Forum - View topic
Fansubs suck!

I've been watching a lot of stuff on DVD lately and I've come to the shocking conclusion that no matter how prolific they are, fansubs are pretty awful. For instance, I just watched the end of Hellsing on DVD. When the disc came out, everyone was praising it... and when I saw the fansubs in the middle of last year, I thought it was pretty terrible. It didn't make much sense and the animation seemed really awful. Watching it on DVD was a completely different story; the animation was actually pretty good (save episode 10), and the storyline made perfect sense. The translation was perfectly understandable, and the whole thing seemed a million times better. The same thing has recently happened with X TV, Fruits Basket, and a whole host of other shows. I regret that the only way to watch new shows like Wolf's Rain and Someday's Dreamers (excellent shows, by the way, and something I reasonably have to do to stay on top of things) is in fansub form. No matter how ubiquitous they are, fansubs are pretty awful. The fonts, the translation, the video quality... I wonder if people who do nothing but download fansubs all day know they're getting a shockingly inferior translation? One group recently put out the latest episode of Wolf's Rain 16 hours after it aired. That's great, we can see it quickly, but there's no way in hell that translation even resembles accuracy. I sorta got the gist of what was going on, but all in all, I wish I'd had a Bandai release or something to really get everything I could out of it. So, from a reforming fansub-devotee, I've decided that unless I just can't live without watching the series as it comes out (Wolf's Rain, Naruto, Someday's Dreamers...) I'm just going to wait until the DVD comes out. "Try before you Buy" is almost a waste of time, since what you get from a fansub is rarely a good indication of what the series is like. Exceptions prove the rule here. Toriyama World's Naruto translations are excellent, but that's because they also did the manga for a long while. They take the time to translate the show accurately. Other than that... well, fansubs are basically the bottom of the barrel.

What does everyone else think?

-Zac

I'm not a big fan of fansubs. I have Sailor Stars fansubbed and it's pretty crappy. (I would really like to know what some people are thinking when they choose sub colors....people need to learn that you do not use the same color as most of the backgrounds.) But not only was the translation pretty bad, but the video part of it was bad too. Even when I got them brand new, it looked like a dying VHS tape. (Tons of static..just generally crappy looking.)

Now, I have seen some good fansubs. I think the Ebichu fansubs are done amazingly well. (As well as the Kare Kano fansubs I saw at Otakon 2K.) But that's not saying that I wouldn't prefer them on DVD. I'm patient enough that I can wait for the DVD to come (assuming the title is licensed....the chances of Ebichu getting licensed is not very good) and I don't work at a job in which I have to be on top of the newest things coming out of Japan. I have a footlong list of older titles to tide me over until the newer shows I want to see arrive in my store.

Indeed, a great deal of the fansubs out there are atrocious. However, there are some that are either good or at least provide a passable groundwork for an improved version.

I think it depends on the fansubs or how much time they had to translate. The quicker they are, the worse it is. I watched Utena fansubbed a looooong time ago, and it was still on vhs even, if that gives you any idea, and it was a fabulous translation, way better than CPM. Doesn't make me less happy to have it on dvd though, since I already know what they're actually saying.

Truthfully though, I've seen a lot that were good (picture quality aside) and explained any cultural references that I might not get, which is actually part of the reason why I watch them (I'm always curious to see how the official release handles some of that stuff, sometimes even in the subtitles they just skim right over it). But there have been just as many that were awful. Sometimes it's not so much inaccuracy but the fact that the sentences aren't well constructed. There's a lot more to translating than just knowing what the words mean. And I'm not even gonna go into how annoying white text for subtitles is.

I still like a chance to watch stuff so if I can get an idea of whether I want to buy it. I usually do though, I don't watch unless I already think I may be interested in it. Though I have learned some patience, a lot of the stuff I'm buying now I didn't watch first, and I'm okay with that.

It's a bunch of tapes. And I'm not quite sure how I'd classify them. They are so old....they're probably bootlegs and I didn't know any better at the time. I should pull one out and see who subbed it.

And when I say it's horrible....it's horrible. You can't even read half of the subtitles because of the static on the screen....and the other half end up being a shade of yellow that you can't really read against the background.

This is slightly OT, but check out these great Engrish subtitles from the asian bootleg version of Lord of the Rings:

http://home.online.no/~gremmem/engrish_ttt_captions/

Best line: "Frodo: I've got to do Sam."

Yeah, I totally agree with you Zac. That happened to me with .hack. I watched all the fansubs a while ago and was like "wtf is going on here?"
Different groups translate things differently, so after a while nothing makes any sense. People should just wait for the dvds =p

blah blah blah, all i see here is a bunch of clueless people. If you're gonna criticize the whole subbing scene, you gotta have some backing for whatever you say. How many people here actually speak both Japanese and English fluently? How many people have actually worked in a subbing (fan or commercial) group? How many people actually know anything about encoding a video? (Well I can say yes to all 3 of those, can you?) Well maybe you should be able to say yes to them before you can say something about the subbing scene.

There seems to be 2 things most people base their opinions of a sub on. The translations and the video quality.

I'll start off with translation first. Many people say a sub may suck cause the translations suck. But what backing do they really have in saying this? I mean how many of those people actually speak fluent japanese. Some say "I've taken japanese courses in the past!". Taking 1 japanese course isn't gonna allow them to understand more than 10% of the dialogue in a 24 minute episode. Those people along with those who don't speak japanese at all, have absolutly no right to say anything about the translations in a sub. I mean YOU DON'T ACTUALLY UNDERSTAND JAPANESE, HOW CAN YOU BE SAYING THE TRANSLATION IS BAD!?!?!?. On another note just because each subbed line does not flow into each other, it does not mean the translation is not accurate. Japanese does not translate to english perfectly, there are oviously gonna be spots where dialogue is not gonna flow because in japanese it may mean something, but in english not mean anything at all. On the other hand, just because the english sounds good, does it mean the translation is accurate? Hey I can make perfectly good english subs up that sound great and flow with the pictures on the screen, but has nothing to do with anything actual said. So back to my original point, unless you can speak both japanese and english fluently, you have no right to criticize the translations. Just because someone else says the translations suck, what credidentials do they have?

Next I'll talk about video quality. I'm seeing a lot of people here comparing the video quality in a DVD to a VHS, and i'm just wondering what you're smoking... I mean honestly how can you compare the quality of a DVD and a VHS. YES A DVD IS GOING TO LOOK BETTER, IT'S SUPPOSED TO. As for digital fansubs you can download, I have to say the quality on those aren't that bad. I mean most of those are encoded in DivX or XviD. The quality is not going to be the same as a VOB (dvd-rip, they tend to be around 1 gig for 30 mins of video), but for a 150mb file, the quality is pretty good. Simply said, if you want DVD quality... you're going to have to buy the DVDs. And if the DVDs look like crap, then theres your queue to start complaining.

Finally, I'm going to make one last point. When saying the "fansubbing" or the "Commercial subbing" scene sucks, you're going to have to be comparing more than 2 or 3 pieces of work from each group. Yes, maybe that 6 year old fansub done by some guy who doesn't even speak japanese is bad, but who says a fansub released last week by a group of bored bums isn't gonna be exceptional in quality? And who says just because a commercial subbing group releases something that it's going to be good? I mean tons of anime DVDs released have errors in them.

Now that I've said that, maybe all of you who complain and whine about things you don't pay for, should um, well shutup? Yes that sounds good. If you paid for something and you think it sucked, fine go complain all you want, but don't complain about free things, especially when you have absolutly no real backing to defend your complaints.

Well at the beginning I enjoyed watching Fansubs (mainly because I didn't have a lot of money). I guess being a president of an Anime Club (METRO ANIME) helped me enjoy a particular series. Some subbers actually research the script and try to do a good job. I have to admit there are some fansubber really have no idea what they are doing.

Thats just my opinion on the subject

ranmah

Last edited by tempest on Mon Feb 03, 2003 10:42 pm; edited 1 time in total

	Anime News Network Forum Index -> General -> Anime	All times are GMT - 5 Hours Goto page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 Next
Page 1 of 6

Forum - View topicFansubs suck!

Forum - View topic
Fansubs suck!