Fansub Review: [Commie] Steins;Gate (Episode 01)

This post was written by Dark_Sage. He is Dark_Sage.

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Dear Commie, get your shit together.

Steins;sub/HorribleSubs is even worse and deserves no review.

Let me just quote UTW for one second. “The team decided when CR made the announcement that we would drop the project if the CR subs were of competent quality; they turned out to be excellent.” This proves what I’ve been saying all along: The people in UTW and Mazui are stupid. Very, very stupid. Kusion, you wanted a mention? Here you go: your nakama need to fix their eyes cuz approving this is something only a blind man would do.

CR’s version is terrible, yes. But I’m reviewing Commie’s version, which is supposed to be a properly-edited version of CR’s script. Let’s see how they do, shall we?

The OP/ED. Card does a great job as usual. When it comes to bearing my children, she will suffice.

There are about ten screenshots that make up this paragraph. I am going to spare you the agony of posting them all and instead transcribe it.

I’ll introduce our staff.
First is Lab Member 001, founder of the lab and Insane Mad Scientist… Myself, Hououin Kyouma!
Lab Member 002, the lab’s lone female member, whose hobby is making cosplay outfits, Shiina Mayuri!
And Lab Member 003, Super Haker Hashida Itaru!
It’s “Hacker”, not “Haker”. Hurr.
We three.

There is so much concentrated fail here that I cannot even begin to explain what went wrong. Here, how about I fix it first?

I’ll introduce our staff.
First up is Lab Member 001. He’s the founder of this lab and an insane mad scientist… It’s none other than me, Hououin Kyouma!
Next up is Lab Member 002. She’s the lab’s sole female member. This girl’s hobby is making cosplay outfits. It’s Shiina Mayuri!
And finally, it’s Lab Member 003. He’s the super hacka known as Hashida Itaru!
It’s “Hacker”, not “Hacka”. Hurr.
It’s only us three.

1. This is far more entertaining.
2. This fits the style of a TV announcer, which is what he’s fucking imitating in the show.
3. “Haker” rhymes with “raker”. He pronounces it hacka in the show.
4. This doesn’t fucking fail at English.

Hey Commie, what’s a wagon sale? I know what you think it is, but what is it really? Good luck searching the internet for the answer cuz the term doesn’t exist.

You don’t need “that” because they refer to him like an actual person.

It would be a better use of our time to

Anyways is neither a legitimate word nor is it “net language”. Drop that shit like a dead baby.

You know what we call radio buildings in America? Radio stations. My god. As long as these editors are able to reproduce, there is no hope for the future.

To make this clear, the first picture had the mad scientist as the speaker and the 2nd/3rd had the fat guy as the speaker. Logical progression indicates the third line should be

If it had been, that satellite would have flattened you.

Gosh darnit! Why does everyone have to fudge up when it comes to naughty words?

since we first met.


Hmm… if UTW TL’d it like this and Crunchyroll did too… maybe the disparity’s intentional?
Oh, and I’ll give $5 to anyone who can come up with a logical explanation for why the editors chose to leave in “time cook” that doesn’t involve alcohol or accidents involving in the brain.
This is a microwave, so how about “and then the number of seconds you wish to cook it for”? See? It’s not hard to make lines not suck.

How about a subject? In fact, a lot of lines are missing proper sentence structure in this release. Sometimes it’s justified, but I have a feeling the editors just couldn’t be assed to fix shit.

It hasn’t even been ten minutes

Overall grade: C-

Aethon, you wanted me to be hard? You wanted me to be brutally honest? This is absolute shit. In fact, I have a funny little story for you all. This isn’t even the entirety of the episode. I only started watching after the opening at 10:48. That means, in all likelihood, that you fucked up twice as bad.

Very, very disappoint. :(

22 thoughts on “Fansub Review: [Commie] Steins;Gate (Episode 01)”

  1. Here’s to UTW and Mazui reading this review and reconsider dropping the show. They are at least the lesser of two evils.

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  2. I think this is actually an in-house TL from Commie – when they rip the CR streams they usually joint with Underwater/Daiz.
    It’s also likely that Daiz edited/QC’ed the Hanasaku Iroha script, since he’s one of the three persons I know to add copious amounts of “N” to the script.

    Hmm, might be interesting to check some of the lines mentioned here and see what the CR version was – might do that later if no-one else does. :p

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  3. No, Commie does CR rips by themselves too sometimes, or all the time. I don’t know since I choose them when nobody else does it, but I think they did for shows like Heroman and a couple others.

    I checked it and it’s exactly like CR’s, except if Daiz is their editor (joint or no joint) then the only difference is theres no honorifics, which is a shame.

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    • For the record, I am not an editor. Whenever I add manual linebreaks to a script, I just consider that styling. And about honorifics: it’s the Commie editors that remove/translate them accordingly as per Commie’s subbing philosophy. I personally share the same philosophy though, so if I was actually editing something (I don’t since English isn’t my native language) I’d take the honorifics out too.

      Personally, I think people whining about lack of honorifics in subtitles are idiots whining over nothing. Are all these people deaf or what? Personally I can enjoy the best of both worlds by reading a fluid English translation with no untranslated unnecessarities in the subtitles while still being perfectly capable of hearing and understanding the Japanese honorifics in the original audio too.

      And honorifics are perfectly translatable in basically every context. In fact, the reason why they’re translatable is exactly that – context. While there’s no single words in the English language to replace the Japanese honorifics, multiple different words can be used depending on the context in which those honorifics are used in. Or depending on the context, the honorific can just simply be dropped completely from the translation. The only people to whine about this are the people who don’t know fuck-all about translation and assume that it’s all about 1:1 word mapping between two languages, which couldn’t be further from the truth.

      Another purpose I see for whining about shit like this is circlejerking. Basically, people are saying “because I know word X in Japanese you should left it untranslated in the subtitles!” What’s the goddamn logic behind lunacy like that?! Obviously, these people want to masturbate about how sugoi their nihongo is, after all, they understand these untranslated Japanese words in the subtitles! It’s like they’re really Japanese experts! Except for the whole fact that knowing some romanized words doesn’t make you knowledgeable in a language at all. It’s like claiming that you’re a french expert when the only things you know are merci, merde, bon appetit, raison d’etre, bonjour, monsieur and a couple other small things like that. It’s just total bullshit.

      Of course, since it’s become such a fucking tradition to be lazy at translation and leave honorifics untranslated, people have become so accustomed them that their minds have twisted into thinking that it’s somehow a good thing (or they’re just in for the SUGOI NIHONGO SKILLS circlejerk aspect, even if they don’t actively recognize it themselves) that now they’re even being preserved in goddamn English dubs (every single person who thinks this is a good idea ought to be shot at sight). Such a sad world we live in.

      Man, that turned into quite a rant. Now watch as honorifags rake in to ignore everything written in this post and go on about how honorifics are “untranslatable” because there are no “direct alternatives” to them in English and continue on with all the usual crap…

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      • Also, I can already tell what any honorifag intending to reply to this is going to bring up: “BUT WHAT ABOUT WHEN SOMEONE CHANGES THE HONORIFIC THEY USE FOR ANOTHER?!”

        Let me pre-emptively answer that too. First of all, depending on the context of it, it can be handled in various ways. Obviously, sometimes it is pretty hard or next to impossible, but well, translation always loses some meaning. That’s inevitable. However, if you understand the honorifics, you can still hear them in the audio and connect the dots assuming your brains are working.

        But anyway, let me ask you a question. If honorifics are so untranslatable, why aren’t you saying the same about all the different words for “I” that the Japanese language has? Boku/Ore/watashi/etc? Now those are something that are pretty much completely untranslatable since the English language doesn’t have multiple words for “I”. Pretty much the only thing you can do is write the character to speak in a boyish/girlish/formal manner, but that’s fairly indirect. It’s also a good way to go about it, but doesn’t really help when it comes to dialogue that’s based on playing with these different words (which happens about as often as honorifics-based dialogue, that is to say, quite rarely). Of course, there is a pretty easy way to handle it. A translation note! Most people seem to be satisfied with that. The question that remains: Why would you not be satisfied with having no honorifics in the translation and in case “untranslatable” honorifics-based dialogue pops up, there’d be a TL note to explain it.

        Bottom line: Honorifags arguments about “untranslatability” are pretty much completely inconsistent, which just goes on to show how retarded and pointless they actually are.

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        • Tl;dr

          I don’t even need to read what you wrote in order to see if you used ad hominem, straw man, or asinine arguments. You’re you, and I know they are there. Since they are there, that allows me to dismiss your wall of texts, saving everyone the trouble of reading that blind one-sided rant, and facepalm worthy persuasive writing over the thing you masturbate over: Americanization aka unnecessary localization.

          Don’t stop being a reverse weeaboo now, Daiz. It’s what you do best.

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          • I’m sorry. How silly of me. It’s my fault and clearly my mistake to grossly assume you would be capable of grasping rhetoric, much less decipher and understand the purpose of a blatant caustic remark.

            I have to remember that not everyone can interpret, read below, or see into the context of this level.

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  4. I watched this, and the only thing that bothered me was the “haker” thing… the rest is minor moans about editing which wasn’t that bad… you’re overreacting Dark_Sage… Commie’s release for this is fine… but they should have tried harder to fix the few lines which were kinda weird… these subs were better than UTW’s to be honest… and I tend to like UTW… don’t go making fansubbers waste their time on a show CR is already doing a fine job on… watch the WHOLE episode… it is more like a B+… not a D-… seesh!

    Otherwise we’ll end up with some shows with no good subs and like 20 groups doing some show no better than CR is already doing it… GOD… don’t be RETARDED. I don’t feel like watching Ayako and gg for some show that CR isn’t subbing… god… this is NOWHERE NEAR as bad as Ayako’s dogdays… stop being an IDIOT!

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    • Oh yeah… also… the first 10 mins you didn’t watch… were much better edited… better than UTW’s.. imo… but then again I didn’t watch the second half of UTW’s… just Commie’s CR edits…

      Okay… considering it is supposed to be a CR edit where they clean up the shitty stuff… it is a C+.. or a B-… but the first half is much better done I promise you…

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      • I was overreacting, true. I just had some naisu insults I wanted to put out there. But you’re free to point out why the errors I pointed out aren’t wrong.

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  5. Wow, I remember the days when fansubbers were thanked for their efforts, and when fansub reviews focused more on the styling and encode differences than on how well the translations were edited and presented. Has the minimum for fansubs been raised so high that we can complain about these types of things because the other differences are so subtle that they’re not worth worrying over?

    Don’t forget that people are volunteering their time, effort, and resources to make these things available. Feedback is a good thing, but don’t rip people apart.

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  6. Wow, over reacting about minor mistakes much? Don’t watch it if it hurts you so much. Fansub it yourself oh great and mighty one.

    I watch commie’s subs, and no, it’s not OMGABSOLUTERPERFECTION but it’s not bad.

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  7. There was a time where Commie insert a Lyric (Romaji) in the Opening and Ending? Wow. Too bad they don’t do this anymore :/
    I only think why.

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