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Answerman - What's Wrong With Fan Translations?

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".

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".

Adamanto wrote:

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.

That's not how copyright law works. Especially when the name's Oingo and Boingo were never used together right after one another.

Not so!

Oingo Boingo ED theme

They only had a problem with the subs displaying the name, but the original audio still has a lot of these names spoken.

It was not obvious to me, since I was talking about subs in anime.

Did they change Zoro's name because they feared retribution from the people in charge of the Zoro property? I have never heard of the reason why they changed it. I would've thought that its the L/R flip that happens with Asian speech.

It was not obvious to me, since I was talking about subs in anime.

Did they change Zoro's name because they feared retribution from the people in charge of the Zoro property? I have never heard of the reason why they changed it. I would've thought that its the L/R flip that happens with Asian speech.

It was not obvious to me, since I was talking about subs in anime.

Did they change Zoro's name because they feared retribution from the people in charge of the Zoro property? I have never heard of the reason why they changed it. I would've thought that its the L/R flip that happens with Asian speech.

I've seen the "it's unnatural for teens to call each other Mr./Miss all the time" as a criticism of localized/no-honorifics subs before. But really, if people don't like schoolkids being too formal, imo they should blame the Japanese scriptwriters for having the characters use the exact same suffixes that adults in a workplace might use. Localized subs are merely a reflection of that level of formality.

Ali07 wrote:

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".

I've seen the "it's unnatural for teens to call each other Mr./Miss all the time" as a criticism of localized/no-honorifics subs before. But really, if people don't like schoolkids being too formal, imo they should blame the Japanese scriptwriters for having the characters use the exact same suffixes that adults in a workplace might use. Localized subs are merely a reflection of that level of formality.

That doesn't stop Mojang from having a problem with the word Scrolls used for a game from a different developer, or the WWF having to become the WWE because the World Wildlife Federation thinks that someone will confuse pandas and pro wrestlers.

Companies and entities have strange issues with names.

Zalis116 wrote:

I've seen the "it's unnatural for teens to call each other Mr./Miss all the time" as a criticism of localized/no-honorifics subs before. But really, if people don't like schoolkids being too formal, imo they should blame the Japanese scriptwriters for having the characters use the exact same suffixes that adults in a workplace might use. Localized subs are merely a reflection of that level of formality.

No, that's an example of a halfway localization which is worse than either none or all.

Let me explain: Yes, it's true that the Japanese scripts have them using the same formal language in high school as people use in say a Japanese workplace. Because that's how people actually talk in Japan. But in the us in particular people do not use Mr. and Mrs. when talking with peers in high school...
So there are 3 choices (broadly): Either you do not localize at all and leave the honorifics in. You localize all the honorifics as Mr/Ms. Or you replace names with first names.
The first does not attempt to localize the dialog at all. The last completely attempts to change the speech to something common in a US setting. The middle one localizes the words but NOT the cultural aspect of address style.

So in my opinion the middling option is the worst choice... either you fully localize both the cultural aspects and the text, or you do neither.

Another example would be something like a game of shiritori. You can either leave the words just transliterated, you could translate the words literally and lose the "shiritori" part where the last letter of one word is the first of the next, or you could completely change the words and make sure they follow the rules of the game in english.
Again, in my opinion the middling option is the worst choice, where it only halfway localizes the dialog.

The WWF entered into an agreement with the panda people in the hopes of heading off litigation and then a court ruled they broke it. So that was mostly their own fault.