What exactly is wrong with TV-Nihon subs?

[SamuraiEchidna]

I really hope that, with the rise of other groups and fanscrubbers and with Over-Time doing their best to sub current shows, the days of TV-N's popularity are numbered.

It makes sense that they were popular back in the day. They were the only ones doing subbing Toku. These days, I think the main reason they still have so much popularity is because they make their releases much more easier to access and more widely available. I know other teams have had trouble with the DDL side of sharing releases, but whatever they can do to get the word out or increase their popularity is worth it.

And I am not sure how to accomplish this, in fact it might be hard to do, but it'd be nice to increase awareness about more professional subbing practices like the ones mentioned in the article KingRanger linked us to. I like watching EZ Rider's toku reviews, but he uses TV-Nihon's translations as his prime source material, and I often feel like the quality of his reviews are lacking slightly because of it. I believe EZ is under the impression that TV-Nihon are the superior fansubbing team.

 

[KingRanger]

I really hope that, with the rise of other groups and fanscrubbers and with Over-Time doing their best to sub current shows, the days of TV-N's popularity are numbered.

It makes sense that they were popular back in the day. They were the only ones doing subbing Toku. These days, I think the main reason they still have so much popularity is because they make their releases much more easier to access and more widely available. I know other teams have had trouble with the DDL side of sharing releases, but whatever they can do to get the word out or increase their popularity is worth it.

And I am not sure how to accomplish this, in fact it might be hard to do, but it'd be nice to increase awareness about more professional subbing practices like the ones mentioned in the article KingRanger linked us to. I like watching EZ Rider's toku reviews, but he uses TV-Nihon's translations as his prime source material, and I often feel like the quality of his reviews are lacking slightly because of it. I believe EZ is under the impression that TV-Nihon are the superior fansubbing team.

There will always be people that want flashy TSing and weaboo translations. T-N also has a die hard army of fanboys behind them.

 

[Switchblade]

I really hope that, with the rise of other groups and fanscrubbers and with Over-Time doing their best to sub current shows, the days of TV-N's popularity are numbered.

It makes sense that they were popular back in the day. They were the only ones doing subbing Toku. These days, I think the main reason they still have so much popularity is because they make their releases much more easier to access and more widely available. I know other teams have had trouble with the DDL side of sharing releases, but whatever they can do to get the word out or increase their popularity is worth it.

I think it's safe to say that, at least as far as tokusatsu is concerned, the TV-Nihon style of fansub is an endangered species. A few years ago most of the groups that were subbing things emulated TVN's style (Order of Zeronos most obviously). But in the last couple of years that's become less and less common as more groups like Over-Time, KITSubs, and GUIS have become more and more prominent. And with that less literal style being used on both the new shows and an increasing number of old shows (both former TVN projects and series they'd never touch), it means that an increasing percentage of subbed shows are in that style instead of TVN's. With TVN's slow pace on all their side projects this means that, eventually, they will be the minority in terms of episode count. I doubt they'll ever change so long as the group is intact, but I think we'll find that their style becomes increasingly marginalized.

 

[Glamador]

What you have said here, not sure if you meant to say it or not, is that you don't want anyone to take you seriously when you say things. You also have implied that what you say doesn't matter, and that replying to what you post really doesn't matter to you as what you are saying isn't to be taken seriously.

No, what I've said is that anything I type should be judged on its own merits and agreed or disagreed with on its own terms, right or wrong, no matter who said them, for what reason, or anything else.

It's simply not good form to make personal accusations or assumptions about your talking partner. I take everything said seriously and I respond to it in equally serious fashion. I have not been purposefully silly. But when you play the devil's advocate in good faith, sometimes you scrape the bottom of the barrel for potentially reasonable objections. (Like presenting fan-community confusion as a reason not to translate names. Is it a GOOD reason? That's up for debate. But it IS a reason, and that's worth exploring. Otherwise how do we know if it's a bad one?)

I have not belittled my posts here by admitting some of them were half-baked. I stand by what I said earlier, and to reiterate: Every passing thought is worth exploring, even if it's just to get it out of the way.

I believe EZ is under the impression that TV-Nihon are the superior fansubbing team.

And getting back on topic and off of myself b/c this is becoming derailing: You say that like it's been concluded, SE. Thus far, aside from being "weaboo" and leaving a lot of things untranslated I've still yet to see a serious case made for TVN being guilty of actual MIStranslation.

It's been alluded to time and again now that TVN is doing a BAD job of it...without any actual proof being presented. Not even a screencap w/ a link to Google Translate.

I'll grant that the prevalence of untranslated words is a frustration if you don't want to do research. And I'll grant that their flashiness can get in the way of the action (and cannot be turned off). But how do either of these (or any other) factors make them a poor choice to use in the background of an episode review video?


At this moment in time the use of honorifics is 90% of why I still prefer TVN. Whatever I may have said before, and whatever other defenses I may have raised, I definitely will not watch a sub that lacks honorifics without seriously good reason to (such as the only alternative being HK subs).

Point me to a non-TVN sub-group that keeps honorifics and I'm all over it. The only other competing subbers I've seen are Aesir and they only did Fourze as a pet project (also no honorifics btw). If you want other groups to get more publicity, there's really no better thread than this one.

 

[Hell Kaiser Andy]

http://danstokurants.rangercentral.com/?p=1581 A very good article.

I reached the comments in that article.
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[Glamador]

I know I just made a long post, but I went and read that article after typing it out and have some things to say in response. Just two things, actually.

1) Translating "mahoutsukai" as "Mage" was a calculated decision which can be explained. The characters of the show refer to Haruto, in his magic-infused state, as "Wizard", in English. TVN has several times translated a line such as "It's that ring mage, Wizard!" It's clear that TVN decided that his NAME is Wizard, but he IS a mage. There is nothing inherantly incorrect about that translation. It is just a choice. And just think how strange it would look to see that line as "It's that ring wizard, Wizard!"

--Edit-- As it turns out somebody in the comments of the article said this same thing and the author agreed with the point.

2) The stilted, literally translated dialogue. Now...I can understand why this might annoy some people. But have we all forgotten that we can actually *hear* these characters? Things like inflection and cadance can be heard directly.

To use a character from Wizard as an example: Phoenix is disrespectful, and he uses informal speech. You could translate a (hypothetical) line as "He never lets me cut loose, I want to destroy things!" or you could translate it as "That jerkass'll never let me have any fun, I wanna burn some stuff!" Both of those (hypothetical) lines get across the key points, which is that the character is not being allowed to destroy things and he would rather like to.

Regardless of your choice of translation you can still HEAR the way the line is spoken. If you only understood Japanese you would HAVE to infer from his way of speaking what his attitude is. So if you're translating something "professionally" why does anything but the literal meaning have any bearing on your understanding of it? Unless you just don't listen.

 

[SamuraiEchidna]

And getting back on topic and off of myself b/c this is becoming derailing: You say that like it's been concluded, SE. Thus far, aside from being "weaboo" and leaving a lot of things untranslated I've still yet to see a serious case made for TVN being guilty of actual MIStranslation.

Okay, I see. You want hard evidence that sometimes TV-Nihon gets their translations completely wrong. You can forgive transcribing Japanese words they think sound better, as well as all the other stuff they do that shouldn't be tolerated in the first place, but you want an example of an egregious mistranslation. Like a translation that was a complete guess or something...

Okay, I think I can do that.
Can someone back me up on this example? I tried to find the reference image, but I wasn't having any luck.

There was a scene in a very early episode of ZyuRanger. The TV-N fansub said something like "Hurry up! I'm turning into a fossil." What was ACTUALLY being said was "Give me the calculator." No lie.

I'm not saying TV-Nihon relies on guess subs nor am I saying that they are famous for getting their translations completely wrong, but it's not below them and they've done it on quite a few occasions. And many of those guess subs have not gone corrected, nor do I see them getting corrected. Not like it would even matter if TV-N tried to give us soft subs like everyone else, but then again, I'd really hate to be the guy who tries to sort out what was translated to the best of their ability and what wasn't.

If anyone cares to give other examples, please do so. I love making a game out of stuff like this.

 

[ultratwilight]

I'm not saying TV-Nihon relies on guess subs nor am I saying that they are famous for getting their translations completely wrong, but it's not below them and they've done it on quite a few occasions. And many of those guess subs have not gone corrected, nor do I see them getting corrected.

Did anyone bother telling TVN about the said mistakes in the first place?

 

[Glamador]

Did anyone bother telling TVN about the said mistakes in the first place?

Those people get banned from their forums and ignored.

 

[Shir]

Okay, I see. You want hard evidence that sometimes TV-Nihon gets their translations completely wrong. You can forgive transcribing Japanese words they think sound better, as well as all the other stuff they do that shouldn't be tolerated in the first place, but you want an example of an egregious mistranslation. Like a translation that was a complete guess or something...

Okay, I think I can do that.
Can someone back me up on this example? I tried to find the reference image, but I wasn't having any luck.

There was a scene in a very early episode of ZyuRanger. The TV-N fansub said something like "Hurry up! I'm turning into a fossil." What was ACTUALLY being said was "Give me the calculator." No lie.

I'm not saying TV-Nihon relies on guess subs nor am I saying that they are famous for getting their translations completely wrong, but it's not below them and they've done it on quite a few occasions. And many of those guess subs have not gone corrected, nor do I see them getting corrected. Not like it would even matter if TV-N tried to give us soft subs like everyone else, but then again, I'd really hate to be the guy who tries to sort out what was translated to the best of their ability and what wasn't.

If anyone cares to give other examples, please do so. I love making a game out of stuff like this.

Hehe.
That was the very first episode.
Every group makes mistakes though. And actually their Changeman wasn't so bad. (that was another translator though)

If I remember correctly they got the rolecall in bokenger wrong.
They didn't hear the difference between ボウケンジャー(bokenger)&冒険者(bokensha - adventurer)

Although this was a long time ago, and my memory could be a bit fuzzy.

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