Forum - View topicAnswerman - How Do Franchises Keep English Translations Straight?
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7PhoenixAshes
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I still want to know what the heck happened with the names in Attack on Titan. The manga was out in English for a while before the anime aired, and when it did, Crunchyroll used all the manga spellings in the subtitles. And then, for some bizarre reason, Funimation changed almost every name.
Was it lack of licensor oversight (despite the size of the franchise and the amount of money involved)? Some copyright issue? Does anyone know? |
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Polycell
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One case where this didn't happen is Madoka Magica: what was "labyrinth" in the AOA's anime translation somehow became wards in Yen's manga translations. I don't recall too many glaring mistakes, but changing up a major plot point sticks out like Walpurgisnacht.
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JDude042
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What's that? Pikachu is not allowed to be shown not smiling?! Oh ho ho! That can be changed my friend, with the wonders of Photoshop! Screw you censorship!
![]() ![]() Last edited by JDude042 on Wed Sep 14, 2016 4:52 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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gravediggernalk
![]() ![]() Posts: 246 Location: Alabama |
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Spellings are my biggest peeves. For example: I don't mind if Ryūko is spelled Ryuko or Ryuuko (that's a lie, I'd prefer Ryuko), but I want it to be consistent throughout all releases. I personally believe that Viz should swap to Funimation's style-guides when reprinting One Piece and Dragon Ball. I don't mind the differences themselves, I mind the fact that there's a difference to begin with.
Also, I'd like it if each voice actor would pronounce names the same. I'm not even talking about across different dubs, I'm talking about in one, single dub. I've spent years listening to two characters talk about a third character and the two of them are saying the names differently. I don't know how that happens, but it's sorta annoying. |
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Spawn29
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I don't like when names are completely change from Japanese to English like in DBZ. I always think Special Beam Cannon and Destructo Disc are pretty stupid names. Not to mention they spell Freeza as Frieza, Broli as Broly, Kuririn as Krillin, Tein as Tenshinhan and Mr. Satan as Hercule.
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JDude042
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I always thought that was a weird one. The names spelt slightly different in the dub and the subtitle translations for the Japanese version. Dub - Sub Chaotzu - Chaozu Yamcha - Yamucha Tien - Tenshinhan Krillin - Kuririn Recoome - Recoom Frieza - Freeza Cooler - Coola Majin Buu - Majin Boo Vegito - Vegetto |
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ParaChomp
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Pikachu merchandise must smile? Then what is this?
![]() source |
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BadNewsBlues
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Them kissing in "A New Hope" was awkward enough in retrospect.
The name changes of DragonBall aren't that bad it's only the ones like Hercule, Android, Tao Pai Pai that are the more egregious since they're in effect changing the names completely to some different (and weird). |
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MoonPhase1
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They used Mr. Satan in the uncut version sometimes. The Edited version though never used Mr. Satan. |
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Just Passing Through
Posts: 277 |
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Copyright and trademark can force changes midstream, such as Beck becoming Mongolian Chop Squad.
Things that bug me are obvious mispelt and mispronounced English words that the licensors insist on retaining through the localisation. Heat Guy J took place in the City, and the Wilderness outside was called Siberbia. I mean, it's obviously Suburbia, but the sub and dub calls it Siberbia. Although I'd watched Ah My Goddess several times before I learned that Belldandy was actually meant to be Verdandi, so I let that pass. There was Sentai's subtitle translation of K-On!!, where Yui is trying to understand Ritsu's lack of creative enthusiasm. The original Japanese uses English words, spike, strike and slump, but the subtitles read gut, mutt and rut. |
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leafy sea dragon
![]() Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
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There's also the Pikachu from the Oops! line. Considering Tomokazu Komiya designed these plushes, they probably break a lot of the franchise bible rules. ![]() Any amount of searching for Pikachu plushes will eventually bring you to the line where he's dressed up as another Pokémon, or in a sleeping bag themed on another Pokémon. But the Oops! plushes are way funnier.
American Satoshi Is Hardcore.
It happens when the original language is English too. I remember hearing Mugambe's name in Dead Island pronounced however the actors feel like. That being said, I do notice a lot of unconsistency in Japanese dubs of English-language shows too. Different actors have different attempts to keep the original pronunciation of the name. You have one character calling Milhouse as "Milhouse," and you have another calling him "Miruhausu." |
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Stuart Smith
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In my experience the long running marketing shows have the most inconsistancies. Pokemon, Digimon, and Yu-Gi-Oh all have tons of incorrect and inconsistant names across all types of media like anime, cards, video games, and manga. Part of the problem is those series generally change everything to be more Americanized rather than
keep it like the original. So it leads to the anime and games having different names for characters since the game localizers might not know the anime already changed a character's name. In Detective Conan's case, Haibara has two different names depending if you're watching the dub or American manga. -Stuart Smith |
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Spawn29
Posts: 553 |
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I also hate it when Oozaru is named "Great Ape" in the US. Apes don't have tails, Funimation should have kept it as Oozaru. It would have work since it can be consider to be a alien name. |
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NearEasternerJ1
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But Oozaru DOES/CAN mean great ape. Japanese doesn't distinguish between monkeys and apes. Large Monkey/Giant Monkey/Huge Ape/Large Ape/Great Monkey are all acceptable translations. |
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Jake Jung
Posts: 23 Location: Japan |
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For the anime I've translated, the policy is generally to drop the long vowels in names. I think the idea behind that is that names with long vowels (e.g. Ryuuko) often don't look very nice, and serious fans with a keen ear for Japanese should able to pick out the long vowel anyway. An interesting but rare case is when you have two characters whose names are the same save for a long vowel. For example, if you have "Toma" and "Tōma," you'd want to use "Touma" for the latter to avoid any confusion. I agree the most important thing is staying consistent.
As someone who's done a lot of video game translation, I can tell you that a large-scale RPG may have up to six translators working on it. Usually there will be shared glossaries and an ongoing group chat, but in the end it really falls on the editor to clean everything up. In this regard, keeping an anime translation consistent is generally a lot easier, as only one translator will be handling the entire series. The exception, of course, are the long-running franchises discussed here.
That's an interesting tidbit. In my (still somewhat limited) experience translating anime, it's now common practice to get the translations of the credits approved by the licensor. So hopefully they take the opportunity to check that the character names have been rendered in English as the creator(s) intended. In the one case where the licensor changed my rendering of a name, it was actually changing an "r" to an "l."
I can't speak for what the creator intended with DBZ, but it's definitely true that names should not necessarily be directly transliterated. To take an example, in Berserk グリフィス should obviously be "Griffith" and not "Gurifisu." (This applies more to your objection of "Broly" etc. than the complete change of "Mr. Satan," of course.) |
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