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I almost never watch English dubs - one, because we don't have cable, and two, because I never liked how the names are pronounced. I really do prefer the Japanese dub with English subs, because I've taken a liking to some seiyuus and I just like it. But it's actually really hard to find anime DVDs of specific anime here, not to mention I'm not confident I can pay for them, so I mostly resort to file sharing if I want to watch more. But because of that almost all of the anime I've watched are fansubbed. I really can't distinguish a licensed sub from a fansub because I have very few recollections of ever watching a licensed sub.

Is a licensed sub really that different from a fansub? Will I miss out on some of the important 'messages' of the characters because of how the audio was translated? Will my understanding of the words of the characters change if I were watching a licensed sub instead of a fansub?

I guess the safest bet here is to learn Japanese so that I won't have to rely on subs anymore.

Well for one thing a LICENSED SUB is LEGAL DISTRIBUTION OF COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL, where as a FAN-sub is ILLEGAL DISTRIBUTION OF COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL.

As for the quality, depends on the various groups & companies I guess.

Soundmonkey44 wrote:

Well for one thing a LICENSED SUB is LEGAL DISTRIBUTION OF COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL, where as a FAN-sub is ILLEGAL DISTRIBUTION OF COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL.

As for the quality, depends on the various groups & companies I guess.

Exhibit A:

AnimeJunkies. Ah, they were the precursor to Triad and gg. They loved to troll. Unfortunately people actually thought those were their serious translations. Whereas AonE just has terrible grammar with no trolling.

Well, licensed subs do actually support the people who worked on the anime itself, so that's pretty much always preferable when you get a chance, IMO.

In terms of translation quality, that REALLY depends on where the subs are coming from. Some fansubs are from fans with great Japanese who really care about the material they're subbing, and there's probably fansubs out there that are much more accurate than the licensed DVDs. There's a TON of fansubs out there that have really horrible translations, though. In general, I assume that licensed subs have at least passable translations because they're getting paid--I'd expect them to do a better job than a group of hobbyists--but I honestly don't know that for sure. You'd probably have to research each individual show and get opinions on all of the available options from as unbiased people as possible to figure out which show actually has the best translation.

But you're probably right, I think the only way you're truly going to know for sure you're getting the best possible translation would be to study Japanese yourself.

The licensed sub is done by paid professionals, many of which speak Japanese natively or have spent much time in Japan. The fansub is done by Random Dude With Internet Connection (or RDWIC for short) oftentimes only identifiable by an unoriginal handle. Who would you trust to give you an accurate translation? Another thing is that translating anime is more than just a one-to-one mapping of words, like translating Spanish would be. I like it, like most things, to genetics. Much like mapping DNA to amino acids, you can map Japanese to English, but that alone does not give you a working protein, or grammatically correct sentence. Knowing how to fold the protein is just as important as it's amino acid chain, and knowing how to write a grammatically correct sentence is just as important as know what the characters are literally saying (Damn extended metaphors, I get carried away). Professionals have these things called 'editors' that help them make it sound normal to an English speaking person. Fansubs are often a pidgin language of raw Japanese, Internet memes, and bad English, which could be considered similar to Jive, as it looks a lot like the Queen's English, but it has it's own rhythms and sentence structure.

Fansubs have cleaned up a lot in the last couple of years, but a lot is because most are Crunchy rips with added honorifics or stupid stuff like that. The fansubs from the good ol' days can be quite horrifying. I'm sure you all know the 'keikaku means plan' meme, but when I watched fansubs of the elusive 2002 version of Kanon (Christ it was horrible) the fansubber left the word 'bukatsu' untranslated, with an explanation that bukatsu means club activities, but mere English could not grasp the subtleties of such a expressive word, and so the raw Japanese is better. If I ever find the person that 'translated' that, I will shoot them in the face. No court on earth would convict me.

But to answer your question, most 'fansubs' these days are rips from Crunchyroll, and if you can't watch CR in whatever mysterious country you live in, then go for one of those. And the good news is most subs these days are all soft subbed, so if you don't like how they're done, you can strip the subs out and fix them. I have spent several Sunday afternoon fixing grammar mistakes on fansubs, but mostly because I have no life.

And Jesus, Soundmonkey44, you don't have to shout. This is the internet, we can hear you just fine.

Soundmonkey44 wrote:

Well for one thing a LICENSED SUB is LEGAL DISTRIBUTION OF COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL, where as a FAN-sub is ILLEGAL DISTRIBUTION OF COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL.

I really don't enjoy the fact that I can't even afford the things I like and I have to resort to other means to get a hold of them. It's the choice between an illegal copy and no copy at all and I'm sorry, but I'm gonna get my copy.

Melanchthon wrote:

I like it, like most things, to genetics. Much like mapping DNA to amino acids, you can map Japanese to English, but that alone does not give you a working protein, or grammatically correct sentence. Knowing how to fold the protein is just as important as it's amino acid chain, and knowing how to write a grammatically correct sentence is just as important as know what the characters are literally saying (Damn extended metaphors, I get carried away).

Sorry, I don't have a comment, I just loved this bit.

Melanchthon wrote:

But to answer your question, most 'fansubs' these days are rips from Crunchyroll, and if you can't watch CR in whatever mysterious country you live in, then go for one of those.

I'm actually not sure if the anime I want are available here. The thing is there are a lot of shops that sell, for example, Edward Elric's state alchemist pocket watch, but it's hard to find shops that actually sell DVDs of Full Metal Alchemist. Maybe I should try looking harder first.

MorwenLaicoriel wrote:

But you're probably right, I think the only way you're truly going to know for sure you're getting the best possible translation would be to study Japanese yourself.

I actually have a Japanese roommate right now. She'll only be in the country until March, maybe I'll try learning from her.

Buying stuff locally is usually a foolish thing to do.

For example, the places that sell anime DVDs/Blu-Rays around here usually want full retail, while online can be drastically less. I got the $55 MSRP Fullmetal Alchemist Bluray sets for about $25 each, since I bought them online.

As for fansubs, personally, I'm *done* with blind-buying, even though I'll import R2 Blurays/DVDs if I *really* like a show, and generally buy anything that I like enough to watch twice.

These days, there really aren't too many shows that require fansubs to see, as Crunchyroll tends to have pretty good coverage each season, even if some high-profile shows don't make the cut (like Madoka in the spring, and Penguindrum this season). I'm generally OK with downloading fansubs of shows that aren't available in R1.

The flip-side to this is that while I generally don't download shows available in R1, if they aren't streaming (via Netflix/Hulu/Crunchyroll/other), then I very often end up not watching them at all.

That's a kind of gray and gray morality there, as downloading them, which would increase the chances of me buying it, is outright theft of works available in my region, while not downloading them, and not blind-buying, means that I probably won't watch them, and thus not buy them, either.

To answer your main question, fansubs are typically done for speed more than accuracy, where a commercial sub can take the time to make sure that the translation is correct and makes sense. The exception to this is more obscure titles that have not been licensed outside of Japan and have a group of fans subtitling the work so the couple hundred people who would be interested can watch it. But I doubt that third option applies to you, since you're broke and likely very young, and you probably are not looking for an obscure 1980s mecha show.

If you know the show you're looking for, you should check sites like ANN, crunchyroll, hulu, etc. for the show, because in all likelyhood you don't have to download a fansub anymore.

I'd say something about your sense of entitlement, but I'm running low on old man rage right now.

Or perhaps going to a video rental store and renting the shows (most decent Video Rental places have at least some anime).

Or maybe join Netflix? It's only $8 to stream unlimited, or if you prefer the same price for 1 DVD out at a time.
Be aware that only a few shows in streaming are sub-only.

Or other options that don't involve illegal stuff. Ask for gift cards to Amazon/Best Buy (or somewhere similar) for your B-Day/Christmas (or whatever holidays you observe). Borrow the anime from a friend.
If you are attending school see if they have an anime club.

I could go on & on, but I think you get the point.

[quote="4750G"]

Soundmonkey44 wrote:

Melanchthon wrote:

But to answer your question, most 'fansubs' these days are rips from Crunchyroll, and if you can't watch CR in whatever mysterious country you live in, then go for one of those.

I'm actually not sure if the anime I want are available here. The thing is there are a lot of shops that sell, for example, Edward Elric's state alchemist pocket watch, but it's hard to find shops that actually sell DVDs of Full Metal Alchemist. Maybe I should try looking harder first.

If you told you where you live it would be probably easier to find a solution. For example Amazon.co.uk and other UK's net bookstores have free shipping options available for foreigners.

Fansubbers vary widely in their competence; they're not all the boobs that people here would have you believe. Unfortunately the more serious and established groups seem to have dispersed in the past couple of years or, like L-E, are focusing more on older out-of-print shows. Some of the better known fansubbers now work for Crunchy or Funimation.

If you live somewhere where you can watch Funimation's or Crunchyroll's streams online, you can see a lot of shows with professional subs. In some cases, they seem inferior to the fansubs I've watched for the same show (Kemono no Sou-ja Erin on Crunchyroll is a case in point). There's also a tendency to "localize" shows that are intended for an R1 DVD release. One glaring example of this is Oh! Edo Rocket where Funimation's producers replaced references to Japanese cultural icons with American ones. I can assure you that "Kin-san the Playboy" did not appear with a reference to Elvis in the original Japanese.

(apologies in advance.)

This is gonna sound bad, but I actually am not trying to legalize my way of acquiring anime. I have friends with a ginormous collection of anime, but they're all just downloaded online. I don't really have a problem with that, I'm just worried that since almost all of them are fansubbed, there might be differences with what I'm understanding based on the subs and what the lines of the characters actually mean.

From asking how different a licensed sub is from a fansub, this turned out to be a suggestion of good ways to find legal copies of anime. Resorting to illegal stuff must really be frowned upon. I'm really thankful to all your suggestions. And I'm really sorry if some people are getting pissed that I'm using illegal means to watch anime. Sad

4750G wrote:

(apologies in advance.)

And I'm really sorry if some people are getting pissed that I'm using illegal means to watch anime. Sad

I don't know if pissed is the right word, but personally I do get abit sad &/or deprressed when people blatently say "Im going to watch anime through illegal means & dont care about supporting the industry"

I mean people work hard to make these shows..& Personally I find it disrespectful to all those underpaid animators and other hard working peeps in the world of anime & manga that are having their projects illegaly acquired by people with entitlement issues.

I mean I can understand why people use fansubs & scanlations, but its still sad. If you like somthing you support it, and that means putting money into it. Or at the very least finding some way of acquiring it legally, (ala Legal stream, netflix, brick n mortar rental, etc.)

But yeah, I don't get pissed at stuff like that....just....sad.

Whenever different people translate the same text, there will be differences in translation. It's not just a matter of official vs unofficial. I mean, there are instances in which there are two different official subtitle scripts; I'm thinking of Strike Witches, with BOST vs Funimation for Season 1, and Crunchyroll vs Funimation for Season 2.

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