Forum - View topicAnswerman - What's Wrong With Fan Translations?
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SilverTalon01
Posts: 2413 |
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If you know what they mean, why do you need them in the subtitles as well as the audio? If you know what it means, shouldn't you know what it means if you were to hear it even without reading it?
I agree. Honorifics are one thing, but actually swapping what is said for something else in the subs is entirely different. I wouldn't care in a dub if they switched to a first name so that spoken english actually sounds like something a native english speaker would say, but a subtitle should be telling you what the person said in japanese. Not what a native english speaker would choose in a similar situation. |
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Shiroi Hane
Encyclopedia Editor
Posts: 7580 Location: Wales |
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I'm on the fence over whether they should be included in subtitles or not, but I mean literally ignoring, as in pretending they don't exist and not taking them into account in the translation at all. What really does bug me is when a different name is in the subtitles to what is actually said (i.e. surname in the dialog and forename in the subs, especially when the forename has never even come up in the script at all)
I was providing an example myself. My quote tags were slightly broken.
I've not seen the DVDs, but from what I understand they used the same subtitles, or at least with minimal correction. Certainly the "tree-day plant" thing was there in CR's subs since I actually included it as an example in my post before trimming it down.
The random German in Chu2Koi threw Sentai off (e.g. Schwarzschild subbed as "Schwartz Shield" etc.); I don't know if anything was fixed for the discs. Going back aways there was also "Armburst" in the Kiddy Grade dub and CCs (Armbrust in the direct subs on the same disc). They weren't immune to problems in Japan either, since they're insistent on "Donnersclag" (even "correcting" it from Donnerschlag in FUNimation's subtitles when they adapted them for their BDs) and the katakana used for Pfeilspitze is actually wrong. The sequel was worse; I don't think anyone figured out what the names of the main characters were until an official romanisation finally appeared and it took me ages to figure out that two other characters had Russian names (and I am still convinced that the official romanisation for Pauki is incorrect). |
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Touma
Posts: 2651 Location: Colorado, USA |
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I hope that I am not going too far off topic here, but after seeing your screen caps I am curious about some other things in the Koihime Musou subtitles. Were "shinning ball" and "who is the attacker and who is the receiver?" supposed to be something different? If so what? I love Koihime Musou and have watched it at least four times, and now I am getting the urge to watch it again, but the subtitles are annoying at times. Maybe it is good that I do not know enough Japanese to understand how bad they are. But Sentai seems to have done much better with the two sequels, which makes me happy. At least they do not have the obvious grammar errors and typos. |
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Shiroi Hane
Encyclopedia Editor
Posts: 7580 Location: Wales |
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Touma
Posts: 2651 Location: Colorado, USA |
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@Shiroi Hane
Thank you. I thought that those screen caps were showing examples of mistakes in the subtitles. Apparently I misunderstood. |
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Shiroi Hane
Encyclopedia Editor
Posts: 7580 Location: Wales |
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I do consider it a mistake, since it is a very literal translation of the words and doesn't make sense in context.
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Drunk Samurai
Posts: 67 |
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That's not what the word fan means. I only have real issues with official subs when they're obviously localized. Like Viz's Jojo releases. |
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YotaruVegeta
Posts: 1061 Location: New York |
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In the big picture, I don't care about how people consume their anime. In the moment, I would just say that people should at least attempt to watch anime legally.
On topic, I think that there are rare occasions when pro subs disappoint. The most recent case was an episode of Gundam Iron Blooded Orphans, which is subbed by Daisuki.net and then given to Crunchyroll. Then there is self-censorship. In JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, they had a lot of problems with using band names and the names of rock stars. It feels really dumb when the characters say "Oingo Boingo" and the subs say some other name. |
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yuna49
Posts: 3804 |
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The music industry is notorious for pursuing its rights in other media. Perhaps the licensor for Jojo would have been required to pay a licensing fee to use "Oingo Boingo" in the subtitles. |
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Adamanto
Posts: 154 |
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Not just "perhaps", we know the reason so many names in the official JoJo subs had to be changed is for copyright reasons. Doesn't make them any less annoying to watch, though. |
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Chagen46
Posts: 4377 |
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Huh, really? I thought most licensors, being Japanese companies, were short on guys who know English. |
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Drunk Samurai
Posts: 67 |
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That's not how copyright law works. Especially when the name's Oingo and Boingo were never used together right after one another. |
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11538 |
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All of these usages would likely fall under fair use as parodies. Even so, the record labels only need threaten a suit, whether they have a leg to stand on or not. Licensees aren't going to want to spend a dime defending themselves over a trivial issue that's easily avoidable, so they just don't take the risk in the first place. It's like that whole Avatar mess. You can't copyright a title. But nobody wanted to waste time and money to get Cameron off their backs, so they just changed it and moved on. |
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Lord Geo
Posts: 2640 Location: North Brunswick, New Jersey |
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Agreed, and it also comes down to how willing the company doing the translation is willing to try. Viz obviously had to have sent requests to certain artists for permission, hence why names like Vanilla Ice were kept for the release of the manga, but CrunchyRoll (& Bandai Namco before them) changed the name to Cool Ice. Hell, Bandai Namco were especially careful, even changing Polnareff's name, which had never been done before. At the very least, though, JoJo's name changes are still related to the original reference in some way (like how "Cool Ice" references Vanilla Ice's movie Cool As Ice), are simply another music reference (Zenyatta Mondatta, Soul Sacrifice, etc.), or are simple re-worded in ways that fit JoJo's general bizarreness (Dan of Steel, Filthy Acts Done at a Reasonable Price, etc.). |
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Guile
Posts: 595 |
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I actually trust fan releases over official ones most of the time. I do appreciate the whole 'by the fans, for the fans' mentality. A lot of official releases make it seem like just a business decision, rather than being done by people who want to love or share something. Pocket Monsters is a really good example
Fan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMF5pBOoPaw Official: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B57o_SIu710 The fan one sounds a lot better and closer to the original than the official one, and it's just one guy rather than a multimillion dollar company. |
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