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 6:08 pm
oOOH This beat my FYG drama post damn!! This URL must be spreading like fire burning up an oily FYG through fansub IRC, forums and word of mouth.
August 30th, 2006 at 6:24 pm
OMFG its totally out,….from now on whoever saw that FKCing lying bastard name tell the sub to kick that bastard out of the group, no wonder when i watch the anime its sound really weird…im not good in japanese but still its really out of the main story…
August 30th, 2006 at 7:10 pm
Silverfire,remember how much we took just to translate from italian to english
that panel in Ergo Proxy ?I’ve spent over an hour with the TL to just get it right in english (since a literal translation from my lang to english doesn’t really exist) and he spent even more with another Italian and doing some research.But i guess not many want (or can ) to spend that much time for a single thing.Nonetheless i have to agree that at least their Strawberry Panic and Pani Poni Dash isn’t that bad (with the little knowledge i have of japanese).
August 30th, 2006 at 7:47 pm
I posted this on Doremi’s site, I shall repost it here:
Never do J->E translations through an intermediary language. Use the raws. Listen, Listen, rewind listen again and take notes when necessary.
Anyone is a beginner at something, Japanese is no exception. With hard work, one day you will get JLPT 1.
P.S: I still remember Animejunkies. Who could forget ‘mass naked child events’?
P.P.S: I seriously think a fansub translator should have at least a JLPT 3 or even 2. It is sheer madness for someone who barely learnt kana to try and translate. My 2 cents.
August 30th, 2006 at 8:06 pm
i’m just going to comment based on what i’ve read from your entry and the comments - mainly yours - since i watched nothing of mai otome.
“Fansubs do it for the fame. If they were doing it for the “good of it”, they’d have put more effort into quality control.”
lemme guess, what about fansubber Lunar? i don’t know if they do it for fame, but they certainly put alot into qc.
“It’s clearly deliberate laziness”
from the comments, apparently doremi had no japanese->english translator; where do you expect the resource to come from? my pants? they’re good enough to come out with something, even if it’s shit i don’t care. what say you? quit the fansubbing scene and start blabbering “I R LEARN WAPANEZE FOR 4 YEARZ AND GOT TRANSLATOR EXPERIENCEZ SO I SHALL PWN JOO NUBZ BY NEGATIVELY CRITICIZING JOO”? lol. how about going back to fansubbing and prove your worth than typing out your rant? maybe that makes time spent more worthwhile…and fansubbers properly won’t be “delibrately lazy”. then again, you weren’t lazy in writing the entry and receiving various feedback.
“You can see why I’m not fansubbing anymore.”
because you think japanese anime fansubs are brought to you from japanese->korean->english or japanese->chinese->english so you decide “i r not gonna t/l japanese raw anymore cuz i r too 1337″. hmm, go ahead then rofl.
“Ok, I apologize. The translator wasn’t lying. The team was just lazy.”
suuuuuure. they were too lazy they managed to bring you a release you probably perceive to be absolutely shitty and henceforth tell the intarweb “no more shit fansubs plz becuz only my wapanese skillz can be used for translations!”.
“I know how translators work and we tend to bluff our way through lines that we don’t know. In fact that’s probably what the original Chinese translator did.”
now you know what the original chinese translator did but you continue to flame the fansub when you know they translate from chinese to english? oh yeah, say what? “4 years of learning japanese” and “we tend to bluff our way through lines that we don’t know.”
“But then again, it’s my blog. It’s a huge waste of time and really silly of you to read my blog and take the time to tell me that.”
contradicting don’t you think? it’s your blog, we waste time reading it and take the time to tell you that. alright.
so you waste time writing about the quality of a fansub group without constructive criticisms, then receiving comments from everyone around the world and finally commenting back on your blog…when it’s a “huge waste of time”, it is also “really silly”; aren’t you wasting huge amount of time and being really silly over it? sure, i admit, i waste huge time and am silly to read your blog. what about you lmao.
“A translation checker only needs to watch it once to tell if the translation is complete junk. It only requires skills. Not much work involved really.”
ohh, so how about going back to the fansub scene now with the excuse of being a translation checker? at least you get to criticize much more about junk translations. besides, “it only requires skills” and “not much work involved really”.
“Perhaps I was a bit too harsh, but I think it won’t have reached so many people otherwise. People love internet drama!”
high five. you proved your worth. now i know doremi isn’t a quality fansub. yay.
“Of course I’m elitist! I spent the last four years learning Japanese so that I can be elitist! Hell, I have to make my investment worth it.”
yay for 31337 translator DM! now, only those with more than 4 years of japanese learning can be 1337! so to avoid further entries of DM criticizing your fansub quality you fansub groups MUST have fansub translators with AT LEAST 4 YEARS of japanese learning experience!
“Since when did people have to be useful and helpful when they whine on the Internet?”
true! that’s why i’m here whining with you on the Internet, along with the comment that you should should do something about your attitude.
bottomline: cheers lah, brother; you made singapore proud proud. limpeh is proud of ur blog.
August 30th, 2006 at 8:38 pm
@Valkyrie:
Personally I wouldn’t pick Lunar as an example of a group that does good QC. A better example would maybe be one of the etg groups like Soldats or The Triad, Anime-Kraze and Kaizoku-Fansubs.
Funny rant but ultimately very true. In the end it proved useful though, so it wasn’t all bad. I have nothing against Doremi. I’m grateful that they took it upon themselves to do Keroro Gunsou without feeling the need to go overboard with the typesetting(are you listening Soldats?) that’d probably not be of that much benefit to the viewer. A little note explaining the translation does the job, no need to spend months and months on it
August 30th, 2006 at 8:39 pm
Valkyrie: Ignoring the fact that you haven’t really read my comments, here are my replies:
It is true. I am too 1337.
It is also true that fansubs are competing for the torrent peer numbers. Translating from Chinese and Korean is a result of this battle of speed release. People don’t care if a translator translates faithfully. It’s easier to for a sub group to gain internet fame by speed subbing than by doing useless things like QC that people don’t even notice. I suck at speed translating. Fansubs don’t need me.
Doremi was lazy. It was minimum effort for free brownie points. Groups like Lunar can spend the time QC’ing and get no thanks for it. For an obscure release like the DVD Special, there’s no competition anyway. Since there’s no competition, who cares about QC? Everyone who wants to watch it has to download your version anyway. And they probably don’t speak Japanese either so it’s all good.
That’s laziness for you.
It’s only the truth. It hurts because people (or maybe I was the only one?!?!) trusted fansubs to at least get the general gist of the anime.
Wow. That’s exactly my point! Thanks for rephrasing it. They are both huge wastes of time, exactly what I said. :)
I think when the translation misses the mark by such a huge margin, it’s no longer a matter of quality, but whether it can be considered translation at all.
I agree 100%. :X
Thank you, and the same to you too.
I’m sorry, you are not my father. My father is dead.
August 30th, 2006 at 9:02 pm
Please note, I did not authorize the v2. There will be a v3.
August 30th, 2006 at 11:00 pm
^LOL
August 30th, 2006 at 11:12 pm
I just want to bump this post because we must reach the 100 mark. Keep it erect D M!
August 30th, 2006 at 11:27 pm
You fool! This isn’t 4chan! You can’t bump blog entries! gt2 /b/
August 30th, 2006 at 11:39 pm
Oh Boy…
Well I just only watch the Omake 8 in RAW… Didn’t touch Doremi-Otome Sub yet… Well if i can wait for the V3 after i see this :/.
Well guys, remember that only Doremi-Otome is the only team who continue something with Otome… Statics give up yet or something like this (I don’t have any news about what Static done after Omake 3) so be happy that you have some subs… Even if it’s incorrect… Real DVD will be good no? So don’t complain so much :/
That is my Opinions
Cheers .
And Thanks Dorémi-Otome for everything, even if problem or error continue…
August 31st, 2006 at 12:04 am
@DarkMirage: I’d like to thank you for inspiring me to do a full QC of one of Doremi’s releases. Judging from a lot of the other posts that people have made here, they all watch Strawberry Panic from them, so I’ll probably do that.
When I finish, do you want me to post the link to the PDF? It’ll be similar in format to those other PDF’s I linked to.
August 31st, 2006 at 12:49 am
Let me make some clarifications here. Disclaimer: I’m not nor ever was part of the otome DVD specials team, so my opinion may possibly differ from their’s.
“Doremi was lazy.”
I’d say this is partially true; the ones who wanted the special out in the first place, i.e. the ones who worked on it were not lazy in work ethic. I can tell you this, having worked with them on prior projects. I can’t comment on the validiy of the referenced Chinese subs, but whether or not Lad (who is -usually- in the ballpark or spot on) was in err when translating, the fault, to me, still lies on QC and the LACK of TL checking; it’s just saddening.
“It was minimum effort for free brownie points. Groups like Lunar can spend the time QC’ing and get no thanks for it. For an obscure release like the DVD Special, there’s no competition anyway. Since there’s no competition, who cares about QC? Everyone who wants to watch it has to download your version anyway. And they probably don’t speak Japanese either so it’s all good.”
You can take comfort in knowing that this is *not* Doremi’s mentality; they work on something because they have interest in it, not because they want “points”. They wouldn’t have been involved in fansubbing nearly as long if such were the case. As Mentar pointed out already, Lad has done a lot for the anime world and if not for the community then certainly for himself.
August 31st, 2006 at 12:59 am
o.O so many people bashing the only english fansub grp subbing the mai otome specials…just cos of a screwup they had with the latest mai otome release..
Well, whos to lose if doremi decides not to sub any more ?
the subbers? nah i dont think so. they got nutting to lose by not subbing and we got 1 less choice to choose(in Motome case,no choice at all).
Therefore, unless any1 of you dare come out and promise to sub the current mai otome specials, none of you are qualified to bash the fansubbers. correcting, maybe, but bashing is overboard.
btw if any of you self conceited brats thinks hes better(like a certain singaporean), pls produce a sub version or quit bashing like its your right to get good quality staff everytime you download from the internet. heck, you guys dont even pay for their work.