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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?

#231

Post by elihu »

onoesworkacct wrote: post #42
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…

How many customers watch each episode of popular shows? 100k+? And we're talking a difference of ~7 hours of labor. $200 difference at most?

...and that's for an episode that probably cost the original studio at least a hundred thousand dollars to produce, maybe a lot more.

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

#232

Post by akimbostrawman »

perching_aix wrote: post #229
akimbostrawman wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>only scandal I actively recall is the Dragon Maid one Then you have not paid attention at all. Almost every season there is a case like this same with LNs and VNs to a point where it's not even news worthy anymore. > I mostly remember these with regards to EN gacha game voice actors No there are multiple people that are infamous anime localizers that are gloating on Twitter how they fix anime by pushed there politic…

> anybody engaging with the medium beyond surface level would know. I'll readily admit to not caring about the people or the process behind how anime are made. I consider that a separate side of the hobby entirely. It is an unfortunate side effect of social media that I can less and less ignore these aspects, including VAs blackwashing characters and other utterly puzzling antics. It's not something I seek out myself…

https://boundingintocomics.com/?s=Localize

https://www.sankakucomplex.com/2021/04/23/localizer-goes-on-...

That's only one show from one localizer and they and many others have been doing this for almost 10 years.

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

#234

Post by MSFT_Edging »

varenc wrote: post #105
programjames wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the take is: If 100k people watch the episode, spending $200 more for higher quality subtitling comes out to... a whopping 0.2 cents per person (per episode). Let's just say that would cost an extra $1/month per person. Are they price sensitive enough that they won't go to a competitor that's a few dollars more expensive per month if it has better subtitles? I don't know, but maybe some manager believed they…

> Are they price sensitive enough that they won't go to a competitor that's a few dollars more expensive per month if it has better subtitles Outside of Asia, Crunchyroll is a de-facto monopoly on legal anime. From the article, 70% of new releases are exclusive to Crunchyroll. They're not losing customers to platforms with better subs, because customers have no alternative. (Besides pirating, but I assume the golden…

Who ever heard of an anime fan pirating media.....

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

#235

Post by GolDDranks »

ishouldbework wrote: post #211
Ferret7446 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Word of the day, 吹き替える. TIL. One question if you have a minute. Why is it アメリカだけに吹き替えされている instead of 英語だけに吹き替えされている?

That depends on the intent of the sentence, and the intent was only a guess of the GP. But you can analyze だけに in two ways:

英語に吹き替える to dub in English (the base case of 吹き替える)

英語だけに吹き替える to dub just in English (だけ + に)

アメリカだけに吹き替える to dub, just because it's America / as you'd expect of America (だけに grammar https://tanosuke.com/n2-dakeni)

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

#236

Post by Erikun »

Tor3 wrote: post #178
Erikun wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This may be true for current seasons but previous seasons and finished series are often available on other services. At least crunchyroll and Netflix have an overlap (in Sweden). Frieren is available on both as an example.

Look at Railgun, for example.. they're all old, and each season is either on CR or on Netflix, never on both. Same with Index, and some others.

I’ll definetly give you that there is weird licensing schenanigans going on.

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

#237

Post by perching_aix »

akimbostrawman wrote: post #232
perching_aix wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> anybody engaging with the medium beyond surface level would know. I'll readily admit to not caring about the people or the process behind how anime are made. I consider that a separate side of the hobby entirely. It is an unfortunate side effect of social media that I can less and less ignore these aspects, including VAs blackwashing characters and other utterly puzzling antics. It's not something I seek out myself…

https://boundingintocomics.com/?s=Localize https://www.sankakucomplex.com/2021/04/23/localizer-goes-on-... That's only one show from one localizer and they and many others have been doing this for almost 10 years.

I checked both links (until the start of 2024). I see a number of examples for the jokey-joke type translations, but not for the political ones. The only politically charged mistranslation I see there is the Blue Box one from April, which honestly looks accidental. The Twitter gloatings screenshotted seem to squarely pertain to the jokey-joke type stuff too at a skim.

Gonna stand by this angle being way overblown. Thanks for at least bringing receipts though nevertheless.

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

#239

Post by bonecrusher2102 »

fhd2 wrote: post #188
programjames wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the take is: If 100k people watch the episode, spending $200 more for higher quality subtitling comes out to... a whopping 0.2 cents per person (per episode). Let's just say that would cost an extra $1/month per person. Are they price sensitive enough that they won't go to a competitor that's a few dollars more expensive per month if it has better subtitles? I don't know, but maybe some manager believed they…

I don't believe managers can operate with that kind of precision. I don't know how they'd execute the "let's spend 200$ more" idea. You're either in a quality or in a cost reduction mindset usually, these are _really_ difficult to mix for management. I know I've tried :) When you even bring up how long something takes, that can already have adverse effects on quality without you actually decreeing anything.

Well, they can, and at least did. I know because I was one of them! The P&L that I rolled up to our execs was dead simple as well. I think everyone had a pretty clear picture of what was going on, down to the fraction of the hour.

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

#240

Post by joseda-hg »

Sophira wrote: post #185
viraptor wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I assume the golden age of Tier 1 fan subs is over That's just because the legal options were easily available, right? Kind of like people stopped pirating as much when Netflix was actually decent. But now the tides are turning again, so maybe the fan subs will start coming back as well.

There used to be an unwritten rule in fansubbing that you should only fansub anime that didn't have a licensed release - but of course that was during the time when barely any anime got licensed. Still, though, I wonder if that mindset is still going to be around.

Less now, but the bar is higher because now there's a baseline good enough product, so even if in the past you'd have done it anyway with more care, now unless the official sub is bad enough, why would you bother?

I remember seeing (I think Netflix release) of Komi-san can't communicate, noticing A lot of things being missed, like Komi's literal main manner of communication (A notebook where she writes) not getting any translation for some episodes, or a lot of things I'd have to fill others in that normally at least would have been a T/N in fansub

It was bad enough that I went looking elsewhere to see if I had missed more than I realized, and the fansub did have everything covered

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