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 5:05 am
It sounds like there are some Doremi fanboys replying to this. The turth is that their encodes are usually crap and their translations are equally as bad. They are a low-grade fansubbing group like most are. Beware.
August 30th, 2006 at 5:45 am
OK, so I’m not the only one who thought during that episode that all of the translations soooooooooooo weren’t matching with the dialogue.
August 30th, 2006 at 6:19 am
That’s nothing, you should see what For Richer or Poorer did to episode 18 of Ouran.
I don’t think they even tried. In defense of FRoP, apparently they only did it while Lunar was delayed, so I wasn’t expecting perfection at all, but many of the the lines were absolutely, 100% different, like they didn’t even have the audio for the scene and just came up with something to link the last scene and the next scene together.
August 30th, 2006 at 6:32 am
More shitty fansubs:
http://silverfire.isadouchebag.net/pdf/noein09_ShinsenQC.pdf
http://silverfire.isadouchebag.net/pdf/eureka41_SeraphQC.pdf
http://silverfire.isadouchebag.net/pdf/nhk01_AnimeAssassinsQC.pdf
Enjoy :P
Hundreds of errors from groups that don’t care about quality at all.
August 30th, 2006 at 6:49 am
>>That’s nothing, you should see what For Richer or Poorer did to episode 18 of Ouran.
Whew! Now I’m glad I waited for Lunar to catch up instead of jumping on the FRoP subs.
August 30th, 2006 at 7:08 am
Me too.
August 30th, 2006 at 7:13 am
Hey. ;) I’d like to further my own opinion that the release this time really did seem rushed. To be fair to Lad, the scenes you say were borrowed were likely translated on the spot — knowing him myself, I doubt he’d reference past episodes unless they were his own work. The special itself, as far as I know, went unQC’d by members outside of the core team actually working on it, so shame on us for letting that slip.
I’m skeptical about bd_ having edited the script; if he did, he’d have to have done it without listening to the audio track. Why? He knows Japanese; he’d have caught said errors and more lest he only be looking at the text (the fact that some grammatical errors slipped by further makes me think otherwise).
I don’t follow the specials myself (currently only QCing/TL checking for SPanic 19+), so I don’t know of their quality nor the work that goes into them, but I know Doremi has, as of late, been stretched for resources. With more attention being allocated to resources, and less to fansubbing (especially with Lad+Mace having just entered college), I can appreciate why these mishaps might occasionally occur.
This was a BadRelease(TM), but to say Doremi is AJ 2.0 is a bit much IMHO.
August 30th, 2006 at 7:39 am
And I thought something was a little wrong with the translation. Hooray! DM saves the day.
Even though DOREMI is doing a great job for translating for free, blah blah if you don’t like blah blah don’t watch it kinda of thing, I think just because they are fansubbers means they get automatic protection from all wrong doings.
It’s like cooking free food people for charity, and the food taste really bad. Might as well do a good job out of it.
But erm, yeah you’re a little harsh DM.
August 30th, 2006 at 8:03 am
For one, editors and quality checkers should’ve caught the absolutely nonsensical dialogues. Even without any Japanese knowledge, I would’ve questioned the reliability of the source and its accuracy. In my opinion, not only the translator and the lack of a translation checker should be blamed, I believe anybody who had anything to do with the script should be held responsible.
Lianyl, it’s not that it’s easier to translate from Chinese to English rather than Japanese to English, since there are just as many or even more CN –> EN translators than JP –> EN translators. Nobody would complain if the translations were accurate. But the fact is, there’s a chance of inaccuracy happening, hence it’s not too reliable to cross-translate and is discouraged. The translation in the end can turn out substantially altered, straying off from its original translation. An average leecher may not be able to tell, but you can usually find minor errors in cross-translating, like wrong tenses, missing words, and such.
Anyway, Mentar, if somebody donated you a broken computer, would you gladly accept it? Just because it’s free, don’t take for granted that everybody will be grateful for it.
I don’t see any problem with this blog, just because it’s true that there’s a big rise in the number of crappy groups recently, and most of them fail in translation and editing, which happens to be the important part of fansubbing. Some believe speed is better, well, this is what you get.
August 30th, 2006 at 8:57 am
“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.”
Wait a minute… the original “translation” was also by Ladholyman. He… copy pasted from his own subs? Paradox perhaps?
Anyways, I was only the timer, so I can’t do anything about that.
August 30th, 2006 at 8:58 am
Perhaps a little harsh, but it is understandable that one can be very upset when an episode from a series that you like a lot is pretty much screwed over by the translations. I mean, for those of us who don’t really know japanese, it’s easy to take these fansubs for granted and trust that they are accurate. After all, they are one of the very few sources from which we can obtain our daily doses of anime. Thus we put our trust in them to give us at least accurate translations. Most of the time I wouldn’t mind waiting longer just for a QCed version, if it means that I’m getting a sub of at least reasonable quality. If I’m really eager to watch the episode, at most i’ll just watch the raw first and wait for the sub.
I’m not saying that Ladholyman did this on purpose, or he’s a bad subber or anything, but perhaps they could have checked the sub before releasing it to the public. It’s like sending a lousy letter to the forums of your newspaper (and if they publish it); it can really draw some flak from the public. What i’m trying to say here is that things can really turn ugly when you produce pretty bad work for the public.
August 30th, 2006 at 9:50 am
A shiny v2 for you. Thank you, ex-fansubber!
August 30th, 2006 at 10:02 am
Well, for those who are interested, they’ve released a ‘fixed’ version. DLing now to see how the dialogue reads.
I guess someone pointed them to this blog entry?
August 30th, 2006 at 10:03 am
Nope DM was right on. I downloaded this and watched before reading this blog entry. Even witj my limited japanese, I knew something was off, even to the point of watching the credits. When I saw LH’s name as translator I just took the translations as being good.
But…. the dialog was still too strange …
Maybe they were bad chinese subs, however DM is right QC your work!
August 30th, 2006 at 10:05 am
I don’t speak a word of japanese. I have nothing to do with Doremi. I don’t think your complaints are unfounded.
But I think you went about this in the meanest, rudest, most unhelpful way possible. He may have done a totally crappy job, but your insults are absolutely uncalled for. Bad days and mistakes happen. That’s what v2’s are for.
It’s one thing to call them out for a bad translation, it’s another thing to try to humiliate them in order to stroke your own ego.