Topic: Jap Cartoons (Read 97558 times)

Mothra · « **Reply #40 on:** June 05, 2008, 10:55:44 AM »

Ideally, companies would translate honorifics into their English equivalents. Nicknames, "kid", "man", "mister", "sir", "brahh", "lady"... there's ways of indicating formality and informality, respect and disregard without needing honorifics. They did a fantastic job of this with Spike in Bebop and Ed in FMA, it just takes a little reworking.

Bongo Bill · « **Reply #41 on:** June 05, 2008, 11:05:05 AM »

It depends on the setting, I think. Which culture's honorifics (explicit or implicit) are used can affect the color of the entire piece.

Catloaf · « **Reply #42 on:** June 05, 2008, 02:12:25 PM »

Keeping a word like 'ahoge' in pani poni dash, or 'zetsubou' in SZS, is fine in my opinion due to the fact that the words are repeated so often, and commonly the entire sentence. Also, the 'I' argument was ridiculous; there are too many ways of saying 'I' and 'you'! One can even make one up!!!

But all in all, the guy does make a good point. He just does it in a far to long-winded way. 'Fansubbers are immature fags' and then a bulleted list would work far better for easily bored/distracted people like the internet.

Bongo Bill · « **Reply #43 on:** June 05, 2008, 02:38:19 PM »

What I want to know is why, in poor translations from the Japanese (of anything) characters sometimes refer to themselves in third person.

LaserBeing · « **Reply #44 on:** June 05, 2008, 03:55:09 PM »

Quote from: Bongo Bill on June 05, 2008, 02:38:19 PM

What I want to know is why, in poor translations from the Japanese (of anything) characters sometimes refer to themselves in third person.

It's common to refer to yourself in third person in Japanese. In fact they mentioned that in the video :T

The main reason I think leaving words untranslated is idiotic is, unless you have the sound turned off or are deaf, THE JAPANESE IS STILL BEING SPOKEN. I realise that people having it spoon-fed to them breeds laziness but whether or not the subtitles say "friend" or "comrade" or "butt-buddy", you can still hear Luffy saying "nakama". With proper subtitles, if you are someone who doesn't know his aniki from a hole in the ground you can still get the meaning, and if you are a weeaboo who actually cares about honourifics, well... TRY LISTENING TO THE FUCKING AUDIO. You might even (gasp!) learn something! If you have to understand Japanese to understand the translation, what is even the point of translating in the first place?

Also every time I see a fansubbed character say "yosh" I die a little inside.

Mothra · « **Reply #45 on:** June 05, 2008, 04:45:22 PM »

Problem with that is the way language works. Predicates and verbs and whatnot are completely shifted around, conjunctions and such are straight absent; unless you've studied Japanese and can translate that crazy moon shit on the fly, chances are that you're not going to be able to understand that butt-buddy is what nakama actually means.

Japanese audio is always going to sound like gibberish to most English-speaking audiences, hence the problem of needing to be clear vs losing bits like honorifics in translation.

LaserBeing · « **Reply #46 on:** June 05, 2008, 08:09:20 PM »

Well yes. My point was that the people who would care about retaining a word like nakama probably already understand enough Japanese to be able to at least pick that one word out of the jumble, particularly when they have the line sitting translated right in front of them. And people who don't understand Japanese at all are exactly the people who should be able to follow the subtitles without having to pause and squint at the top of the screen every other line. If you don't know jack shit about the language, having someone's name end with "kun" or "senpai" or "oneesama" depending on who is talking to them is not going to help you, it's just going to confuse the shit out of you.

What if I translated a cartoon from Kransploombian and you had never taken a Kransploombian lesson in your life. A character appears who has not yet been named; as he enters, a younger girl calls out to him, "There you are, Brazmojaz'z!" He is not addressed by name again for several more episodes; in the mean time, what would you suppose that character's name was? Meanwhile all the sweaty neckbeards who are obsessed with Kranimation are making fun of you for being a throzblad.

The only time I would encourage the use of honourifics and such like is when it would enhance the flavour of the story, like in a samurai period drama or something. And even then, only when the meaning is obvious or trivial enough that a translation note is unneccessary. Having a ronin pay for his sake with a fistful of mon is fine not only because it adds to the exotic appeal, but also because A) it's easy to figure out what they're talking about from context and 2) it doesn't really matter anyway.

ON THE OTHER HAND. There are those shows that only appeal to hardcore otaku anyway, and for those ones I suppose it's fine. As long as you know your audience.

I think the bit in the video I liked the most was when he pointed out the scene where some overzealous subber added in a "-san" where there wasn't one. The fact that I have seen that happen myself, not just once but several times, makes it a pretty sound indictment of that particular proclivity.

Burrito Al Pastor · « **Reply #47 on:** June 05, 2008, 10:23:17 PM »

I like my translated animation they way I like my translated books: with footnotes.

Is there a way to fully express a line in English? If yes, then it doesn't need to be in anything but English. If no, then stick a footnote on there, and retain foreign words where no parallels exist.

A Möhre is a carrot, but a zeitgeist is... a zeitgeist.

sei · « **Reply #48 on:** June 06, 2008, 01:15:49 AM »

I didn't mind "ahoge," but "shinigami," "yosh," and a bunch of other things did bug me. I also hate having to pause/rewind to keep up with lots of on-screen spam. I also don't mind seeing "tanuki udon" in the subs, especially as that's what you'd see on a stateside menu at a Japanese restaurant, but I don't really need an on-screen footnote telling me what it is.

I'm not sure that Pani Poni Dash "status screen" segment was the fairest bit to harp on, as those status screens have a lot of crap to take in, even without the translation in the way.

The video reminds me of athe karaoke rant from LordBrian, of Triad.

Quote from: said rant

This one was posted by a "Mikademus" on Anime-Planet's forums, regarding EP's release of Shakugan no Shana: I've watched EP's version and it seems like solid work. It features absolutely gorgeous karaoke -fantastically well made, one impressive feature in the ED is that the romaji text floats BEHIND the animation- and a good enough encode. I generally couldn't care less about "frills" like karaoke, but this is very slick. Some lines are phrased somewhat ankward and once in a while I spotted grammatical or editing errors, and due to long lines with short on-screen time or convoluted construction I had to rewind a very few times, but nothing that irritated me. [...] I've got no prior experience of Eval Powar but this seems like a good release.

He had trouble reading lines because of shitty timing and poor grammar to the extent that he had to rewind and watch multiple scenes again, but this seemed like a good release to him. WHAT THE FUCK. Apparently "slick" karaoke can make anyone ignore a halfass sub job.

Saturn · « **Reply #49 on:** June 06, 2008, 03:33:46 AM »

i'm not sure if this is an example of GOOD on screen text translation or just fucking scary.

jsnlxndrlv · « **Reply #50 on:** June 06, 2008, 05:17:38 AM »

I quit watching about halfway through, but I agreed with pretty much everything the guy said. I really liked the idea of including translator's notes in a text file distributed with the video rather than on the screen.

Niku · « **Reply #51 on:** June 06, 2008, 08:13:05 AM »

I remember fansubbers used to put the translation notes before or after the episodes themselves, which at least killed the onscreen clutter. The most elegant solution was a hardcopy version of what Newbie just said, when Animeigo vhs releases used to come with little recipe cards with translation notes on them.

Burrito Al Pastor · « **Reply #52 on:** June 06, 2008, 08:48:42 AM »

The ADV release of Excel Saga handled this really nicely, actually; there was an option to turn on extensive on-screen notes.

Classic · « **Reply #53 on:** June 06, 2008, 01:53:45 PM »

I'm enamored of the Matroska pack option, but unsure as to whether or not it would actually be a step up...

EDIT: It occurs to me, that the article is a bit amiss in it's decrying the video maker as somewhat hypocritical in that professional productions are beginning to do the same things as fan-subbed productions. It's a safe bet that this caused the video to be made, as some kind of an attempt to stop the crass weaboo market from squeezing the life and art of translation from out of his field. Or some such a thing.

Arc · « **Reply #54 on:** June 17, 2008, 11:35:20 AM »

Alternate Universe Gurren Lagaan:

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5sn3n_gurren-lagann-parallel-works-rap-is_shortfilms

Next one comes out Monday.

After the first Rebuild of Evangelion became a success, the field was clearly going to be opened up for other remakes. So why not kill the sacred cow right away, whydon'tcha:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEarWEgUB7Y

Mongrel · « **Reply #55 on:** June 17, 2008, 07:11:47 PM »

And it still won't be anything even close to the greatness of the actual comic*.

I mean few anime experiences were as depressing as the Appleseed anime, so why stop there?

*Please note that only the original GitS deserves this praise. In no way can I endorse the horrible sequel.

Saturn · « **Reply #56 on:** June 18, 2008, 08:48:07 AM »

i didn't really like EITHER Gits movie, but of course i think oshii is kind of a hack.

Arc · « **Reply #57 on:** June 18, 2008, 08:56:47 AM »

I'm afraid you'll have to qualify that one.

Mothra · « **Reply #58 on:** June 18, 2008, 09:39:34 AM »

Did we really need a remake here? Couldn't we've just, you know, had another original movie? Probably would've sold just as well!

EDIT: oh yeah

Saturn · « **Reply #59 on:** June 22, 2008, 05:27:25 PM »

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNrtK78tlJA

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Author Topic: Jap Cartoons (Read 97558 times)