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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?

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.

Last edited by JDude042 on Wed Sep 14, 2016 4:52 pm; edited 1 time in total

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! Twisted Evil

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.

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.

Spawn29 wrote:

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.

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

Pikachu merchandise must smile? Then what is this?

source

Sakurazuka_Reika wrote:

A similar method is used when it comes to such franchises with multiple spin offs (for example a multi-film franchise with books on minor characters). In the script-writing world I believe such a document is called a "Bible".

Funny story with Star Wars - back when it was at its peak, "Bibles" were not so common-place, which led to some...questionable events in some of the old Star Wars books. The biggest was when Luke spoiler[slept with Leia] in one such book. This happened before it was revealed in the films that spoiler[she was his sister].

Them kissing in "A New Hope" was awkward enough in retrospect.

Spawn29 wrote:

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.

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).

Spawn29 wrote:

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.

They used Mr. Satan in the uncut version sometimes. The Edited version though never used Mr. Satan.

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.

explosionforgov wrote:

ParkerALx wrote:

Well... at least there was a method in 4Kid's madness! Laughing

Thanks for another informative article, Justin. That line about Pikachu not being allowed to frown sounds about right. If corporations were ever to take over the world, I'm sure none of us would be allowed ever stop smiling! It would be just like the Doctor Who serial "The Happiness Patrol." Only with less candy.

It's a little harder to find official merch of Pikachu frowning, posing in a battle stance, wearing a costume, or a female Pikachu, but they do exist. I have a figure of Pikachu frowning and standing on all fours, but it did take me years to find one.

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.

JDude042 wrote:

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! Twisted Evil

American Satoshi Is Hardcore.

gravediggernalk wrote:

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.

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."

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

BadNewsBlues wrote:

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).

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.

Spawn29 wrote:

BadNewsBlues wrote:

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).

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.

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.

gravediggernalk wrote:

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.

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.

Brand wrote:

Some companies can't get it together at all. I remember my friend playing Oppona on the Wii. It is pretty obvious that at least more than one person worked on the translation (at least a few in all likelyhood). And it seems like they didn't to much editing to the script once they put it together. Because even within the game there is a lot of discrepancies on what things are named or called.

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.

John Thacker wrote:

Another one I can think of is Gunsmith Cats, where the main character is definitely called "Larry Vincent." People thought that was obviously a mistake and used "Rally" for the name, but Keiichi Sonoda has indicated that "Larry" was certainly intended, and was a pseudonym adopted to hide her gender.

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."

Spawn29 wrote:

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.

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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