Forum - View topicAnswerman - Who Are Subtitles Written For?
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7jaws7
Posts: 495 Location: New York State |
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Those were the days... |
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mgosdin
Posts: 1078 Location: Kissimmee, Florida, USA |
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One of my all-time-favorite songs is 1973's China Grove by the Doobie Brothers. But it does make me wince because Tom Johnston didn't know the differences between cultures, which to be honest no one could have expected him to. Still good memories associated with that song.
I've learned a lot, for being one of those "old fogeys from the 70's" that could have flinched at anything new. Now if I see something I don't understand it's off to Google we go. Right to Left manga, no problem. Top to Bottom text flow, got it. Gee, this is fun. I appreciate the pro subtitles and the fan subtitles, it's all good. Mark Gosdin |
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Key
Moderator
Posts: 14534 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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Yeah, this has been a well-known phenomenon in education circles for ages. (And it still is, sadly.) Justin's comments about how this is changing for media viewers makes me wonder if that change might gradually be starting to creep into education, too, or if perhaps that's something we need to encourage/force along. Definitely worth researching, from a professional perspective. |
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ultimatehaki
Posts: 256 |
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"Don't eat a riceball eat a donut!"
Those were funny times I'm sure. Thanks for the interesting article. |
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whiskeyii
Posts: 1325 |
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Honestly, with stuff like TV Tropes and Cliff Notes, I'm honestly a little more surprised this issue hasn't been more significantly reduced Anyways, this Answerman went in a totally different direction than I was expecting, but it was enlightening. It was nice to see my theory for "why no honorifics" actually pan out for once. Personally though, I'm not really huge on translator notes unless it's something like a language trick (explaining a pun) or if it's giving information on a locale, like many of the Detective Conan fansubs did, considering how many episodes took place in touristy areas. |
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Paiprince
Posts: 539 |
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Considering how neck deep in its inner circle references and culture anime tends to be (the ones that most Westerners would have an interest in), it's a fool's errand to try to even "normalize" it. The fandom doesn't need more casuals that would just come by forums and wonder why the rest of anime is weird and depraved and so unlike that one show they watched on Adult Swim.
To go along with this train of thought, the masses generally prefer what they're familiar with, no matter where in the globe they're at. While they might touch a bit on subcultures to feel inclusive and cool like what happened with geek chic, they see anything below the thin surface as prohibitively complicated. Should the industry even attempt to cater to such a people? I don't think so. It's goal is to try to convert as many into the hardcore market and going for a faithful translation and advertise Japan as a really interesting country are the methods to go. |
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andyscout
Posts: 33 |
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This rings so true. I remember the first time I took my father to see an anime movie. My parents are generally pretty accepting and curious. They knew I was interested in this anime stuff and when I said I was going to a theater to see one, my dad asked to come along. The movie was Howl's Moving Castle. Now I don't recall the movie being particularly confusing but for some reason my dad was very confused when we came out. Talking with him about it, the hang up seemed odd to me. He seemed like he had been unwilling or unable to relate to or explore the motivations of the characters. This is not something he normally had a problem with when we watch other movies. Reading this article, and that paragraph in particular got me wondering if that was the case. The stuff was *just* enough foreign that he wasn't able to see past things he would normally in a film. We actually saw the film dubbed so it wasn't a subtitle thing but maybe the idea was the same. Anywho, nice look at the subs argument and nice article. |
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Hikaru Suzuhara
Posts: 58 |
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As far as the script goes there is little difference between Pro and Fan subtitles as whole. Both range from great to terrible and both are sometimes literal while other times liberal. For any given digital approach the official release is almost never the superior one.
Last edited by Hikaru Suzuhara on Fri May 12, 2017 1:37 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Tylerr
Posts: 409 |
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There are some things that should never be translated
attack names are one. |
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vonPeterhof
Posts: 474 |
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I've been assuming that the reason professional translations have become more tolerant of honorifics, untranslated terms and translators' notes (and it's not just the subs - even the official dub for Watamote contained TNs) was that former fansubbers had started entering the industry as professional translators and retaining bits of "fansub culture" even as actual fansubs started declining. Because of this I've always been torn on the issue. On the one hand all those TNs and cultural tidbits piqued my appetite for learning Japanese and eventually led me to my current career as a translator. On the other hand, the spillover of fansub geekdom into official releases could raise the barriers to entry into the fandom even higher and make it even more weird and inaccessible for mainstream audiences. Thinking about it from the angle Justin took seems to imply that the situation could be the opposite and that nowadays it's actually easier for the general public to get into anime and other niche interests. Not sure if I'm fully convinced, but it is an interesting and encouraging thought.
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Sahmbahdeh
Posts: 471 |
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Huh, this is actually a fascinating look at the subject that I hadn't really considered. It makes perfect sense, though. I'll be sure to bookmark this article in case I ever need to discuss this with someone.
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maximilianjenus
Posts: 1403 |
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let's not get started with pro translators pushing thier political agendas, instead I will say that this reminded me of a manga that ahd the following translator note "if you don't undertand those honorifics why are you even reading this manga", which is fun because you can learn a lot of japanese by absortion by watching anime, since you are still listening to the japanese audio , so even if the subtitles don't keep the san/chan, change names to him/her, or even translate stuff like "this humanity" to "the humanity" (thanks for ruining the clue for peopel ho don't listen) you can still make do.
Manga on the other hand, has that complex writing method and I have yet to meet someone who has learned kanji by absorption and not by getting deep and studying kanji, because the way manga is edited the kanji get obsiouly deleted to add the english text, unlike anime. |
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KH91
Posts: 4253 |
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When I read a persons reason for liking Railgun more than Index majority of the time. |
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BadNewsBlues
Posts: 2228 |
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I'm sorry but if the attacks are in a format that's not familiar to whatever language is your primary language leaving it as is literally serves no purpose.
Yeah I'm not a language teacher or the like but even I know one can't learn another language simply by watching a TV show with characters speaking in that language and with all their spoken dialog being translated. Watching anime is good for learning words in Japanese not for learning how to actually speak Japanese. |
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Brand
Posts: 939 |
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I remember seeing Summer Wars in the theater and the guy behind us and brought this girl with him for what I think was a first date. I don't think she was into anime though, she was super freaked out by the bathtub scene (which of course by anime standards is really mild) and he had to spend like 15 minutes explaining to her Japanese bathing practices.
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