Forum - View topicThis Week in Anime - What is the Anime Localization Controversy?
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Turtleboy76
Posts: 161 |
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It has been getting a little painful over the years.
A lot of bias and politics and personal opinions being added to translations. Even when you call them out on Twitter or other platforms, they hold a mightier than thou opinion that their work is correct even when it is objectively wrong. Granted there have been time when translators are super loyal and pursuits and i have seen even ANN editors complain at them too. There just doesnt seem to be any winning with the amount that is getting translated these days. A bulk is better than some of the cringy fansubs of the mid to late 2000s, but a lot of those had heart and still are a more ideal way to consume certain franchises, even to this day. |
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Glordit
 Posts: 643 |
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I laugh at people who complain about how something is seemly badly translated, when they don't understand what's being said in the first place.
They forget what translation isn't just words, its also meaning. |
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Cardcaptor Takato
 Posts: 5161 |
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Y'all only keep bringing up the same five shows from half a decade ago. |
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TsukasaElkKite
 Posts: 4014 |
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I like it when a translation sounds natural.
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kgw
 Posts: 1178 Location: Spain, EU |
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I just want to add that the chief editor of Shueisha's Manga Plus said in a piece last year that translation was expensive* and that they were expecting to AI to get better in order to "reduce costs" an add more languages, maybe.
It's bad enough when overseas companies think AI can solve anything. But it's even worse when in Japan some people thinks "Hey, translation is easy!". * So far they offer series in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese (Brazil), Thai, Bahasa (Indonesian), Vietnamese and Russian Disclaimer: (former) anime translator. Last edited by kgw on Thu Jan 18, 2024 7:24 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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samuelp
Industry Insider
Posts: 2246 Location: San Antonio, USA |
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I would like to comment that when it comes to digital releases, translation costs are indeed more expensive than licensing costs (at least up front).
This is true for manga (at least if you pay people more than slave wages) and doubly true for novels. Many language releases are simply not profitable when done by professional human translators translating from Japanese, due to simple demographics. Which is why pivot translations have been a thing for some languages for forever. Whether AI will be used to _expand_ the audience for content or just for a short-sighted way to cut costs is to be determined... |
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Turtleboy76
Posts: 161 |
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Im not even bringing up the low hanging fruit options like that god awful dragonmaid scene or even the Big Bwudda one from Higurashi, its still an on-going thing. Hell like last year they real translated all of Persona 4 and it was an inferior translation by comparison to 2008. I understand the social constructs of language and certain lines and dialogue needs to be altered for flow or even joke constructions, but it gets to a point when some translators are taking the piss at the bare minimum and are trying to push an agenda at the most extreme. |
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Moses34
Posts: 8 |
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Dusting off my account for this...
This conversation is so tiresome, especially to anyone that has been in the animesphere since the early 00s or even well before that, in the era of hard to get VHS bootlegs with crappy subs. Everyone has their preferences and I feel most people would be happy with shows being as accurate as possible to the original writing, with some liberties taken for slangs and dialects (like when TLing kansaiben), and I think most people would be upset to see a show have subs that are way off, INCLUDING an extremely literal stilted translation. At the same time, I think both sides (not this article thankfully) tend to be dishonest about this conversation, probably out of fear of showing one bad example. When the subject is "Western politics forced into anime", it's always those same few shows from the same few people. That's not a localizing problem, that's a studio/staff problem. But they would rather wage war on everybody else than admit it. Similarly, there's times where localizers DID go too far, and someone will post a horrendous machine translation of a line or scene and say "this is what was said!" at which point everybody will point and laugh and say the machine translation is bad, ergo, literal translations are bad. Yeah? Of course? That's where the human writers come in, and shouldn't be an excuse to rewrite and remove the meaning. Thing is, that isn't really a problem in anime or manga. Anyone that has spent decades in this hobby, even with minor studies in the Japanese language can attest that most of it is very faithful to the authorial intent. Videogames on the other hand, have been getting shafted for ages, but that's a completely different issue because the people localizing videogames come from a different background, mindset, and ruleset than the ones localizing anime. That said, I hate AI, and feel bad for people who are so severely misinformed they think it could be a substitute for any of the work above. Yes, it cuts costs. Yes, it gives more profits. Yes, companies would love to not have to pay anyone but themselves. All of this is obvious and not indicative of the translation quality. And yet, if a company really wants to translate most of their catalog, I don't think they could find enough translators to do so, unless the current worker pool is overworked more than they already are. Maybe I'm just too negative, but I truly feel sad that the idea of machine-translations being so widespread may discourage people from becoming translators or just studying the language. And yes, most of the people complaining don't know anything about the language they supposedly defend. C'est la vie. P.S. Great choice of examples for this article, as always. |
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Great Rumbler
 Posts: 334 Location: Oklahoma |
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This argument reminded me that I used to watch HK import DVDs with English subs quite a bit back in the day. Man, the translations on a lot of those were so incredibly bad; obviously used some kind of machine translation system, or had some unpaid intern going through the script with a Cantonese-to-English dictionary. Kinda feel nostalgic for that awkward weirdness these days, though not enough that I'd want to see it make a return.
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sirdano1
Posts: 303 |
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I'd still rather not have memes inserted into translations, thanks.
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harminia
 Posts: 2045 Location: australia |
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Yeah, I've seen bad official translations. I've seen some questionable choices. I've also seen bad (really bad) fansubs and fansubs where they changed characters names to (I think) Final Fantasy names just for funsies or something.
Both sides have their problems but neither side's issues are as bad as what would come from AI translations... People also seem to forget many translators these days came from fansub origins. So whatever bias or political agenda they supposedly have now they would've had back then. No one is free from "sin" I'm split on overly localised translations. On the one hand, some of the Fire Emblem game translations are way too far, but on the other hand the localisation of Strawberry Marshmallow manga was hilarious for young me so... |
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FinalVentCard
ANN Reviewer
 Posts: 635 |
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I have a unique position in this whole ordeal because I'm actually bilingual. Not JPN/ENG, but ENG/SPA. And lemme tell you, that's already one heck of a thing; Spanish is nowhere near as different from English as Japanese is, but the differences are already staggering when it comes to syntax. And that's before you get into stuff like idioms; I'm infamous for having a peculiar turn of phrase among my coworkers because as it turns out, the phrases "talking out of their elbows" (which means to be talking too much) doesn't exist in English. There are countless phrases I grew up hearing in Puerto Rico that don't translate at all into English. "A mí me caen los chinches", "halblar en arroz y abichuelas", "hablas cuando las gallinas méan"... put those through a machine translater, have a blast with that. I'll wait.
And that's kinda the thing. A lot of the would-be know-it-alls complaining about translations don't speak other languages. They're not bilingual, nowhere near it. They're all depending on machine translations as proof that "the localizers did an evil". It's all a bad-faith argument that's only being used as fuel for a culture war. "I want translations to sound neutral!", get outta here with that. You're not fooling anyone with that anymore than you did when folks claimed "it's about ethics in gaming journalism!". It's trying to shout reason to a brick wall doing nothing but repeating canned phrases from outrage peddlers, who don't know anything and care nothing for the realities of it all outside of "gaining validity" in the public eye and will quickly move onto some other Public Enemy #1 to ride on once this horse keels over (while still blaming the same three people). Llora ante los ojos de Dios.
Considering how language works and how memes that get big enough simply enter day-to-day parlance... you're gonna have to deal with it. Folks were using "feels" outside of the internet since at least 2013, folks say "Oh emm gee!" IRL... if you don't want memes in translations, keep them out of dialogue. And with people at large peppering memes into their dialogue to begin with... |
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ANN_Lynzee
ANN Executive Editor
 Posts: 3028 Location: Email for assistance only |
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Freelancers, maybe. I doubt anyone from our news team or myself has "complained at" any official translators for a word choice.
That was changed back, thank god. |
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fathomlessblue
 Posts: 384 Location: Manchester, UK |
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Obviously this is bad-faith whining, but I did get a good laugh that your rebuttal to being told that interpreting language requires nuance & understanding intent was to completely remove nuance & intent to make it sound like you're a literal victim in the making. I mean it won't fool anyone, but I at least have a better idea as to why you prefer the company of machines. |
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Utsuro no Hako
Posts: 1052 |
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What do you do with Steins;Gate where the original dialogue is full of references to 2chan memes? |
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