Forum - View topicAnswerman - Who Are Subtitles Written For?
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SilverTalon01
Posts: 2408 |
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I mean I guess they could do that, but it seems to me like that is something that should be translated. You are right that it isn't a normal way to put it so just saying something like mankind does lose a bit of meaning. Taking name suffixes off also takes away meaning and that is widely accepted so there is an amount of meaning that subtitles are allowed to lose in the process. Replacing it with a word that has no meaning because you literally just made it up also loses the meaning in the original context plus it adds in the problem Justin was talking about where the audience doesn't know what the hell it is. So doing it that way is lose/lose. |
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Tempest
 I Run this place.ANN Publisher  Posts: 10446 Location: Do not message me for support. |
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The problem with leaving Japanese words in, even really basic ones like sushi, is that so many Americans don't understand them. They think they've groked the meaning of a Japanese word because they've seen it used frequently in a certain context, but actually, they don't understand the proper meaning word, and leaving it in Japanese would be doing them a disservice. For example, an American might think that sushi is raw fish on rice, when in fact, it isn't. |
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Cam0
 Posts: 4913 |
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Aren't the "emnetwihts" just humans? I think I hear the Japanese word for human with some added extra thingy when they say it. I mean I don't speak Japanese, but I have watched enough anime to recognize some words. So when they say it I hear them talking about human-something and then it says "emnetwiht" in the subs which is a completely unknown word to me, though I do know what it kind of means now thanks to Gina's explanation in the review thread. Does anyone know if the Japanese word they use change the meaning so much that they couldn't have just translated it to "[insert cool fantasy-like word] humans/men"?
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jymmy
 Posts: 1244 |
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This really isn't accurate. Now nowadays, at least. You're either conflating "bad amateur subtitles" with "all amateur subtitles", or perhaps don't watch or only look at a couple of fansubbed releases a year, rather than being familiar with what they're actually like overall. The biggest fansub groups currently working generally avoid honorifics and any Japanese word not in common parlance, and aim for a much more natural, liberal translation style. Almost every non-ironic (like in Viewster's Ninja Slayer release, or an alternate joke subtitle track) translator's note I've seen in the last five years was in a professional release. Earlier this season I saw "Note: Buyers can sell back items during a "cooling-off" period." in Sentai's release of Kyoukai no Rinne season 3. That same release has "shinigami" untranslated. AnimeLab's release of Busou Shoujo Machiavellianism (which is the same as Anime Strike's as I understand it) has "senpai" as both a noun by itself and an honorific. While the dialogue style is not "literal" in any of these, that's the same in any amateur translation not written by incompetents. And although the quality baseline is generally a lot higher for professional releases (disasters like Funimation's simulcast release of Nourin aside), professional and amateur translations are both capable of dropping the ball. I wonder if the viewers of Koe no Katachi with no Japanese knowledge were better served by the subtitles mangling the tsuki/suki sequence with a nonsensical literal translation than by just putting (tsuki = moon) and (suki = like) in the subtitles. Of course, the better option still would have been to interpret it rather than translate it literally as they did: - "Love... y..." - "Lovely? Yes, the moon is lovely." And then some fansubs will do things like the translation of Naruto Asiko was watching. I do wonder when that episode was actually released, though. Illegal streaming sites nowadays just grab the first thing that's available, and for a long time now that would have been Crunchyroll's version. If I could find a copy of Naruto volume 1 released by Viz, incidentally, I'd see tajû kagebunshin no jutsu right there in Chapter 1. |
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Laethiel
 Posts: 42 |
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I'd have to go back and check the first time it comes up, but they probably actually said "emnetwiht" (エムネトワイト, emunetowaito) once in SukaSuka. That's what's given as a reading for 人間族 (ningen-zoku), basically "human tribe". Ningen-zoku isn't what you'd call humanity in our world, they're clearly using it to differentiate between humans like Willem and the other sentient races; the term ningen-zoku also shows up in other fantasy series with multiple sentient races. After that first time, they're always saying ningen-zoku rather than emnetwiht, but the subs translate it as emnetwiht.
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Sakagami Tomoyo
 Posts: 943 Location: Melbourne, VIC, Australia |
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This was pretty interesting, especially given it's about an exceptionally well-worn topic of conversation among the fandom. I hadn't really thought about just how much societal attitudes to watching TV and movies in general, not just anime, have changed over the last few decades.
To hell with that kind of elitist attitude. Every single one of us, no matter how hardcore now, was once a casual newcomer. Honestly, if the fandom does need anything, it's more casual viewers, because more casual viewers means more people who get curious and dig deeper.
Wrong. The industry's goal is to sell as many DVDs/Blu-rays/streaming subscriptions/whatever as possible. Presenting Japan and its pop culture as really interesting is a means to that end. And even if a specific goal is converting as many as possible into the hardcore market, making as many people as possible casual viewers is the best starting point.
Honestly, "delusional" is probably the least bad simple way to translate it; there is no really good way to get the meaning across without sounding pretty awkward. The trouble is that what chunibyou is is not universal knowledge, even amongst anime fans. This is where a case can be made for leaving it and providing a translator's note, but even that approach carries its own problems. |
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zrnzle500
 Posts: 3768 |
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This was already addressed in the episode review thread. The name comes from the author or at least is present in English on both the author's website and the anime's official site. They translated it with a made up word because that's how the author wanted it translated. Take it up with them not the translators. Last edited by zrnzle500 on Fri May 12, 2017 9:38 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11508 |
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I have not seen Sentai's release, but I'm pretty sure that was part of the episode itself since that sounds awfully familiar. KnR is always throwing up such notes, usually onscreen, read by the narrator to explain shinigami tools and other things like "cooling-off period" or even repeated plot points as if the viewers were 3rd graders (which they might well be). But it tends to be done in a rather sarcastic tone as a wink to older viewers. |
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EricJ2
 Posts: 4016 |
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I remember the early 90's, when culture-phobic translators had to make sure that even the honorifics were safely Westernized, back before we learned what the heck to do with them: Ayeka referred to Tenchi-sama as "Lord Tenchi" (on their first meeting, which got shouts of "...What??" from some of the unaccustomed girl viewers), and the girls of Magic Knight Rayearth referred to their friend Fuu-kun as "the Fuu-ster". Those were simpler times. 
We've gotten over the culture shock to know that the characters are in Japan and speaking Japanese, and not 100% English, so it doesn't have to be. If the Mexican border-town character in a Western starts slipping bits of Spanish into his broken English, we kind of assume he's going to, without requiring that he be perfectly translated either. |
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jymmy
Posts: 1244 |
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@Gina Szanboti
Nope, it just appeared for the duration of the line "I can use the cooling-off system, right?". The narrator didn't speak and there was no text for the line on screen. |
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nargun
Posts: 929 |
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... the map is not the territory. The wording used in japanese is a map of the intended meaning, not the actual-meaning-as-such. Abstract "platonic" meaning is primary, meaning-distilled-into-japanese is secondary. Copying from the japanese is adding another generation of loss and noise: as far as possible, we want to work not from the japanese text but from [what we can reconstruct of] the abstract meaning. The abstract meaning doesn't use honourifics, because it doesn't use anything in human language. The abstract meaning is framed in terms of social relationships and attitudes: the job of a writer -- a translator is a-fortiori a writer -- is to represent their desired abstract meaning in the language they're writing in. Sometimes languages work in your favour, sometimes they work against you. English has obligatory plural marking; japanese has obligatory evidentiality marking. In english you can trivially hide the gender of a narrator; in japanese you can't do that, but you can hide the gender of other characters, basically impossible in english. Honourifics let you establish social-status relations fairly easily in japanese, but there are ways of doing this in english that often work well enough for the purpose. [honourifics are actually fairly minor next to keigo and teineigo, but w'evs.] [/url] |
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Shadowrun20XX
 Posts: 1936 Location: Vegas |
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Unless its an info dump or an anime series like LOGH, you are going to hear the same diatribe over and over again. You watch enough subbed you will get into raw, then you get to really understand that subtitles are interpretations and most times vary on the knowledge of language by the translator. Subtitles can go many ways. Cunchyroll gets called out a lot, it goes with the territory of bringing series out quickly.
Last edited by Shadowrun20XX on Fri May 12, 2017 10:51 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Kadmos1
 Posts: 13589 Location: In Phoenix but has an 85308 ZIP |
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It depends on the suffixes and the setting. Say we had a European-type fantasy LN-based series with pseudo-European names. Going with what your post said, adding a Japanese honorific to the name would be similar to "a word that has no meaning because you literally just made it up". |
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SilverTalon01
Posts: 2408 |
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You guys are completely missing the point and getting sidetracked by mining my post for a single line tangential to the main topic I originally posted on and responded to Key about, but whatever. No, it isn't the same because honorifics do contain meaning, and they would not have been literally just made up by whoever decided to slap them on your European type fantasy series. If your European fantasy is say in German and uses a German word, but when making English subs for it, I subtitle that word as aeryahgarhe, that would be the same. That isn't a word, and I literally just made it up. A German audience will know what was said, but the English audience won't because I just made that up. If you add honorifics to said German work for Japanese subtitles, the Japanese audience will know what those honorifics mean because they were literally being used commonly before this work existed. It isn't even remotely close to the same thing.
If you thought I was in any way saying it wasn't minor, you should go reread what I actually said. I'll even go one step further and say that having them in the subs is needlessly redundant. If an honorific actually has meaning to an individual viewer, they will not lose that meaning because they can still hear it. If that individual has no idea how each honorific is used, having them in the subtitles isn't going to add anything useful. Also, for someone who went on a giant spiel about intent, are you actually going to disagree that if the intent was for the audience to immediately understand the word, but you switch to a made up word, that people will not immediately understand, that you are no longer in line with the original intent? |
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relyat08
 Posts: 4125 Location: Northern Virginia |
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Well, I guess this translation was forced by the author, so nothing can be done about that... but a translation that makes more sense to English speakers wouldn't be particularly hard to come across. The Japanese is literally just "ningen"(human) and "zoku" which is the second kanji from the word "kazoku" meaning family. So, if not for the authors stipulation, I imagine it'd be translated as something like "human family" or "human tribe". |
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