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Hey, Answerman! [2006-10-27]

Whoa, step back, who said anything like that?

I rather enjoy the dubs for: Cowboy Bebop, Goldenboy, Tenchi Muyo, Most any Miyazaki film, Akira (both times, atually), Burn-Up, FLCL - I could keep going.

You have apparently had a lot of nasty run-ins with fansub translators to sit here and make these assumptions about me from one post. If I hadn't mentioned the fact of being one, and instead just claimed to be a fan - what then? Are fans who prefer the original dialogue also predictable and tiresome? Because that's what I am - The fact that I translate has nothing to do with it, and I preferred it in Japanese way before I knew any of the language.

Problem is, we probably have each other figured totally wrong. Most assumptions you just made about me were incorrect.

But I only made one assumption about you, and apparently it was right, at least a bit.

But I can't blame you. In your position, you probably hear it all, and get pretty sick of it.

garylisk wrote:

But I only made one assumption about you, and apparently it was right, at least a bit. But I can't blame you. In your position, you probably hear it all, and get pretty sick of it.

To be frank, I don't even know why you said that in the first place. Nothing in my recent column was "pompous". Generally I know when I'm being arrogant or whatever, and that column was pretty innocuous.

They say "Speak with authority, and you will be believed." Sad but true.

These people put in a lot of time and energy creating an English language performance of people's favorite series and, for some, this is the ONLY performance they have listened to and intend to listen to. They work to try and provide fans with something and there are a lot of fans, myself included, who really appreciate that.

I know that dubs sometimes have flaws, but rather than insult them and those that work on them as "talentless," maybe we should take a few moments and actually think about just how hard it is to do the job.

English VAs deserve just as much respect as the Japanese VAs because they are trying to do a job that is very difficult and most of them do want to make the fans happy. Anyone who thinks they're doing this for the money is insane. Voice acting doesn't pay hardly anything. Most US VAs have second jobs unless they're getting work constantly.

Virtually all of my complaints about dubs come from technical questions of translation and scripting. I rarely have a bad thing to say about a performance because I refuse to just write someone off as terrible without giving them a fair shot. Are their voices different from the Japanese? Sure. Does that make them automatically inferior? No, it doesn't.

The rant this time was ridiculous. It hits home for me because I am one of those fan translators that do such an "unprofessional" job by leaving honorifics in a translation and such.

You're a little confused. "Professional" means you get paid to do what you do and you do it for a living.

Professional: applied to describe a person (or work of such a person) with the following attributes: service orientation, making expertise available to others, based on a distinctive body of knowledge and skills underpinned by abilities and values, autonomy in performing working within defined boundaries, public recognition of the authority of the practitioner by virtue of working to ethical standards and being accountable.

"-San" often has an english equivilent of "Mr." and "Mrs.". What is this of no way to translate honorifics?

Zalis116 wrote:

In Kamichu!, the line, "What kind of calligraphy would you like write?" appears in: A) a bad fansub B) an HK bootleg C) the official Geneon DVD

Um that is actually a valid question. There is Indian, Islamic, Western, East Asian, Tibetan. Each of these has further types. Each of these has further types.