Forum - View topicAnswerman - What's Wrong With Fan Translations?
Goto page Previous Next Note: this is the discussion thread for this article |
Author | Message | |||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Nonaka Machine Gun B
Posts: 819 |
|
|||||||||
My biggest concern with fan translation is with manga. It seems like the vast majority of the time, any given scanlation group is made up of college kids who don't know English themselves. Some series are unreadable as a result. There are obvious exceptions and great fan translators, of course.
|
||||||||||
Kingoanime
Posts: 12 |
|
|||||||||
In general I've held the philosophy that "If you have the means to watch legally, and you don't you're not a real fan" Now obviously I know there are exceptions, like if you live in a country without legal means, but if you live in NA you at the very least have CR and Funimation.com which are free.
I'm in High school so I know a ton of people who use fansubs. for a couple of them I've learned to stop trying to convince them, most are even friends of mine. I'm actually vice president of our school's anime club and I always tell our members about how important it is to support the industry. We don't have access to streaming sites because of our's school's firewall so we use rips of official subs, but I always give links to legal places. |
||||||||||
Kadmos1
Posts: 13564 Location: In Phoenix but has an 85308 ZIP |
|
|||||||||
There is at least one case of a fansub streaming site going legit. This happened just about 7 years ago now (8 years this month I've been using). That is Crunchyroll.
|
||||||||||
SilverTalon01
Posts: 2403 |
|
|||||||||
The column made a really big point about the advantages of the professional translators, but I think it ignored a very important advantage 'some' fan translators have: they are fans.
What I mean is that context is incredibly important when trying to translate something. Being very familiar with a work in advance can clue you in to what a line is really saying. Considering how many series coming out are either adaptions of LN / manga or sequels / spinoffs, I don't think that advantage should be ignored. My personal experience has been that they are roughly even at the top end, and at the bottom end, fan translations are a lot worse.
That is too true, and it isn't even just translations. I mean I will see early spoilers come out for something, get debunked, then months down the line get referred to as facts by different users.
That means hardly anything. I mean most fansub groups use to have a Q&A position. That only really means anything if the Q&A person also speaks Japanese and actually compares the original Japanese to the translation. Usually being able to translate is not a requirement for Q&A though which means it is pretty much worthless as far as integrity of a translation. |
||||||||||
myskaros
Posts: 600 Location: J-Novel Club |
|
|||||||||
I helped out with a fansub group for a few months, doing quality checking and some editing. The leader of the group was from Asia and did not have very good English. He frequently "vetoed" my suggested changes and actually argued with me over an English grammar point once. I did not stay in that group very long. |
||||||||||
NJ_
Posts: 3014 Location: Wallington, NJ |
|
|||||||||
It also doesn't help that they were used by other companies as well such as Streamline & later ADV (the same "Casshan" OVAs that Discotek has now), Dreamworks ("Casshern" live-action movie), Capcom ("Casshan" in Tatsunoko Vs. Capcom) & Sentai (original 70s TV series as "Casshan").
They actually confirmed the reason for "Mazinger Edition Z" months ago.
That name was also used when Yamato released the show in Italy years ago so this was either Dynamic Pro or Bandai Visual's call and backs up what both had said about copyrights.
Uh, they actually said they would release Victory at Anime Expo back in July. |
||||||||||
vonPeterhof
Posts: 729 |
|
|||||||||
My opinion about the use of swearing in translations is that it can work as long as you keep the audience and the situation in mind. Perhaps not every "temee" needs to be translated as "you bastard" and not every "-yagaru" needs to be translated as "f-ing", but if the work is aimed at an adult audience and if swearing would sound natural in English in the given situation with the characters involved, then go for it. However, I do understand that not everyone feels that way. Here in Russia official dubs for Hollywood films routinely replace actual English swears with much milder Russian equivalents; there's even a "fansubber" community dedicated to redubbing those films with more accurate swearing. |
||||||||||
Suena
Posts: 289 |
|
|||||||||
And I'm pretty sure there are still people out there calling Eren "Ellen" |
||||||||||
Lili-Hime
Posts: 569 |
|
|||||||||
And we all remember the iconic space pirate... |
||||||||||
Deacon Blues
Posts: 389 Location: Albuquerque, NM |
|
|||||||||
I've been translating for eleven odd years now and there are times where I'll either be watching something or reading a manga and something will pop up that has me scratching my head in confusion over.
I will admit that I do have a certain bias when it comes to legal releases of Gundam titles (manga, naturally)... mainly because they're passed off to translators who have never even heard of the series before and just translate it as whatever with no real effort to fact check/ask questions. Plus, they use the Gundam Wiki as a source which is rather troublesome. There has only been one translator that I know of who worked for Tokyopop that made an effort to ask questions from the community when translating X Astray and Lost War Chronicles. Of course his work was just as butchered (as he explained) by the time it was returned to TP for editing and processing, but I digress. I know my translations are far from perfect and never will be, but the localization of some titles is strange at times... |
||||||||||
whiskeyii
Posts: 2247 |
|
|||||||||
I should've been more specific. Official subs have a PAID Q&A person, and money tends to (though not always) incentivize folks to do their job well. Because yeah, like you said, unpaid Q&A can to varying levels of quality. |
||||||||||
SilverTalon01
Posts: 2403 |
|
|||||||||
I think the only gundam manga I've read has actually been yours, but I definitely agree that people just getting handed something and either choosing not to familiarize themselves with it or not having time to leads to problems. You also pointed out another problem. Too many cooks in the kitchen or however that goes. Even if a translator gets it right, the translation can get passed around and changed by other people, and I'm guessing a lot of those changes are not done by people who speak Japanese and check the changes against the original.
You missed my main point. Whether or not, or even how much, the Q&A people are paid doesn't matter if those people don't actually know Japanese and actually go and check against the original as far as the integrity of a translation. For what you are suggesting to matter, the Q&A people would have to be qualified enough to also be able to be translators, but I'm pretty sure that isn't usually the case. What they're Q&A'ing isn't the integrity of a translation. |
||||||||||
Ryusui
Posts: 461 |
|
|||||||||
I've actually gotten to a point where I don't trust professional translations of manga. There's just too damn much of it for it to all get done with anything but the most slapdash of efforts. Tokyopop couldn't be bothered to get the names or terminology in its .hack efforts right to save its miserable existence, and when a high-profile title like Fullmetal Alchemist ends up with nonsense like "Cselkcess" on its pages, you have problems.
The flip side of this is that I don't really trust the fan translations either, for much the same reasons. I actually tried my hand at translating a few chapters of Liar Game myself because the previous translator was clearly phoning it in; I offered my services as an editor, but they refused on the grounds of "this is just a hobby" (i.e. "it's not worth the effort to make it good"). My work is still floating around out there, but I got beaten to the punch on later chapters by some jackass who ought to be flogged with a dictionary. The net effect is, I don't really read manga anymore. >_> |
||||||||||
Hameyadea
Posts: 3679 |
|
|||||||||
Of course, one cannot simply forget those wonderful, wonderful moments (NSFW) when fansubs have shown us how some scenes can be viewed in a new perspective and with an additional flare that just adds to the experience. Surely, memories to be cherished.
|
||||||||||
belvadeer
|
|
|||||||||
Bearing in mind we didn't technically Americanize the names. Those were done at the behest of a Japanese promoter who felt the show would have more success overseas if they changed the names to stuff that we're familiar with (probably because they thought we were too incompetent to pronounce Japanse names or something). So it's more of a rare case of "Americanized according to Japanese perceptions of North America". |
||||||||||
All times are GMT - 5 Hours |
||
|
Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group