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Old 2013-01-12, 20:17   Link #17
Midonin
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Join Date: Jun 2007
Location: Florida
Quote:
Originally Posted by Qilin View Post
There was a time when I would agreed that liberal translations were sufficient, but now that you have writers like Nisio Isin or Koji Kumeta in the anime scene, I'm not so sure anymore.
I pledge the opposite. A liberal translation is absoloutely needed to get someone like Kumeta across. Again, I point to the subs of Joshiraku, from the only group that was willing to sub it. It was a translation that wasn't exact, but it hit the timing of the jokes, and the feel of the puns was more or less the same was what they were in Japanese. This was a script that not only needed to be convey the language, but the humor and all the wordplay games that ensued. Literal translations would've rendered Joshiraku stilted and confusing instead of sharp and creative. Literal translations are really only useful from an academic standpoint, not an entertainment one.
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