#you couldn't have just ONE person fluent in English proofread your subtitles?

[superiorjello]

So I got The Untamed on DVD for my birthday this year, because I am a bitch that loves physical media. I started watching it today, because the powers of free time and ADHD were on my side, and the first couple episodes have been... interesting

I'm not sure if there are multiple dvd releases or just the one, but mine came from VStarz Enterprise, if that means anything to anyone.

So, first off, there is a logo perma-burned into the top right corner. So that's rude. I MY MOM paid MONEY for this and there's better quality video for free on YouTube? Also there are Mandarin subtitles perma-burned in there too. And when the English subtitles are on they sit overtop the Mandarin ones, so there's like 1/3 of the screen full of subtitles. It's not great.

Secondly, some of the translations are... creative. And sporadically applied. Lan Zhan gets called the fully translated "light bearing lord" for all of episode one, but then it's suddenly "hanguang" in episode two (no -jun suffix on there either). Koi Tower gets called the Immortal Unicorn Tower? Oh, and cultivators are Immortals, apparently (can't wait to see how they differentiate someone like Baoshan Sanren). Also I'm used to "Dafan this, Dafan that" when it comes to Wen Qing's family, and it being translated as "Fan Mountain" threw me off. Does "Da" just mean mountain or something?

I did find it interesting that they translated Mo Xuanyu wwx as saying he would break his cousin's hand if he stole again, and then his arm gets demonically possessed. The slight difference between a hand and a whole arm and then still getting blamed for it anyways adds a slightly different flavor to the scene than him having already threatened the entire arm, and I dig it.

Then there's the bad translations. Our intrepid hero is introduced as "Wei Yin". There are many sentences that look like Google translate garbage; the words are technically English, but not in the right order for a sentence, or are only part of a sentence. When mxy wwx insults Jin Ling in the forest it's translated one way, and when wwx flashes back to that moment, he says something completely different. So that's funny.

Many of the longer dialogue bits flash by so fast it's impossible to read them without pausing

Fascinatingly the episodes themselves are longer than I remember, and I think it's the extended cut which I have watched bits and pieces of on YouTube but never the whole thing, which is going to be a fun experience

Overall I'm having fun, because The Untamed is always fun to me (you know, except for the parts where you cry) But I also can't wait to see what else they've fucked up!