I don't know what anime that was from, but I've seen equivalents in actual subs.

It's from Death Note, and according to that page the spoof sub was created specifically in order to make fun of those subs you mention. I don't remember seeing anything quite as bad as that in English subs, but many Russian subs I've seen were about as crappy. Since pretty much all of them are translated from English there are two layers of potential loss in translation, and sometimes you find untranslated or semi-translated terms from both Japanese and English in the same sentence.

While those pictures are pretty funny, what do you expect from these people? It's non-professional japan culture nerds who know a little japanese voluntarily translating stuff for other japan culture nerds who know even less. It strikes me as naive/pointless to get annoyed that volunteers aren't subbing your anime accurately enough. The crowd that are into watching subbed anime know the words like, san, kawaii, oishii etc anyway. It's no big deal. It's not like "hey get kimi no te off my oppai bakayarou! or I'll hirateuchi you in the kao." If the subbers were really going that overboard then it would be the people who actually need the subs complaining about it, not the people who know enough Japanese to realize the inaccuracies and probably don't need subs anyway.

My proficiency in the Japanese language is non-existent (only just hit 300 kanji characters), so my view probably doesn't count for much, but I thought I'd weigh in, as somebody that frequently watches fansubs/reads scanlations.

Jarvik mentioned fan groups leaving words like "chikara" or "kawaii" untranslated, and that being a sign of weaboo-ism (is that even a word?) and laziness. And I totally agree. There is no point in leaving random little words untranslated, even if you assume that most readers will be able to understand them. It defeats the whole purpose of translating the damn thing.

On the other hand, I figure that certain words and honorifics SHOULD be left in, depending on the context. You can certainly translate "X-san" into "Mr X", and it would probably be the natural choice if, say, it were a first time meeting between two businessmen or some other highly formal occasion.

But how many teenagers do YOU know that would call their classmates "Mr Y" when they meet for the first time? Even if they weren't very familiar with the other party, it's still more likely for them to call them "Jack" or "Bob" or whatever their first name was. Tacking on "Mr" or "Ms" to the dialogue would just seem odd to Western audiences. I guess you could drop the honorific entirely, but then some of the meaning would kinda be lost in translation, too.

Likewise for "senpai". Which I believe means "senior"? You can literally translate that too, but again, how many English-speaking kids these days call their fellow schoolmates "senior", even if they were a few years apart? As with the previous case, it sounds odd. And if you drop the word, how would the viewers know that character X is the senior of character Y? I guess you could drop a line somewhere about "X being in the 3rd grade/Y being in the 2nd grade", but it'd still seem a bit awkward ...

"Why hello there, Mr Jack! You happen to be in the 3rd grade, while I'm in the 2nd! THAT MAKES YOU MY SENIOR! I'm not sure why I just shouted that! Let's go hunt the demon king!"

Edit: Also, that little translation parody comic Betelgeuzah posted a page back was frigging hilarious. Seriously, if all liberal translations/localizations were like that, I'd never touch a "weaboo" translation ever again.

In anime translation(professional ones). They actually pretty much switch everything to English. I noticed only names/places where kept or any words that can't be translated into are kept. Other than that, it's pretty much in full English with a little taste of Japanese in there. No "san" or "sama" or "chan" honorifics in the translations.

@Onelove_yo, I've actually watched TV where translators added cultural notes into the subtitles. It was great because people who didn't know about the culture at all were able to understand what the "senior/junior" terms meant, as well as lots of other things. I agree about things outside of honorifics/places though. Most words should be translated :-).

And when I say lazy viewers, I mean people who are so closed minded that they aren't willing to ask questions about another person's culture or can't handle learning a couple words like "san" and "chan" and hate the movie/show because of that. To me that is just depressing.

I gotta say though, I'm with IceCream on this one. I enjoy randomly learning bits of culture from watching TV/movies. I didn't know anything about Korean (or even Korea!) when I started watching Korean TV shows, and it was no problem for me to pick up what the various honorifics meant. When I started watching anime I also knew no Japanese and I was able to figure it out. I think as long as they don't overload the viewer with new terms (and/or they add in a short explanation) it is truer to the source material and also makes it seem more "Japanese" or "Korean" or "Indian." If you are watching a foreign film, does everything need to be "Americanized?"

@Aetheus, I totally agree about the "senior" part. Same goes for saying "brother, older-sister, etc." which is common in Asian cultures (including India). It would sound bizarre if they translated it as "Brother, let's go do this" etc.

Granted, they could just leave all of that out, but I think the translation loses a lot of its meaning. There are pros and cons to each solution.

jishera Wrote:I enjoy randomly learning bits of culture from watching TV/movies. I didn't know anything about Korean (or even Korea!) when I started watching Korean TV shows, and it was no problem for me to pick up what the various honorifics meant. When I started watching anime I also knew no Japanese and I was able to figure it out. I think as long as they don't overload the viewer with new terms (and/or they add in a short explanation) it is truer to the source material and also makes it seem more "Japanese" or "Korean" or "Indian." If you are watching a foreign film, does everything need to be "Americanized?"

I have to agree with this. When I first started watching anime, honorifics, and culture notes were really interesting to me. After watching a few, I looked up what all the major honorifics meant, and that, among other things, sparked my interest in learning Japanese. I was pretty surprised when I saw some professional dubs leave in "chan" and "senpai" though...That struck me as sort of odd, but hey, if the fans like it, it doesn't really matter to me. After I learned more Japanese (but not enough to stop watching subs yet), whether a sub kept honorifics or not ceased to matter as much. As for cultural terms in other languages, I also like to learn things about other cultures when reading books or watching movies about other countries, and if a term is not translated, you can be sure I'll look it up on Wikipedia or somewhere afterwards. XD

If you've ever actually done Japanese to English translation, you'll realize the bit that takes the longest is converting everything to decent sounding English while still accurately getting the meaning across. It takes time. These subs are for done by volunteers, they don't necessarily have the time or skill to translate things decently, I imagine they just go through each episode in one pass, pausing after each line and quickly translating it to the best of their abilities. They may not have a high enough level of Japanese to understand the original meaning in it's entirety or English may be their second language. If you're enjoying a service (bucket loads for translated anime) for free you pretty much forfeit any right to bitch about its quality. You want professional subs, then pay for your anime or make them yourself. I agree with much of what's been said in the thread but seriously professionalism costs money.

Aetheus Wrote:On the other hand, I figure that certain words and honorifics SHOULD be left in, depending on the context. You can certainly translate "X-san" into "Mr X", and it would probably be the natural choice if, say, it were a first time meeting between two businessmen or some other highly formal occasion.

But how many teenagers do YOU know that would call their classmates "Mr Y" when they meet for the first time? Even if they weren't very familiar with the other party, it's still more likely for them to call them "Jack" or "Bob" or whatever their first name was. Tacking on "Mr" or "Ms" to the dialogue would just seem odd to Western audiences. I guess you could drop the honorific entirely, but then some of the meaning would kinda be lost in translation, too.

You seem to be missing the point. You're painting a picture of a translator who mindlessly applies a one-size-fits-all translation to everything: X-san -> Mr. X, senpai -> senior. You're right that that would be worse (especially in the case of "senior" which would be unnatural as all hell). But that's just another manifestation of the laziness that Jarvik is talking about. Making a good translation means showing more finesse than that.

If someone is talking directly to someone and addressing them as X-san, that should be replaced with "you." If they're talking about a third person with Jack-san, it should just be Jack. "Senpai" should likewise generally be replaced by a name or "you." Can you honestly think of a situation where the "senpai" means of address is so important to the dialog that that distinction needs to remain in the translation?

@JimmySeal,

While I agree that translating honorifics as "You" etc would still keep the general meaning, and it's not a gigantic difference from the original source, I think having those honorific terms in there show subtleties that can help the viewer understand relationships better. Personally, I really appreciate them, especially if I don't catch them in the audio. But I understand how others find them distracting or not necessary. They definitely aren't necessary. Doing amazing translations sounds like a difficult balancing act :-).

@JimmySeal

Admittedly, not a whole lot would be lost by dropping honorifics entirely. Still, something WOULD be lost.

For instance, if X were Jack's senior at his job (does "senpai" still apply for seniors at work?), it'd make sense for Jack to act in a formal and/or respective manner in X's presence, even when they they meet outside of work.

If you drop "senpai" from Jack's dialogue, the relationship between the two is slightly less clear. Jack could simply be overly formal in general. Or maybe X is just somebody he doesn't know well, and acts slightly awkward around.

Again, not much is loss, and the viewer will likely figure it out eventually, but just leaving "senpai" at the end immediately tells the viewer that X is Jack's senior, and makes the context of the dialogue clearer.

There are probably better ways to go around translating these kind of things, though. And I do agree that honorifics should be translated/dropped whenever possible. But if they absolutely have to be dropped in the translation process, the translated output SHOULD still tell the viewers a bit about the relationship between characters, while keeping a natural flow. Which I imagine is no mean feat.

here .. just read this thread (translating guide ) written by a fansubber with more discussion from fansubbers..

http://forums.animesuki.com/showthread.php?t=103272

JimmySeal Wrote:"Senpai" should likewise generally be replaced by a name or "you." Can you honestly think of a situation where the "senpai" means of address is so important to the dialog that that distinction needs to remain in the translation?

Yes. If two students are talking to an upper-classman, and one is calling him senpai and the other is calling him by name, this means a lot. Maybe you can ignore it. Now the upperclassman goes away, and one of the students calls the other out on the style of speech. Now what? Make one student talk more formally and properly and the other use slang... ?

What if the student who was being casual with the name has speech habits that are in other ways more proper and academic, very bookish perhaps, and the student who was using senpai was using slang and contractions and otherwise being pretty roughly spoken other than the term of respect? If you use the English cues to 'hint' at the formality, you've just reversed everything else about the nature of the speech.

You can either keep the endings, or you are going to lose something no matter how skilled you are - the variety of modes of speech simply doesn't exist in natural English, especially natural student English.

Of course, this sort of thing only matters significantly in stories that are primarily about relationships between characters who live in Japan and that are tied to the cultural behavior expected in Japan. If the story is mostly about some dramatic event and the relationships are side-story, then go ahead and lose something in translation for smoother reading, after that page the lost information won't matter again.

If the story is primarily about the personal relationships, however, you might want to think twice about how much you're going to lose. (Especially since this mostly means romances and romantic comedies, family crisis tragedies, coming of age stories, and it takes a certain kind of culturally-interested fan to be interested in that material in the first place, and they are more likely to -want- a more literal translation.)

It doesn't matter in adventure stories generally, and I absolutely agree with Jarvik when it comes to fantasy worlds and space adventures.

You have far more to work with in natural English when you can borrow from antiquated speech patterns in a fantasy world or in the past - most people will quickly understand pseudo-Victorian style speech which has a wealth of status-aware expressions. (Although, while you have the linguistic tools available to work around it, fans of samurai fiction may prefer the Japanese titles to those of British derivation, which is a different question from 'do you lose anything', and more of a taste consideration.)

Most science fiction adventures are set in a military setting, which again has a lot more to work with in status-aware expressions, and in any case, when it's an invented universe you can invent habits of speech that don't exist in any real-life setting to work around the problem.

jishera Wrote:@Onelove_yo, I've actually watched TV where translators added cultural notes into the subtitles. It was great because people who didn't know about the culture at all were able to understand what the "senior/junior" terms meant, as well as lots of other things. I agree about things outside of honorifics/places though. Most words should be translated :-).

And when I say lazy viewers, I mean people who are so closed minded that they aren't willing to ask questions about another person's culture or can't handle learning a couple words like "san" and "chan" and hate the movie/show because of that. To me that is just depressing.

I gotta say though, I'm with IceCream on this one. I enjoy randomly learning bits of culture from watching TV/movies. I didn't know anything about Korean (or even Korea!) when I started watching Korean TV shows, and it was no problem for me to pick up what the various honorifics meant. When I started watching anime I also knew no Japanese and I was able to figure it out. I think as long as they don't overload the viewer with new terms (and/or they add in a short explanation) it is truer to the source material and also makes it seem more "Japanese" or "Korean" or "Indian." If you are watching a foreign film, does everything need to be "Americanized?

I also enjoy picking up various bits of culture and language from reading/watching/listening to media from different countries, but whether or not you and I enjoy it is beside the point. I was merely criticising your calling viewers lazy for wanting to enjoy something in English.

Also, how is this honorific argument still going on? I'm pretty sure leaving honorifics in is not the only way to show the relative status or type of relationship between two characters as we manage to get these nuances across in English just fine without the use of Japanese honorifics. Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't changing the tone of the speech have the same effect? Something along the lines of "Could you please hand me those papers, James?" vs "Hey James, pass me those papers."

[Zgarbas]

Aetheus Wrote:@JimmySeal

Admittedly, not a whole lot would be lost by dropping honorifics entirely. Still, something WOULD be lost.

For instance, if X were Jack's senior at his job (does "senpai" still apply for seniors at work?), it'd make sense for Jack to act in a formal and/or respective manner in X's presence, even when they they meet outside of work.

If you drop "senpai" from Jack's dialogue, the relationship between the two is slightly less clear. Jack could simply be overly formal in general. Or maybe X is just somebody he doesn't know well, and acts slightly awkward around.

Again, not much is loss, and the viewer will likely figure it out eventually, but just leaving "senpai" at the end immediately tells the viewer that X is Jack's senior, and makes the context of the dialogue clearer.

There are probably better ways to go around translating these kind of things, though. And I do agree that honorifics should be translated/dropped whenever possible. But if they absolutely have to be dropped in the translation process, the translated output SHOULD still tell the viewers a bit about the relationship between characters, while keeping a natural flow. Which I imagine is no mean feat.

Good day, Mr Jones.
Hello Jones.
Hey Adrien.
Hey Mary. (Mary is a senior, whereas John is a freshman).

Quick. Which would be kun, san and senpai? What would be lost? And calling someone by their first name can be equally taboo. You won't be running up to your boss and call him by his first name.

Aetheus Wrote:Admittedly, not a whole lot would be lost by dropping honorifics entirely. Still, something WOULD be lost.

So why does Japanese have this special role that people like to see translations sprinkled with Japanese honorifics? With other comics like "Asterix" and "Lucky Luke" no one cares that English is unable to express the formal and informal personal pronouns that appear in French.

@zgarbas: What was lost was the status and/or relationship between the characters. You had to TELL me, in your role as an omnipotent narrator, that Mary was a senior and John was a freshman. While you could easily slide that line into a book, doing so in an anime or live-action drama would require you to, well, narrate it out. Alternatively, you could modify the dialogue so that it's mentioned in passing.

Or you could go for your route of dropping it entirely. While it won't take away anything from a trivial exchange like the one you've provided, it will leave viewers wondering why Mary doesn't show up at the freshman field trip with John and the rest of the gang.


@Christoph_D: Erm, I have no idea, honestly. Probably because I've yet to come across either of those comics, and I haven't the slightest idea what these formal and informal personal pronouns might be.

Although I could as easily grab a random [Insert foreign language] comic, translate it, and present it to you. As long as the dialogue makes sense, you would have no reason to doubt the integrity of the translation. Until I told you that I left out about 20% of the content, and you're forced to wonder what that content might have been.

Aetheus Wrote:While it won't take away anything from a trivial exchange like the one you've provided, it will leave viewers wondering why Mary doesn't show up at the freshman field trip with John and the rest of the gang.

Really? Seriously? Wouldn't the viewers just realize she wasn't a freshman? Not everyone that interacts at school is in the same grade, so why would people assume off the bat that they were? That's exactly what we mean when we say these honorifics aren't as necessary as people keep portraying them. Viewers aren't as clueless as you think.

Christoph_D Wrote:So why does Japanese have this special role that people like to see translations sprinkled with Japanese honorifics? With other comics like "Asterix" and "Lucky Luke" no one cares that English is unable to express the formal and informal personal pronouns that appear in French.

Because Japanese honorifics have an important role and carry a lot of information about the relationships between people, but more critically, because they are more likely to be specifically commented on in the course of a story when people are explicitly invited to drop the honorifics or chided to use the proper honorific. This creates entire conversations that make no sense if honorifics are ignored, or perhaps seem to talk about very subtle choices of speech if you simply translate it as 'be less formal' 'be more formal' (especially if the speech other than the honorific wasn't particularly formal). It's a major cultural difference that has no proper translation in some cases.

[Zgarbas]

Erm, there are major cultural differences between most languages, and lots of them are not directly translatable. However, a translation's job is to portray the original purpose whilst keeping to the desired language. This does sometimes mean modifying the original text. In my example with explaining freshman vs senior I mean leaving an annotation, since an annotation is needed if you're going to keep the "senpai", anyway. As a matter of fact, I just recently read a short story which had a plot point about how the character was called senpai by her classmates. The story just translated it as "the Senior" and left an annotation to explain what's going on precisely, though the situation wasn't hard to get.

In an anime you have
visual queues: usually different grades have a different color bandana(or whatever it's called). During development it can be noticed that Mary and John are not in the same class or whatever. Sometimes plot points are made regarding one of them being in year X. And so on.
Assuming that people won't catch on to such "subtle" hints is just assuming the audience is an idiot.

Also, here, have a suggestion.
This is Ana-senpai= This is Ana. She's my senior.

Pa-dam.

English doesn't have a formal language equivalent as strong as most languages. That doesn't mean that whenever you translate something from one of those languages you have to keep the original. English doesn't differentiate male from female cases as most languages do, so if there is a joke about someone using a male adjective to describe a boyish girl it is untranslatable, right? Many things don't transfer well from one language to another, but that doesn't make them "untranslatable", it just requires a bit more thought put into making a translation work.

Trying to preserve every tiny nuance because you think the viewer is too obtuse to pick up on these details through other clues is tantamount to trying to preserve the pronouns and plural and singular nouns in this text:

Today, I shelved the books and magazines that had been returned. After that, I had an apple and a sandwich.

by coming up with this:

今日、私は返却された複数の本と複数の雑誌を片付けた。その後、私が一つのリンゴと一つのサンドイッチを食べた。

Remove the bold parts and you've got much more natural Japanese that conveys everything that really mattered in the original text. Not every single detail is important. Languages put emphasis on certain constructs and less emphasis on others for a reason.

howtwosavealif3 Wrote:here .. just read this thread (translating guide ) written by a fansubber with more discussion from fansubbers..

http://forums.animesuki.com/showthread.php?t=103272

I liked his explanation. He talks about a "Liberal Scale" to judge translations on how liberal they are with the source. On that scale, most professional translations will probably tend to be more liberal because if they're too literal than the client will not understand. In the end, I think that the most important thing is adapting to what your client wants. In the case of fansubbed animes, the "clients" are the anime fans. So if they want to see honorifics, then why not?

As Zgarbas suggested, one quite common way around translating imbedded information in a word like 'senpai' would be to mention somewhere else in the conversation that the person is older/of a higher position than the other person i.e. completely make up a sentence that isn't in the original. The skill of a translator would be trying to do that naturally.

One issue with using san, chan, sama etc. is how much do you assume that the listener knows about the use of these terms. Sure anyone who's learned a bit of the language can tell you roughly when they are used and what they mean, but in reality their use is actually a bit more complicated.

An example might be someone in a company talking to a customer about their boss. In Japanese it would be common to refer to the boss less politely than they would if they were talking to him directly (e.g. dropping the -san) because the boss is part of their 'group'. However, in English it may be the opposite. You may be on first name terms within the office, but to a customer you would refer to them as Mr. ..., Dr. ... etc.
Do you assume that the listener is aware of slight differences like this? If you use -san, and the listener is not aware of these differences then they may assume the speaker is being rude about their boss (due to the sudden dropping of -san), as opposed to just being humble as he is part of their company.

You could also argue that 'boku', 'watashi', 'ore' etc. should all be left in the original Japanese because translating them all as 'I' loses information, but in reality it would just be lazy translating and lead to a translation that sounds ridiculous.

Not only that, but the use of honorofic language and desu/masu vs. plain is much more significant than suffixes, and nobody argues for leaving that in. The difference is that people with no japanese knowledge can understand the suffixes, making them feel like they know Japanese.

Exactly, the translators don't know enough japanese. They're also not getting payed. Do you really think they have a lot of time to spend making well written literal translations or accurate liberal translations. For someone who doesn't have the time/knowledge skill to translate well, leaving certain parts untranslated may be a time saving way of keeping the translation more accurate, and the fans apparently understand and enjoy the honorifics and other common words left in so it's a win-win. The only other options for the fans are watching it unsubbed and understanding nothing or paying for quality.