Forum - View topicINTEREST: Japanese Fans, Official Translator Weigh in on Netflix Evangelion English Subtitle Debate
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Wtv
Posts: 157 |
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I honestly believe no one is in the wrong here. The translator translated literally. People wanted him to adapt. But how much can he adapt? If you change all sentences to the American meaning, people will complain, right? Where is the line here? It might be easy for an English speaking translator but very complex for a Japanese translator.
Suki is like. Daisuki is love. Suki can be romantic. Daisuki can be romantic. Love can be romantic. Like is rarely romantic. I feel like the biggest mistake here was made when they asked for a Japanese person to translate it. I might be somewhat confident in my English even though I'm not native, but my first language is also of European origin. For a Japanese person, all rule change, no matter how good in the language he is. |
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Lord Geo
Posts: 2695 Location: North Brunswick, New Jersey |
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So, going off of that tweet, ADV originally used "like" & made things more vague, only to later re-translate it as "love". Personally, that sounds like ADV simply took advantage of what fans were already interpreting Kaworu's message, & decided to use a more direct word, so as to play more towards fans who wanted to believe it was more than "just being friends".... Or maybe not, as I'm editing this post to point out that, apparently, ADV changed the "like" to "love all the way back on the original DVD singles, making this all the more confusing. At the same time, though, it's also pointed out in that Twitter thread that "In other words, I love you." is a blatant reference to "Fly Me to the Moon", which could also make it very possible that somebody at ADV could have simply thought they were being funny by changing the line into a silly referential joke... Only to then validate an entire group of young anime fans who would realize that they were LGBT+. Honestly, I could easily see ADV do something like that, accidentally (but in a good way). Regardless, I do agree with what Anno seems to have indicated, which is that he purposefully meant for it to be up to personal interpretation, hence why he used "suki", & the "koi" kanji used wasn't the one meant to direct "love", but rather a more subtle meaning (i.e. "koui). Could Kanemitsu have kept it as "love"? Sure, & I understand why people got annoyed by the change, but him changing it (back) to the more interpretive translation shouldn't be taken as "removing" any message that people may have taken from it. If you always felt that it was "love", & it helped in you figuring out something about yourself, then continue feeling that way. Last edited by Lord Geo on Thu Jun 27, 2019 2:07 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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gacha
Posts: 74 |
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The last part of the article is so weird and unnecessary. I don't believe a report like this needs a univocal personal thoughts of a reporter, especially since it's not like Kim is a famous translator. You can't just randomly be an "expert" and a "reporter" in the same article.
Especially since this way she is indirectly supporting the endless stream of harassers who are trying to make Dan's life miserable without a decent reason. Last edited by gacha on Thu Jun 27, 2019 1:46 pm; edited 3 times in total |
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ANN_Lynzee
ANN Executive Editor
 Posts: 3051 Location: Email for assistance only |
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Kim is a published J-E translator, including having translated Mari Okada's biography. You can, in fact, be good at more than one thing at the same time. Publications often seek out reporters with backgrounds in different specialty topics, like finance, sports, etc. |
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gacha
Posts: 74 |
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ANN_Lynzee
ANN Executive Editor
Posts: 3051 Location: Email for assistance only |
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I understand your opinion of it seeming out of place, but I want to point out that Kim is more than qualified, which seems to be the main basis of your point. If we put aside the book for JNC, you can see that she has a huge published body of translation work. Here at ANN. The article attached to this forum section was translated by her and she translates Japanese sources (including very complex ones on industry news) for Anime News Network five days a week. She writes reviews for us after viewing films in original Japanese and conducts interviews with Japanese staff and creators. It's much more rare for Kim to report on sources that were originally in English than in Japanese and it would be irresponsible for us to hire her to do that work if her translation abilities were not optimal.
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gacha
Posts: 74 |
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olgita
Posts: 156 |
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Fun fact: The Polish version translated this semi-correctly - Kaworu said in this scene "Inaczej miłością" which can be translated as "It means love" or even "aka love"(not literally but in similar context). And in the scene when Shinji was talking with Misato by the lake he said "Kaworu powiedział, że mnie kocha" which means "Kaworu said that he loves me". Does it mean that only English version was poorly translated?
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Animehermit
 Posts: 964 Location: The Argama |
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I will say that while this particular debate has lead to some good discussion on the nuances of translated one language into another, i have doubts that some of the people truly outraged at Netflix for this localization are acting in good faith.
I understand being upset, but now some of these people have moved on to digging through twitter post history and the subtitle scripts looking for things to be upset about. Its gotten to the point where fanart from strike witches on the dude's twitter page is being used as evidence to paint the dude as an alt-right pedophile. Translating things is hard, nuanced work, and its even harder when the source material is Evangelion and it's littered with double meanings. |
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Kougeru
 Posts: 5600 |
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As others have stated, Japanese people generally confess using "suki", and so in the context of show (bathing together, joking about sexual things IIRC, touching in other in ways straight men would never do even in a public path), "love" makes far more sense to most people.
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uguu
Posts: 220 |
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I wouldn't care about any of this (feel free to criticize translations) if people weren't trying to destroy Dan Kanemitsu's life and literally label him as a nazi pedophile, and getting dozens of thousands of Twitter favorites for it.
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AmpersandsUnited
Posts: 633 |
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Some people are overlooking that "love" does not have to mean romantic love. You can love someone as a friend, or as a family member. A platonic feeling of endearment with no romantic meaning. I suspect they chose the like definition precisely because certain fans would interpret it as definitively romantic if they used the word love, which does seem to be the main driving force behind Dan Kanemitsu's harassment campaign, which has now escalated to him being labeled a Nazi and a pedophile by Shinji x Kaworu fans.
If you watch anime subbed you'll find 'daisuki' comes up quite a lot. I can think of a number of times off the top of my head when it was used purely platonically, such as in Yu-Gi-Oh! where Yugi says it Jounouchi right before he sacrifices himself. Or in Naruto where Kakashi says it to his students in a similar scene. It totally fine to translate it as "love", but "love" does not automatically mean romantic or sexual desires. In the context of the scene, Shinji is being told someone cares about his existence and well being for the first time in his life. Considering his his family and upbringing, that's important. |
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GATSU
Posts: 15604 |
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It's a bit of a dilemma, because if they're 'gay', are you provoking a negative backlash against the LGBT community with that 'ending', or would Kaoru be considered more of a martyr for the cause? OTOH, dumbing it down the way they did sounds like a form of denial which would foster more unhealthy reactions to said community. So yes, hate happens, and Gendo sounds like he was harder on that 'angel' than the rest. Should do a poll/video where randoms and fans alike are asked how they feel about the change.
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John Thacker
Posts: 1009 |
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"Like" can be, and often is romantic for native English speakers, especially in middle school ranges. The controversy with this word is overblown. All the words mentioned can be interpreted as either romantic or not; there's some slight difference in the intensity, but as noted that has to be weighed against differences in cultural norms that make it impossible to have a single "right" translation. There is absolutely no way to definitively answer the question of "in a situation where Japanese cultural norms would be somewhat more diffident and indirect, do you reword dialog to be more brash and American or keep the original vibe." The answer may be different for a stereotypically very British audience than an American one. That applies to all sorts of translation issues, not just this one, but here it's a choice between two ambiguous words in English as well. That's way simpler than deciding, e.g., how to translate omosiroi. |
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Covnam
 Posts: 3848 |
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Very interesting to see those comments from Nijimen and get insight to how native speakers interpret it for english.
Hmm, I feel like this was brought up recently elsewhere, but can't quite recall where or the context... Regardless, I still find it to be quite an interesting concept.
Agreed. |
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