What exactly is wrong with TV-Nihon subs?

[LaZerwolfX]

LaZerwolfX, both you and Kingranger need to drop this now.

Fair enough, consider it dropped.

 

[Frumix]

Pretty much everything else he said (sans the Westboro paragraph) is completely legitimate.

Except it's not. Frankly, after that painful Akibaranger translation and multiple errors (not "choices" like they might try to play it up bu legitimate mistakes) exposed on a certain microblog they've lost all right to claim preference has anything to do with the criticism they recieve.

 

[LaZerwolfX]

This is getting ridiculous

 

[KamenRiderBritannia]

An interesting blog post from takenoko http://www.tvnihon.com/node/1624

That was me xD made a funny meme pic bout them and couldn't help myself xD permanent forum ban for me but it was worth it

 

[LaZerwolfX]

Could someone please just respond to the following statement without going on some ridiculous tirade?

Why do you feel the need to go after TV-Nihon at all? Why not just move on and watch Toku wherever you want? And if TVN is the group someone starts with why not just be glad that our fandom is growing and let that be that? Why do you give a **** about what fansub group people are watching? Does it really matter?

 

[Herman the German]

The stuff they provide is just plain evidently wrong in many cases and ways. No sane person wants to pause to look up what stuff means in the middle of things. I don't much mind the special effects crap they put in -- long as it's actually READABLE and not some garish swirly **** that's the same color as the stuff behind the text.

I haven't had any interest in Kyoryuger but it's been my impression that this Nossan guy or whatever is a very punny man. Their idea of pun-translation is "don't try at all", which kinda very much grates my funny bone in the most painful ways.

It's the kind of fun I like to make off of their stuff in the sense one makes fun of someone for making a statement for a movement without understanding the underlying principles and motivations for said movement (at least that's the closest social-interactivity-analogy my work-tired brain can come up with presently). It's like, "you should know stuff like this doesn't make a lick of sense so why torture yourself"?

… not sure if this counts as a ridiculous tirade but, eh. :V

 

[Hell Kaiser Andy]

Could someone please just respond to the following statement without going on some ridiculous tirade?

Why do you feel the need to go after TV-Nihon at all? Why not just move on and watch Toku wherever you want? And if TVN is the group someone starts with why not just be glad that our fandom is growing and let that be that? Why do you give a **** about what fansub group people are watching? Does it really matter?

It's because people have seen the grass is greener on the other side, and for some it feels like going from dirt ground to lush forest in terms of improvements. But they can't help but feel curious about the dirt ground and when they're then reminded how much better the alternatives are.

But I think what dissapoints some people is how TVN doesn't really go with the times. I think just about every other group supports Softsubs now so there's a lot more freedom. And then there's what people think of their "HD" encodes.

And finally there's the endless remains of Japanese words and certain things that doesn't get translated. Herman linked a good example above me, and I've seen images of Nossan's puns simply getting a translator note explaining the vocal pun and then leaving him a simple line that doesn't convey the pun.

I think that's the gist of what's generally people's opinion about this. I don't really care about they do things anymore since I have alternatives to most shows now. Though that blogpost did honestly have a lot of stupid within it.

And don't make this blow up into a huge mess... Again!

 

[SamuraiEchidna]

Could someone please just respond to the following statement without going on some ridiculous tirade?

Why do you feel the need to go after TV-Nihon at all? Why not just move on and watch Toku wherever you want? And if TVN is the group someone starts with why not just be glad that our fandom is growing and let that be that? Why do you give a **** about what fansub group people are watching? Does it really matter?

As it has been said, their translation choices are incredibly questionable, and it is indeed "greener on the other side". Not to mention, almost all of our criticisms would disappear if they used softsubs instead of hardsubs. However, I like to think it's more then that.

TV-N may not realize it, but they do stand as an example of what all fansub groups in general are like, the question is: What kind of example are they, positive or negative?

As I've said before, people coming into fansubs for the first time might see TV-Nihon's subs (or a group just like them), and they might get the wrong impression. They might think their style of translation is the correct way of translating something from Japan, but it's not. Not saying there is a correct or perfect way to fansub or translate, I'm just saying there are groups who do it much better.

I really hope everyone who gets into tokusatsu, or fansubs in general, understands that there will always be fansub/translation alternatives. However, if you get stuck in a comfort zone with groups like TV-N, and if you never reach out to forums or anyone else to see if there are better alternatives out there, then you'd be easily inclined to think TV-N's translation style is how most fansub groups do it or how they should do it, and that's just incorrect. I speak from experience, because I once fell into this inaccurate mentality. Back when I was a fan of their work, I had to become a study in TV-N's translation choices, keep personal notes about what their untranslated words meant, etc. I wasn't even aware of how ridiculous it all was until members of this forum started showing me that there are better fansub alternatives out there, that Japanese isn't some holier-than-thou language that people shouldn't even attempt to translate completely.

 

[Magenta]

Could someone please just respond to the following statement without going on some ridiculous tirade?

Why do you feel the need to go after TV-Nihon at all? Why not just move on and watch Toku wherever you want? And if TVN is the group someone starts with why not just be glad that our fandom is growing and let that be that? Why do you give a **** about what fansub group people are watching? Does it really matter?

When the subs have inaccuracies or stylistic choices that affects the way people will interpret the work, yes, it matters. There's a large audience of people out there who have no clue what Kamen Rider Blade is about, that matters. There's a large audience of people out there who will have a twisted view of Gotou's character arc in OOO, and that matters. There are a large number of people who, because TVN do not attempt to make jokes in the source language actually funny in the target language, have deluded themselves that tokusatsu as a medium "doesn't do" humor and will attempt to argue against the very nature of the franchise, and that matters.

Someone watching a fansub that doesn't do the work justice doesn't just affect them, it affects people around them. They might recommend that translation to others - and those people will be ill-served by it, their opinions formed from inaccurate or ill-fitting interpretations of the work will come up in conversation and may skew how others see the show. These things are a connected web, and a translation that doesn't do a show justice permeates down into the social conscious of said show, and affects how it is perceived.

So yes, I think that matters.

Edit: Okay, lemme elucidate a bit.

As a fansubber, I do what I do for two reasons. The biggest one is, I enjoy translating. It's fun, challenging and thought-provoking to me. But you know, I could just translate what-the-**** ever and sit on it and purely do it for myself if that was the only draw. But I choose to work on tokusatsu that gets released to people because I enjoy the shows, I enjoy the medium, and I want other people to enjoy them too. I've spent time learning a language so I can watch a TV show, play a game, listen to a song, and experience something. I can understand what its saying, understand the message it has, be moved in the way it wants me to be moved. And it's like, if I put out a translation that doesn't allow people to have the same reactions, well, why the hell am I bothering?

This is, to my mind, the really big issue with TV-N's subs. On the whole, they're very utilitarian. When you treat the Japanese language - both in general and the specific words used - with more reverence than the meaning and spirit of the work itself, problems happen. Jokes stop being funny, twists may lose their impact, the viewer's ability to just switch off their mind and enjoy the show is severely hampered.

Here's a flipside example: Go watch KouAidou's translations of The Hero Yoshihiko. That is a show full of Japanese language jokes, Japanese cultural references, Japanese celebrity jokes. But you could look at those scripts on their own and be totally unaware that what you were reading was even a translation. It's a translation that entirely serves the point of the work, the humor of the work, through localizations so witty that they become invisible even to a translator. And that, IMO, is the crux of what good translation is: invisible. Nothing in a translation should ever make you stop and consider it, should make you query it while you're watching, should make you take your focus and attention away from what you're there for: the show.

If you want to learn language and culture, that's admirable. And there's probably people who learned a lot through watching TV-N's subs (though there's enough mistakes in their work, especially their older work, that it should definitely not be your primary linguistic intake). But ultimately, a translation of a work should always exist to serve one master and one master alone: the work itself. Language is a beautiful thing, but in this case it is a tool, a canvas, and not an end unto itself.

 

[Ryuuta]

That was me xD made a funny meme pic bout them and couldn't help myself xD permanent forum ban for me but it was worth it

Tact's massively overrated nowadays, huh

Why do you feel the need to go after TV-Nihon at all? Why not just move on and watch Toku wherever you want? And if TVN is the group someone starts with why not just be glad that our fandom is growing and let that be that? Why do you give a **** about what fansub group people are watching? Does it really matter?

I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with criticizing a fansubber's work, be TVN or O-T or whoever. There's however a huge difference between mindless bashing done for the lulz (like the previously quoted example) and well-formed criticism (like Magenta's post), and just because the former's more predominant it doesn't quite invalidate the existance of the latter.

People's within their rights to ignore the critics and just go with whatever they like, and that's fine - much as it'd despair some critics, it's ultimately the people who choose whatever the hell they wanna watch. If people want to be more informed about what they're watching, though, they can always look up threads like these and see what's this hubbub about.