How American Fans Pirated Japanese Cartoons into Careers
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Re: How American Fans Pirated Japanese Cartoons into Careers
#2Piracy has never been about cost as much as it has been about convenience. For a long time the fansubbers simply offered a better product; shows from now rather than five years ago, with better-quality translations, and often better-quality video. Fans wanted to support the industry - I know more than one person with a shelf full of official English DVDs, still in their shrinkwrap - but the quality wasn't there.
Even today, as someone who takes the underground to work, a streaming service is no substitute for the incredibly well-oiled machine of fansubbing.
Re: How American Fans Pirated Japanese Cartoons into Careers
#3French japanimation enthusiasts over 30 probably remember how official dubbers for Fist of the North Star/Hokuto No Ken in the late 80's actually took pride in providing bogus dubbing (with bad puns, changes in the dialog and purposely egregious voice-overs) because they thought "the show should not have been brought to young French kids" and just didn't care [1]
This is precisely why you need enthusiasts providing quality subs, because those anonymous people actually care about the body of work, being fans themselves. That the anime industry in the US was smart enough to recognize and offer them jobs is a sign of hope. Good on them.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2jfBEgtc88 (this is NOT a parody, this is the ACTUAL dub for the anime series).
Re: How American Fans Pirated Japanese Cartoons into Careers
#4Piracy has never been about cost as much as it has been about convenience. For a long time the fansubbers simply offered a better product; shows from now rather than five years ago, with better-quality translations, and often better-quality video. Fans wanted to support the industry - I know more than one person with a shelf full of official English DVDs, still in their shrinkwrap - but the quality wasn't there. Even…
One example of impressive fansubbing i have seen was where the subs were color matched to the speakers hair, and contained cultural/historic/contextual info.
Re: How American Fans Pirated Japanese Cartoons into Careers
#5Piracy has never been about cost as much as it has been about convenience. For a long time the fansubbers simply offered a better product; shows from now rather than five years ago, with better-quality translations, and often better-quality video. Fans wanted to support the industry - I know more than one person with a shelf full of official English DVDs, still in their shrinkwrap - but the quality wasn't there. Even…
One example of impressive fansubbing i have seen was where the subs were color matched to the speakers hair, and contained cultural/historic/contextual info.
Matching the speakers' hair is useful, but too often notes end up as showing off. A good translation is supposed to replicate the experience of watching something in its original language, not explain every reference.
Re: How American Fans Pirated Japanese Cartoons into Careers
#6Earlier quoted context omitted.
One example of impressive fansubbing i have seen was where the subs were color matched to the speakers hair, and contained cultural/historic/contextual info.
Matching the speakers' hair is useful, but too often notes end up as showing off. A good translation is supposed to replicate the experience of watching something in its original language, not explain every reference.
*Translator's note: Keikaku Means "Plan"
Re: How American Fans Pirated Japanese Cartoons into Careers
#7This is my story basically.
I started getting interested in anime in mid 90s. I set up dial-up Internet (Trumpet Winsock on Windows 3.11!). I met this guy from Germany online who had somehow managed to get Ranma 1/2 on VHS tapes, which he graciously agreed to mail to me in Finland. I knew a guy who was into video editing, so he had the setup to be able to copy them so I could mail the tapes back to him.
From there it took many years before I knew enough Japanese to be of any use to anyone. But once I started to get there (and with a ton of help from my now wife), I skipped the fansubbing part and instead made a demo manga translation and sent it in a professional looking folder to two companies who were doing the official translations. I thought it was worth the shot, but didn't really expect a response. But to my astonishment BOTH agreed.
Soon I found myself regularly visiting the publisher for new work and had a professional translator as my mentor. I was getting paid to translate manga, it was my dream come true.
But after the dream ended the hard work started. I was surprised by the speed at which I was expected to translate these books. I was supposed to do 2-3 books every month! Take a look at a manga, see how many pages there are and you are not just translating the dialogue, but also explaining all the sound effects floating in the background.
Around this time social networks started releasing their APIs and I got into that world instead and left the translation work for others. That was a great choice, as I started making WAY more money doing that than I ever could have with translation. But I'm glad I gave manga translation a shot, as now it won't be left nagging as an unfulfilled dream in the back of my mind.
We translated the complete series Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne and some other manga before "retiring" from this profession :-)
Re: How American Fans Pirated Japanese Cartoons into Careers
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
One example of impressive fansubbing i have seen was where the subs were color matched to the speakers hair, and contained cultural/historic/contextual info.
Matching the speakers' hair is useful, but too often notes end up as showing off. A good translation is supposed to replicate the experience of watching something in its original language, not explain every reference.
Perhaps, but sometimes a show is just that much more impressive if you understand more of what's going on. The show 'Ergo Proxy' comes to mind. It's got a mysterious plot and some throw off episodes that will really mess you up, but aside from that it's also got loads of references to history and philosophy that I would just not understand because I haven't studied either. The fansub group had small blobs of explanation pop up every once in a while to explain something, it really aided to the feeling you were watching something awesome. The text would only be up for a second, so you'd have to pause to read it. I think my Ghost in the Shell S.A.C subs had something similar.
There's one instance I remember of the fansubbers breaking the 4-th wall unexpectedly. The line the character said as a cliff hanger came from absolutely nowhere and was so staggering that the subber added something along the lines of "We assure you this is no translation mistake", if they hadn't added that I'd think it was so they were right to. (The anime in question is Elfen Lied, I don't suggest you watch it if you're not already deep into J-culture.. and maybe just not at all)
Re: How American Fans Pirated Japanese Cartoons into Careers
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
One example of impressive fansubbing i have seen was where the subs were color matched to the speakers hair, and contained cultural/historic/contextual info.
Matching the speakers' hair is useful, but too often notes end up as showing off. A good translation is supposed to replicate the experience of watching something in its original language, not explain every reference.
> A good translation is supposed to replicate the experience of watching something in its original language
It's my feeling that this should include what would be automatically understood by natives.
I have never found this to go too far - I have always wanted more local context.
Re: How American Fans Pirated Japanese Cartoons into Careers
#10Piracy has never been about cost as much as it has been about convenience. For a long time the fansubbers simply offered a better product; shows from now rather than five years ago, with better-quality translations, and often better-quality video. Fans wanted to support the industry - I know more than one person with a shelf full of official English DVDs, still in their shrinkwrap - but the quality wasn't there. Even…
One example of impressive fansubbing i have seen was where the subs were color matched to the speakers hair, and contained cultural/historic/contextual info.
This makes me want to try to find the Ghost in the Shell 1 and 2 fansubs I downloaded years ago. I think one of them included explanations of the context of quotes and cultural references. But I might have trashed the CDs or DVDs once I was able to buy legal copies.
Related to the article, is unfortunate that Netflix has lost some of it's foreign film diversity on streaming. But as they move more and more toward appealing to the masses to lower costs, it's inevitable.