Doremi-Fansubs = AnimeJunkies v2.0
Here is a note to all fansub groups: Please make sure that your translator actually speaks Japanese! And please make sure that you have at least one other team member on the project who speaks Japanese so that he/she can make sure that the translator isn’t pretending to know Japanese by making random guesses and checking Babelfish!
NEVER TRUST YOUR TRANSLATORS WITHOUT SEEKING A SECOND OPINION!!! (I was one. I know what we do.)
Now here’s a sad, sad example of a “fansub” gone horribly wrong. The following translations are from Doremi-OTOME’s fansub of Mai-Otome DVD Special 8. The torrent can be found here (way at the bottom).
The translator is very cunning. He sounds like he knows what he’s talking about. But really, I am not certain if he even speaks a single word of Japanese after watching this piece of wombat dung.
Evidence 1
Sounds like reasonable translation? Well here’s what Mai really said in that exact scene:
私、家出同然と学園に来ちゃったんだけど、
I entered the school after running away from home,
運良く援助してくれるお家があって
luckily there was a family who offered to help me
Wow! That sounds like a completely different story now, doesn’t it?!?! How the fuck did the translator miss SO HARD that he nearly landed in a totally whole new continent! Imagine if I didn’t know Japanese and believed in this asshat’s lies. He’s creating a whole new anime with his “translations”.
Evidence 2
Again, this sounds completely reasonable doesn’t it? Well SURPRISE!!!
みんな良い人達だったし、何より条件が破格なくらいよかったのよ。
Everyone was so nice to me and the conditions were just too good.
Wow. Another brilliant translation. I can’t even figure out which word he might have mistaken to produce “trouble”, so I conclude that the translator just made the whole thing up out of thin air. Please also notice that the translator is using present tense. I guess the editor went fishing too, huh?
Evidence 3
最初は逃げようともしたんだけどね、
I tried escaping at first,
その度に捕まっちゃって
but I got caught everytime.
The meaning is changed, but hey, at least he got all the keywords right! CHEERS!!!
Evidence 4
でまぁ、毎日この子とこの谷で過ごしているうちに
So, during the time I spent in this valley together with her, I unknowingly…
うちに？
Unknowingly?
すっかり馴染んでしまいました
I got attached to her completely.
お前という奴は昔から全く変わっていない
You have not changed a bit since then.
I must confess that my translation for the second line isn’t very accurate.
うちに (uchi ni) is used to mean “within a period of time”.
うち (uchi) means “house”.
The translator, in his infinite wisdom, confused the two and just went along with it even though it makes no fucking sense if you stop and think about it for even 1 nanosecond.
The last line is even more hilarious. The translator confused 変わる (kawaru) with かわいい (kawaii) and the meaning of the sentence was TOTALLY RAPED in the most gruesome and inhuman manner possible. For the love of Haruhi and all that is good, what kind of “Japanese translator” confuses “to change” with “cute”!?
Maybe he’s really just a narutard who knows nothing but “NEKO NEKO KAWAII DESU”. Holy shit, I saved the best for the last!
Evidence 5
これは私にの挑戦ですか、氷雪の銀水晶。
Are you challenging me to battle, Silver Crystal of Ice?
あっ、いや・・・あの・・・
Ah, no…I didn’t…
ならばお相手しましょう
Very well, I accept.
Cool. I think this speaks for itself. The translator just had to screw up the funniest part of the video.
EDIT 2
Thanks for informing me that Ladholyman isn’t responsible for the mess up because he only translates from Chinese subs. You can read my follow-up here. But I’ll keep the remarks below for the sake of completeness and preserving history and all that jazz. Just imagine that I’m talking to the Chinese translator instead. :P
END EDIT
Mr. “Translator”: If you can’t figure out what they are saying, please be honest and tell the rest of your team. Your team members do not speak Japanese and trust you enough that they didn’t get a second translator to expose your little lies. You betrayed their trust. If you want to bullshit, at least do it with style like “Mass Naked Child Event” or something. Be creative!
Listen up fansub groups! DON’T let this guy translate anything! Not a single word! Not even if it’s in English!
The rest of those guys are probably cool, but Doremi deserves a good ass-kicking for not having a translation checker. Come on, it’s so fucking basic that it’s not even funny.
This has been a public service announcement brought to you by DarkMirage. I know if you’ve been naughty or good, so don’t even try to %$#%# around with me!
EDIT: I have to add that these are NOT the only mistakes in this 4:32 short video. And also, the first scene is relatively free of mistakes because it was taken from one of the main episodes, meaning the “translator” probably “borrowed” the translation.
August 30th, 2006 at 12:58 am
I work for Doremi and it’s safe to say, that we screwed up royally and that’s that. We all make mistakes and ladholyman was excited to get into UC Berkley, so he must’ve screwed up.
-Mike
Doremi Fansubs Webmaster/Public Relations Officer
August 30th, 2006 at 12:59 am
BOO BOO BOO~~~
August 30th, 2006 at 1:06 am
I am not proficient in Japanese and had I understand Japanese, I would’ve been disheartened too if I saw totally-off-translations like this, but maybe you should’ve contacted the translator to find out what happens before u start bashing people. Just my 2cents.
August 30th, 2006 at 1:31 am
DM >> You’re being too sensitive. If what Mentar said was true, I don’t see a problem in Chinese->English translations for fansubs. There aren’t many willing Japanese translators out there. So to improvise on the situation, they rely on Chinese subs which are easier to translate. Never did they say the translator was translating from Japanese raw did they? Maybe because Chinese subs are mentioned so I’m siding with them.
And Mentar >> When people can’t watch raws it doesn’t mean they don’t have the right to know that the translations are wrong. That’s like Sony exclaiming “Everyone’s saying it but no one actually knows what’s a rootkit”.
As for the “Please make sure that your translator actually speaks Japanese!” comment, I just found it very elitistic. As much as I don’t like to use the word “elitist”, your above comment was rather caustic, which ironically results in your post becoming just another Anime Junkies to Urban Vision email v2.0.
August 30th, 2006 at 1:51 am
//I just found it very elitistic.//
That’s the was he is apparently, telling fansubbing groups how to do their jobs while simultaneously being beyond the morally unsavory task of fansubbing himself. It’s lucky that Doremi seems to be good sports and are starting to redo the translation and not telling DM to go **** himself
August 30th, 2006 at 1:59 am
LianYL: You’re certainly right there. It’s also fair to point out the translation errors - of course. But I think the smackdown was a bit harsh for that - this kind of dissing really gets people to quit, which would be a shame. Also, DarkMirage’s tirade basically implied that the quality of Doremi subs in general was AJ niveau, and that’s flat-out wrong in my opinion. We (almost certainly) have a case of a bad translation template here. Which is the exception rather than the norm.
Finally, I’ve talked to ladholyman quite a bit, and he’s a great guy. Cut the guy some slack, he’s done alot for the anime world :)
August 30th, 2006 at 2:25 am
Mentar: seems like you skipped the thing about “make sure that your translator actually speaks Japanese!” Cross-translating from Chinese fansubs? Now that makes a sense, if I try to remember all those unbelieveable translations… Try and run some complex sentence through a translation program, you’ll be freaked by results.
Now ofcourse, it’s not like anyone’s paid for the job, but WTF? Freezing your name into frame so proudly after doing shit?..
August 30th, 2006 at 2:28 am
Mentar: the problem is a lil bit wider than just some ladholyman messing up translation for a 4-min DVD special. The problem is quality of modern fansub.
have you ever watched Lamune fansub by C1?..
August 30th, 2006 at 2:44 am
“the first scene is relatively free of mistakes”, at least one thing ought to be corrected at around 0:13 of the video. I’m not that good in Japanese but I think she says something about Mai being selected to succeed a famous gem, “yuumei na ishi wo tsugu koto ga kimatteita”.
August 30th, 2006 at 3:24 am
Am I wrong in reading this post, and immediately breaking out laughing afterwards, both at the tone of the post as well as the content? Doremi screwed up the translation this time, and that’s for certain… but I used to be in the #animejunkies channel way back when, and this is NOTHING compared to the Mass Naked Child Events thing, or half of Gundam SEED. :D
August 30th, 2006 at 3:44 am
I have to side with Mentar on this in that while there were probably mistakes in the Mai Otome special (I don’t speak Japanese, but some of the translations triggered something in my mind), a person can still get a sense of what is going on.
I’m defending Doremi b/c without them, I wouldn’t have been able to watch 54 eps of Keroro Gunso (which has some kind of curse on it). And while they get a few things wrong (like translating Angel Mois’ attack to “Apocolypse” when she’s saying in English “Armageddon”), they’re generally pretty good about it. The Mai Otome specials are the same in that no other group has picked them up (are they licensed?). I know for a fact that they picked up Keroro Gunso b/c they saw the Keron SF arc and thought that the series was pretty good and a lot of people are grateful for that.
So I’m just saying that before slapping what is probably the worst insult in fansubbing, take the group’s work as a whole.
August 30th, 2006 at 3:48 am
Correction on last post: they started Keroro Gunso on ep. 9 so its actually 46 episodes, but still quite an accomplishment.
August 30th, 2006 at 3:57 am
Well, the topic touches me because I’ma BIG ass fanatic of Doremi’s Strawberry Panic.
Dunno if DM was too harsh or not, but there are 2 things I’d like to point:
1. Fansubs are pretty different from other hobbies. Why? Because most fansubbers pride themselves in their translation accuracy and video quality. Video quality can be bad at times (it’s pretty hard to find a good raw sometimes), but the translation can’t be half-assed. As simple as that.
2. Because of 1, fans are used to high quality. And people used to high quality doesn’t like bad translations. Even more if they don’t know Japanese and therefore they can be easily fooled. That really can piss someone off.
So, maybe the right thing for Doremi to do is to investigate what really happened (bad Chinese translation, a lying translatir, etc.)
And that’s all. Impressions from a former Mai-OTOME leecher.
August 30th, 2006 at 4:35 am
Nothing happened. I translated from a bad Chinese sub. If it irks you that much, I’ll do a v2. Thanks for letting me know about this.
And you’re right. I don’t know a lick of Japanese. (In fact, I’m taking Japanese 1A right now at Berkeley, so I know 20 hiragana as of today) I never realized that people actually watch my subs, so I would like it if you can check our translations for the specials.
As Mentar said, it’s your blog, and because of this post, you get a shiny v2 in a few days. Hop by our IRC channel if you have any more suggestions about my crappiness.
Hey, it’s not as bad as Gerald Roberts.
August 30th, 2006 at 4:57 am
I just want to say that I mostly agree with what Mentar brought up in his post. I am a personal friend (and ex-translator for Keroro under Doremi) of Maceart and Ladholyman, and I must say in defense of them that this time particularily is a hard time for them both. They’re actually in their first week of college, and you know how hecktic things can be. Yes, they made a mistake. Yes, this is annoying to the viewers. But they didn’t do it on purpose. And I believe DM is taking this too far by saying “DON’T let this guy translate anything” without watching at least the other half of Doremi’s releases: Keroro. There could’ve been so many factors in the mistranslation of this episode, and I know for a fact that they did their best with a chinese script. Yes, they should’ve gotten someone who’s fluent with japanese to double check, but not every group has one, which is why blogs such as yours exist; not to point fingers at someone, but to bring the mistakes to light.