is Misaki-san going home now?" And most good subtitles perform some degree of simplification and omission for the sake of "screen real estate" and providing enough reading time. Subtitles are not supposed to be exact closed captions; is there really anything lost by reading "What're you doing here?" rather than "What're you doing in a place like this?"? I try to cut out verbal chaff like "well then" wherever I can.
By that same token, I've observed that more people get annoyed when honorifics are omitted than when they are included, excepting some shows with obvious non-Japanese settings where the reverse is true. So from a subber's standpoint, the lazy approach to having crowd-pleasing subs is to leave honorifics in. And, if you're subbing a weekly/ongoing show, you don't know if there's going to be some relationship/honorific change that might throw any localization attempts out of whack. Otoh, companies working on completed shows will know that A calls B "B-kun" from the beginning to the end, and can thus more safely omit or change honorifics. |
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