Forum - View topicHey, Answerman! [2007-01-19]
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HitokiriShadow
 Posts: 6251 |
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That's not Engrish. That's simply a romanization of a name that had no enlish origin. I'm partial to Eruru since that's how I heard it (repeatedly, though I never saw the fansubs) before it was released. However, Elulu is not wrong, its just a different romanization of the name. |
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ichido reichan
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Yeah, in Macross, the translator doesnt take a single time to check on official spelling of Aliens names, example, one enemy is called "Kamjin" when his actual name is "Quamzin" or the horrendous name of the main character of Berserk "Guts" when originally he has a german sound of "Gatz" or "Gatsu" that the author in an interview wanted to name it from the derivative name of a cat in german "Katze"
So yeah, character names are a free game for translators |
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sam18x
Posts: 19 |
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Regarding the whole youtube thing, I'd have to say...how is this significantly different from fansubs? Sure you can get it "faster" instead of waiting a few hours for it to DL via torrent, but then the quality on Youtube is terrible, low-res, and you have to watch everything in 10 minute pieces. I remember trying to watch "The Third" on Youtube and the blockiness, aspect ratio distortion(for some shows), and having to change files 1/3 and 2/3 of the way through made it really hard to enjoy it at all. I don't see how with Youtube, anyone who says "i'm not buying it, I can just see it on youtube", wouldn't have also said "i'm not buying, i can just see it on DL fansub". The people who were already going to buy are still going to buy it.
There are a couple of people who have posted comments along the lines of "if you can't afford to pay for the crappy shows you watch, and waste money on, tough luck, too sad that's the real world." To this I'd say that with the current way things are set up, yes, you're right, all of this fansubs, bittorrent, youtube stuff is illegal. But we humans are also the proprietors of this "real world", and are able to change it, and I think the explosion of anime/manga is telling us something about a good way to change it for the better. I can tell you with a very high probability that if I had to pay for literally every single anime episode I watched, otherwise I couldn't watch it, I couldn't be an anime fan. I simply couldn't afford it. Right now I am able to buy anime that I've watched at the same rate I'm watching new series(the "line" that I've drawn for myself), however, when I first started getting interested in anime I didn't have that money and I would be forced to admit that the vast majority of the stuff I watched at the very beginning, I didn't buy(I have bought most of them now though). I would say that is the situation with many people who are anime fans under the age of 18(which is quite a lot). They may be buying merchandise with all the available money they have but they can't possibly buy everything they're watching, even if it's just one or two series a season. If they had to buy everything, all of these people could not be fans of the genre now, and will not be paying supporters of it in the future when they have disposable incomes. Now that I think about it, the situation's very much like how it is with college education. College education is something that leads to enormous benefits to society, however almost no one nowadays can actually afford to pay for it. So what do we do? Grants and low-interest loans. Essentially colleges invest some amount in each student in the hopes that they will yield productive future returns. Now, no one would think of trying to set up a system like this for something like anime, but I think that services like fansubs and youtube have served a similar function, and yielded enormous benefits for the genre. Therefore, while the current system of "investing" is strictly illegal, i am definitely of the opinion it has been highly beneficial rather than detrimental, and maybe the licensing companies in both anime and mainstream media can learn some things from what has happened here. [/i] |
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Sven Viking
Posts: 1039 |
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Every time Zac talks about fansubs, I get more and more the impression that he's mostly seen low-quality speed-subs. A minutes' research on an appropriate site will generally point you to the highest-quality group for any given series. Having employed this method, I've seen maybe one case of "extremely gimmicky and often impossible to read fonts" in a fansub over the last couple of years, and never animated subtitles.
The "crappy TVs people will be watching this stuff on" is a good point, but there's nothing Gimicky about choosing a (legible) font that fits the series' atmosphere (as creators do with official on-screen text such as credits, sluglines, etc.). It helps text to blend, rather than clash, with the images on-screen. Same with subtle hue matching to backgrounds -- not to be "colourful", but to avoid ugly colour clashes. It's the blocky yellow DVD subtitles I've always found distracting. That said, crazy over-the-top effects for the OP/ED (karaoke/etc.) are pretty standard. It's always seemed pointless (and sometimes distracting) to me, but these are hobbyists working at their own expense, so I don't see why I shouldn't let them have their fun. Zac has often disregarded the possibility of hobbyists doing a better job of anything than would anyone who receives money for the same task -- why then be so taken aback by the first sign of unprofessionalism in said hobbyists' output? Last edited by Sven Viking on Mon Jan 22, 2007 11:34 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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DKong
 Posts: 152 |
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Sorry if any of this has been said before....
About fansubs: I agree. Fansub groups typically do a LOT better than official companies. I downloaded a few episodes of Hunter x Hunter (and it's still unlicensed, so it's legal enough), and the text is colored to the character's clothes (Gon's dialog is green, for example), and it's put right under the character talking, not centered. Though, since it's unlicensed, there are no official subs to compare it to. For Christmas, I got a 12 Kingdoms DVD....the subs were horrible. Bright yellow, no border, so occasionally they get blended into the backgrounds. The fansubs of it on youtube have the perfect white with black border subs (which are REALLY hard to get lost in the backgrounds). The majority of the time, DVD subs are better than fansubs, but it's not ALL the time, which (at least IMO), it should be. Youtube: I personally don't feel bad when I watch licensed shows on youtube (or other streaming sites). DVDs cost a FORTUNE ($30 for 4 or 5 eps? That's kinda bull if you ask me), and I would rather not have to buy them for every single anime I wanna watch. I do buy DVDs of series I really like, or just aren't on streaming sites...but I have to find discounts first. Also (someone might've addressed this already, and if they have, sorry), someone said that you couldn't download videos from youtube. That's not true. Firefox has a certain add on that lets you download videos off of youtube. It downloads with a weird extension, but there ARE players for it, plus you could just convert them. As for people saying that youtube hurts the industry....it really doesn't. Look at anime cons, tons of people swarm the DVD vendors. I've seen people walking away with like $200 worth of DVDs. In general- people still buy DVDs. Youtube might even help the industry, because people can watch a few eps of a series to see if they like it before buying it. |
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izzyntsherandom
Posts: 2 Location: UK |
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I think DVD subs need improving in two ways: one, having a thinnish background around the words, because that way whatever colour they choose to use will show up *all the time*- I can't imagine that that would be too hard to do, technically, since so many fansubbers do it. Two, show the opening and ending songs in both english and "romanised" Japanese, one at the bottom and one at the top. No fancy animations necessary, as I agree those often lead to illegibility, but showing both languages is one feature of fansubs that I really like.
On the youtube issue, I don't think the comparison to films is accurate- it's more like watching things on TV before buying them on DVD. The *vast* majority of anime, even among the stuff that's licensed, is never shown on TV, or it's shown at ridiculous hours, or on channels that not everyone has or can get. I heard that with the Haruhi licensing company said they were going to try out a "pay to download shortly after the Japanese tv release" (ie, "look at us we can do everything the fansubbers can, only you get to pay for it and thus not risk breaking any laws") feature for future licenses, which could work out (though if I'm going to pay for something, I like it to be tangible, so I'd rather pay more and get a DVD or a book than pay less and just get a computer file. I guess that's just a quirk of my brain though; I know lots of people who disagree). I see no harm in watching programmes for free and then, if you like them a lot, buying them when (or if) the DVDs are released. But perhaps I'm still stuck in the mindset of "television is free" that children have because their parents pay the license fee, despite now contributing to a TV license in my Uni flat! |
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FlamingPinecone
 Posts: 131 |
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Hmm thinking about it i wonder if it is the text over the eye catches and opening themes i dislike about fan subs more than the font because most of the fan subs i've watched are fairly good, unobtrusive--free of misspellings and garish fonts lesser subs are plagued with.
I suppose i have no beef with standard mellow yellow RI subs. If they changed it to a be a bit prettier and it's still legible all the power too 'em but overall im apathetic on it. fawhoooosh! |
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