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Why did Crunchyroll's subtitles just get worse?

animebythenumbers.substack.com

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

#151

Post by Phelinofist »

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…

I remember the Gintama fan subs. They were awesome. They had a lot of explanation that really made the show accessible for someone not all to intimate with Japanese culture. That also helped with getting some jokes that would've went over my head otherwise.

Nowadays SubsPlease floods the market with their Crunchyroll rips.

Also, I tried watching Komi-san on Netflix but it was atrocious - the timing and placements were so bad it was actually unwatchable.

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

#152

Post by Tor3 »

Arnavion wrote: post #114
aidenn0 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My native Germanic language has a specific variant of 'yes' which is perfect for when both 'no' and 'yes' alone would be ambiguous. Not sure why not more languages have that. Japanese 'hai' isn't really 'yes' though.. so it's used way differently than you would use just 'yes'. In colloquial speech it's more common uttering various sounds instead.

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

#153

Post by heisenbit »

chii wrote: post #94
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…

> The level of customer delight (and hate) in the anime industry is like no other. except that it doesn't show up as revenue. That's where the problem is - people would obviously prefer to have elite tier subs, but not be willing to pay elite tier prices for it.

I believe it does. In the comic world there were famous collaborations between visual and text artists. When the latter died the comic withered. Anime is about story telling - much harder to do well with images alone.

The real problem with all these brand killing enshittification moves is the delay until consequences manifest.

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

#154

Post by viraptor »

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…

> 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.

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

#155

Post by Tor3 »

bavell wrote: post #60
SllX wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They’re still just within the threshold of good enough, but I was pretty annoyed the day comments disappeared. It might have been young viewers, but I was a young viewer once and those comments went back all the way to that time. It was also one thing Crunchyroll had that other streaming sites typically don’t (except YouTube of course): community.

CR removing comments removed the soul from the product :/ Was always fun reading the top comments on big episodes. Finding those few other ppl who noticed that one small thing at timestamp 14:30, dunking on the first episode of the latest garbage isekai... etc

Yes, that the comments disappeared was terrible. Some comment would have early and precious information in some cases, e.g. the existence of a direct precursor (not part of the list of 'seasons'), and tons of other information, not just comments about characters in the show or whatever. And reviews don't have comments either, I miss those. Would have saved wasted time.

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

#156

Post by GolDDranks »

Ferret7446 wrote: post #120
GolDDranks wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Those were the days.

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

#157

Post by ehnto »

vunderba wrote: post #142
SllX wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it’s not understandable because Crunchyroll has spent the majority of its time as a streaming service as a commercial paid or free-with-ads service that has a community, with comments under every video up until like last year. Moderation is an expense, but it’s 1) not an unreasonable one, especially given the scale of Crunchyroll and a paid subscriber base and 2) some investment in automating moderation or develo…

Shrugs. I don't know what to tell you. I'm glad to see that you're passionate about it I guess but most of my friends who use Crunchyroll were also equally unsurprised when they removed the comment section. I can't think of any streaming services that have something like that - as I said before, there's literally no upside to it for CR. Those comment sections could also be a puerile cesspool. I'm sure there was an ex…

A brand is built on sentiment. That's the upside. You are witnessing exactly why it's important here, as people tell you why they're going to stop being customers. I don't watch anime so have no skin in this game, but this is a classic tale at this point.

A company gets successful off the back of community engagement and builds great shared sentiment with its customers. They get bought, the incoming board members start cutting costs, accidentally cutting the artery they didn't realise fed the heart of the brand.

The company loses an edge the board didn't realise it had, and people slowly lose that connection, which allows them to painlessly jump ship to the next company with the same catalog but better sentiment brand.

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

#159

Post by Tor3 »

SllX wrote: post #127
vunderba wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a shame but understandable from a business perspective since they had to have a moderation team to support some of the less savory comments juvenile users were leaving.

No, it’s not understandable because Crunchyroll has spent the majority of its time as a streaming service as a commercial paid or free-with-ads service that has a community, with comments under every video up until like last year. Moderation is an expense, but it’s 1) not an unreasonable one, especially given the scale of Crunchyroll and a paid subscriber base and 2) some investment in automating moderation or develo…

The problem is that '.. make Crunchyroll less competitive..' isn't really happening. There is no competition. Even when there are multiple providers (say, Netflix in addition to Crunchyroll), a particular show, or even season, will be licensed to exactly one of them, in any particular region. There was a particular show where I had to juggle between CR and N for every season because CR and N couldn't both license all the seasons.

And.. it's actually better if absolutely everything is on Crunchyroll. One subscription and you're set. Or I am, at least. Having to hunt around to figure out where some particular show can be found.. subscribe there only for watching that particular one.. mostly it can't be done, in my region, and I absolutely don't want to.

Which of course also gives CR no competition, and that's the price we pay. When the quality has gone down enough, the alternative isn't moving to a competitor, it's to give up on anime altogether.

Plan B is of course to get my Japanese up to a level sufficient to be able to turn off the subs, at least any potential problem there will be gone.

I pay much less for CR than for Netflix, I would rather pay more on Crunchyroll if this could guarantee a certain quality. Netflix, on the other hand, is basically a giant waste of money for me. That I haven't cancelled yet is just lazyness.

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

#160

Post by mmaaz »

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…

Fascinating insight into the industry. Thanks for sharing.
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