Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Crunchyroll is destroying its subtitles

daiz.moe

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 171 posts

Re: Crunchyroll is destroying its subtitles

#141

Post by pohuing »

ramses0 wrote: post #132
pohuing wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except ASS streams really aren't that big and don't have to be stored with each encode. They can just be in a separate file. And this is how cr used to serve them. Before they used hardware drm you could just download all of the separate sub tracks. You don't need to multiply anything here, except the number of sub streams. One is ass, the other the primitive standards Netflix and other surges use.

Someone else was saying they maintained burn-in subs for devices that didn't handle ASS renderers. Even without accounting for the burn-in versions, using non-standard subs still bumps them off of commodity subtitling services and limits distribution/syndication. Edit: and to the peer comment regarding S3 vs self host: regardless of 10x cloud cost, it's still 10x volume. Where 1TB local would do, now you need 10TB (1…

The labor of ass to ttml is there yeah. But the the factors are n_videos * languages * 2 Formats. And considering these are pretty compressible text(34MB->4MB for a completely bonkers sub track that includes animations, animated fonts and otherwise transformed text). I can't imagine that hosting costs cost more than their analysis.

Re: Crunchyroll is destroying its subtitles

#142

Post by meowface »

voidUpdate wrote: post #130
meowface wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But... people who only speak English and no other languages watch shows and films in other languages all the time. That's what the subtitles are for. I would guess 99% of anime watchers who listen in the original audio don't know any Japanese. I'm sorry but it's so strange to me. To me it's like putting on your favorite song, but it's in Spanish so it's dubbed by a much worse singer who sings it in English. I also do…

If something is my favourite song, I will listen it in the language where it is my favourite song. I generally don't have favourite songs in other languages. I have ADHD. I struggle to concentrate on anything. I would rather have the ability to be distracted for a bit and still be able to follow the show, than have to rewind it constantly or force myself to concentrate on something (which my brain doesn't enjoy). I d…

Infotainment YouTube videos, and most YouTube videos in general, are just kind of mildly interesting or mildly entertaining content. Television shows are usually things production crews have toiled away at for years to complete an artistic vision. They're very different kinds of media.

It's like going to watch The Godfather in a movie theater and you scroll HN on your tablet the whole time during it.

I have severe ADHD as well and am distracted very easily and am constantly playing content while doing other things. But there's a difference between "content" and "art".

Re: Crunchyroll is destroying its subtitles

#143

Post by packetlost »

piperswe wrote: post #80
notpushkin wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could borrow a trick from Netflix mentioned elsewhere in this thread: https://netflixsubs.app/docs/netflix/features/imgsub I’m pretty sure it’s not too hard to implement an ASS → PNG renderer (especially considering vibe coding is now a thing). Then, just need to split out subs that can be actual text somehow from the ones that have to be overlays. Apart from that... surely they could at least keep ASS subs for…

ASS can have frame-by-frame animation IIRC, so a stream of PNGs could end up being quite high bitrate with high complexity files

It can, but that doesn't mean they use that functionality.

Re: Crunchyroll is destroying its subtitles

#144

Post by HelloMcFly »

jahsome wrote: post #63

As someone who doesn't watch anime, this article reminds me of when a coworker sends a screenshot with zero context and says something like "is this supposed to be like this?" Maybe it's a spectrum thing, but I find it beyond lazy and insulting. In the article, there's zero explanation of what the actual issue is, at least in the first few paragraphs. It just seems to say the subtitles are bad with some examples and…

> I find it beyond lazy and insulting

I cannot imagine how much more difficult of life you make yourself with this kind of reaction to someone writing extensively on an article nobody forced - much less even asked - you to read.

Re: Crunchyroll is destroying its subtitles

#145

Post by Blub2121 »

jahsome wrote: post #63

As someone who doesn't watch anime, this article reminds me of when a coworker sends a screenshot with zero context and says something like "is this supposed to be like this?" Maybe it's a spectrum thing, but I find it beyond lazy and insulting. In the article, there's zero explanation of what the actual issue is, at least in the first few paragraphs. It just seems to say the subtitles are bad with some examples and…

Basically they are intending to limit their own options of how subtitles can be displayed. The limit of not being able to position multiple subtitles at specific position is the biggest thing imo. To go with the first screenshots the post has:

For the first it is translating the info box on the left and just adding it above its dialog subtitles. This has a few problems. First the text overlaps the text in the box, not the worst thing here but that can sometimes make things hard to read and imo doesn't look good.

Second it can make it hard to know what is being translated if there are multiple text fragments on screen. Take this screenshot from the article https://daiz.moe/content/crunchyroll/dumbell-funi-4.jpg how are you supposed to know which belong to which muscle? Or this where only one of the rows is translated and you don't even know which https://daiz.moe/content/crunchyroll/mha-funi-hulu.jpg

Third with two dialogs to translate (like tv in background plus people in foreground) you could probably better indicate where what is coming from with the ability to position it.

Re: Crunchyroll is destroying its subtitles

#146

Post by Blub2121 »

jahsome wrote: post #97
Nexxxeh wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"...I find it beyond lazy and insulting." Using the words "lazy" and "insulting" in this way sounds rude, insulting, entitled and arrogant. They are very negative words and it is rude to use them when referring to someone else's work or things similar to that work. TFA is certainly not lazy (and it's very obvious to an NT that a LOT of effort went into it). We should ideally all be producing content in an accessible…

Seems like you were so quick to jump to the defense of the author (who likely doesn't need your white knighting) you completely misunderstood or are misrepresenting what I said was lazy and insulting which was the hypothetical coworker example, and NOT the article itself. With that in mind, I don't have the energy to read the rest of your reply. I appreciate you taking the time to respond, and I'm sorry if my phrasin…

Dude no offense but they just read what you wrote. Maybe it isn't what you intended to write but you can't blame them for not reading your mind. Applying "beyond lazy and insulting." to coworker and article is the normal interpretation.

Re: Crunchyroll is destroying its subtitles

#147

Post by robocat »

meowface wrote: post #46
charcircuit wrote: post #15

The mass market has already responded that they want dubbed anime. It doesn't make sense to invest into subtitles. Maybe it's time to accept that you are not the target audience anymore of western anime distributors.

It baffles me how this is a thing. Not just regarding anime but any non-English language show or film. I've never come across a dub that wasn't at least five times worse in every way.

My Spanish friend was explaining how some dubs can be better than the original - because the voice actors are good. I think anything with Jeff Goldblum could be easily improved.

The voice actors become well known and some were popular . . . although they can really change the tone of a movie (for good or bad) which they said was sometimes jarring when watching the movie in the original language.

I remember them saying they Manuel in Fawlty Towers is cast as Mexican, which is darkly humorous to me.

Re: Crunchyroll is destroying its subtitles

#149

Post by meowface »

robocat wrote: post #147
meowface wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It baffles me how this is a thing. Not just regarding anime but any non-English language show or film. I've never come across a dub that wasn't at least five times worse in every way.

My Spanish friend was explaining how some dubs can be better than the original - because the voice actors are good. I think anything with Jeff Goldblum could be easily improved. The voice actors become well known and some were popular . . . although they can really change the tone of a movie (for good or bad) which they said was sometimes jarring when watching the movie in the original language. I remember them sayin…

I suppose I can't say it's impossible. It just seems very very uncommon, and it has to be a case where the original has unusually bad voice actors and the dub has unusually good voice actors. Most of the things I would want to watch will have good acting/voice acting in the original; that will tend to correlate with the overall thing being good, and I try to only watch things I find good.

Re: Crunchyroll is destroying its subtitles

#150

Post by m10i »

boredhedgehog wrote: post #116
m10i wrote: post #47

A similar issue has been plaguing the manga industry since "The Great Scanlator Purge" that took place a few years ago, leaving only the "official" Viz media-contracted translators in the wake of the ruins. For some reason, this change came with a general unwillingness on the translators part to correct, or translate, concepts that virtually all fan translators would've been happy to do. Here's some examples (there a…

Footnotes and endnotes always carry a hidden burden: They interrupt the reading flow and direct the mind of the reader away from the characters and the plot and towards linguistics. If the translator follows a philosophy that prioritizes the subjective experience of the reader over a deeper understanding of the material, this "mode switch" is something he will try to avoid. Personally, I tend to agree that a need to…

I think we agree on the conclusion, but differ on the premise. As a lifelong manga reader, I can say that the footnotes/endnotes made me more focused and invested in what was going on in the panels, not less. It's a different flavor of footnotes than the one you would find in a textbook or reference manual. One way to look at it is as an extended dialogue box for context that can't fit in-panel, but is "vital" from the author's perspective (since they aren't english speakers, they can't really be expected to know just how badly their work is altered sometimes). It's an optional aid for those that are interested in getting more engrossed into the world building.

At the end of the day, when a phrase has multiple meanings (as intended by the author), it can be impossible to translate it into a single, tidy, english catchphrase. This is why in manga raw's (the original, non-translated versions), when authors write kanji characters, they will often superscript them with smaller, hiragana characters. This is essential because in japanese, those kanji characters usually have multiple meanings, so it's necessary to guide the reader towards the intended ones. And even from there, the re-interpreted hiragana characters/words themselves can have multiple - sometimes conflicting - meanings. It's in these conflicts that puns/dual meanings can arise. It's all part of the beauty of the language, and mangaka's are obsessed with showing that (as they should be).

So this sort of nuance will always be lost in translation, but can be essential.

Post reply on HN