Forum - View topicAnswerman - Subtitle Hues and Cry
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jymmy
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I believe in the conversation you were referred to Crymore's review of a Funimation release. Had you seen their release of Nourin? Here's an analysis of episode two from the same website. I don't know if I'd call much of that minor at all; rather, I would call it extremely poor English and I would pay to have the subtitles removed would I hypothetically otherwise be required to watch an episode with them.
That site is also principally a fansub review site, with reviews on official releases of anime – mostly simulcast streaming, but also the odd physical release – featured as well. It's hardly an "I hate official releases!" blog with no purpose beyond criticising your Funimations and your Daisukis every post. (On a related point, apart from pointing out six hyphens in two lines, none of which was used correctly, there wasn't a point in either Funi's Owari no Seraph or Sentai's Chuunibyou reviews, which I believe you were referred to specifically, on punctuation at all. A comma splice was actually screencapped and not called out.)
The only thing my crappy 2011 laptop ever struggled with was Commie's "The Eotena Onslaught" subtitle, which was 30MB in the subtitle file. I recently built a desktop I don't game on and it played it without a hiccough. Only other thing I've had an issue with was Daiz's 72-second 2GB Phantom 4K Test Sequence. Considering that fansub groups are generally enthuisiasts, and most seem to have high-spec computers, typesetting and such is pretty non-bleeding edge, unless you're addicted to >5-year-old netbooks or use smartphones or tablets, in which case there are plenty of re-encode groups happy to take care of you. MysticMew: Those issues you've pointed out are considered bad practice. I'm largely happy with where fansubs and Crunchyroll are at the moment, other than fansubs' inherent and in-practice redundancy. I can forgive the style limitations Funimation has other than things that are unequivocally wrong – again, one may as well typeset an exclamation point as Ꞌ. or a question mark as ʔ. or the word café/Pokémon as cafe'/Poke'mon as represent an em dash as --. |
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GalicianNightmare
Posts: 124 |
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I dislike fansubs as a rule of thumb. Translation issues (I.E Not making sense in English) and the fact that suffixes are retained for no reason. You can watch Otaking's video on this. It is the perfect video regarding professional subs vs fansubs.
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CoffeeFlux
Posts: 7 |
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What limitations, exactly? These simulcasts are hardsubbed, and if I remember correctly their font supports an em-dash. |
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CoffeeFlux
Posts: 7 |
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Please link to that video, because I very much doubt that it's truly a fair comparison. Generalizing "fansubs" based on quality of impossible, because it varies greatly. Some groups (Doki, for example) are often of questionable quality. Others, like Underwater (the group whose typesetting was highlighted in the article) are of very high quality and has a significantly better translation than the professional subs. Also, note that if the video is very old, the quality of fansubs has greatly increased over time, and comparing modern CR simulcasts to 2005 fansubs is hardly fair. Not much more I can say without the video link, but I suspect it's innacurate, and I'd love to demonstrate how. The complaints you raised are far more common with simulcasts than with decent fansub groups. edit: If it's the video I think it is, it's from 2008 and highlights old, bad groups. If you're judging based on that, clearly it's been years since you've actually taken a look at a fansub release. The largest fansub groups, in fact, almost never add translation notes for the very reasons that video outlines. Referencing that irrelevant, unfair "documentary" throws your argument's credibility out the window. 
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SilverTalon01
Posts: 2404 |
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Just to be clear, from that I am taking it that you understand Japanese well enough that you can understand at least the majority of what is said right? I often see people complain that a translation is bad when they don't know much or even any Japanese which is just a massive display of ignorance. (Edit: To be clear, I mean the actual translation not complaining about the presentation of the translation which includes things like typesetting and grammar.) Regardless, I am very skeptical that Underwater's translations are better than the better professional ones. There are bad professional ones, but it isn't fair to just pick what you are saying is a top fansub group and compare it to the bottom of the professional subs. Just because you are paid to do something doesn't mean you can automatically do it better than some one who does it for a hobby. I hardly watch fansubs anymore with CR being a thing, but I'm not sure that last part is true at least in terms of translations. Just the other weak I saw a fansub translate what would literally be 'fire station' as 'library'. I think what likely is really the case is that there are good and bad in both. If you cherry pick the best from one and compare it to the worst of the other, then obviously there is a huge difference. Edit: Then there is also stuff like that Seraph translation you linked. Summarizing is not the same thing as translating. I do that all the time when people post a link to a Japanese tweet or magazine scan about a game. It is trivial in comparison to an actual translation and is just taking the easy way out. Just so happens the vast majority of people who see it won't know the difference. So regardless of what you think of their type setting, grammar, etc their "translation" is worse than the professional one. Last edited by SilverTalon01 on Sat Apr 25, 2015 12:50 pm; edited 2 times in total |
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jabashque
Posts: 7 |
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Some fansubbers nowadays also refer to that video to explain why translation notes are stupid and why translating "literally" never works. Honorifics may or may not be kept depending on the group and depending on the show, but thus far, most of the professional subs (unfortunately) seem to keep honorifics nowadays since stupid fans demand them. But using a video that refers to 2008-era fansubs is not a good idea when many of the practices shown (translation notes, poor editing, group logos) are no longer the case. |
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jabashque
Posts: 7 |
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For the case of Kill la Kill, the subs most of the time were the Aniplex/Crunchyroll subs, heavily edited and translation-checked, with a few of the episodes being translated from scratch when the Aniplex/CR subs were delayed. The Aniplex/CR subs iirc had some great lines, which were kept, but otherwise, it was very heavily modified. And localized, if I may add (kamui -> Godrobe, goku uniform -> ultima uniform, etc.), which I personally loved. You would have to check out the subbed episodes yourself and make that judgment since I know that there were some people that (unfortunately) disliked what Underwater did with the localization of all the terminology. But generally, the quality of the official subs varies from good (Parasyte: the Maximum, Nisemonogatari, F/SN UBW [aside from a few translation errors from Aniplex]) to bad (Haikyuu!, Shirobako, Nourin). Fansubs also vary from good to bad, but with official subs, if the provider happens to be giving bad subs, then you're stuck with it because of exclusive licensing--other companies can't legally compete on the same show, whereas with fansub groups, if a group is doing terribly on a show, you can ditch that group and get subs from a better group. EDIT:
Which group was this and which show? |
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SilverTalon01
Posts: 2404 |
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That is a good point, but fansubbers can potentially have a few advantages which I think means the simulcast subs should get even more leeway. Apparently some of the 'fansub' groups are just fine tuning an existing script which is obviously easier than making one from scratch. Also a lot of times fansubbers are familiar with the source material. For example, you brought up UBW which I can't remember anything offhand so far, but back in F/Z the official subs translated 'kyoukai' as 'church' in one instance when the line was referring the the magic association. Fans of Fate would probably have realized which one it actually was, but I doubt professional translators just get to pick up the shows they have prior knowledge of. But does it suck if you get a bad professional translation and can't just switch to a better one? Sure. I think it is even worse when the subs are locked so I can't even just turn them off. (I got Railgun on bluray, and while it does have dual audio, if you switch it to japanese, the subs are automatically on which I would prefer to not be the case because they're bad.)
I don't feel like calling anyone out specifically here, but if I tell you the show you can probably figure it out easily enough. It was Nanoha Vivid ep 2. The line following where they made the library mistake was also very wrong. The thing is that the series does have a library and it could potentially make sense for that character to have transferred there between seasons. You'd either have to be familiar with the source material or know Japanese to really catch it which makes me wonder how many other mistakes fansubs make that their fans just never notice. Last edited by SilverTalon01 on Sat Apr 25, 2015 1:23 pm; edited 2 times in total |
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Shiroi Hane
Encyclopedia Editor
 Posts: 7580 Location: Wales |
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With this article title I was expecting something about white vs yellow DVD subtitles ^^;
I used to flag errors with Crunchroll subs when I watched on a PC, but since switching to the PS3 I rarely do. It's honestly not all the frequent that something bothers me enough to consider opening a browser to say something about it. The only show where I actually sat down and documented problems more recently actually happened to be Chuunibyou (on Animax UK, and Anime on Demand before that, using Sentai's subtitles). OTOH, there is only one show more recent than Koihime Musou where the subs truly made me despair - To Love-Ru Darkness.
You've reminded me of the one group (actually, I think it was one person) doing Air that I really appreciated. They were so slow I don't think they even finished, but they put real effort into it; they took the clean credits from the promo DVD and translated the credits and used game CGs for translation notes at the end.
Back when Anime on Demand was still around they had soft subs, but it seemed that the player couldn't do anything by way of positioning other than stacking lines at the bottom. Un-Go, however, had hard subs which nicely translated the onscreen nametags they liked the throw in - and it wasn't an issue since you couldn't actually turn off the soft subs anyway. |
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jabashque
Posts: 7 |
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Yeah that happens when the offical subs end up being good enough, but sometimes, even when the official subs were problematic, some editors end up changing nothing. :/ (those editors may or may not end up being fired from their fansub groups)
I don't think anyone is obligated to follow terminology used by fan translators anyway (and considering how awful the English is in the F/SN VN fan translation... yeah.). So in this case, it is not the offical subbers not being familiar with the source material, but rather, fans that were used to terminology being translated in a certain way and not liking how other translated.
Yeah, it does suck if you're trying to stick with official subs only, which is why I use a mix of both (lol). And the locked subs thing is most likely because of Japanese fears of reverse-importation, since Japanese BDs of anime tend to be VERY pricey compared to their American equivalents. |
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SilverTalon01
Posts: 2404 |
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In that specific instance, that is not the case. Kyoukai can mean both church or association. The kanji are different though so anyone who read the LN (or even familiar witht he VN) would know. The primary figures present in the series from the magic association also are from the church, but the two are not the same. They also do sometimes call it 'magic association' and not just 'association'. So it isn't a matter of sticking to what fans are considering established terminology.
Yeah, I know why they likely did it. I'd also buy Railgun S on bluray if they release it knowing it will likely be the same, and I would certainly rather suffer through that then pay Aniplex prices for everything. Also, I edited in an answer in my previous post to the question you edited in. |
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jabashque
Posts: 7 |
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I see. Then at this point, I can't really comment on it anymore since I'm not familiar with the source material (heh). EDIT: Hah, just realized that this pretty much fell in line with what you said about official translators being unfamiliar with the source material, since it appears I made a mistake similar to what they did.
If it were [anon] subs, then that would make sense because the 4chan anons that release under that label tend to be very underqualified as translators. If it were [FFF] subs though, then that would be a major problem since fansub group nowadays only hire actually experienced translators (thanks to official subs removing the need to do every single show, thus allowing groups to be much more picky with the people they hire to translate) |
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SilverTalon01
Posts: 2404 |
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Yeah there is the 魔術協会 and the 聖堂教会. The last two characters of each are read 'kyoukai' but you can tell the second to last characters are different. Anyway, context is always very helpful in determining meaning even if you are only dealing with your native language. Having a strong knowledge of the context will certainly help in making a better translation. It isn't even really about not using fan approved terms. Now fansubbers may not always have that advantage, but they are probably a lot more likely to when possible since they can actually choose their projects. Edit: Another example for that is subjects. Japanese does not require a subject to be in a complete sentence. This can make translating incredibly frustrating if you aren't fully aware of the context. Last edited by SilverTalon01 on Sat Apr 25, 2015 2:25 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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jabashque
Posts: 7 |
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Yeah, I can definitely agree with context always being useful. I just wasn't aware enough about what the actual problem was and assumed it was related to terminology usage (lol. Sorry about that). And yeah, when translators can pick and choose the projects they want to do, they are indeed more likely to select something they are familiar with. |
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vashthekaizoku
 Posts: 261 Location: The House of Rat |
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I still wish someone would license rescue Cromartie High School. Both the anime and the manga disappeared when ADV went belly up.
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