Although I’m very grateful for fansubs and consider them a gift and a privelege from people infinitely more generous than I am, there are times when having fansubs that are not up to par can completely ruin a fan’s enjoyment of a show. Most of the time I’ll adopt a “beggars can’t be choosers” state of mind for poor fansubs, especially if they’re the only group subbing the show, but the fact is if you’re going to do something stupidly wrong then it would be better not to do it at all. I don’t understand why or how some awful fansubs are even made; I’ve always thought that the entire process of fansubbing was quite laborious in and of itself without wasting your time to make a terrible product. Is it due to lack of skill or understanding on the translator’s part, or lack of quality/translation checking? If you intend to make LOLWUT subs, then do so, but don’t try and pass crap off as good translations to all the innocent internet anime n00bs.
There are many other aspects of poor fansubbing that are irritating to anyone with an ounce of common sense, such as color choice (why yellow? Or bright pink?) or karaoke subs which take up half the screen, but you can leave all that stuff to the MIGHTY OTAKING to rant about. What really gets me are the translations. Before I get crushed by the amazing power of Legitamate Raw Watchers, I’ll say that by no means am I able to understand Japanese past the extent of the general gist of a simple sentence. However, there are times when even the most oblivious of watchers can make more sense of a sentence than Chihiro a fansub group. I don’t understand how these travesties can make it through numerous stages of QC’ing and still either make no sense or simply be wrong.
Even so, there are legitamate groups out there who I’ve come to trust for quality translations. But at times, I think people confuse accurate translations and transliterations. The primary function of a translation is to accurately convey the meaning of a phrase while at the same time maintaining the coherence present in the original phrase, whereas the primary function of transliteration is to copy out word for word the phrase used in the original language.
The whole meaning of subtitles is to try and keep as close to the original experience of a show as possible. But to take it to as absurd a level as keeping every nuance and phrase word for word would just make it seem awkward and further distance the viewer from a show. There needs to be some level of libery taken to maintain the fluidity and feeling of what’s being said on screen. Though, with that said, all too often translators (especially from anime licensing companies) take too much liberty and completely change the meaning of a sentence for some inexplicable reason. In any case, a lot of fansubs groups are good at gettting the balance between accurate translations and fluidity right. For instance, the multiple forms of “you” in Japanese are translated differently depending on the situation (I say differently, but most of the time it’s either “you” or “bastard”. Or once even “thou”…)
To be honest, you’re never going to be able to get the art of translation right 100% as there are all sorts of nuances and inflections present in one language that aren’t in another. But that doesn’t mean you should just translate something however the hell you want without taking into consideration those who are actually going to watch your work.
Grand Punk Railroad 
Hmm… I try to avoid taking shots at fansubbers, whether directly or indirectly, because even if they suck, they’re doing better than I probably could. And in fact, I have no desire to do it at all, regardless of quality, so I have to at least give them some credit. It’s really a thankless job, one I’d rather not do, so I’m not going to complain over something someone is doing as a fan, for the fans. If I have concerns or think some fansub group is terrible and not translating properly, then I just don’t download it. But not being a translator/fansubber, I don’t really think I have a right to judge what they do, not having even tried it myself.
But I do know what you mean about a poor translation ruining some enjoyment of the show. It’s a fact of life that mistakes will happen, but there are times when it’s a bit overboard and I’d almost rather watch something raw or not at all, compared to watching it with terrible subs. Which is why I just don’t download subs I think or know will be terrible :p
There’s no real reason to dig at subs, fansubs or pro subs, without looking into the factors that caused the problem some digs.
A good translation takes time, it doesn’t matter who’s translating it.
I also think the cakequality in anime subs is a lie and take a pragmatic approach. It ain’t the Bible peeps.
So basically the goal for fansubs: Don’t be too literal, but don’t get too creative with it. Just…do it.
Ah…translating. It’s really a complicated thing so I don’t fully trust professionals or fansubbers. Professionals tend to dumb stuff down and fansubbers…well they’re not professionals so they’re not held to any standard.
Luckily I’ve only encountered a couple of fansub groups that actually ruined my enjoyment in a show and that I now have to stay away from. Though I’ve had my share of, “WTF? How did I recognize that mistake and you guys didn’t?” moments. Like something that probably should have been translated as “world domination” being “universal uniform.” What the Hell is a universal uniform anyway?
“DO NOT WANT!”
Lol, that’s an ignominious moment in translation work.
Like the previous commenters, I’d rather not rant about fansubs. I’m taking advantage of a free service. Without them I would never have been able to see most of the shows I love.
I have taken coursework in translation in graduate school and it is ridiculously difficult. I don’t think I’d be able to do a splendid job of it, even if I did have fluency in Japanese.
I really haven’t considered too many terrible subs on my watch, but those that I have were usually crosstranslated from Chinese, such as the Chihiro subs for Code Geass. If things can mess up for a direct Japanese-to-English translation, consider that problem doubled when going from Japanese to Chinese to English. It’s also worth considering that many translators do not speak English as their primary language — probably again with the Chinese-to-English subs, so the translators might not even realize that their work is a little wonky. Sometimes I think that those translators do the subbing work to practice their English… I mean, if they’re active in the community, they can surely see any derisive reactions people might have towards their releases.
In any case, those are the main reasons why I don’t really try to give subbers a hard time for less-than-spectacular translations. A bad sub job has yet to ruin a series for me, anyway. Missing or unknown parts in the subtitling occasionally hinder the understanding of important story elements, but well… the next best thing is to learn Japanese yourself. XD
OH MY GOD HOW DARE YOU CRITICISE FANSUBS IT IS SOMETHING WE’RE GETTING FOR FREE, THEREFORE WE SHOULD NOT CRITICISE IT.
…right. As if voluntary labour’s exempt from criticism or something. Heaven forbid you actually want to help people better their efforts. Anyway, the above comment faggotry aside…
I’ve always admired fansub groups that go out of the way to make their translations more natural. Claiming that some is outright untranslatable is just dumb determinism (language determines thought, something expressible in language J might be impossible to express in language E) bullshit that hack translators and shit editors make up to cover their own inadequacies. Maintaining “purity” of the language is just something hardcore weeaboo fanboys have come up with, and I don’t buy it at all.
Been watching Shinsen’s subs of Mononoke, and while they didn’t translate ‘mononoke’ or ‘ayakashi’, they did make an effort to turn ‘katachi’, ‘makoto’, and ‘kotowari’ into Form, Truth, and Reason respectively, and I can appreciate the story all the better for that. Forcing the viewer to stumble over untranslated terms like those is pure ignorance, and nothing else.
Fansubs haven’t really ruined my experience in watching a series. They can be distracting, sure (as in the “wow misspellings” or “with my limited knowledge of the language, I think the meaning is different”), but never devastating to the point where I can’t enjoy the rest of the show I’m watching or the series itself.
I’m not sure it’s important enough to get bent all out of shape about though. QC better is my only request. 😛
Sometimes you can’t help watching a bad sub because it’s the only sub around. Like that Turn A one with assloads of spelling mistakes, despite their shortcomings I love Hero Legends to death for subbing such an amazing show. They also did Gundam X too but it was noticeably better.
Good thing I’ve never picked up a release of Anime-Junkies, whew.
@nazarielle
I’m not saying taht fansubbers who aren’t good should just GTFO or something. I got rid of that part of the post before publishing 😛 I still think that anything is better than nothing though. So they should try to keep up the
goodword I guess.@omo
So then take the time. Tsubaki-Hatsuyuki for example; translate Soul Eater over around 6-7 days yet always have high-quality franslations with some really helpful subs. In contrast to another group who did it in 3 days and translated “The Lines of Sanzu” as “Sound Lines”.
@FuyuMaiden
In my opinion, to fansub (in any way) requires a good level of work ethic anyway. so I think that most of the time the subbers are trying their best.
Universal uniform? Uh.. a uniform that can change to match any school? You know, like camouflage!
@ghostlightning
Fair enough, but could you have loved those shows if the dialogue was made incomprehensible by bad subs? And that’s kind of surprising, I would have thought that, writing well as you do, you’d have a natural affinity for translation.
@kirisaka
If taht was the case you’d expect QC’ers to catch smoe awkward errors *shrug*. I can normally fill in the holes of particularly bad subtitles (all hail the power of learning Japanese through anime!) so that’s not much of a problem for me. Though perhaps I was going too far by saying it “ruins the show”.
@Owen S
From the sites and comments I’ve seen by fansubbers you’d expect that they derive at least some level of enjoyment from doing this, so people pointing out inaccuracies and saying some word of thanks must be pleasing. I should say thanks more, myself. Also, fuck yeah, Shinsen Subs.
@TheBigN
Perhpas I should attack the QC’ers in my next vindictive rant. RAWR!
@schneider
I guess I should be thankful I haven’t hear of those sub groups.
I don’t propose that fansub groups to be made immune to complaint.
Let me distinguish between analysis and complaining in this particular context.
In analyzing gg’s work on Gundam 00, we can explore the possible motivations and effects of their joking with the actual translated text:
What the subs should have read is [Graham Acre]: “Trans-AM!”
What gg did: [Graham Acre]: “Trans-GRAHam!”
It was an interesting joke, and violates a lot of rules of translation. I can imagine a series of essays on this and other things like it (like how gg also replaced the audio of the OP and SUNG OVER IT).
Complaining about it would sound like: gg SHOULDN’T DO THESE THINGS! THIS IS WRONG! IT INTERFERES WITH MY EXPERIENCE OF THE SHOW! I WANT AN EXPERIENCE CLOSE TO THE ORIGINAL! I DON’T WANT THEIR FILTER! [caps added for hyperbole and emphasis]
Otaking does both I think in his video series, and I give him credit for showing how he’d like things done rather than just making people wrong.
This is the difference, between analysis and complaining: the latter is judgmental. I don’t think that fansub groups are or should be immune from either, but I am more interested in the former than the latter.
Regarding your flattering surprise at my lack of affinity, I believe that one needs to write well in both languages – to have a literary capacity in both languages to translate well. Regarding this I am much better writing in english than I am in Filipino or any of our vernacular languages.
Hahaha, laughing at your naming a specific anime sub group. I’m astounded the flamers haven’t arrived yet.
I have also noticed that in a few instances some big-name fansub groups dropped anime once official subs or dubs were rolled out, only for the resultant product to turn out to be worse. This is true even if the sub group doesn’t have a perfect run. I won’t say that I’ve never caught Dattebayo making mistakes or filling in questionable translations, but they used pretty high quality raws and repeatedly turned out a decent product. Almost without exception, anything they’ve dropped which has since been done commercially has not been done as well.
I do realize that generally distributors would not countenance hiring a group “from the other side of the fence,” as fansubbers are seen by many on the monied side of things as malevolent parasites who leech their market share. However, this struggle to avoid making any subbers “legitimate” winds up excluding some of the best translation talent. Fansubbers are already experienced, and in particular know anime tropes; translators hired from an outside pool of people never involved in fansubs may or may not be so knowledgeable. The end result is a lower-quality product.
@moritheil
Perhaps distributors think of it as rewarding a crime or some such. However, there have got to be certain legitimate applicants that know about anime tropes or at least the background of the show they’re watching. Just doing it straight off doesn’t seem like the smartest way to go about things to me.
When I was at school, we used to call a translation that retained the original word order and didn’t add anything to help the sense flow ‘construese’.
Anyway, Omo makes a good point: look at the fuss over translating the Bible (parts of which are inherently ‘translated’: the New Testament was probably written in Greek, but the dialogue, if it was spoken, was probably spoken in Aramaic). Look at the fuss over whether you even can translate the Qur’an. Translators of anime and manga don’t have to deal with that kind of pressure.
I’m hesitant to say anything which makes me sound bitter or ungrateful, but I don’t think a lack of pressure is really an excuse for some glaring mistakes in fansubs.
Oh, true, it’s not an excuse for the fansubbers. I suppose I’d say it’s a reason for us not to care so much.
I love when translators don’t translate parts of dialog, lol. I’ve only seen it in some doramas though.
I’ve noticed yellow subs in a lot of licensed releases…and I’m still not sure why they do it. It’s like how DVDs never seem to include karaoke – it almost seems like incentive to download fansubs instead.
But that’s a different matter. Basically, you’re right: some fansubs are bad, and it’s tough when you don’t know Japanese and have to worry about being misguided, quite literally, without even realizing it. Sadly, I can’t think of a decent solution to the problem short of studying the language, so it isn’t a big deal to me. After all, no one wants to wait for the “good” groups to pick up a show when everyone will be talking about the latest episodes based on Chihiro and CoalGuys.
Yeah I dunno. I think people are just going to try fansubbing stuff if they can really do it well or not. I think it’s all mostly for the E-peen.
Excellent site, keep up the good work
I came across this while working on homework. Don’t ask how, its complicated {heh heh ^^}
I do agree though. I’ve seen some translations to english that have horrible spelling and other issues. It does get annyoing to have to pause and think about what they were trying to say. It honestly isn’t that hard to go over your work a few times or have some smart friends watch.
That said, if spelling is the issue, that is stupid and pointless.
About the brief metion of font issues.
I don’t know what the hell some people are thinking. You should always keep the font small but not unreadable. If you show the episode to someone and they can’t read it or see the image….fix it.
All of the simple issues can be fixed by simple solutions. And about the whole “don’t judge them” thing.
We are not judging them.
Just their work.
If they are going to call something worthy or amazing…they can fix minor errors and take the time to make sure their work is as good as they say it is.
If they say it sucks, and it does, don’t bother with it. They know it, they admit it, just leave them a suggestion or two (or more) nicely and maybe things will improve.
Also if it is good but their are some simple issues, comment and tell them how they can improve.
Just remember be nice when commeneting.
Who wants to listen to an idiot who yells to much.
You are the one taking time to watch THEIR stuff, you could find something better.
im a translator- english to spanish- and i noticed the too literal translation in fan translated stuff. i think this shows the fact they’re not too comfortable with the language and i dont like it at all. VIZ’s translation for the ruroken manga was excellent and the fan made one was so so. i mean, i dont know japanese, but for me, the best translation is when you manage to not make it seem it’s a translation, and some of fansubbers’ stuff clearly do seem like translations.