Forum - View topicAnswerman - Subtitle Hues and Cry
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SnowWarren
Posts: 275 |
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I probably hold the most unpopular opinion.
"It's an English release so scrub out the Kanji and replace it with English." I can understand not touching street signs when a show is based in Japan, but alot of the text isn't part of the artwork to me: it's overlayed over the artwork. I miss the days when the opening credits and the title would be translated and the songs would be in English for the dub. I loved the Princess Tutu approach where the Japanese title changed into the English one. I just want an equal product to the Japanese. |
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Dark_Sage
Posts: 10 |
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I feel as paying customers we deserve better quality than the following: Funimation's No-Rin Funimation's Seraph of the End By the way, Mr. Sevakis misrepresented "speedsubs" in this post. When I talked with a Funimation simulcaster, the number he gave as the absolute worst time requirement was a 9-hour turnaround from the Japanese materials to a full release. The implication that the professionals only ever get a few hours at random times in the night to get their translations out in a mad rush of late-night passion is patently false. Last edited by Dark_Sage on Fri Apr 24, 2015 11:49 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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CoffeeFlux
Posts: 7 |
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Not at all, I'd love to see the kanji masked and replaced with English on most signs. That's in fact preferable, though for softsubs it's often more work and thus not done on fansubs unless necessary. |
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GiriOni
 Posts: 218 |
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Have you ever tried to in 9 hours: translate a show, edit the show, send it back to Japan to get it checked, have it returned so you can correct the terms, have to argue through translation to people in Japan that the translation they 'corrected' barely makes sense among other things, repeat, repeat, finally get it out barely edited. Try it next time. |
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jymmy
 Posts: 1244 |
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While the tone is perhaps unjustified, that's not an incorrect statement. I agree with the points in the article overall, though. |
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Dark_Sage
Posts: 10 |
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Not hard to get a show done when you've been handed a script and encode on a silver platter. I've done three-hour releases before, and our translators actually had to understand spoken Japanese. Add in typesetting, karaoke, styling, encoding (workraw/.ts->MKV)... that was an effort. 9 hours for a script alone, with a couple passes to Japan and back? Sorry if I'm not able to sympathize with the struggle. |
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whiskeyii
 Posts: 2251 |
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If I had to guess, the bolded part (emphasis mine) is probably what eats up your time the most. Having had to correspond with SEGA's Japanese legal department in the past for licensing permits, unless I responded within 5 or 10 minutes of receiving an email from them, they wouldn't get to it until roughly whatever time their lunch break was, usually anywhere from 1 to 3 AM. But some days I wouldn't get a reply til 5 or 6 AM, and that was after staying up all night waiting for a simple "yes" or "no" reply. Which is understandable, given how busy I assume they are, but it was still a pain on my end. XP |
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John Thacker
Posts: 1006 |
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IMO you massively underestimate the difficulty of working with customers whose approval is necessary, particularly when in another time zone. Your three-hour releases sound like absolute cake compared to having to iterate through multiple rounds of change approvals and requirements with a customer, whether in translation or in software engineering. Sorry if I'm not able to sympathize with your struggle. |
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dragonrider_cody
Posts: 2541 |
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I feel the need to correct a few things. First of all, another poster stated that Funimation "hard subs" their releases. That is not true. Hard subs are actually burned into the video, such as S'mores release of Galaxy Express 999. Most current bluray releases from Funimation and Sentai, and all bluray releases from Viz, utilize locked subtitles. They are still created in software and are encoded on the bluray, but they are not burned into the video.
By being locked, you generally can't turn the subtitle track off when the Japanese audio is playing. This is apparently to discourage reverse importation into Japan. However, the video and subtitle tracks are still separate, and you can even utilize some bluray players and software to move the subtitles off screen. You couldn't do this with hard subs. Not to mention, R1 DVD's are still mostly free of locked subs and you can turn them off on the fly. Once again, you wouldn't be able to do that if they were hard subbed. Also, I found it funny that article mentioned "Orphen" as a title, as it was probably among the first ADV titles to be "license rescued". Sentai acquired season one, and released a complete set with season two from ADV. Later when ADV's license expired for season two, Sentai picked up that season as well and released a second collection. Of course, it was a TBS show and those almost always end up at Sentai anyway. Last edited by dragonrider_cody on Fri Apr 24, 2015 11:30 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Dark_Sage
Posts: 10 |
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Funimation hardsubs their simulcast releases. |
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dragonrider_cody
Posts: 2541 |
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A lot of video streams are hard subbed, but their home video releases are not. It wouldn't make any sense for them to make two completely different sets of subtitles for their releases. Why would they spend the time and effort making fancy subtitles for an online stream, when they wouldn't be able to duplicate that on home video? |
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Dark_Sage
Posts: 10 |
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You act like styling takes a lot of effort. And maybe it's because streaming is a growth area and physical media is becoming ever more irrelevant? Maybe you could correct me on that, since you seem pretty well-informed. |
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Ergzay
Posts: 56 |
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It's crap like this that gives simulcast licensing a bad rap. This is why I'm a happy 3-year subscriber to Crunchyroll and refuse to give any money to Funimation and happily download all of Funimation's releases from a certain unnamed popular streaming rip site or watch fansubs if they're available for a Funimation-only show. Crunchyroll largely doesn't make this level of mistake. A couple of major mistakes per season is honestly pretty great and they even come back and fix them later for people who re-watch the stream. This is furthered by the fact that Funimation's web player is even worse than Crunchyroll's (which isn't great either). They've put very little investment into their streaming technology at all over at Funimation. |
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dragonrider_cody
Posts: 2541 |
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I just don't see what purpose it would serve. There doesn't seem to be a lot of demand for far more stylish subs. Other than complaints about typos and grammar, the most common thing I see people asking for is a different color. I always see people asking for white subs when they are yellow, and different people asking for yellow subs when they are white. Plus, it seems to me that it would disappoint a lot of people who streamed the show and then later bought the physical release. It would be reasonable that they would expect the bluray or DVD to have the same subtitle style. Now if Funimation, or another anime company, chose to do more stylish subs for their stream, and later hard-sub those episodes for the home video release, wouldn't bilingual releases have some more issues? The video for each episode would have to be on the disc twice. One with the subtitles burned in, and one with clean video for the English dub. I would think that would ultimately increase the amount of data on each disc, as well as the disc count, as each would hold less episodes. Not to mention, I would be afraid of other compromises they would make and how it would ultimately affect the video quality. Overall, I just don't think it would be very practical, especially for companies like Funimation, Sentai, and CrunchyRoll that are releasing several new shows each season. Streaming may be he growth market right now, but home video is still important to them, and I would think they would want their releases to be consistent. Last edited by dragonrider_cody on Fri Apr 24, 2015 11:55 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Ergzay
Posts: 56 |
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Crunchyroll doesn't hard sub and neither does Daisuki. Which video streams are you referring to besides Funimation? I'm not aware of any other legal simulcast streaming sites in the US. Increasingly direct-to-web releasing for anime is becoming the norm. I personally no longer buy DVDs or Blurays except for true classic shows (on par with Gurren Lagann for example). I am also starting to buy direct Japanese blurays because of the substantial extras that come with such disks and also to directly support the creators, but can only buy a series or two a year because of the high price (roughly $300 per series). Last edited by Ergzay on Fri Apr 24, 2015 11:59 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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