What exactly is wrong with TV-Nihon subs?

[Painted_Outlaw]

This may be news to you, but languages frequently borrow words from each other. Surprisingly enough, not every word borrowed keeps its meaning!

Not trying to start an argument (because well, that's not me) but, this did remind me of the whole "All Silver"\"Forever Silver" thingamajig that happened with Over-Time 1(?) year ago. :laugh:

 

[bleachjoj]

I guess it's not just translating Japanese words but foreign words as well.
For Gobusters, I believe both Tvnihon and Overtime didn't translate all the French words Enter said.

Now I know Enter only uses single words but I'm totally clueless about French.
The only French word I know is Oui and I learnt that from the 2nd Mr Bean movie.:sweat:

I still remember there was a point whereby I had to use google translate to find out what Tres Bien is. I know French may not be foreign to many of you but I still think they should translate anything that is not English.

You can kind of guess their meaning just by their context. "Tres Bien" just means "Excellent!" or "Very Good". If you translate the french I think you miss on a key part of his speech pattern.

 

[Zelalem]

Well, there's always this:

I don't use VLC. I use Media Player Classic. Keep in mind that I had JUST gotten Media Player Classic a couple days ago.

 

[Dessa]

I've asked you this before, and I'll ask you again: outside of the OOO anniversary episodes, when has OT done this? It seems like a lot of people have seen screen grabs from that particular episode and decided that all of OT's releases are like that. Can you show me another example?

I don't agree with your other criticisms of OT, but I can see how someone reasonable but misinformed would come to those conclusions. The accusation of fifteening against OT makes no sense to me whatsoever, and I've watched OT's releases every week for two or three years now.

I'm fairly certain you've never asked me before, especially as I've never even seen any of their OOO subs. The only subs I've seen of theirs are some Gokaiger, and the first 10 or so Fourze episodes. And I saw tons of things like translating "kawaiko" (cutey) as "sexy" or "hot stuff". It's children's shows, I expect children's language.

This may be news to you, but languages frequently borrow words from each other. Surprisingly enough, not every word borrowed keeps its meaning! That's for words. Moreover, Japan really likes how English sounds, so they might use a sentence but forget some grammar rules. Not taking both of these into account is being wrong as a translator. Sometimes what you think is being said is not what actually is being said. That's why you put your trust in the translators to do their job and interpret it for you.

There is a very distinct difference between "PUREI BOORU" and "Batter Up". Which also don't mean exactly the same thing.

I guess it's not just translating Japanese words but foreign words as well.
For Gobusters, I believe both Tvnihon and Overtime didn't translate all the French words Enter said.

I'm pretty sure that TVN had translations in small font at the top of the screen.

 

[bleachjoj]

I'm fairly certain you've never asked me before, especially as I've never even seen any of their OOO subs. The only subs I've seen of theirs are some Gokaiger, and the first 10 or so Fourze episodes. And I saw tons of things like translating "kawaiko" (cutey) as "sexy" or "hot stuff". It's children's shows, I expect children's language.
.

Since when is "Hot stuff" and "sexy" forbidden in children shows? Especially Japanese children shows where Naruto has something called "Sexy Justu". Hell in Fairy Odd Parents they said sexy all time and that's on Nickelodeon.

 

[Lynxara]

Pardon my ignorance, but what exactly is "fifteening"?

It was a translation practice employed by anime licensing companies many years ago, an by "many years" I mean the late 80s through the late 90s. At the time, many of the properties licensed were action properties that licensors wanted to sell on the strength of having a lot of explicit bloody violence and/or sexual content that would appeal to fans of action films. The expectation of that audience was that violent, sexy films would also be films full of cursing, so the licensors would create English language scripts loaded with filthy language even in cases where the original Japanese was pretty plain.

I've always felt like this was a strange accusation to level at a fansub group. Fifteening was viewed as a necessary marketing evil by a lot of folks in the industry, and once the market for anime grew enough to be self-sustaining, it fell by the wayside. Any fansub group that is leaving cussing in a subtitle is probably not doing it because they think nobody would download it otherwise. Chances are, the translator honest-to-goodness felt like that was the best way to handle the line. It's important to remember that what the Japanese consider dirty language is very different from English standards, and what is an unacceptably filthy word even changes as you go from one English dialect to another.

I'll put it this way: if you've ever seen Sentai or Rider subs that include "****," "damn," "hell," or "*****," the translator is not fifteening. Terms you could validly translate in these ways occur in Sentai and Rider all the time. Many translators prefer to use kid-friendly equivalents or minced oaths in place of them, just in case somebody chooses to watch the shows with a child. Other translators, especially when working with older shows that ran in evening timeslots, feel that mincing the language neuters the script and fundamentally disrespects the material. Something to remember when talking about translations is that you can hand the same material to ten really good translators, and chances are they'll turn in ten different scripts that reflect ten different but valid interpretations.

I might choose another sub group over TVN if given the choice, but OT's subs feel like they completely lack subtlety or nuance. And they make much less effort to break up the timing of sentences to match the cadence of the speech on screen.

This is not a matter of effort so much as process. Most OT releases are timed before the translation is done, so the timer really has no idea when a line will be long or short. Generally, if a line takes longer to read than it does for the character to speak, editors or QC will look for ways to shorten it if possible. In extreme cases, say if there's a triple line onscreen, then the line will be split. Generally, Sentai and Rider weeklies do get a little less editing than, say, films or older stuff, to help speed up the release. When it comes to editing, your returns for time invested diminish fairly quickly for weekly material.

Can I ask which releases from OT have left you thinking the group lacks "subtlety or nuance"? Slightly different staffers work on most projects, so there may just a particular editor or translator whose style you find displeasing. That does happen sometimes.

I guess it's not just translating Japanese words but foreign words as well.
For Gobusters, I believe both Tvnihon and Overtime didn't translate all the French words Enter said.

There's a good reason for that, though. When a character in a Japanese production is speaking in a foreign language and you're meant to understand it, it'll be subtitled in Japanese. Nothing Enter says is ever subtitled, so you're clearly not supposed to understand specific things he's saying in French. All the plot requires is that you recognize he's babbling in French from time to time, as there is a plot point that addresses the origins of that quirk. I would say the way TVN and OT are handling this is entirely in the spirit of the show's actual writing. I am kind of allergic to the notion that anything that isn't English must be subbed, since doing that can put a well-meaning team on the fast track to ruining Kuuga.

(And Enter's French is quite simple, so it shouldn't be too hard to look up if you really want to know. Google Translate should be fine for Enter's phrases. If I was working on Go-Busters, I'd probably be doing copious release notes addressing his little recurring phrases, but I am kind of a fiend for writing release notes. I think release notes are the best way to explain extra things people might want explained, without having to blat excessive text into the encode. That's just my opinion, though.)

Well, those pics are...pretty awful. Glamador has not yet encountered any of those.

TVN's rougher days were when the group was relatively new to subbing, and so it's generally older projects that are in worse shape. Newer projects tend to be solid once you set aside the issue of TVN's stylistics, and of course sometimes the group's style clicks better with some material than others. I would say that is true of basically every group that tends to work in a dominant "house style."

What is the corrected translation of that "girl Kamen" sentence?

"Osaka's Masked Beauty," I believe. A part of Akiko's personality in W that doesn't translate well, for cultural reasons, is that she's meant to have a stereotypical Osakan personality since she was raised out in the country. The Japanese stereotype of Osakan characters is that they're money-grubbing and extremely concerned with business, but also short-sighted and as a result prone to behaving in hilarious ways (for instance, many Japanese comedians speak with a specifically Osakan accent, whether they're actually from Osaka or not). Physical comedy and acting in an overbearing way toward others is also part of the Osakan stereotype. Just off the top of my head, Carranger's Green Racer is also an Osakan stereotype (he's Pegasus Garage's screw-up salesman). I'm sure there's others in both franchises but I can't think of them offhand.

And I saw tons of things like translating "kawaiko" (cutey) as "sexy" or "hot stuff". It's children's shows, I expect children's language.

"Use children's language in children's shows" is a reasonable opinion. That said, what you are describing is not fifteening. When you say it is fifteening, you are fundamentally misusing the word. Fifteening was always very specifically about adding cursing. A lot of infamously fifteened titles already included nude scenes or frank discussions of sex, so there was simply never a need to add extra sexual content to early anime releases.

And this touches on another cultural issue: Japanese sexual mores are really, really different than Western ones. For instance, there is not really a Japanese equivalent to the Victorian "babies come from the stork" mythology, because as a culture, the Japanese have always been frank with children about where babies come from. A lot of classic novels and plays deal very forthrightly with subjects like adultery, keeping mistresses, and fathering children both legitimate and not. This is certainly something kids of a tokusatsu-watching age will be familiar with, if vaguely.

As a result, there's a lot of sexuality in Japanese children's entertainment that a Westerner would find shocking, but to the Japanese is not really a big deal. Go Nagai probably brought this to its peak, as he actually would get away with topless scenes in four-panel gag comics, not mention the stripping heroine Cutey Honey. Frank discussions of physical attractiveness occur in modern Sentai and Rider all the time, and it seems unfair to me to say a translation is wrong for referencing physical attraction or sex in a children's show. For pity's sake, one of the first things Kibaranger does on-camera is grab a female teammates' breasts, then taunt her by saying they're too small!

I don't see what is inappropriate with kawaiiko as "sexy" if it's clearly being used to refer to physical attractiveness, and it often is. "kawaiiko" isn't a portmanteau of "kawaii" and "ko," it's used as a separate word that generally means "a physically attractive young girl or woman." It's the cultural equivalent to calling a hot young girl "baby," as I understand it. I believe the infamously lecherous Lupin III uses it to refer to Fujiko, she of the famous "sexy dynamite body." And Lupin III was also originally considered children's material, Fujiko and all!

 

[Ziginz Zegell]

Lynxara...why are you so amazing?

I still have so much to learn about Japanese culture and sterotypes in various media.

 

[Lynxara]

Lynxara...why are you so amazing?

Because I have entirely wasted my life on this ****. Don't make my mistake, kids! :laugh:

(Serious answer: I took a Japanese Studies minor in college, and have made a point of studying the culture as much as I can over the years. Hanging out with a lot of people involved in aspects of the translation industry has helped, and that was an opportunity that came along entirely by chance.)

I still have so much to learn about Japanese culture and sterotypes in various media.

So do I! I'm sure some day you'll school me on something I didn't know.

 

[Ziginz Zegell]

Looking forward to it. I think I would enjoy being Osakan. They seem like a happy lot.

 

[Painted_Outlaw]

Lynxara...why are you so amazing?

It'll be a sad day indeed if/when Lynxara stops being amazing.

Looking forward to it. I think I would enjoy being Osakan. They seem like a happy lot.