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Answerman - Subtitle Hues and Cry

So, wait, I haven't bought the blu-rays or watched it on Toonami, did they completely change the amazingly creative Kill la Kill intertitles I fell in love with for the foreign market releases?

I would actually like to see someone pull Zeorhymer out of CPM's catalog. It was kinda hokey, but has great BGM and has enough fun with its few OVAs to be entertaining.

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(Incidentally, this email had lines like, "using two hyphens instead of an em-dash is not OK, sorry.")

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From what I can tell there's only a handful of people like this, and I don't think they realize that they're coming off as irascible -- I get the feeling from reading these blogs that they'll simply never be satisfied.

Nice one

It's also on BD now, which is reason enough for me.

On a streaming site, you can just hardsub the videos with great fonts and such with no issue. Blaming Flash is an excuse IMO. Most only have English anyway. MY biggest issue with a lot of legal subs is how many liberties they take. For example, in Kancolle there was a scene where two girls hugged and one of them said "you're hurting my arm." Except she didn't. She said "mune" which means chest. And she actually only said "My chest hurts". I listened to it as a play on words in Japanese, because spoiler[she was struggling with loss and was on the verge of tears.] By changing it to "arm" they completely destroyed that scene. This happens far more often than it should, I count at least twice per season. Even worse is this kinda crap makes it into official blurays/DVDs.

Regarding fansubs, you mentioned typesetting and my mind instantly went to one place: Kamen Rider.

I'll avoid naming specific sub groups because the ANN mods may not like it, but there's one group that's rather infamous for...well, a lot of things. If you've seen screencaps of subs with the words "kisama", "yatsu", and "-tachi" awkwardly shoved in the middle of English sentences, then you know who exactly I'm talking about. But the reason I bring them up is because part of the reason their subs take about a week (sometimes more) to get out is because they INSIST on adding all kinds of cute typesetting effects to the subs whenever a Rider transforms or uses a special attack. They'll actually go out of their way to render an effect that imitates the actual Rider transformation sequence, such as a magic circle sweeping across the text in their subs of Kamen Rider Wizard. It came off as kind of cool when I was younger, but now I just consider it a massive distraction. And that's not getting into the fact that they use different fonts for each different series they sub, which can get really weird during crossovers.

And then, of course, you look at the other big group that subs Kamen Rider: They just use a basic sans serif font, white text with a black outline, nothing fancier than italics used to occasionally show emphasis. Thanks to that, they get their episodes out in about one or two days. And they're willing to occasionally "tweak" a line of dialog if a direct translation would result in a sentence that doesn't sound right in English. As one might imagine, a lot of people jumped ship to this second group as soon as they appeared.

Regarding fansubs, you mentioned typesetting and my mind instantly went to one place: Kamen Rider.

I'll avoid naming specific sub groups because the ANN mods may not like it, but there's one group that's rather infamous for...well, a lot of things. If you've seen screencaps of subs with the words "kisama", "yatsu", and "-tachi" awkwardly shoved in the middle of English sentences, then you know who exactly I'm talking about. But the reason I bring them up is because part of the reason their subs take about a week (sometimes more) to get out is because they INSIST on adding all kinds of cute typesetting effects to the subs whenever a Rider transforms or uses a special attack.

OK, I do feel the need to defend myself here, because a certain degree of context was left out of the post. My major complaint isn't typesetting (though companies like Funimiation cannot complain about the technical limitations, since they hardsub), it's about basic knowledge of the English language.

I see your point about the grammar, especially on a disc release, but I think it is within acceptable margins for a simulcast. I subscribe to watch simulcast anime because of the speed of release and convenience. Because of that speed, they can't really have much time to proof read the script so I think you need to let it slide.

However, a lot of what you complain about is just different approaches to translation. Do you leave the XXX-onichan or XXX-senpai in there? Do you just pretend it was never there at all? Do you actually translate it? You're pretty much screwed either way.

In the first one you could argue that they could have put the subs under their respective lines, but that would clearly fall apart seconds later when the next lines show up without the space to keep doing that.