Forum - View topicAnswerman - What's Wrong With Fan Translations?
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Ali07
 Posts: 3333 Location: Victoria, Australia |
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True, which is why I went on and mentioned that later in the post you quoted. I mean, I mention it on the next line. 
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tofukitty
Posts: 19 Location: Outside Kansas City Mo USA |
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I was hoping the article would touch on something more like this. While I love my new CCS blu-Rays their translation bugs me first Shaoran is spelled the Chinese way, Xiaolan, which isn't huge but is intimidating especially if you weren't sure what his name is. And then there was the flipping of first and last names for example Sakura calls him Li for most of the series, then later asks if she can call him by his first name. This didn't happen in the NIS Version, she always calls him Xiaolan Considering how important the personal relationships are to this show it rubbed me the wrong way. I thought of pointing out my objections-nicely- to NiS America so they might avoid doing so in the future, after all they can't read minds! Then I read about all the crap translators get in this article and I'm a little hesitant. Oh well just nice to know I wasn't the only one bugged by that. Of course in the Dark Horse manga Shoaran uses Sakuras name during the test of courage, WAY too early instead of saying "you" *sigh* I'm just happy to have the volumes tho I could barely read TP's version because they tried to translate Kero's accent! |
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leafy sea dragon
 Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
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And I don't mean any disrespect to anyone who's a fan of silent films either. I HAVE watched a lot of them (and The General is one of my favorite movies I have ever seen). I'm just classifying people who prefer silent film over sound film (and oppose their restoration outside of recovered footage) as just another type of movie viewer, just as I classify people who prefer vinyl over digital or people who prefer 8- and 16-bit non-emulated gaming over later games for reasons other than nostalgia. They like the old, worn-out quality to them.
Whoops, I missed that for some reason. Sorry about it. |
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yuna49
 Posts: 3804 |
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One show whose official translation drove me crazy was Saiunkoku Monogatari. There are two "Kou" clans in the story, pronounced slightly different in Japanese. The protagonist Shurrei belongs one of them; the other appears briefly in a few places. The novelist and her publisher were concerned foreign viewers would not notice the different voicings and convinced Geneon USA to use the Chinese translation of "Kou Shurrei" with the reverse name order so she was called "Shurrei Hong" throughout. (The show takes in a faux T'ang Dynasty setting.) I don't have a problem with that change on the English dub track, but it was incredibly annoying when also used in the subtitles. Shurrei is called by her full name repeatedly throughout the story, yet we see "Shurrei Hong" in the subtitles every time we hear "Kou Shurrei" on the audio track.
The fansubs naturally made no such change. Even though I own the DVDs I watch the fansubs still for this reason. When I watched Oh! Edo Rocket in fansubs, I was convinced it would never be licensed in the US because it was just "too Japanese." If there's a distinction between "localization" and "translation" when it comes to adapting anime, Funimation's version of Rocket definitely falls into the first category. Some of the Americanized jokes are funny. North Edo Magistrate Toyama Kinshiro, who wanted people to call him "Kin the Playboy," was interpreted as impersonating Elvis. The very difficult to render New Year's recap that begins episode fifteen is funny both ways. Funimation explicitly presents the recap as designed for American audiences including a reference to the "History Channel." In the original the characters wonder among themselves how a parody of Japanese television will be understood by foreign viewers. The excellent fansubber for this show offered useful notes for the historical events and personages this show portrays and other cultural references as well. For example, he translated all the historical events that appear on Sora's board in episode fifteen, which Funimation did not. Funi's Sora berated her American viewers for only being able to recognize maybe a couple of the kanji especially ones the audience might be wearing as tattoos. |
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Adamanto
Posts: 146 |
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And on the opposite side of the spectrum, it drives me nuts when subs for anime based on something Chinese (usually the Four Great Classical Novels) insist on using the Japanese names for everything, making it hideously frustrating to realize what name is ACTUALLY being used. Both prosubs and fansubs suffer from this problem |
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SilverTalon01
Posts: 2402 |
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I think it is just lose/lose in cases like that. If you use the Chinese name in the sub, it doesn't match what you hear, and sometimes is pretty far off from the Japanese which can make it harder to get everyone straight initially. Some of these series are also taking place in Japan which, to me anyway, makes Chinese names seem very off. However, because the Japanese name can be so far off from the Chinese, it makes it really hard to get the reference with both the audio and subtitles using the Japanese name. If they're referencing something, I definitely would like to be able to tell what. |
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Shiroi Hane
Encyclopedia Editor
 Posts: 7580 Location: Wales |
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I remember helpfully (I though) reporting a mistake to one of the Kiddy Grade fansub groups on IRC (it seemed logical to me that if one secretary is called Mercredi then another one is probably not "Bindledee") so that it could be corrected in future episodes and getting yelled at for my trouble.
The cap for the worst official US simulcast subtitles is, I believe, still worn by To Love-Ru Darkness, beating even the early Crunchyroll subs for Koihime Musou.
It's still wrong in the current revision of your post: "(レヴィアタン Rivaitan)" The romaji here should be Reviatan.
I can't remember what came up on screen in the show, but that sounds like a furigana gloss, where you have Kanji that mean one thing with a specific English phrase attached (see all the ability names made up by the chuuni lead in Inou Battle).
Ignoring honourifics completely is a bad thing, since they do have meaning - even often in western settings if the writer is Japanese. Del-Rey retains honourifics as a matter of course, but it led to some weird hybrid terms in Negima like "sister-chan" and "headmaster-sensei", and deciding not to follow this rule with Nekane lead to that huge backpedal when she turned out to be a cousin rather than a sister...
You clearly know just enough to think you know more than you do know, without realising how much you don't know.
ANN's official stance has always been that they have no official stance and individual staff members have their own opinions. ANN even interviewed a fansubber (before he created the company now subsumed by and responsible for Crunchyroll's in-house subtitling).
I actually do have one specific example of Miaha/Miach in the Danmachi novels (along with some other translation glitches). Evidently it did get caught, but not till after the first novel was already in print.
Kaze decided not to subtitle insert songs for Penguindrum. So it is a pity that large segments of one episode were preformed as a music... [edit: fixed quote tags] Last edited by Shiroi Hane on Mon Nov 23, 2015 11:04 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Adamanto
Posts: 146 |
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I'd say it's a hell of a lot harder to get everyone straight when you need to have a spreadsheet handy to keep track of who the hell "Ryofu" and "Sousou" are supposed to be all the time. Unless you have absolutely zero familiarity with the source material and treat all names as fantasy names the author made up, in which case the plot is going to be largely lost on you anyway, I really don't see what there is to lose. |
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SilverTalon01
Posts: 2402 |
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If by "ignoring" you mean not in the subtitles, then I disagree. You lose nothing because you can still hear them. There are plenty of other parts of Japanese that convey additional meaning like honorifics which are "ignored." If you actually know what they mean, you still get all the meaning because it isn't like they're censoring the audio. If you don't know, then seeing honorifics in the subtitles is meaningless and might actually be confusing to some. Now for manga or LN where the original Japanese isn't accompanying the english, I do see your point.
I know he gave at least one which was Thorn Bind Hostage being wrong in Log Horizon.
Sorry, but that is a load of crap. Every single example I can think of does enough in series explaining of key points to be able to follow the plot in the anime. There might be some where that isn't the case, but no, you can't just assume the plot is going to be largely lost on people.
That is only applicable to keeping straight the historical reference of each character and not to actually the anime characters themselves. However, hearing the name and seeing the name doubly reinforces the association between the name and the character. I do agree that using the Japanese names does make it harder to keep track of which character is a reference to what. There is also, like I mentioned above, an issue of some of these series taking place in Japan where the characters are mostly / all Japanese. I do understand why you prefer the Chinese names, but using them isn't objectively better in every way which makes it lose/lose. The only real fix would be having two subtitle tracks (which I am all for). That is assuming the licensor doesn't specify character names. |
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Touma
 Posts: 2651 Location: Colorado, USA |
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Were those worse than the subs that Sentai used on the DVD? Those were pretty bad, with a lot of grammar errors and quite a few things that were probably just typos but were rather distracting, such as switching between "three" and "tree" twice.. If the Crunchyroll subs were worse then I am glad that I never had to read them. Or were they maybe the same subs? Fortunately Sentai had much better subs on Shin Koihime Musou and ... Otome Tairan. |
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roxybudgy
Posts: 129 Location: Western Australia |
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Reminds me of my newbie translator days when a friend asked me to translate a doujinshi about a series I had absolutely zero knowledge of. I was baffled at the what the character name "Tsuvai" was supposed to mean. It wasn't until years later when I started to study German (because I'm a fan of "Kommisar Rex") that I realised it was meant to be "Zwei". Somewhat related, another mistake I often see translators make (both professional and fansubbers/scanlators, although more so the latter) is "style". The line is often incorrectly translated as "She has good style", but it should be "She has a good figure". |
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Ali07
Posts: 3333 Location: Victoria, Australia |
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No problem. Now you know we are in agreement.
And, I will add one more thing to the honorifics. There are instances where they don't show up in the subs, and it does kind of take me out of the show. Moreso because I notice they're not there, but it isn't a deal breaker for me. After finding out that they won't use them in the subs, then it's fine. I just don't want to see many other "Nagato-san" to "Miss Nagato" subs. That was something I never got used to in The Disappearance of Nagato Yuki-chan. Thankfully, YenPress' manga releases doesn't have that. And, while I hope that Funi changes that for their home release, I'll still buy the show...even if her teen friends refer to her as "Miss Nagato".
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leafy sea dragon
Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
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But having honorifics in dialogue in a western setting feels out of place. You can determine social rank based on other aspects of dialogue and how people treat each other. |
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Sariachan
 Posts: 1494 Location: Italy |
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Not once you get used to it, especially if it's just something written in subtitles/manga translations, and not actually spoken out in a dub. Honorifics, once you learned what they means and all the subtle cultural stuff behind them, add a lot to the relationships between characters and how you perceive them. That aside, I often read more than one translations, both official and not, of the shows/manga I really care about, and the official ones aren't necessarily the best ones around, especially when we consider adaptations too. Other than that, the title of this article is quite biased; a more neutral one would have probably been better. |
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yuna49
Posts: 3804 |
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Suppose "Nakamura Miyuki" is spoken to directly by a boy in her class who calls her "Nakamura-san." In English that boy would never use Miss or Ms. Nakamura. He'd call her "Miyuki," but that fails to convey the social distance of "Nakamura-san." Plus we'd hear that construct in the sound track but see "MIyuki" in the subtitles. I'd prefer the subtitles to match the dialogue in these cases.
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