Forum - View topicAnswerman - What's Wrong With Fan Translations?
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L'Imperatore
 Posts: 828 |
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Eren? Which Eren are you talking about? Eren Yeager? Eren Yaeger? Eren Jaeger? Eren Jager? Eren Jäger? Eren Jagger? 
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mrsatan
 Posts: 909 Location: Olympia, WA, USA |
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I think the silliest thing that fans whine about is the demand for honorifics (-san, -chan, -kun, -sama, etc.) to be placed in subs instead of being translated or ignored.
They've successfully bullied most everyone into doing this. Even if the anime takes place entirely in a Western setting with no Japanese people, we have to have Japanese honorifics for some reason. |
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Ali07
 Posts: 3333 Location: Victoria, Australia |
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The only issue I ever tend to have with official translations is when they get rid of "-san" and the like. There are times when the "onee-chan" thing comes up, but I'd say it reads more awkwardly if they keep in "big sister" than just having the sister's name.
I don't know many English speakers that refer to their sibling that way, beyond the first time you meet their sibling(s). Anyway, back to the honorifics. While I don't have much of a problem with them just being chopped off when it comes to the subs, there is one recent example I don't like. For the subs of The Disappearance of Nagato Yuki-chan, all the Funi subs (as I doubt that we got different ones here in Australia) changed all of the Nagato-san (well, anyone that was referred to as *Insert Name*-san) into Miss. Hopefully, they change this for the home release. While big sister/brother doesn't really ring true for me, seeing teens refer to their friend (of the same age) as Miss Nagato rings totally false. 
The only other thing that ever annoyed me was Frosch's line in Fairy Tail. I did start watching that show through fansubs, as I started when it was over 100 episodes in and didn't make much effort to see if there was a legal stream for it (this was the first show that I started watching online, so I hadn't looked into much when it came to streaming). I remember the fansub had Frosch's line as, "Fro thinks so too." Which, to me, sounded good. I've stopped watching the show, as I'm getting the manga, and am now ahead of the anime thanks to Kodansha USA pretty much catching up with the Japanese releases of the manga. And, reading Frosch's line in the manga now seems...strange to me. It doesn't read as well to me as the fansub did. That is because, in the manga, Frosch now says, "Fro thinks so also." |
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Top Gun
 Posts: 4576 |
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Fully agreed. I can't stand seeing those things pop up on actual retail releases, most of all because they're utterly redundant. If you can hear them in the original Japanese audio, why the hell do you need to repeat them in the written subtitles? |
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_Quasar_
Posts: 51 |
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I'll admit names and honorifics is probably where my preference for more literal and less localised translations comes from. To the point where I've added fansubs to my bought versions. Railgun being a recent example. But really its manga (and novels) where it matters most, given how much material never gets an official release. |
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RestLessone
 Posts: 1426 Location: New York |
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I have a preference for honorifics to be kept. In manga, because there is no audio so what's written is what you get. Honorifics can be important when assessing personalities and relationships. In anime, because I hear the honorific but it's absent in the subs and it distracts me. More the case for -chan and -kun, where there isn't really an English equivalent.
The major caveat is that honorifics in series that don't take place in Japan or fantasy Japan are weird. I don't really utilize fansubs or scanlations anymore except for web/digital series where I can give the original creators pageviews. But I remember some translations being very keen on keeping honorifics, even if they took place Western settings. I had the same problem with Hetalia, which kept honorifics in the TP manga--personifications of non-Japan nations speaking with Japanese honorifics. It can really take away from the experience. |
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Suncraft
Posts: 44 |
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Fan subs tend to have lower lows than official subs for sure, really easy to point at some bad ones. But fan subs also have higher highs, by far. Official subs just can't match a local file in your chosen video player where you can choose which subs you want to use anytime by just pressing s or v (sometimes honorifics vs no honorifics, or choosing sub groups, plus ripped official subs if wanted). Nicely styled OP/EDs are nice to watch, specially when there's some novel typesetting with actual effort put into the whole affair (Railgun S, SAO II comes to mind). Often OP/ED lyrics can be used to understand an anime better too, which official subs have just been getting around to doing while fan subs of older shows have had them forever. It'll be up to the professionals to catch up on the technical side of subs, else they'll forever be outshone.
One bright spot on the official side though is the dubs on airing anime. The Seraph of the End dub was wonderful in both sub and dub. Fan subs cannot match that. I see the translation accuracy and names argument has been talked about and I can agree on most of it, so I won't argue anything there. I'll lend my support for the honorific users over no honorifics though. Official subs are more standard all around. Less variance in quality. They've also been gradually picking up a lot of anime each season too, which is great. Sometimes they fall through though, sadly. (Rip Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha ViVid, never officially simulcasted. Fun show with absolutely no choice but to use fan subs. Rip most of Precure. Rip Pripara. Seeing a trend yet?) On the scanlation side, there's so many manga coming out all at once that any newly formed group can just pick something they like and scanlate it. And these newly formed groups can be really bad too, but also decent. Specially since official sources are so lacking, thus there's not much choice of where you can read. Most one shot manga, or just new authors in small magazines will never be picked up officially in the west. So while we're thankful for official sources, scanlation groups are absolutely necessary. Most of the arguments in the article and comments have merit, it's been an enjoyable read. |
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SilverTalon01
Posts: 2402 |
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I agree. That said, there are times I wish an anime would leave them because what they did instead of leaving turned out to really be awful (talking subs not dubs where I'd give a bit more slack due to attempting to match mouth movements).
I don't see why that is an issue. All the sounds you here aren't in the subtitles or it would still be in Japanese. Now I do get annoyed when something is said in english, said english is perfectly fine, and they words they picked for the subs are different. I also find it somewhat awkward when the name order is reversed in subtitles because you actually hear the exact same name you read but in reverse (don't care about name order otherwise). So I agree having a disconnect between what you hear and what you read is a problem, but what you're saying is basically saying you want the subtitles to include "desu" because you heard them say it. Last edited by SilverTalon01 on Wed Nov 18, 2015 9:07 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Andrew Cunningham
 Posts: 444 Location: Seattle |
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Honorifics can be important.
But the better you get at Japanese, the more you realize they aren't anywhere close to as important as you think they are when you're just starting out. With the possible exception of an argument about a characters choice of honorifics, virtually everything involving them can be conveyed just as well, if not better, by writing for character. Making them sound polite or rude, friendly or cloying. That's half the fun of doing a good translation, and reading a well written one. Keeping them in is always going to be clunkier, and I always sigh when a client wants them kept. "I can actually write well enough you won't need them!" I think. But they just don't want to get the complaints about the lack of them. Can't really blame them! I remember being super big on them before moving to Japan. I remember getting mad because the official Nadesico subs translated Ruri's 'baka' as 'fools' instead of 'stupid.' But I worked hard and got better at Japanese and outgrew all that stuff. I will always recommend people who care about the quality of translations do what they can to improve their Japanese. It opens the doors to so much. |
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ebv2406
Posts: 54 |
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Proffesional translators have help to fix a lot of problems, most to our benefit.
What I like the most about them is the release dates, in the past you had to wait a week or two for a decent fansub (there were faster ones like Dattebayo in their golden days), and if the group lost their leader or translator you were stranded for months without being able to watch your favorite series. It's a very good thing that's in the past. However I do miss the very cool karaoke openings and endings some groups did, that took a LOT of love. I dissagree with one thing from this column: the complains. Fans do have every right to complain for errors specially if they repeat them over and over, we are paying, simple as that. So it's not "seMpai", it's "seNpai", I know at least enough japanese to know senpai has the "N" sound in the middle, and the closest thing to "M" is "mu". |
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whiskeyii
 Posts: 2245 |
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Maybe Q&A isn't the right title, but I know I've seen a behind the scenes bit on one of my DVDs (damned if I can find it now) where there was a woman whose job was to vet scripts, basically. She was well-versed in Japanese, and her job was to explain puns or jokes to script writers so it would make sense in English. Pretty sure she worked for Funimation, too, or at least was for that particular show. Granted, maybe the DVD-selling part of the anime industry can afford to hire folks like that and the manga industry can't, but I'd be willing to put more faith in an institution with money having someone on board like that, than against folks doing the translation for a hobby. Though in all honesty, since I don't know Japanese, the integrity of a translation matters far less to me than coherency and proper grammar usage. I think that's what bothers me the most when I see fansubs (and occasionally rush-job streaming subs; hello, Charlotte). I usually just trust that a translation is done correctly in spirit, if not in letter, unless it's painfully obvious, like with dubtitles. (EDIT: Or narm, or purple prose, or in Cardcaptor's case, screwing around with plot points.) @belvadeer Huh. Thanks for pointing that out about Detective Conan; I just assumed it was akin to what 4Kids did for Yu-Gi-Oh. Last edited by whiskeyii on Wed Nov 18, 2015 9:25 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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SilverTalon01
Posts: 2402 |
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But not enough to know there are multiple methods for converting it into romaji apparently. You seem to be hung up because you learned ん is "n." But that isn't really the case. ん is ん. Last edited by SilverTalon01 on Wed Nov 18, 2015 9:28 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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RestLessone
Posts: 1426 Location: New York |
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Not quite. The difference with honorifics--to me--is that it is connected to a name, rather than just a particle or noun or verb. Part of it comes down to being conditioned to honorifics. Nowadays, it's common to include them, especially in manga titles. I'm used to reading/hearing them and I understand what they mean. So the disconnect comes from hearing a familiar term that is commonly kept in English translations but it being absent in written word. Exception, as mentioned before, is when the world/speaker is not Japanese/fantasy Japanese. That creates a totally different disconnect and annoyance. One of the issues I had with the CR Rokka translation. Last edited by RestLessone on Wed Nov 18, 2015 9:28 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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fuuma_monou
 Posts: 1817 Location: Quezon City, Philippines |
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Never watched fansubs of Zeta Gundam, but I still prefer to spell the protagonist's name as "Camille Vidan" rather than the official "Kamille Bidan".
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RestLessone
Posts: 1426 Location: New York |
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Quick explanation: when a bilabial consonant such as "p" or "b" follows an "n", the "n" instead sounds like "m." Senpai is the direct Romanization, but sempai is correct from a sound perspective. I prefer the former personally, but the latter is fine. Other examples: kanpai and tempura. |
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