Post by Hergen LehmannPost by YesI just read about a company in South Korea Rakuten Viki that provides
video streaming services. One of its services is crowdsourced
subtitling. I'm curious if this approach is used for subtitling in
anime series. Is it a widespread practice?
No. Commercial services usually work with fixed contractors, because
they need the work to be done on a specific air date, and they need to
fulfill strict non-disclosure agreements before that date.
Non-commercial "fansubbing" services usually work in teams. The members
are recruited online, but once the team is formed, everyone has his own
specific task (with the translator usually being the bottleneck).
Post by YesI frequently watch subbed
anime and from time to time am jolted out of my immersion in the story
by the phrasing of the dialogue (English).
Shit happens, when the budget is tight and the deadline is close.
It even happens in the fan-subbing teams where they have no
budget except for snacks and power to run a computer.
This grating mistakes in English come from an unfamiliarity
the language and the peculiar nature of the originating language.
I.e. in Japanese the same word may be used depending on context
to designate different actions or various objects. This makes
Japanese a "punful" tongue and many of the jokes relate to to
this aspect of Japanese humor. Now a company in Korea may have
people directly translating the Japanese without respect to these
matters or even knowledge of the humor intended.
We see this in manga as well where the translators are
again unfamiliar with the subtleties of the languages.
In some fan-subbed anime we see a subject addressed in
which the translators are unfamiliar with the technical terms
used. In the solid story, "Yawara, a fashionable Judo girl!"
the fan-subbers translated "ukemi" to "passive" which may be
the meaning outside of Judo but ukemi in Judo is the "right
way to fall" when thrown and it is practiced (unrelentingly)
in Yawara, when Jigoro tells his grand-daughter "do a 100
ukemi". The power of it is shown when they are hit by
Sayaka's car and get by without any damage.
In Maison Ikkoku in one episode Kyoko is missing and
Godai calls her father by an honorific implying that he wishes
to become her husband so that her father will become his
father-in-law. Anyway the English does not translate this
well though it was done by someone who might have known
better.
bliss
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bliss dash SF 4 ever at dslextreme dot com