#like subs are a more accurate translation but it's also localized?

[m4rs-ex3]

terrified to quote young royals bc idk whether i was supposed to watch w subtitles or closed captions😭

[27daisuki]

Hello again! I recently added subs to the dmmd stage plays (except Ren's! i do not take credit for that). Originally i only had 4 routes, but I received Mink's and ViTri's routes and just finished subbing! (thank you @minkiemoo for sending them to me!!)

They're all updated on the same Google drive that i posted before but I'll repost it here

I hope you all enjoy!! please let me know if I missed anything or if it's not working (I didn't finish subbing the post credit conversations but i wanted to get the rest of the play out there first)

translators notes and general thoughts below if u care

Woo!!!! I'm so happy i got to watch all the routes and I'm very happy to make it easier to consume for English speakers! the game blew up in 2014 on tumblr from a fan translation iirc? so I think it's only fair that I do my part now that I'm at a level of fluency where I can do that too! my goal since i was a kid to be able to watch/play things in jp without subs or translation, and i think i only recently realized i can do that now lol

it has been a very long time since I started learning jpn (i believe in total it has been 18 years on and off 💀 god) and i just wasn't confident in my skills but when i was watching Ren's route (it was the only one available overseas without vpn shit and had subs) and no shade to whoever had to sub Ren's route but i noticed some subs were just straight up wrong? (there's a part where aoba is looking at a screen at toue's speech and it was just all wrong) so i think that coupled with having friends that also like dmmd and wanted to watch the other routes inspired me to do my own damn subs lmao 😂

I'm absolutely not saying my subs are perfect, I'm sure there are spots that aren't 100% accurate (mostly because i can't 100% hear exactly what syllables they're saying sometimes because they talk so fast or just the audio quality or mumbling lol noiz I'm looking at you), but if i was unsure at any point I'd cross check the game lol if anyone notices any point where my subs are inaccurate, please let me know! i take no offense and honestly would love to be corrected so i can know for the future

also lastly, i did wanna touch on my strategy for subbing! jpn and English don't translate very well to each other all the time so there are some things that are said in jp that if i wrote literally in English would feel awkward or be hard to understand, so for some dialogue i tried to convey what they were saying with phrases that would make more sense to an English reader. So if you hear some sentences/words and you're like, wait that's not 100% exactly what they said, there's a good chance I know and i made the choice to translate it differently. it can be really hard to know when to leave something literally translated and when to localize it, or how far you should change the wording even if you keep the important information in a sentence, and which words i can leave out because of how fast they talk😭

jpn is also a very context heavy language, which means they leave out words in a sentence because it's implied that they're still in the sentence but you're supposed to fill them in. so there are many times where it sounds like in jp, they say 2 words, but it could really actually be like 6 because they're assuming you filled in the other 4 words. English you can only really get away with so much not said, and it can feel a bit weird when u read 6 words on the screen but hear the actors say 2 words lmao but just trust me on this, i promise I'm not adding words outta no where😂

one example: when Mizuki is holding a knife to Tae, he says 後悔すんなよ which literally means "don't regret this", but with the full context he's saying something close to "don't regret this because it's gonna be your fault your grandma dies" which obviously is a lot more than what he said and I can't write all that on the screen for 2 seconds. The best equivalent to this (imo) was too write "You'll regret this", because even though it's not what he said in jp, it still gets the point across to english speakers and eng speakers can fill in the blank that he'll regret this because he didn't take Mizuki's threats seriously. It's less words and it's easier to digest in the few seconds that you have to read the sub

anyway i just want it to be known that i put a lot of care into these subs and thought very hard about how I translated each sentence, so i hope that you can trust my work!

Thank you again for all the kind words! I hope you enjoy the plays!!

[kaiowut99]

A Special Announcement~ | Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V Tag Force Special Re-Translation Project!

I've been itching to get around to posting about this for a few months now, but wanted to wait until I'd worked on enough for it, but also had the idea to create an announcement trailer to go with it for added good measure--after recording and editing clips for a couple weeks and leveling the audio last night, heremst we are! (For some clips, I forgot to turn off the PPSSPP emulator's DevMenu option so that shows up in the top-left, buuut I didn't feel like re-recording those, lmao.)

Details worth reading below the cut here, but tl;dr work has been in progress for over a year in between things, work will continue to be in progress for a while, and the release will happen when everything's ready, but stay tuned, fun's getting started etc etc~

So, I'm sure most of us are familiar with the as-yet-unlocalized-by-Konami TFSP, the seventh and last entry in the Tag Force series on the PSP that came out early in ARC-V's run (featuring the first five series which was a cool first), as well as the current translations out there originally worked on by the guys at XenoTranslations (omarrrio and ScrewTheRules/ClickClaxer01 at GBATemp handling the card and story/etc translations, respectively) and how there are... some issues with what's out there. Everything from the DM story mode being loaded with YGOTAS references (no shade to YGOTAS and much respect to LK/Martin for his ongoing work on it still making me laugh sometimes, ofc) to the off-the-cuff edginess of 2014-2015-era internet culture and the problematic (in some cases, derogatory) language that permeated it--though to its credit, some parts do have some level of translation attempted, but taken as a whole, it can definitely turn people off from giving the game a try and seeing what it brings to the table (which is still a good amount despite the corners Konami cut here/there compared to prior TF games).

I actually did attempt a translation of my own back in 2015 (if you've been following me for a long time, you might remember it lol), tackling the GX story text starting with Judai's heart events, but eventually put it on the backburner as I focused more on my GX subbing work and beginning to finalize everything (which I'm still doing). Sometime in 2022, a friend over on NeoArkCradle (the "anonymous YGO fan" in the opening screen) was poring over the story text and patching it up the best he could to remove the references and inaccuracies with more coherent work, and after a while of seeing what he was working with in the Discord, I was a bit blown away by just how inaccurate much of it was--so alongside him, and using the better tools available since then (including some really awesome work from both nzxth2 [who did a proper re-translation of 5D's TF6 not too long ago and was kind enough to release his tools for it] and our coding helper Xan1242 who we eventually reached out to for some help), I decided to *cracks knuckles* get involved and help give everything a more accurate and professional translation, much like I do with my GX subs, working directly off the Japanese text and files. I've been taking cracks at everything in between the GX episodes I've been finalizing going back to at least last January (and I'd used my little hiatus after finalizing GX Season 2's subs to really get at some other stuff throughout the game), starting with re-translating DM's story text but also properly translating other aspects of the game, from the character names (using the original Japanese names, including those of the TF-exclusive characters, partly since Konami made a whole mess of them in English TF1-5), in-duel dialogue, pack descriptions, and more to images with Japanese text (such as localizing the in-duel cut-in onomatopoeia as you see in the video above, or other little images throughout) using some Photoshop skills I've picked up. And it's been a joint effort, as said NAC friend and I have been bouncing off how we'd like to see this go between us to stay on the same page and all, while also checking with other translators there for second/third opinions as needed.

Our plan is to release two versions of a translation--one which uses the OCG [translated] card names in Story Mode, in-duel, and other text but not in the game's card system (mainly to deal with story-relevant notes like Osiris vs Slifer with the Gods or things like not-Utopia Hope being symbolic between Yuma and Astral, akin to how I do my GX subs), and one which uses the TCG card names in everything (like how the official subs go about it). While we're mostly working with the Japanese game files due to how the Xeno team went about decoding everything, we'll be using the card-system-related files from the fixed ISO provided by FLSGaming which fixed some issues that had been present there. And Xan has helped us with a plugin that will be used to apply our translations to the system files that were hard to edit otherwise (things like the character and recipe names, as well as the pack names pulled from for the Card Description screen), but more on how that'll work once this is ready for release, lol. At some point, I'd like to also look at HDifying textures and things, but that's definitely a bonus-level thing for after the main work here is done.

SO.

Currently, Story-Mode-wise, I've gone through everything up to Yusei's events--so Dark Yugi/Kaiba/Jounouchi/Ishizu/Mai in DM, Judai/Manjoume/Asuka/Misawa/Ryou in GX, and Yusei in 5D's have been fully retranslated, though I took initial cracks at Yuma and Yuya's events to get content for this video lol (I've also been intentionally holding off on as much ZEXAL as I can until I've properly watched the whole show so I have context). I haven't tackled overworld text yet, though (like pre-duel or the tournament-related text, which is all in the same file as all the story text). I've also been handling the in-duel dialogue as I go through the character stories, so also just up to Yusei, though I did take initial cracks at Aki's, Yuma and Shark's, and Yuya and Yuzu's for the video.

Other things tackled that were sprinkled into the video, along with some other notes:

Pack names and descriptions have been retranslated, though the descriptions may see minor edits closer to release for a little variety between worlds given the different characters at the shop. Character recipe names were also retranslated, with Yugipedia's translations for them used as an occasional second opinion, though ones based on pack names had to be abbreviated in spots.

Menu text, from the Options to Help screens and stuff in between, has been retranslated, as have in-duel text strings (so, you'll see a full "Activate Effect" instead of "Activate" or "Switch to Attack/Defense Position" instead of "Switch to ATK/DEF Position", etc--also fixed the "BATTELE PHASE" graphic typo, and NAC friend created a new translation for the "Turn Change" graphic for accuracy since ENG TF1-5 made that into "Next Player's Turn").

Database stuff, such as the Sound Test, Tutorials, Duel Missions, etc., have been retranslated closer to the Japanese text; originally I retranslated the Tutorial text via hex editor, with compromises done on quite a bit of it due to the space limits, but as Xan recently updated a text extractor tool of theirs to more cleanly pull out and reinsert that text, I've been going through and fleshing out those translations more (on my commutes to/from work mostly, to be productive lol).

As mentioned, I've been localizing/translating Japanese-text images throughout the game as I come across them, like with the in-duel onomatopoeia that come up during cut-ins or images in the shop/duel/etc screens using Japanese text, to make sure the game is fully translated.

The series logos, used during the title sequence and in the Series Select screens, were updated with translated fan edits shared on Deviantart (which we'll credit in the final release) for DM and GX, while the 5D's-ARC-V logos were edited to enlarge the "Yu-Gi-Oh!" text on them that was pretty hard to see originally.

The game's original opening sequence starts on an anti-piracy message before going into the Konami logo and then a "From Yu-Gi-Oh!..." screen before the opening animation for each series logo--the original team decided to use the first image to vent their frustration at Konami for not localizing this game, and while that's valid (to some extent), we thought we'd use the opportunity to dedicate this project to Kazuki Takahashi for inspiring our love for YGO and the place it's had in our hearts for all these years.

We'll be updating the names of cards that had TCG releases after the original patch was worked on/updated by FLSG to those corresponding names.

Xan has been working on many UI fixes for us to apply with this, among them 3-line dialogue box text as is used in the ENG TF1-5 games--once implemented for TFSP, I'll be going over everything to make full use of that extra space where needed, so things might not look as they do in the video by then.

Character bios will be worked on after I've done the story stuff, though I've taken initial cracks at it for Yuma and Yuya's bios for the video, along with translating the location/affiliation names ("Domino High School," "Satellite," etc).

Currently no release date is planned, as I'm working on this between my GX-finalizing work and actual IRL work, though we'll see how later this year looks as more work gets done--but as noted in the video, all things being equal, it will be released when everything is ready. I'll try to post regular updates or rambles now that this announcement's been made, lol, but do try not to constantly check in on a release date. 🙏🏽

All that said, I think that covers just about everything I wanted to put out there with this, lol. It's been fun to work on this so far and getting to see what I've re-translated in-game is definitely neat; looking forward to us being able to release everything when ready.

Stay tuned for more; the fun's just getting started!

[script-a-world]

Submitted via Google Form: Languages

How can my fictional world strive to keep all its languages active and in use, including all rare ones. I saw a few of your posts but none of them quite desacribe what I want. Several languages co-existing due to different functionality is the closest I've seen, but that can't be used to explain thousands of thriving languages that do not become endangered over time with fewer and fewer speakers. There certaintly may be few speakers, but it WILL be spread when the oldest die. (Honestly the only way to extinguish a languages is by genocide and that isn't happening) Maybe everyone keeps their own languages and common languages only exist in the outside world and everyone at home speaks theirs with the main language teachers being parants rather than schools. But how about when families join together and don't have the same home language? But what would create a culture like this? How about families that don't have childfen, the languages still must pass to someone elsewhere. Or maybe my world should have thousands of microstates where you have to know one of the languages to be there and only some of them share a language? How would the world even work without any massive powers? Butcurencethe issue with these microstates is in real life that's because the the people come from elsewhere where that language is the main. Maybe this is not a natural occurrence but they have very successful programs to keep languages alive, with population monitoring and being sure to teach any declining languages. But that sounds autocratic, but lthen how would all places be similar. But that veey much is not what I envision and it will neve rwork with with my plot or characters

Utuabzu: A lot depends on the tech level of your world. If everyone has some sort of accurate real-time machine translation, then it's very easy to maintain many languages. Similarly, if travel is still very difficult and people of different cultures don't come into contact that often, it's also pretty easy to keep small languages vital. But assuming that we're dealing with a roughly-modern tech level, we do have options.

The first is what you described with people having separate home and non-home languages. This is called diglossia if there's two languages/dialects and polyglossia if there's more, and it's more common than monolingual people often assume. You see it in places like Switzerland (local German dialect - Swiss German - Standard German), Italy (local dialect, dialetto*, Standard Italian), Indonesia (local language** - Bahasa Indonesia), the Arabic-speaking world (local dialect*** - national dialect - Modern Standard Arabic - Classical Arabic).

In a lot of smaller language communities, it's very common for a person to natively speak both parents' community language (often these communities are so small that outmarriage is necessitated, either by cultural law or simple pragmatism - below a certain population, the whole community is going to be related) and a lingua franca.

Even if you yourself are a native English speaker, you likely also speak a regional dialect, even if you don't realise it. I speak Australian English, and I switch between sub dialects contextually - I use one closer to Broad Australian with friends and family, and one nearer to Cultivated Australian with authority figures and non-native speakers. This sort of thing can be stable over very long periods if there's no outside pressure. It usually collapses when governments try to impose a standard national language in all aspects of life, either because it drives the local languages to extinction or because there's a backlash that drives the national language out of the local public sphere.

Now, for preserving and revitalising small languages, you've got a couple options. You could use government bodies to do it, which can be awkwardly coercive, or you could use private organisations, either cultural ones or religious ones. In our world, the biggest database of languages is Ethnologue, which is maintained by a Christian missionary group****. One option here could be a religious order dedicated to recording and preserving languages. A priesthood of a minor god of language might be a fun little bit of worldbuilding and even a helpful resource for characters, since they'd presumably have extensive archives and be pretty open to anyone looking through them.

One final note relates to language death. Not every language dies violently. Latin is dead, but because its regional dialects became independent languages. Old English is dead because it evolved into Middle English and Middle Scots, which evolved into Early Modern English and Early Modern Scots, which evolved into modern English and Scots. Classical Nahuatl is dead, but has birthed a whole family of languages. Other languages, like Damin, which is and has only ever been taught to initiated adult Lardil and Yangkaal men, have never had native speakers*****. 

What you do with these situations is up to you, but it is worth keeping in mind that living languages are always changing, always evolving, always becoming. The only way they can stop is by dying. Regional dialects diverge or converge based on a variety of socio-cultural factors, potentially birthing new languages. The pace of change is different between languages - English has changed far more quickly over the last thousand years than Icelandic, for example - but change is inevitable. Languages must change because the needs of their speakers change. New words are needed for new concepts. Old words for old concepts no longer needed are discarded or repurposed. Grammatical structures are influenced through contact with other languages or just through individual linguistic quirks being adopted by the community.

*dialetto is often translated as dialect, but that's not really very accurate. The Italian term actually refers to what Italian linguists call regional languages, which are Romance languages that evolved independently from Latin, rather than regional variations of Standard Italian - those are called Italiano regionale.

**eg. Javanese, Balinese, Sundanese, Makkasan etc.

*** Over the last 1400-odd years regional dialects of Arabic have diverged so far that many are no longer mutually intelligible. An argument could be made that they're separate languages now, but the speakers consider them dialects of Arabic, and since there's no hard line between dialect and language linguists generally go with what speakers themselves say.

**** A lot of linguists have ethical concerns about this, and there's a move to create a new, non-religiously motivated database.

***** a warning, don't look this up if you're not comfortable with body modification.

[cryptturon]

so lately theres been an AI controversy in the anime community: no ones defending western localizers from being replaced bc theyve been making fans upset by shoving completely unrelated politics into the subtitles

i.e. a character could straight up just be like. "i wanna wear something fancy" and the subs apparently become something along the lines of "i gotta look as gay as possible to piss that guy off" [dramatized]. similar queer and feminist sentiments have propped up where there were none in the scene's original text

the reason i find this funny is bc the biggest one ive seen this happen to is dragon maid. like. the questionable ecchi dragon girl anime. and the localizer was trying to make the most sexualized big-titted character speak for feminism like. very wrong place at the right time. it's an important thing to talk about but not while doing a job that's done best with accuracy and none of your personality and ideas popping out

the one people are Fine with are dubs bc theyre already commonly accepted to not only speak the text in english but to Feel like it's An English Version of the original text + people really love when memes get in there. subs are, fairly enough to me, not given this freedom bc theyre understood to be purely making the original text understandable but mostly unchanged

anyway it seems these AI subs dont even meet the quality of fansubs and professionally done official subs so its not like people even really want the AI lol its really like. a combination of decent standards for translation quality and just a tad bit of the typical anime space bigotry giving it more attention.

the unfortunate part of all this is how very few people are going against the change and making it abt how much they dislike the localizer's work, rather than advocating for stricter localization standards. they seem too focused on being really bigoted abt it rn and seem to have sentiments that say these people brought it upon themselves which is always. always a bad mindset to have about this

of course i feel like fansubs have consistently been good, except they can also be prone to exhibiting the translator's agenda! the point of official subs is to safeguard from this, but instead the perspective that "it's fine if it's progressive" is really fuckin stupid. both of yall just gotta make it accurate to the context of the text. THATS why we also cant have AI because it lacks an understanding of the context

[yusuke-of-valla]

If you wanna my 2 cents on Dubs vs Subs, I am ok with and can like dubs that change jokes or small aspects of a character's personality. Like making a character that quotes Japanese poets quote Shakespeare instead or giving new dialogue to a generic character. Or like alot of the time, directly translating something with subs gets a sentence that doesn't quite feel right like someone randomly saying "Remember what I am about to say, never fall in love with a thief". Whilst the official localization says something like "Well, you just be careful. There are plenty of thieves out there who would steal a girl's heart" which sounds more natural. It does annoy me though when dubs/localization do stuff like completely change concepts like the culture of the fictional setting to be more like "typical" to western cultures.

Well sure but that's outside the realm of what annoys me about the discourse. "Being faithful to the original while also comprehensible to audiences in the target language" is the bare minimum we expect from subs and dubs, so really you're saying "I like ones that are good at their job," which agreed! Both work when done well.

Of course, there are dubs that are bad, there are subs that are bad, but taking the worst examples of either as a reason one or the other is inferior is dumb and disingenuous which is what a lot of people tend to do (think TikToks about 'anime dub voicing acting' that over annunciation or play up the faults of a bad dub)

I don't prefer dubs because I think they're better than subs I personally prefer dubs because I get distracted easily and if it's dubbed I can still follow along if I want to sketch or play a game or get a message on my phone, it's not deeper than that. Subbed anime is just harder for me to watch, plain and simple

Mostly I think the discourse is annoying when people act like you HAVE to have one or the other or that one's inherently more accessible or something when the ANSWER is that we should have subs AND dubs AND dubs with subtitles *accurate to the dub* (because a lot of times they have to change the dialogue to fit the timing of the scenes and mouth flaps and what not, it's another reason you can't make a dub a word for word translation along with the fact that when spoken Japanese just flows completely differently). The most accessible option is always going to be more options.

[arbitrarygreay]

Something missing from the incessant translation discourse I see online is that they're all centered on translation of fiction. This warps a lot of the incentives towards more localization than less, which is only possible because fictional dialogue and writing is often not like real life conversation! This post brought to you by my being reminded how when I got into idols, probably the number one phrase you're going to encounter in the footage is "yoroshiku onegaishimas". The literal translation is something like "please take care of me". Localisations will tend to be custom to whatever situation the characters are in, like "pleased to meet you" or "thanks for your support [in advance]". But such customizations obviously don't apply to real life, so subs of idol footage tend to use "please take care of me". And this is way more accurate to making me understand the culture in which this phrase exists! Even in fiction, it points to a mindset the writers are coming from, in which this phrase is so customary! I just encountered this in the context of a science fiction story where a human meets interstellar aliens, and it really struck me how these aliens would receive being greeted with such a phrase for the first time. For them, there really is no such thing as a localisation, just context-free exposure to a human culture where this is a standard part of introductions. Even in the case where a localization might work, like a character using slang to be rude, I get more value from a literal translation and "T/N character is using slang to be rude," since now I have also learned a new idiom, as well as its meaning. After all, we do this kind of learning even within our own language all of the time. It would be absolutely insufferable if we started converting all uses of e.g. "bury the hatchet" into "made peace" for the kiddies. The fact that some idioms become divorced from their historical origins and feel a bit vestigial is simply how languages are developed!

[shihalyfie]

Translation problems in the official English subs for Kizuna

We’re thankfully in an era where Digimon is getting official localizations again, and with much better quality than we used to, but, unfortunately, Kizuna’s official English subtitles have problems that are detrimental to the movie. (Even worse, the official English dub is obviously based off the same mistranslated script, so a lot of its issues are carried over.) It’s not to say that the movie can’t still be enjoyed well enough or understood with it, but this is a fast-paced 90-minute movie that relies on a lot of nuance in key lines, and it’s not like we haven’t already had issues with things with a more oblique storytelling style getting accused of being “difficult to understand” or “incomprehensible” due to the impact of a less-than-ideal translation (hi, Hurricane Touchdown and X-Evolution).

In this post, I’m going to point out some of the more glaring translation issues in said official release and why they pose a problem. Note that I still endorse supporting the official localized release if you can -- it’s very important that we still show our support for Digimon products having demand outside Japan, especially subtitled, and I also feel we’ve still come a long way from the time when official Digimon subtitles used to be borderline bootleg tier -- but I’m writing this post as important reference so people are aware of the translation issues if they need to do deeper analysis of the movie’s dialogue. Note that the Dash X Bunko edition of the novel has the movie’s dialogue transcribed effectively word-for-word, so I suggest referring to this translation of it if you would like to reference a more accurately translated version of the dialogue.

The movie has effectively been fan translated (at least) three times apart from the official translation, partially because of frustration with its quality, so that should go to show how frustrating it is for people who know Japanese to see this. For this post, I’ll be referencing both the translation by L Subs (which is translated by the same person who translated the Dash X Bunko version of the novel) and the translation by an anonymous person who released it under a “Kizuna” name, having retranslated it independently out of frustration about the official translation being subpar. (I’ll be referring to the latter as “Kizuna subs” for lack of a better way to call them.) An indirect translation was also done by a third translator via the Shueisha Mirai Bunko novel; I won’t be referencing it below due to some minor differences in the actual Japanese text, but note that it’s also far more in line with the other two fan translations than the official version in terms of preserving important nuances in each piece of dialogue.

(Also note that the official subtitles use the American English dub-originating names for characters and terminology, but although I’ll be quoting them as-is, I don’t consider them to be translation problems, so this is all purely about the phrasing of certain lines and some outright mistranslations.)

Official subtitles: The more that people accept the future chosen for them...the less they will age.

L Subs: We aren't so elderly yet that we simply accept a future that has been decided by someone else.

Kizuna subs: We have not grown up so much that we can simply accept the future that was decided for us.

Already, the first sentence of this movie is a huge huh? in the official translation. In fact, it’s supposed to be just a clear statement of the movie’s main theme: we don’t just sit here and accept what people tell us is inevitable, and that’s not what getting older is even supposed to mean. The official translation here arguably says the opposite in that being younger means accepting a future that someone else’s decided, and that’s...uh, really not good?

Official translation: “My wings are holding back, they are still weak”

L Subs: “Even with these unreliable wings, full of images tending to stay”

Kizuna subs: "But even on these undependable wings, filled with images I can't just shake"

This one doesn’t really have to do with Kizuna in particular per se, but I’m starting off with this example just as a proof of concept: notice how absolutely diluted the lyrics of Butter-Fly, of all things, have gotten! This song has been translated more times than you can even count, so you can reference all of the other translations on the Internet to compare -- the L and Kizuna versions are most certainly capturing something that the official translation just isn’t retaining at all. Being interpretive is understandable, but this is pushing it way too much.

Official translation: “It’s just, it made me realize what I really want to do.”

L Subs: "I just want to do what I really want to do."

Kizuna subs: “I just realized that I only want to do what I really want to do."

Taichi hasn’t realized what he wants to do yet! The point here is that Taichi doesn’t have the motivation to push on unless he finds out what he really wants, instead of graduating just for the sake of it. Taichi’s fully admitting that he’ll push forward if he does find something he wants (which he does at the end of the movie) -- he just hasn’t found it yet, which is why he’s having his existential crisis right now. Also kind of important in light of it already having been driven home back in 02 that partners have a connection to having passion for one’s own dreams.

Official translation: “Mimi launched an e-commerce startup.”

L Subs: “Mimi put up an online shop selling imported goods.”

Kizuna subs: "Mimi's built her own online shopping site and is selling all sorts of goods all around the world."

This one’s more of a nitpick than anything, but since we only get a few sentences to catch up on everyone like this, it’s good to not omit the part about the imported goods -- it ties into Mimi’s love of cultural exchange, and contextualizes why she constantly has to do so much international travel.

Official translation: “We’re at the Asagaya Horumonya...”

L Subs: "We're at a barbecue restaurant in Asagaya."

Kizuna subs: “We’re at an offal grill in Asagaya.”

I’m just including this one because I honestly think it’s hilarious that the official subs seem to think there must be only one offal barbecue grill (horumonya) in Asagaya to call it the one there. (Actually, the restaurant is a real one, and its name was earlier in the scene: it’s Buchi Horumon Yakiniku.)

Official translation: “Do you know why Digimon partners pick the children they work with? It's because they're full of potential...The possibilities are endless. Their choice results in growth. That growth and potential produces an enormous amount of energy. Surely you understand. Your growth was the trigger for your partner Digimon's evolution. As we live our lives, the choices we make help us grow. But as you grow older, the power of your Digimon steadily dwindles. And once it's gone...the bond between Digimon and partner is broken."

L Subs: “Do all of you know why it's children who are chosen to be partners with Digimon? It's because children are full of possibilities...The future is rife with unlimited choices. You grow as a person by making those choices. 'Growth' and 'possibilities' together provide vast energy. As I'm sure you guys are already aware, the evolutions of your Digimon partners are triggered by your growth. In our daily lives, we make tons of choices and grow. But in those choices, the power that exists between you and your Digimon gradually decreases. When that power is gone...Your partnership with your Digimon ends."

Kizuna subs: "Do you understand why children are chosen to be Digimon partners? Because children are overflowing with potential...The limitless choices that stretch to the future. The growth that comes with making those choices. The coexistence of this potential and growth produces a tremendous amount of energy. You all should know this. The evolution of your partner Digimon was triggered by your own personal growth. In the course of living our day to day lives, we choose amongst many possibilities and grow. But in doing so, you steadily lose the power that exists between you and your partner Digimon. When that power disappears...your partnership with your Digimon is broken.”

First of all, if you’ve watched Adventure and 02, you should know full well that Digimon partners do not pick the children they work with! But that aside...

Both the L and Kizuna translations are much better at phrasing Menoa’s “theory of partner dissolution” in much easier-to-understand ways, and the ambiguous references going back-and-forth really obscure the case Menoa’s making. Precise syntax is important here (especially since the rest of the movie is dedicated to showing that Menoa’s view of the world is extremely warped). Menoa’s argument is, in short, that “making choices narrows down your possibilities”, and this is kind of gleanable in the official translation, but gets very obscured -- which is a problem when the finale brings back the exact sequence of events that led to Menoa locking onto this mentality, and why it’s wrong.

(In general, this official translation has a problem where it's way, way too vaguely or sloppily phrased for a movie where phrasing really matters, and is altogether very stilted in its wording. Character personality is also totally absent, with Koushirou and Iori’s infamously polite speech patterns nowhere to be seen.)

Official subtitles: “I like Matt’s ramen better.”

L Subs: “I like Yamatoya’s ramen better, dagya.”

Kizuna: “I like Yamatoya’s ramen more.”

(As a side note, I like how you can see three tiers of localization philosophy in terms of name changes and retention of verbal tics.)

So as you can see, the official translation seems to have misinterpreted “Yamatoya”, a reference to Kizuna’s scriptwriter Yamatoya Akatsuki. (Making “cute references” to Digimon’s own staff members has been a long tradition since the original Adventure, and Yamatoya’s name sounds like one that could totally be that of a ramen shop, because it literally means “Traditional Japanese Shop” and uses the “-ya” suffix common to such shop names.) It’s also referenced in the drama CD. Of course, there’s nothing stopping you if you want to make a headcanon that Yamato is now so good at making homemade ramen (not an easy feat!) to the point he can beat out professionals, but...

Note that this is one of the most obvious signs that the English dub was working off the mistranslated script -- it has the same error.

Official subtitles: “We’ll never grow apart.”

L Subs and Kizuna subs: “We’ll always be together.”

The phrase that more literally translates as “we’ll always be together” -- (zutto) issho da -- is used as a recurring theme in this movie (and in the stage play, too), with this exact phrasing. The fact it can be expanded to mean many things in terms of “being together” (including the implication that their partners are still somewhere tied to their hearts even after they ostensibly disappear) is also an underlying nuance as we get into the later parts of the movie. Beyond the fact that “grow apart” is really weirdly poetic phrasing for our very lackadaisical Taichi, “growing apart” is kind of...exactly what happened here to cause this whole problem in the first place.

Nitpick, but I’m really not sure what was the rationale to translate a simple “Gennai-san” to having this whole “Master” thing. Taichi was never particularly respectful of Gennai (he called him a very irritable “old man!” back in Adventure), and moreover Gennai’s more like an informed advisor for them, hardly a master of anything. The fact that the Digital World’s main protector entities weren’t particularly all-powerful or omniscient was kind of a recurring thing back in Adventure and 02.

Another nitpick, but it seems that the translator here didn’t recognize that “Bingo!” is supposed to be a known recurring catchphrase of Miyako’s (this usage here is meant to confirm that she’s still got that habit). The English dub goes with this translation as well, thus also missing what was the equivalent of her catchphrase in the original English dub of 02 (”Perfecto!”). A shame.

Official subtitles: “I’m afraid partnerships do end.”

L Subs: “Unfortunately, you are experiencing the case where your partnership is dissolving.”

Kizuna subs: “Unfortunately, it’s true that there are broken partnerships.”

This is probably one of the most detrimental ones overall. One of the key words in Gennai’s statement to Taichi is the word jirei (case) -- this is a single isolated case of a partnership dissolution. While the Kizuna sub translation doesn’t literally use the word “case”, it at least captures the nuance that there isn’t some set-in-stone rule that partnership dissolution is going to inevitably happen to everyone, but simply that there’s known cases of this happening and that Taichi is one of them. This ties into, again, the fact that Gennai and the other Digital World protectors were not portrayed as necessarily knowing everything about how Digimon partnership works, so they’re getting a feel for this just as much as Taichi and the others are. At this point, a perceptive viewer should be able to catch that there’s a mismatch between Gennai’s way of framing the issue and Menoa’s significantly more cynical and resigned way of seeing it.

The much more vague phrasing of the official translation implies that Gennai knew that this was some kind of ironclad rule and never divulged this fact, which makes the fact he never told this to them before look significantly more cruel-sounding. In the situation where this is just a thing that may happen, it makes much more sense to not talk about it until it becomes relevant, because hey, we don’t know much about this yet and you might be lucky about it not happening! -- hence, why Gennai’s following statement is about the fact you normally wouldn’t talk about something morbid like this unless you were asked. But the official translation not only makes Gennai look like a pretty horrible person, it also makes Menoa’s “theory” of inevitable partnership dissolution happening at the cutoff point of adulthood look a lot more plausible than it’s supposed to be.

Official translation: "But if you still have unlimited potential...Or..."

L Subs: “But if you guys still have infinite possibility...Then it's possible...”

Kizuna subs: "But if you two still have limitless potential, maybe..."

Again: This scene is supposed to give you the impression that something’s off -- that Gennai just came with a significantly more hopeful outlook than Menoa’s. Translating that last word (arui wa) as a simple “or” sounds borderline ominous, or at least doesn’t correctly get across the nuance that Gennai’s implying a way out of this, or a way to change this situation in the future, very much not like Menoa’s extremely cynical way of seeing it. Taichi’s zoning out and missing this last part, which is why he’s still subscribing to Menoa’s way of seeing things until the end of the movie.

Official translation: "And...you might be able to change our cruel fate. I truly believe that.”

L Subs: "You guys might be able to change this tough reality. That's what I thought."

Kizuna subs: "Because I thought that you might be the ones who could change this painful reality."

Notice something about how both fan translations preserve the fact Menoa considered Taichi and his friends to be strong enough to change things in past tense. Menoa’s portrayed as cynical, and completely and utterly resigned to a lack of any possibility out -- she takes the actions she does at the end of the movie because of how completely convinced she is that partnership dissolution is inevitable, and that adulthood is cruel. Even Taichi and Yamato, members of that so-called strongest team, ended up with the rings on their Digivices, and just as confused as to what to do about it. In other words, they “failed” her.

Therefore, it’s actually pretty out of character to end a line like this on a hopeful tone of her belief in them -- her belief that they can’t do anything and that she needs to force her way on others is what defines her mentality right now!

(Unfortunately, the English dub, running with this translation, absolutely has Menoa say that she “believes in them” with full hopeful voice acting delivery to go along with it.)

Another instance of issho da (both fan translations phrased this as “we’ll always be together” to match the other instances of this recurring line), this time translated by the official translation as “sticking together”.

Official translation: “So...this is my fate.”

L Subs: “So...This is our destiny, huh?”

Kizuna subs: “Damn...is this our destiny?”

The problem isn’t the translation in a vacuum, but the fact that the official translation fails to maintain a particularly significant recurring nuance. (The really distressing part is that the official translation of To Sora maintained a proper distinction, but the official translation for the movie itself does not.)

The word Yamato uses here is unmei, a word that’s historically showed up a lot in the Digimon franchise, and in kids’ anime in general, or really any kind of poetic or idealistic series. It’s showed up in episode titles (Adventure episode 34), in major parts of the franchise like a certain Digimental, and has been repeatedly brought up in any kind of context you can think of. And in many cases, it’d be fine to translate it as “fate”, but the problem is that in this movie, it’s important to maintain the distinction between it and the word shukumei -- which is used by Menoa.

I’ll go into shukumei when it shows up from Menoa’s mouth later, but the important part is that unmei still has a nuance of being able to overturn it by luck or effort -- it’s a sort of thing that the universe vaguely set out for you, but that doesn’t mean you’re bound to it, whereas shukumei is an inevitable thing stuck on you since before your birth that you’ll never be able to escape no matter what. The words “destiny” (implying a guided route to a “destination” rather than necessarily something incredibly set in stone) and “fate” (which has a much stronger nuance of something inevitable) have a similar difference in nuance, which is why both fan translations go with it here.

Official translation: "Try to make it back in one piece."

L Subs and Kizuna subs: “Come back safely, boys.”

Imura jokingly calls Taichi and Yamato “boys”, which has a bit of symbolic meaning in that this is the moment Taichi and Yamato most resemble their younger selves in temperament and initiative.

Official translation: “The one that goes to File Island?”

L Subs: “It’s the one on File Island, isn’t it?”

Kizuna subs: “-- the one from File Island, isn’t it?”

The train car never went to File Island, it only was either on it or left it. The fact it’s associated with leaving the island is presumably connected symbolically to why it’s crystallized in this movie, as if wanting to prevent it from ever going anywhere.

Official translation: "The fated parting with our partners is inevitable."

L Subs: "Separating from your partner is your fate. It can't be changed."

Kizuna subs: “Separating from our Digimon is fated. It cannot be changed."

All three lines are similar for the first sentence, so, again, this isn’t an issue by itself as much as it’s in the context of how the words in question are used. The prior mention of Yamato’s unmei had been translated as the same “fate” here, but there’s a distinction!

Menoa uses the word shukumei, which is a word that you really don’t hear much -- if at all -- in Digimon, or really in much of anything else, and the reason is because of how impossible it is to do anything about to the point of downright cynicism. (The etymological root is that the un part of unmei means “luck”, as if the course of your destiny is based on how the dice rolls, while shuku literally means "dwelling" and refers to a place you're inevitably determined to be in as determined before you were even born.) This is the kind of word that’s used to describe fatalism and other really cynical outlooks on life. You invoke this when you have the view of your life being mapped out for you, with no concept of agency in the situation. Even Katou Juri in Tamers, at her most cynical about her inability to overcome death or inevitability, still used the word unmei and not shukumei.

So the point here is that even Yamato, agonizing over what’s in store for them, is not nearly as cynical as Menoa, who’s completely locked down on this fatalistic view of how things are going, with no ability to change it. The official translation also omits that extra sentence to drive in further that it’s “unable to be changed”, which is an important part because not only does Menoa believe it’s inevitably incoming, she’s obsessed with the idea that nobody can do anything about it, no matter what they do -- which is also what Taichi, Yamato, and the others set out to disprove by the end of the movie.

Official translation: "That's why I have to save her and the DigiDestined throughout the world."

L Subs: "That's why I have to save all of the Chosen Children throughout the world."

Kizuna subs: "So I had to do this. I had to save all of the Chosen Children all around the world."

The original Japanese line never mentioned “her” (Morphomon), and that’s reflected in the two fan translations. Because yeah, it’s probably not a good idea to imply that Menoa thinks saving Morphomon is possible -- again, the issue is that she thinks there’s nothing she can do about it, so she thinks she’s doing everyone a favor by preventing them from ever getting to that point.

Official translation: “And now I save myself.”

L Subs: “This is my salvation for you.”

Kizuna subs: “This is my salvation.”

Huh? Menoa’s not claiming that she’s doing this for herself at all -- her entire schtick is that she’s trying to save everyone. She’s saying that she’s doing everyone a favor by giving them “salvation”, so the literal translation is necessary here.

Official translation: "Thanks, Captain Obvious! I mean, it's like we're not the only one's [sic] fighting!"

L Subs: "Of course! We're not the only ones fighting, after all!"

Kizuna subs: "Of course! We aren't the only ones fighting!"

This one’s just disjointed in general. Beyond the fact that “Captain Obvious” is somewhat uncharacteristically dismissive for Daisuke, it’s not that he’s just getting a feeling about the others around the world -- he’s well aware this is a battle they’re fighting for everyone’s sake.

Official translation: "Even if you made a bad [choice] along the way!" “We all have to live with the choices we make!”

L Subs: "But no matter what waits for us after making that choice...!" “We have to live with the decisions that we make!”

Kizuna subs: "But no matter what lies beyond that choice..." “...we have to live in that future!”

This is a plain-and-simple mistranslation. It’s not exactly a good implication to say “your choice wasn’t a mistake, but it sure was bad!” Taichi and Yamato are just saying that you have to have the strength to deal with the future that may come as a consequence of your choices, even if you’re uncertain about what comes next.

Official translation: "We may not be able to change our fate. But...!" "Our lives aren't preordained!"

L Subs: "We might not be able to change our fate. But...!" "We can change our destiny!"

Kizuna subs: "It's true that some things in the present might be fated. But!" "We can change our own future destiny!"

The shukumei and unmei distinction returns again! I understand that the emphasis on “preordained” is an attempt to invoke the fatalism aspect of shukumei, but the nuances that are missing are: the fact that this is Taichi and Yamato directly challenging Menoa’s outright stated ideology with the one they’ve been believing in this whole time, and the fact that they’re saying outright that there’s still hope to actively change it. It's not just about life going one way or another; Taichi and Yamato are going to spit in the face of it.

Honestly, I’m just wondering what the point is of keeping this line’s sub in if it’s not going to actually say anything? (Yes, I know this is me being nitpicky.) The L Subs version chooses to use the “I’m sorry...” line that came from the novel (and was presumably in the original script), and other versions of this official sub have “Forgive me...”, which the English dub also pulled from...? Meanwhile, the Kizuna sub just omits it entirely because technically nothing's in the audio. Either way, pick one or the other, please...

Official subtitles: "Those guys are awesome!"

L Subs: "I knew Taichi-san and the others would succeed!"

Kizuna subs: "Yahoo! Go Taichi's group!"

It’s not just “those guys”, it’s Daisuke specifically being his usual senior-adoring self.

Official translation: “And that was how we finally grew up.”

L Subs: “This is how we arrived at the entrance to adulthood.”

Kizuna subs: “Thus we arrived at the entrance of adulthood.”

There’s very good reason the word “entrance” is used here -- the question of what counts as “adulthood” is vague to begin with, and it’s arguable that Taichi and Yamato still hadn’t even really reached it yet rather than running around in circles with no direction. But now, they have a proper start of the rest of their lives in front of them, and they’re entering a new adventure in its own way. This should not be translated with finality.

[crtter]

Actually, I WILL go a little bit into why sounding “snooty” is actually very accurate to Iyami’s portrayal because I’ve been sick all morning and I deserve to say a bunch of stuff about a Blorbo of mine for being so brave about it:

-san doesn’t go too much into it, not sure if it’s because of the bigger focus on the Matsunos or if they just thought it wasn’t a funny enough trait of his to pursue further in their opinion, but one of Iyami’s characteristics in the manga and the Osomatsu-kun animated adaptations is that, despite being crass in just about every way someone can be crass, Iyami fancies himself as a very sophisticated man. If you pay attention to his body language, you’ll realize his mannerisms are pretty delicate. Feminine even, for the lack of a better word.

This “affecting being more classy than he actually is” trait of his doesn’t stop only at the way he moves, though. He also affects the way he speaks to reflect being high class, which… he’s not. We see that mostly in his usage of zansu instead of desu (or, de aru, which was more common back when he was created) and in his made-up personal pronoun, me. Zansu is an unusual contraction of de gozaimasu, which was used mostly by upper class folks and theatre actors back in the 20th century! Me is literally just the English word me. He used it instead of the more common first person male pronouns boku or ore because his whole thing is pretending to be worldly and well-traveled, therefore someone who speaks English with as much ease as he speaks Japanese. Incidentally, he also likes dropping gratuitous English in Osomatsu-kun, which he genuinely does seem to have a much better grasp of than French, a language which he only knows a few words of.

These speech quirks of his weren’t translated in the subbed version of Osomatsu-san because like… they’re hard to localize! It’s like, how do you even convey that this character says this particular word that was once associated with upper class people because he thinks it makes him sound fancy? His dialogue is translated as it is, even keeping the me as a personal pronoun, which in English only makes him sound like he’s Tarzan. Before the dub dropped, I theorized many times about how he would be translated in it and if it would be accurate or not to his character. You know how it is. That’s the kind of thing I do for fun. One thing I proposed, which was the most logical way to go about it really, was replacing the me with moi, but only whenever he used “me”, not “I”. Kind of like Miss Piggy does. But I had no idea what they could do with the zansu. My best idea was translating him with a very obviously fake French accent.

Well, when the dub dropped, I was VERY, very pleased to see that they, indeed, made his me become moi! He doesn’t always makes the substitution, but whenever he does it’s in place of “me” not “I” indeed and I found that very neat. But what surprised me the most was the honestly brilliant way they dealt with the zansu situation: they gave him a Mid-Atlantic accent!

Here’s a bit from S1 Ep. 20 so you can hear his accent. I had to crop it weird on purpose and mirror it like those Family Guy Funny Moments videos or YouTube wouldn’t let me upload it.

The Mid-Atlantic accent, for those who don’t know, was a way of pronouncing the English language with phonemes half how they’re pronounced in British English and half how they’re pronounced in American English. Hence Mid-Atlantic. The most interesting thing about this accent, though, is that it’s completely fabricated: it was created in the 40s or so movies made in America wouldn’t sound as strange to British viewers. It was taught in acting schools and also, interestingly enough, to upper class children so they’d have a “classy enunciation”. You might recognize it as the accent in which Rarity from My Little Pony speaks.

The Mid-Atlantic accent is basically a perfect equivalent for the zansu, which is something pretty rare to stumble upon when it comes to translation! It’s specially interesting if you look at it in the context of -san: both were used by rich folks and actors in a bygone age, and, while it would have made him sound sophisticated in the past, it was already antiquated in the 60s! Coupled with his abrasive and very much not classy personality, Iyami doesn’t sound fancy: he just sounds goofy and pretentious, like an unflattering cartoon portrayal of a upper class twit. And THATS what Fujio Akatsuka wanted to convey with him! Iyami literally translates to “gaudy, disagreeable” and that’s what Iyami is: a tryhard. A poser. Someone who alienates whoever he interacts with: rich folks can tell he’s not really one of them and poorer folks dislike his haughtiness. And that’s why I think that, despite changing his voice quite a bit from the original, the way Iyami was handled in the dub was incredibly well done!

[tratserenoyreve]

im pretty partial on the dub i chose on the rest of my gameplay (jp) and its obvious since xiao's VA is already skilled enough to know the tone that fits him. though its interesting each dub interprets xiao in quite a variety of his characteristic; as most of them maintains his reserved outlook, jp has that spark of sass and confidence when he feels like it (it really has his struggle noises nail you in the head), cn takes the reserved more gently and accurate to his nature (a lot more tired and timid to vulnerability, casual), kr is a lot different but not far from eng, but it fits his maturity and he sounds older (he sorta has a playful tint, too).

what saddens me is not really the performance, but the subtle yet irritating inconsistency and potential hyv did on their characters' interactions and dynamic thats lost to translation. the eng subtitles may give you the basic context of something, but dialog-wise its much more than that (perhaps even more different on other subs), since jp cn kr has lots of meanings behind their writing. xiao addresses zhongli indirectly as rex lapis too in jp, and the latter had expressed concern as if he has been convincing xiao instead of stating the chasm's danger. ("do you really have to go?". theres lots of those coming from too. klee calling albedo as her brother instead of the typical Mr, same from ayaka to ayato, etc. its obviously not something easy for hyv to change and keep it all streamlined overall, but the chances were truly left unseen.

the dubs do definitely change the tone of characters yeah, and i've also been picking up on how much the lack of nuance the english dub has for honorifics changes how character interactions feel! all of the voice actors do good work, just some were given different direction than others and can't do much about localization choices.

zhongli for example has a decent amount of lines that are actually adages, old proverbs that add to his "wise elder passing on stories to the next generation" image. but in english, because we don't have the same cultural context or puns, a lot of that doesn't translate and it instead comes across as him rambling about boats. like, he is rambling, but there's more to it than what english dubs get.

another notable instance of translators having trouble with conveying layered dialogue that i can think of is during venti's story quest, where diluc and kaeya are having a discussion outside of angel's share. in english, we still get the overall idea that the two brothers are still having a disconnect but some of the details on how kaeya talks to diluc is lost. the english dub has them more directly confrontational whereas, if i understand correctly, the original chinese has kaeya using more double-meaning with his phrasing to express how he feels abandoned and diluc is being unintentionally blunt. which is why he's surprised with kaeya actually being so upset when diluc poked at him about drinking alone so often.

and yeah!! the klee thing is one that is so?? ashfhjdg i've seen a number of people be surprised to learn that klee and albedo are adopted siblings, because in english i believe one of the only instances (outside of events) of that being clear is on albedo's profile after you've boosted friendship with him and he calls klee his little sister. something that requires having albedo, which many people don't!

xiao's interactions definitely feel way different with context on what honorifics he is using in other translations. with how tight the update schedule has been and how the development team is being shuffled around between projects, i don't think the translators really have the time they need to cover those details.

[marshmallowgoop]

duuuude finding a fellow conan dub appreciator in the year 2022 🙏 the english dub is criminally underrated imo-- it was clearly localized with love and the VAs gave a lot of unique personality to their roles. (Viktorin + Jewell do a killer job as Conan and the use of the Shinichi voice for the internal monologues is so. good.) (also I finally have the info I need to determine if my SAVE copies are bootlegs like i've always suspected so thanks!)

I've found that there are actually quite a few FUNimation dub appreciators still around!

But yes!!! Totally agree. FuNi's English dub is genuinely my favorite way to watch DetCo, and it's so nice to see it get recognition for what it did well. I mean no disrespect to the new Bang Zoom! dub; my most popular post on this site is celebrating a Bang Zoom! dub, after all (unfortunately not captioned, though I did put together a sub/dub breakdown here). It's exciting that Conan is getting official English-dubbed releases after years of nothing, and there are some real skilled, experienced folks in the cast and staff.

And admittedly, I've only seen Bang Zoom!'s rendition of Episode One: The Great Detective Turned Small despite having every DetCo Blu-ray that Discotek's released sitting on the shelf in front of me right now, but I can't help but feel that in trying to correct the inaccuracies of the FuNi dub, they've lost a lot of the charm. Conan thinking in Shinichi's voice isn't faithful to the original Japanese performances, true, but it's a perfectly fair way of adapting the manga and a choice that resonates so much more with me. Why would you think in a voice that you don't consider your own? Conan thinking in Conan's voice strikes me as contradictory to the character, in all honesty. It was such a disappointment to me that the Bang Zoom! dub didn't continue this practice.

The Bang Zoom! script itself often comes off to me as stilted, too; one of the biggest strengths of FUNimation's dub, in my opinion, is how natural it could sound. But part of that is due to the loosey-goosiness of its translation. It takes a lot of creative liberties—definitely too many at times!—but for the most part, I think it's absolutely excellent at making the dialogue really work in English. The Bang Zoom! production sells itself as a more accurate Detective Conan, and I sincerely do respect that, and I love that it uses the original names, but I also feel that in striving so much for accuracy, it loses the naturalness that FuNi's dub absolutely shone in.

Of course, a quick glance tells me that other Bang Zoom! Conan projects have different ADR directors and script writers, so maybe the films still wrapped in plastic on my shelf have a different feel to them than Episode One. But gosh, while I initially watched Detective Conan in Japanese with subtitles because I was turned off by the name changes of the FuNi dub, actually experiencing it all these years later told me that you can still have a fantastic dub, even if it's not 100% faithful.

Sorry to ramble! I'm super passionate about dubs and subtitles and that sort of thing. Happy that my S.A.V.E. bootleg post was helpful! Still can't believe that Case Closed of all things got so bootlegged, though I must say: for anyone interested in collecting the old FuNi dub on disc, I can't recommend the original art box releases enough. Sure, they're not as nice and compact as the seasonal sets, but you get more extras (dub bloopers!) and the occasional English dub subtitles and video options. I really regret not getting them initially!

[entamesubs]

Yu-Gi-Oh! SEVENS Blu-Ray: Episode 6

Google Drive ONLY (for now)

Support us on ko-fi

Blu-Ray episodes will come out... when they come out.

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Please use either MPV or MPC-HC to view the Blu-Ray episodes. I do NOT recommend using VLC.

Please check the post for episodes 1&2 to see why.

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!! This is NOT a final release !!

Nor are any of the files on Google Drive. They will be polished and edited one more time before being put up on Nyaa. Stuff I decide on changing halfway through these episodes will eventually be changed for Nyaa release.

Until that happens, the Google Drive folder is more like a “final draft” than a finished product. I will not be going back to change font, styling, or certain wording until I’m done with all the other episodes first.

————–

Extended Translation Notes

So, at this point, we have left the RoadRush sub era and come into tempsubs. I feel a little bad trying to do comparisons with tempsubs because they have clearly stated before that their subs were double-translated from Indonesian, so the “mistakes” made here aren’t necessarily mistakes, just quirks of having been translated through two different filters first (Japanese -> Indonesian -> English).

Most of the translation notes from now on will be much more like the regular notes you’d see on a weekly release. Unless something extremely weird comes up that needs to be clarified.

Under Siege: Luke Territory & The Lukeminator

During this section of the episode, Luke is just making references to old 80s-90s movies that were popular in Japan, like Under Siege: Dark Territory and The Terminator, of course.

Menzaburo’s way of speaking

You may have noticed his speech has been a lot more spiced up than it was previously.

This was a decision made after a lot of deliberation with others who also spoke and translated Japanese, some of whom are industry professionals. Menzaburo uses two things that warrant such a drastic translation / “localization”.

The speech tick でござる (de gozaru) and the pronoun 拙者 (sessha).

Both of these are meant to evoke an almost Shakespearian-era of speaking, but in Japanese (think moreso of feudal Japan). We could have kept his dialogue in plain English just for convenience’s sake, but Menzaburo’s style of speaking was done intentionally in Japanese and I wanted to mirror the feel they were going for with him.

He is dressed like a ninja and has a very old fashioned way of speech. He’s meant to feel like someone from a period drama, like a kid who’s watched too many hours of History Channel. You know, that kind of image.

For comparison, with the new PV drop for Go Rush, we know that Yuudias uses the speech tick である (de aru) and the pronoun 某 (soregashi), which are actually a little bit like “evolutions” of what Menzaburo used. This is also a weird way of speaking, but not so much as Menzaburo’s. Yuudias moreso comes off as someone who is extremely formal and like an old samurai.

And fun fact! Samurai existed up until the end of the 1800s! That’s around the time of the Civil War for Americans and the Victorian Era for those across the pond. They are a much more recent phenomenon than ninjas, who were active mainly around the Warring States (Sengoku) period of Japan (1500s).

Anyway, all this to say that we made the change so that Menzaburo was a lot more accurate to his portrayal in Japanese and would come across as someone extremely old-fashioned like he did in the original.

That said, Elizabethan English is not my strong suit, as really English isn’t even my native language at all. Please let me know if some parts sound weird.

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For people interested in the raw BDMV vs encoded final video comparisons, click here. (Click the image in the center to swap between “raw BD” and “encoded”).

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Credits

Translation, timing: entame Proofreading: angelthinktank (Yona) Encoding: PelvisBass

[xbuster]

The Complete English Puyo Puyo Experience (as of 8/20/23)

Here is a link to what should be a complete collection of translated Madou Monogatari and Puyo Puyo games to emulate that I’ve compiled.

Some things to note:

– CHECK THE README FILES IN EACH FOLDER, they will tell you which system each game can be played on in that folder and its sub-folders

– Pocket Puyo Puyo~n does not have an English patch, but @precisemuseum​ translated it and put it on YouTube here; follow them because they’re constantly translating new Puyo Puyo content

– Fever 2, Arle’s Adventure, and Arle no Roux are unfinished, but still playable

– Puyo Puyo Fever for the Dreamcast is in Japanese, but you can choose to play in English if you navigate the Japanese menus correctly; on the main menu, choose “おぷしょん;” press down until you select “ことば;” press right on the first option, which also says “ことば” (日本語 should switch to 英語); if you would also like to switch to English voices, do the same to the option below, which should say “おんせい”

– The Disc Station games are not translated to English, but the ones I’ve included have little to no Japanese except for the story modes but the dialogue can usually be skipped with the Esc key; these games are playable on Windows, but they may have issues running in full screen, in an English locale, or both; I use DxWnd to force it to play in windowed (which you can set to full screen when selecting the path, this allows you to play it in full screen); if it still doesn’t work use Locale Emulator to set the game’s locale to Japanese without having to change it for your entire computer

– Kikimora’s Cleaning is the only game in that folder that doesn’t run on Windows, so download Neko Project II, T98-Next, or Anex86 from the emulators folder (some emulators are more demanding on computers, but are more accurate, so the order of highest accuracy to highest performance would be Neko Project II > T98-Next > Anex86; Anex86 has noticeably worse sound quality than the others, so only use it if your computer can’t handle the others); these should be pre-configured to make using them easier, but search the Internet for help if you are having any trouble; for games that end in .hdi, use hard disk drives (HDD); for games that end in .fdi, use floppy disk drives (FDD)

– Madou Monogatari 1-2-3 also needs to be played on a PC-98 emulator; the roms for 1, 2, and 3 are all included for completion, but only 1 has been translated; to play Madou 1 on the PC-98, you have to insert “Madou Monogatari 1-2-3 (#1 System disk).hdm” into FDD1 and “Madou Monogatari 1-2-3 (#1 Sampling disk).hdm” into FDD2; I haven’t been able to figure out what the “data disk” does, but I still included it, so if anyone figures out what that file is for, please let me know

– If using Neko Project II you should always open np21nt.exe, navigate to the drive that matches the rom you want to open, open, and load the game file from whatever folder it’s in; if the menus aren’t shown in the top bar, right click to bring them up; when you load a new disk, navigate to Emulate from the menu and click Reset and the emulator will boot up the new rom

– If using T98 click on the drive that matches the rom you want to open, load the game file from whatever folder it’s in, and press the start (top left) button

– If using Anex86 click on the ellipses next to the drive that matches the rom you want to open, load the game file from whatever folder it’s in, and press the start button

– I have provided two other unconventional emulators, one for Puyo Pop (N-Gage with EKA2L1 emulator) and the other for Puyo Pop Fever DX (Java Phones with KEmulator - download Java Runtime too if you don’t have it); these should also be pre-configured, but the same suggestion applies; these games are bad and were only included as curiosities to be preserved

– It would be better to get a clean Japanese rom of Chronicle and patch it yourself (especially if you’re planning on running it on original hardware) as the prepatched rom is not up to date and does not include the DLC or other mods

– Puyo Pop Fever arcade (for the Sega Naomi) is a bit confusing to get working, so extract the contents of the puyofev zip into a folder also named puyofev; if the folder contains another folder named puyofev and a zip named puyofev (like this), you can download Flycast and the Sega Naomi bios to play it

– None of the current- or last-gen console games are included, but Puyo Puyo Tetris, Puyo Puyo Tetris 2, and Puyo Puyo Champions can be purchased from Steam (please support the official releases!)

– Puyo Puyo also has a mobile game called Puyo Puyo Quest; it is not in English, but there are resources online to help you play it if you can’t read Japanese (Puyo Nexus is particularly helpful as well as providing information for everything else Puyo Puyo)

– If there are problems with any of the folders I’ve included (my own data accidentally being included, one of the games not working, etc.) please let me know

– This post will be updated as more translation hacks are released

[fyeahmetroid]

It’s been a while since Metroid Other M was released back in 2010. For years, nobody bilingually fluent in both English and Japanese bothered to do a side-by-side comparison. Until 2020. Turns out that the English version has BADLY translated/localized Metroid Other M (though it’s up to you to decide if Japanese Other M is good or not). There is a YouTube video called “The Other M that never was” that explains it better (that also has a link to Japanese!Other M with more accurate subs)

Here’s the video, which I just watched.

It’s an interesting analysis.

Even so, coming away from it I have the impression that the Japanese version was still putting lipstick on a pig. There's too much that's incoherent regardless of language, like the Deleter apparently teleporting right after his boss fight or the Ridley freakout coming straight out of nowhere for different reasons depending on how much information you already had about the series (eg knowing he ate her parents gives context to why she's reacting this way that the game never bothers to tell the player, but at the same time knowing how many times she hasn’t had this reaction makes it out of place, and sorry, further confirmation that this game is supposed to be about Samus not being over all of her issues doesn't excuse it for me), and too much that seems to be gunning for what many people find appealing about Samus as a character. 

If the Japanese version is a pig in lipstick, the English localization just rubbed the lipstick off. The plot still comes across as a rehashed version of Fusion's, with diminishing effect on a much better game. 

Still... there’s some good data about the original story, like Samus being more assertive, sssssort of coming within the ballpark of addressing the Hell Run, and Phantoon actually being relevant instead of a random fanservice boss. So is the part about Metroids being able to influence and transfer mindsets. I might watch the resub later, but this is how I came out of the video. 

I still hate Other M to my core, but I'm glad to see analysis that investigates some of what went wrong. I think I still would have hated it with a more competent localization, but what we got sure didn't help.

-Mod Sparky

[todomitoukei]

Thank you so much for you explanation about Dabi’s little speech in the last chapter. It really explained a lot of put things into context about him and the situation. Reading that has honestly just made me question the whole manga translation, cause it brings into question what else we don’t truly know from the Japanese manga. And that our interpretation of some characters or situations may be completely wrong. I was just wondering does the mistranslation also happen in the English dub and sub?

Thank you for reading it!

I think the change in the manga is mostly concerning the villains - considering the bias from the official translator - but I’ve also seen people generally complain about certain changes that are made in terms of localization, like using the word “meme” instead of “joke” for example or like I said with that line from Best Jeanist in chapter 292, where he refers to Dabi’s broadcast as a “domestic complaint” in Japanese, whereas in the English translation they took the liberty of inserting an English expression (”dirty laundry”). 

There’s a lot of debate on whether that is good or not; some people don’t like a literal translation and others would rather have a translation that is as close as possible to the original.

Regarding your question, though, I can’t answer that one too well because I don’t watch it in dub and admittedly haven’t paid enough attention to the accuracy of the subs to say for sure. From the few clips I have seen in the dub, though, I do remember that there was one scene where Kaminari and Uraraka talk about food. While in the Japanese version they explicitly say “Mocchi” the English dub changed it to “sweets” 

The other example I know from the top of my head is from the “Make It! Do-or-Die Survival Training” OVA after Kaminari turns the power back on. Shouto tells Tokoyami that the electricity is back on. According to both the official sub and the dub, Shouto says this:

And right after that, Tokoyami responds with “Denki... Kaminari?”

This really surprised me when I went on tumblr after watching the OVA because I watched it with different subtitles that didn’t mention Denki, only electricity. Keep in mind that the Japanese word for electricity is denki.

It didn’t make sense to me that this was translated like this because it wouldn’t make sense for Shouto to call Kaminari by his first name (especially considering he never does it at any other point in the story). Tokoyami’s reaction also makes it seem more like it should be “Electricity... Kaminari?” Obviously, in Japanese, this is a pun - when Shouto says denki it can remind Tokoyami of Kaminari both because of his first name but also because of his quirk.

Anyway, someone else explained the Japanese line for that in this post.

In regards to whether dub or sub is more accurate to the original - I would recommend watching this video which specifically compares Deku and how he can be interpreted as a person depending on whether you watch the dub or sub. To sum up that video: in the dub, he is a lot more confident. That’s also something that has a lot to do with culture because Japanese people are less direct and more humble when speaking, so what the west would see as confident could come across as cocky in Japan. In a way, the dub is changing things so that the western audience gets the “same” impression of him as the Japanese. Again - whether that is a good thing or not depends on the individual.

Also, I’m not sure, but I think there are several official English subs, right? So it would probably also depend on which subs you’re watching it with. But overall, I think both are probably flawed here and there, though the dub seems to change it a lot more from what I’ve seen!

[nerdfighterwhatevernumbers]

I was watching some youtube videos about translation and localization with anime, and I got to one done by an actual professional translator, and it was pretty cathartic hearing some of her vids point out that the reason people insist dubs are ‘bad’ are often less because the dub is actually bad and more because them not being able to speak Japanese means it’s harder for someone to tell when the acting is weird, when the lines are cheesy, or what dialogue sounds cliche.

See, this is cathartic because of the annoying elitism subs only fans. To keep it short, intense subs only people are annoying because they act like people wanting anime to be more accessible makes them somehow inferior.

But then the same translator had a vid about ‘mistakes’ people make when translating and some of the examples were like. Keeping honorifics in the subtitles, translating kare wa as ‘this is...’, or including a lot of stuttering in the subtitles because they think that’s just for voice actors

First off, with stuttering you can only tell they’re stuttering without subs if you can hear, subtitles are for deaf people too.

Second, it’s not really that hard to get that ‘This is...” has some other meaning behind it like “what is going on” or “this is beautiful” from context clues, it’d be pretty weird if you DIDN’T pick up on the context clues because of how vague a phrase it is

Third, while I don’t think you HAVE to use honorifics, I don’t see a problem with using them? She said they clog up the sub screen but tbh that seems like a personal thing, they never seem to bother me. Sure non-Japanese speakers won’t get all the nuances behind honorifics so it’s not an accurate translation to just keep them the same, but a localization wont’ be perfectly accurate either because there’s no solid English equivalent, so it doesn’t automatically make it better to remove the honorifics. They’re not even that hard for beginners, you learn what they mean once and you’re set. You can write around them when you localize it, but sometimes it’s actually easier to just use chan and senpai than to write a whole new conversation around how you refer to people, it’s shorthand.

I’d be fine with it if this was just a pet peeves list but she called them “Mistakes” and framed it like it was professionally wrong to translate things differently than she would

It just came off like elitism in the complete opposite direction of subs only people, like if you aren’t a fluent Japanese speaker you can’t POSSIBLY learn a  couple words and pick up on meaning through context without a translator localizing not very complicated things for you, and also deaf people don’t exist.