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Why did Crunchyroll's subtitles just get worse?

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Re: Why did Crunchyroll's subtitles just get worse?

#111

Post by jan_Inkepa »

socalgal2 wrote: post #76

Are they just bad now? The one I noticed was the "Kingdom" which is several years old. It had horrible subs because the sub were written by Chinese people using Chinese names for places and characters but the spoken language was Japanese. So the sub would say "General Mike is going to attack Houston" and the spoken Japanese would say "General Bob is going to attach Seattle" (fill in Mike and Houston with Chinese name…

> It had horrible subs because the sub were written by Chinese people using Chinese names for places and character

More likely the translators, probably native English speakers, intentionally decided to use 'authentic', 'historical' Chinese names (as modern mandarn speakers would write them in pinyin) rather than the Japanese ones?

I agree that the effect could be really confusing though, and it's not what I would do!

(IIRC the fan translations of the Manga also gradually decided to change to use Chinese versions of the historical names, which I also found confusing - especially as they have kept some of the old Japanese names ones, so...it's a weird mix...)

Re: Why did Crunchyroll's subtitles just get worse?

#112

Post by rmunn »

aidenn0 wrote: post #83
Barrin92 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>but fan subs are notorious for mistranslations and awkward hyperliteralism. funny to see the comment. I was rewatching JoJo, this time in dub, and just came across a line like this. (the context is a fight between two 19th century British characters in a very theatrical setting): Sub: "Stop the futile, useless resistance. Don't hide in the curtain's shadows and come out!" Dub: "You're behind the curtain, like Poloni…

Watching anime dubs with subtitles enabled can be interesting. I've literally seen the dub say "yes" with the sub saying "no."

Was either "yes" or "no" clearly the right translation in context? I'm very curious to know which one was correct, the dub or the sub. Or was it one of those ambiguous situations where either one would be a correct translation of the text, but with different subtext?

P.S. For an example of when "yes" might really mean "no", I heard an anecdote. An American guy had been hired by a Japanese company to work in their offices in Japan and be a liaison to foreign businessmen. He was attending a meeting once where everyone but him was Japanese. The boss presented an idea. There was silence for about 10-15 seconds, then people said things like "Yes, that's a good idea, let's do that." The American left the meeting thinking that the idea had been approved, only to have his Japanese colleague explain to him that the key part was the silence. The boss clearly heard and understood the message that his employees didn't think it was a good idea, and the idea was dropped and never mentioned again.

So I could see a case where the character says "Yes" but the subtext is "No", and that would be clearly understood by a Japanese viewer. Different translators would choose different approaches there; some might translate the text, and some might translate the subtext. I'm curious to know if this was a case like that, or if it was a clear-cut case of one translation being right and the other one being flat-out wrong.

Re: Why did Crunchyroll's subtitles just get worse?

#113

Post by Culonavirus »

Analemma_ wrote: post #41
egypturnash wrote: post #3

Crunchyroll’s major layoff just two months ago, during which most of their operations team was unceremoniously let go, included some of the longest-serving Crunchyrollers, adding up to a combined total of around 100 years of service to the company by my calculations. Is a new subcontractor and/or service the replacement? It seems that way to me. And there's your answer. Bet they're replacing most of their artisinal s…

It's alright, I'm sure they'll pass the savings onto us, the customers.

I'm sure they will. You know, AI is so cheap compared to humans, they have to, right? I'm sure. Obviously that is until the biggest bubble in the recorded history of human economy pops and we get back to 2008 economy (hopium), then it's gonna sting a wee bit, but that's the cost of progress, right.

Re: Why did Crunchyroll's subtitles just get worse?

#114

Post by Arnavion »

aidenn0 wrote: post #83
Barrin92 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>but fan subs are notorious for mistranslations and awkward hyperliteralism. funny to see the comment. I was rewatching JoJo, this time in dub, and just came across a line like this. (the context is a fight between two 19th century British characters in a very theatrical setting): Sub: "Stop the futile, useless resistance. Don't hide in the curtain's shadows and come out!" Dub: "You're behind the curtain, like Poloni…

Watching anime dubs with subtitles enabled can be interesting. I've literally seen the dub say "yes" with the sub saying "no."

The answers to negative questions are the other way around in Japanese compared to English.

"Are you not a student?"

In English, the non-student speaker would respond with "No", short for "No, I am not."

In Japanese, the non-student speaker would respond with "Yes", short for "Yes that's correct."

A literal translation would make this mistake.

Re: Why did Crunchyroll's subtitles just get worse?

#115

Post by brigandish »

aidenn0 wrote: post #83
Barrin92 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>but fan subs are notorious for mistranslations and awkward hyperliteralism. funny to see the comment. I was rewatching JoJo, this time in dub, and just came across a line like this. (the context is a fight between two 19th century British characters in a very theatrical setting): Sub: "Stop the futile, useless resistance. Don't hide in the curtain's shadows and come out!" Dub: "You're behind the curtain, like Poloni…

Watching anime dubs with subtitles enabled can be interesting. I've literally seen the dub say "yes" with the sub saying "no."

Sometimes, the same meaning has the opposite response in English and Japanese. It’s called echo polarity (apparently). For example, in English:

“You didn’t go?” → “No, I didn’t go” (agreeing) or “Yes, I went” (disagreeing).

In Japanese, you should say “yes, I didn’t go” or “yes, I didn’t go”:

行かなかったんですか。→ はい、行きませんでした。(agreeing with the negative) or いいえ、行きました。(disagreeing with the negative)

(This difference possibly shows the more fundamental difference in the cultures, where one values truth more, and one values agreement/harmony more.)

I’m not saying that’s what happened to you, just that it wouldn’t necessarily be wrong to see it.

Re: Why did Crunchyroll's subtitles just get worse?

#116

Post by xenadu02 »

egypturnash wrote: post #3

Crunchyroll’s major layoff just two months ago, during which most of their operations team was unceremoniously let go, included some of the longest-serving Crunchyrollers, adding up to a combined total of around 100 years of service to the company by my calculations. Is a new subcontractor and/or service the replacement? It seems that way to me. And there's your answer. Bet they're replacing most of their artisinal s…

They did the same thing to their developers a few years back from what I recall. That's why the app has bugs that haven't been fixed in years. For example the sorting options on your watch list are just garbage. They aren't remembered. And "recent activity" includes adding dubs in languages I have disabled in the UI - constantly causing old shows to pop to the top of the list making it useless.

Back when they had software developers they were rapidly improving the app but someone decided they needed more executive bonuses and laid everyone off. Their software hasn't moved an inch since.

Funimation had the same idea. They bailed out of VRV (Crunchyroll's attempt at an anime "marketplace" all-in-one app) and released their own garbage app that is somehow much much worse.

It is the classic "we have exclusives so these drooling morons will take whatever we deign to give them because we're the only ones with show X/Y/Z" move.

Re: Why did Crunchyroll's subtitles just get worse?

#117

Post by GolDDranks »

kmeisthax wrote: post #43
charcircuit wrote: post #16

>see it as a cost-cutting measure to stop doing it. If only. I wish they would stop localizing it. Just give me the raw episodes. It seems like every site outside of Japan insists on ruing it by putting English on top of it. Unfortunately the economics of the situation means that sites will server the interests of tourists instead of otaku, so it's unlikely to ever change.

日本語をわかれる人として、アニメはアメリカで一番部分は英語だけで見たいのは分かります。それから、アメリカで英語に翻訳しております。 If you don't understand the above, then you don't want raw episodes after all.

Not the GP, but I watch all my anime raw (often enabling Japanese closed captions), and I struggle to understand the above...

Re: Why did Crunchyroll's subtitles just get worse?

#118

Post by zenlot »

bonecrusher2102 wrote: post #22

Hah, this is my time to shine. I worked in anime subtitling and timing for a number of years. I helped write our style guide — things like how to handle signs, overlapping dialogue, colors etc. It wound up being quite a large document! But the thing to realize here is that, all of these subs have to be placed by hand. There are AI tools that can help you match in and out times, but they have a difficult time matching…

> Elite tier subs can take up to two or even three or four hours per episode. That’s why the best subs, are always fan subs! Because a business will never put in 8x more time on an episodes subtitles than “bare minimum.”

Thank you for this. Great perspective.

Re: Why did Crunchyroll's subtitles just get worse?

#119

Post by Ferret7446 »

kmeisthax wrote: post #43
charcircuit wrote: post #16

>see it as a cost-cutting measure to stop doing it. If only. I wish they would stop localizing it. Just give me the raw episodes. It seems like every site outside of Japan insists on ruing it by putting English on top of it. Unfortunately the economics of the situation means that sites will server the interests of tourists instead of otaku, so it's unlikely to ever change.

日本語をわかれる人として、アニメはアメリカで一番部分は英語だけで見たいのは分かります。それから、アメリカで英語に翻訳しております。 If you don't understand the above, then you don't want raw episodes after all.

That Japanese is a travesty. I can only guess, but I suppose you meant something like アメリカ人は大体英語吹き替えのアニメしか見ないからアメリカだけに吹き替えされている

Re: Why did Crunchyroll's subtitles just get worse?

#120

Post by Ferret7446 »

GolDDranks wrote: post #117
kmeisthax wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

日本語をわかれる人として、アニメはアメリカで一番部分は英語だけで見たいのは分かります。それから、アメリカで英語に翻訳しております。 If you don't understand the above, then you don't want raw episodes after all.

Not the GP, but I watch all my anime raw (often enabling Japanese closed captions), and I struggle to understand the above...

Well, it's not really Japanese. It reminds me of myself as a doe-eyed freshman who took Japanese 101 and thought I was hot shit.
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