I concur, but replace "grain of salt" with "shoveling handfuls of coarse salt rocks into your gaping maw as fast as you can".

Indeed. Even the most respected fansubbers make mistakes constantly, here's an example that will hit a lot of people where it hurts:

Tell me one good fansubbing group. Most people will say Dattebayo since they are the main fansubbers for the two most popular currently airing animes, bleach and naruto. Are they good? Sure. Do they make mistakes? Tons of them. For example, listen to the current Ending song to Bleach and watch the karaoke they've written (the japanese one).

This is what they write: 一片の花びらが触れている
This is what is actually sung: ヒトヒラのハナビラが揺れている

As for the kanji -> katakana thing, that's understandable since it's the exact same... but the song is named ヒトヒラのハナビラ, so it should be written like that. Anyways, the point is the last word. For those who can't read those kanji yet, the first one is read "fureteiru". What they are singing is, "yureteiru".

Now, if you search for 一片の花びらが触れている on google, you'll get some hits... because as always, animelovers trust the fansubbers and put up the text on their blogs etc. Search for ヒトヒラのハナビラが揺れている and you'll find tons of japanese sites with the lyrics.

Ah that reminds me, I remember watching some Naruto episodes a while back[dattebayo subbed]...but one of them was by a different group.

It was shocking to see such crazy differences in the translation [and even just plain hearing the lyrics differently] between the two,

One reply about "Making Out in Japanese" was that the slang in the book helped his comprehension of drama and anime.

Slang is a tricky thing to learn. It doesn't take long for it to go in then out of style. You dig, you hip cat you? Granted, worrying about slang without having basics of Japanese down is akin to putting spoilers and rims on car that can't run.

I can't think of any examples at the moment, but I was finding mistakes in fansubbing 6 months ago... Long before I had -any- proficiency in the language. It made me realize 1 thing very quickly: Don't trust the subtitles.

Of course, this is true for professional commercial subs, too. They often change them to sound better to them and lose the real meaning... Sometimes changing the whole tone of the movie or even the plot.

It's actually one of the things that motivated me to get serious about learning Japanese.

wccrawford Wrote:Of course, this is true for professional commercial subs, too.

I watched a film (Appleseed (2004)) a while back where the subtitles were quite far off from what the dialogue said. After it was finished, I switched over to the dub to see if the subtitles were taken from them. Turned out that, from the small bit I watched, the dub was actually closer to the original than the subtitles.

But I can't watch anything in Japanese without complaining about subtitles (maybe I just haven't found something with good subtitles).

Most commercial animes don't really translate for the subs specifically... they make dubs and then they write the subs from the dubs. Not a good idea since it's much harder to sync dubs than subs, so their subs could be much better if they spent equal time on it.

Tobberoth Wrote:Most commercial animes don't really translate for the subs specifically... they make dubs and then they write the subs from the dubs. Not a good idea since it's much harder to sync dubs than subs, so their subs could be much better if they spent equal time on it.

Yeah, I wasn't clear on my point: Subs aren't good for learning Japanese because they are often different than what's really being said. There are many reasons for the differences: Laziness, greed, dubs... But it all ends up the same.

ok 1. keep away from subs check

2. ???

Nah, I say use subs... No reason to ruin your anime watching etc just because subs aren't perfect translations. Just don't use subs as study material.

yeah i think i'll just continue to watch naruto wit subs but i'll watch gintama without it since there is like 100+ episodes that aren't subbed yet i think 0_0.

My reason for not using subs is to actualy learn something while listening anime - not because subs are bad.

I'm not forbidding you to watch anime without subs, but don't count it as study time, because it is simply not.

Even now, despite being able to watch movies etc unsubbed, if subs are there I end up reading them automatically and not paying attention to the speech.

Jarvik7 Wrote:Even now, despite being able to watch movies etc unsubbed, if subs are there I end up reading them automatically and not paying attention to the speech.

Quoted for emphasis. Even if I perfectly understand the dialog, my eyes will still slowly start drifting towards the subtitles, giving more attention to the written words rather than the spoken.

For the same reason, I stopped using Rikaichan - it simply becomes too much of a crutch.

The same is true with ふりがな. I hate having furigana in manga I read, even if I understand the kanji fine, even if I know the word by heart, I will automatically read the furigana unless I activly force myself constantly to read the kanji first. Thank god that furigana is rarely used in novels.

I think it's human nature. If I'm watching something in English and captions are on, I read the captions even though I understand it perfectly anyway. And strangely, if I'm watching something in English and there are subs in the bottom in a language I don't understand, I still read the subs. I can't help it.

mentat_kgs Wrote:My reason for not using subs is to actualy learn something while listening anime - not because subs are bad.

I'm not forbidding you to watch anime without subs, but don't count it as study time, because it is simply not.

I totally agree with this, especially after today. Allow me to explain.

Today, all day, I hung out with my Japanese friend and watched Japanese movies. There were English subtitles, but I insisted on not having them. At the beginning, I understood nothing. But we would constantly pause, and he would explain what was going on and what the words I was hearing were in Japanese. We did this for hours, no English. By the end of it all, I was understanding a lot. Both what he was saying (nearly 90% of what he said) and like, 70% of the movie.

Yeah, it was awesome.

man your story is the kind of story that should be told more often can't wait for that to be me (^_^) ok no subs it is

gintama here i come