Common mistakes made by fansubbers

[ars magna]

Originally Posted by Undertaker

Agree, CR is mostly speed sub, that all truth be told has many translation errors especially when it comes to anime that has more culture and regional references. And it is much easier to spot in series like Chihayafuru and Saki.

Oh, REALLY?

[Undertaker]

Originally Posted by ars magna

Oh, REALLY?

Have you check the discussion threads on both series with people's questions on the translations and notes?

I know I have done my shares of clear up along with other multilingual members in Chihayafuru threads that CR either mis-translated or didn't bother to clarify...

[TheFluff]

Originally Posted by Undertaker

Have you check the discussion threads on both series with people's questions on the translations and notes?

I know I have done my shares of clear up along with other multilingual members in Chihayafuru threads that CR either mis-translated or didn't bother to clarify...

CR contracts out all of their translations; they don't do translation in-house at all, AFAIK. Some of the contracts go to people who are quite competent, some go to Singapore or Hong Kong and get mangled. Chihayafuru in particular is one of the ones that got mangled in a rather offensive way.

[Cyprene]

CR contracts out all of their translations; they don't do translation in-house at all, AFAIK. Some of the contracts go to people who are quite competent, some go to Singapore or Hong Kong and get mangled.

As far as I know CR doesn't have any translators in Hong Kong or Singapore, and I would be in a position to know.

Also I know nothing about Chihayafuru so I can't really speak to it. Unless it's the one with the big old orange cat?

[ConsiderPhlebas]

Originally Posted by Cyprene

Also I know nothing about Chihayafuru so I can't really speak to it. Unless it's the one with the big old orange cat?

LOL, no it's about youngsters competing in karuta. Very nice, I'm looking forward to S2...

[TheFluff]

Originally Posted by Cyprene

As far as I know CR doesn't have any translators in Hong Kong or Singapore, and I would be in a position to know.

insert some southeast asian country of your choice then
(facts? who gives a shit about facts, we're discussing anime translations here)
(tl note: my original source for the statement was some forum post I vaguely remembered from somewhere; of course I can't find it now)

CR Chihayafuru translation example: "Or you could say that the Naniwa Bay in #88 had more prostitutes at the time, so the card should be rich green." (episode 17, 19:53)
no, there is no context that explains what the hell it means, it just makes absolutely no sense
(my sources claim the green card is supposed to represent fertility but idk)

The original subs also had a lot of silly basic issues like text getting cut off, missing lines and other dumb stuff like that. May or may not be fixed by now.

[Undertaker]

Just to make it clear, I'm not attacking CR or accusing them of anything. The fact they are willing to contract and licenses for simulcast or stream is pretty awesome and I'm a subscriber to CR myself even if my primary watching habit is still with Chinese fansubbers.

I'm just pointed out the fact that many fansubber spends more time and effort into their work for nothing and shouldn't get blamed and ridiculed when the fact their quality is often on par if not better then the official one.

It was a response back to SinsI's comments...

It's one thing to complain about actual mistakes, it's another to complain because the subber is spending more time so the result can convey the creator's intentions better...

[Cyprene]

insert some southeast asian country of your choice then

Nope, nobody from southeast Asia whatsoever. All the translators are located in English speaking countries, except for one in Japan.

[GabrieliosP]

Okay, one thing I really hate:

Direct translations from subs in another language.

English is not my first language, and many subbers in my home country actually just translate it from english, which sometimes causes a few troubles. One example is the use of slangs. The phrase 'I'll give him/her/them a piece of my mind' obviously does NOT mean what it does literally, yet I've seen an episode of Rozen Maiden that kept 'I'll give them a piece of my mind' LITERALLY TRANSLATED, and unlike english, THERE IS NO WAY WE CAN INTERPRET THE PHRASE EXCEPT IN ITS LITERAL MEANING.

Another example is words that sound similar. One fansub, in an episode of Bakatest, confused 'sweat' with 'sweet', yet IT WAS A SFX OF A SWEATDROP! YOU PRETTY MUCH HAD A CHARACTER WITH A GIANT DROP OF SWEAT HANGING FROM HIS HEAD AND THE WORD 'sweet' WRITTEN. Much like the example above, 'sweat' and 'sweet' mean completly different things in my first language. A similar case in an episode of Kämpfer, when the words 'suck' and 'sulk' were confused. The original used 'sulk', but the incompetent translator used 'suck'. The fact that it made NO SENSE was acknowelged in that 'suck' was written like that:

Yeah, now they'll go "suck"!

Another thing: if you want to leave the honorifics, then leave the right ones. The following example is from the same fansub that I mentioned above, the 'I'll give them a piece of my mind' one, also in an episode of Rozen Maiden. In the subs, the character Jun referred to Hinaichigo as 'Hina-chan', yet in the audio he obviously says 'Hinaichigo'. A problem that could have been easily corrected with MINIMAL checking.

Sometimes they also go too literal, in an episode of Rockman.EXE Axess (different fansub this time), the sentence was:

"Battle Chip, Roll Soul, slot-in!"

For those not familiar with the series, 'Roll' is the name of a character, and the more acurrate translation would be 'Roll's Soul', yet the fansub went completly literal and the final result, instead of meaning 'the soul of a character named Roll', became 'a roll (as in, something rolled) of souls'. In another episode the characters were talking about a bug, as in as computer bug, because they were referring to Rockman, who is basically a setient software. We all know 'bug' can mean 'insect' and 'computer malfunction', but my language doesn't have a word for 'computer malfunction', so we use 'bug' as a loan word in this case, yet the fansub translated it like this:

Rockman is ill. We think it is because of an INSECT in his data.

I mean, what the hell? How does it makes any sense?

[Kamui04]

When fansub groups translators are mostly self-taught and screw up translations because they didn't have a better understanding of grammar, semantics or even sometimes idioms. And it really pisses me off when you try to be helpful and point out the mistake and they just diss you off as an idiot that doesn't know Japanese.

I studied Japanese in a school recommended by the Japanese embassy in my country. The staff was 100% japanese, most were on exchange and didn't speak my language or even english. But thanks to that I learned japanese by linking it to the idea rather than translating it to my native language in my brain, as in the case of how I learned english. Also because I was taught by japenese teachers I learned a lot of stuff outside of what was available in text books. I passed the N3 of the JLPT, would have taken N2 if it wasn't because of college and work.

Some examples have been. One instance where learning from japanese teacher helped because sometimes he would teach us some proverbs. Once some of the verbs in the proverb ended with ~nu form which we didn't know. The teacher explained it was an archaic form of the negative ~nai/masen form. At the end of episode 1 of The Twelve Kingdoms (Junni Kokki) Keiki, a Kirin, tells Yoko no matter what do not close her eyes, because if she does the creature possessing her can't help her fight. Keiki uses "Tojinu"=don't close, which is the verb close = tojiru (閉じる) + the ~nu form explained. The translator of the only group at the time didn't know that form and translated it as "keep your eyes closed", this badly translated line later contradicts another creature giving the same advice an episode later and this time they did write it as "don't close your eyes". When I pointed this out in Ep1, guess they simply ignored and didn't bother to correct it.

The next one was learned from my japanese text book around my second semester! but also if the translator bothered he could have found many examples and lessons on it by doing a search. When you have a verb + negative + ~nakereba narimasen added it means "It’s not right not to do something" or "must/have to do". To put it simiply like in math negative * negative makes positive. So back in Gundam 00, when Aeolia Schenberg talks about the situation of the world before giving the gundams the Trans-Am capability. He says Sekai ga kawanakereba narimasen, from the verb "kawaru"=change + the previous explained form which means "The world must/has to change" or "It's not right for the world not to change". But the group Nyoron translated it as "The world can't change", again pointed it out and even gave links and everything and ended up getting ignored. Funnily the other groups shinsen and gg (yes they're troll subs but they aren't half bad with the translations) got that right.

A few episodes later when the Ptolemaios is almost destroyed we see Lichty injured and showing more than half his body was cyborg. He explains to Chris that he was involved in an accident where he lost his his parents and ended up like this. He says the sentence ending with "konna kanji/こんな感じ" which could be interpreted in many different ways, this feeling, this form, this way. But come on! if you understood the conversation you'd know that those words referred to "ending in this form" referring to his cyborg body. But Nyoron translated it as "I feel like this". I pointed it out to them again, ignored and banned from their irc channel, lol.

The following two aren't about anime but manga but it's the same stuff. In one chapter of the Gantz manga one minor character says something. It was an idiom, which as you know are phrases with a figurative meaning as a whole, unlike the literal meaning of each word. Idioms are hard to translate because if you translate it literally it ends up as nonsense, back when there was no internet, you'd need to check books or someone to explain its meaning, today it's easy to google it. That idiom in that Gantz chapter translated literally word by word would end up saying "You're all acting like bugs" or something. Put the sentence in google and you get that the idiom means "You're all acting too selfish". Two out of three different translations didn't get that.

And don't get me started when sometimes the translators are so bad that they can't even figure out "left" from "right" or basic/simple kanjis like that. I once had to spend two hours typing an explanation as to why one group got a chapter of One Piece wrong and the other didn't. Although one group has good cleaners and typesetters and makes beautiful edits of the script, their translator got every major plot point wrong, and even confused "left" and "right" twice! The other scan its translation was literal and script pretty rough but got all the things that mattered correct.

And I write this just let out steam becaue of the discussion about the different translations for the currently airing anime Girls und Panzer. Where one group insist on having his fun Aryan track with gratuitous German words added, but neglect on proper translation when I can catch at least 3-4 basic translation mistakes each episode! The other two translations are more bearable outside of a few mistakes which are attributed to being context dependent.

[Cosmic Eagle]

@Kamui...

I'm self taught and the mistakes you point out are really basic...it's not being self taught that's a problem seeing as I clear N3 without much difficulty. Not that something as elementary as N3 is actually worth anything anyway. It's how much experience you have using the language.

GNP is easy languagewise....so why don't you just raw it?



Also, what's this about Southeast Asian translators being terrible? Since when did the translator's nationality count for anything? You think Japanese people proficient in English as well and willing to risk their country's copyright laws are as common as air?

[erneiz_hyde]

One thing I noticed after trying an episode of gg's JoJo: Take note that I don't really think it's a mistake or anything, but to me personally the stylistic translation they adopt doesn't really work well for me because I can understand what the characters are saying in Japanese, so my brain spent an extra effort in linking how to connect what's on the sub and what's spoken mostly because I'm not very familiar with the archaic English style used there. In the case of anime, the reason I watch subs is like why I watch English movies with English subs: to pick up on things I might've missed on the fly and not as a primary mean to understand what's going on. This improvised styling probably works better when working on a manga or a novel where you can't readily see/hear the original at the same time, or on games and VNs where you can take your time reading what's written and what's spoken (like in Neptunia where they take a very liberal approach, or in Agarest where they take Epic/Classic English literature style).

[Kamui04]

Originally Posted by Cosmic Eagle

@Kamui...

I'm self taught and the mistakes you point out are really basic...it's not being self taught that's a problem seeing as I clear N3 without much difficulty. Not that something as elementary as N3 is actually worth anything anyway. It's how much experience you have using the language.

GNP is easy languagewise....so why don't you just raw it?

I raw most of the anime I watch, but usually watch subs when I don't understand something. The other reason I download subs is because I share and watch a lot of my anime with friends. So whenever this kind of errors crop up, specially those contradicting previous or future events or those that make it difficult to understand for the friends that don't understand japanese, it really annoys me. The previous examples I remember clearly because one friend is a Gundam fan and another really liked Twelve Kingdoms.

[Rakshasa]

Originally Posted by Cosmic Eagle

I'm self taught and the mistakes you point out are really basic...it's not being self taught that's a problem seeing as I clear N3 without much difficulty. Not that something as elementary as N3 is actually worth anything anyway. It's how much experience you have using the language.

Really below the level of level 2 / N2 being self-taught really isn't that much of a problem. But when you get to N1/2 it really does strongly favor those who have gone through some curriculum built around the more varied aspects of Japanese language not seen as much in daily life.

Now many years ago our university's head Japanese (native) teacher visited the anime club's showing, and giggled quite heartedly at the translations. After the shin-sekai yori mess on these forums where some hapless translator thought a girl would say 'boku' the male personal pronoun rather than '~poku' the grammatical form, I fear to download anything with subs.

Hmm... This talk of JPLT makes me realize it's probably about time I do N1 this summer after years of slacking off, cause stuffing your head full of comp.sci. related vocabulary isn't as well-rounded.

[Kudryavka]

Originally Posted by GabrieliosP

*snip*

Yes, double, triple, etc. translations are pretty inevitably bad. The more you translate, the farther you get from the original author's source and ideas, even when it's master translators doing it; it's an inescapable truth that we have to deal with unless we want to go learn the author's original language. When people who seem not to have a great grasp on the from language do it it's only worse.

But some translation is definitly better than nothing.

[Quarkboy]

Originally Posted by Kudryavka

Yes, double, triple, etc. translations are pretty inevitably bad. The more you translate, the farther you get from the original author's source and ideas, even when it's master translators doing it; it's an inescapable truth that we have to deal with unless we want to go learn the author's original language. When people who seem not to have a great grasp on the from language do it it's only worse.

But some translation is definitly better than nothing.

Here's an interesting theoretical question to ask yourself though:

Let's say you have 3 translators, A, B, and C.

A can translate from language J to language X
B can translate from language X to language Y
C can translate from language J to language Y

You want a translation into language Y, so have 2 choices: double translation A->B or single C

The question is, what level of skill of the translators A, B, and C makes one or the other a better choice?

Clearly if C is a terrible translator and A and B are both excellent, the double translation is superior. And if A, B, and C are all just as good, then C's single translation is superior in all cases. But what if C is half as good as both A and B?
Is the quality of A's translation more important than B's? (I would hypothesize this).

Especially with more obscure languages, finding a competent direct translator may be nigh impossible...

[Pink Cow]

It irks me when fansubbers do something like this:

*character says "Ohayou!*
subtitle: "Ohayou!"
T/N: "Ohayou means 'good morning'."

You can replace "ohayou" with any common greeting and they would still put a translator's note. What I don't get is why don't they just translate the phrase in English? This bothers me a lot. It also happens in scanlations. I can understand if it's a term or phrase that is difficult to translate to English, but words and phrases like ohayou, arigatou, gomen nasai, etc? You've got to be kidding me...

[Kudryavka]

Originally Posted by Quarkboy

Here's an interesting theoretical question to ask yourself though:

Let's say you have 3 translators, A, B, and C.

A can translate from language J to language X
B can translate from language X to language Y
C can translate from language J to language Y

You want a translation into language Y, so have 2 choices: double translation A->B or single C

The question is, what level of skill of the translators A, B, and C makes one or the other a better choice?

Clearly if C is a terrible translator and A and B are both excellent, the double translation is superior. And if A, B, and C are all just as good, then C's single translation is superior in all cases. But what if C is half as good as both A and B?
Is the quality of A's translation more important than B's? (I would hypothesize this).

Especially with more obscure languages, finding a competent direct translator may be nigh impossible...

Its not about skill of the translators, unfortunately. No matter how good, a translator is rewriting the authors work into something of their own. The more it gets rewritten, the farther it gets from the authors original vision (unless the author is in contact with translator, which is never the case in fansubs). I suppose a terible C translator coould put out a bad translation, but if B has no knoowledge of language J, how are they supossed to respect the original authors vision at all? They cant, they can only guess what the author meant through A's work.

And yea for some languages its either multi-regurgitated translations or none at all.

[Raiga]

Originally Posted by Kudryavka

Its not about skill of the translators, unfortunately. No matter how good, a translator is rewriting the authors work into something of their own. The more it gets rewritten, the farther it gets from the authors original vision (unless the author is in contact with translator, which is never the case in fansubs). I suppose a terible C translator coould put out a bad translation, but if B has no knoowledge of language J, how are they supossed to respect the original authors vision at all? They cant, they can only guess what the author meant through A's work.

And yea for some languages its either multi-regurgitated translations or none at all.

I would argue that it depends, especially when it comes to academic translations. Academic translations usually come with extensive footnotes and detailed forewords that explain the intricacies of the translation and relevant quirks of the source language.

The author's intent is a matter of interpretation as well; maybe A and B were really on the same page as the author and C completely missed the point. There's no reason to say B would have to "guess" what the author meant. Far from it, B has A's translation to work from. If my friend read a book and told me what the book was about, would I be "guessing" about the content of the book? If my friend had good critical reading skills and good explanation skills, I'd probably end up with a pretty good idea of what the book was about.

What's more, there are some who would argue that the intent of the author is irrelevant to the integrity of the text. What makes a "good" translation in the first place isn't all that clear-cut.

Just playing devil's advocate here. Of course, a good direct translation with no intermediary languages is preferred in the vast majority of cases.

[Kudryavka]

Originally Posted by Raiga

I would argue that it depends, especially when it comes to academic translations. Academic translations usually come with extensive footnotes and detailed forewords that explain the intricacies of the translation and relevant quirks of the source language.

The author's intent is a matter of interpretation as well; maybe A and B were really on the same page as the author and C completely missed the point. There's no reason to say B would have to "guess" what the author meant. Far from it, B has A's translation to work from. If my friend read a book and told me what the book was about, would I be "guessing" about the content of the book? If my friend had good critical reading skills and good explanation skills, I'd probably end up with a pretty good idea of what the book was about.

What's more, there are some who would argue that the intent of the author is irrelevant to the integrity of the text. What makes a "good" translation in the first place isn't all that clear-cut.

Just playing devil's advocate here. Of course, a good direct translation with no intermediary languages is preferred in the vast majority of cases.

Of course literal words can be translated. But sudelties can be lost. B must guess authors meaning b/c all he has is As assertion of what author meant. If A did a gtreat job with notes and stuff, then B can do best job thats always less than reading what came directly from authors pen. But if A did a shit job, then B can be the best translator in the world, but Bs translation is still gonna be terrible.

With more translators, theres more relying on other people to pull through, blind faith. Anyone who worked in a group project before knows how bad things can get when relying on others.