24 thoughts on “Translation Review: [Nishi-Taku] Tamayura ~more aggressive~ – 02”

1. The real question is: how aggressive was lyger’s translation?

   • Nevreen pls

   • Turtleriffic!

   • Too aguresshibu, so much so that the show doesn’t even deserve it.

     • lyger’s too good for this show? :p

       • That, and the fact it looks like he actually… enjoys it

2. >It appears Nishi-Taku is in the “treat dialogue scripts like prose” camp and decided not to bookend each line that is part of a quote with quotation marks and opted instead to put the quotation marks around the entire quote said by the character, even if it takes up multiple lines. This practice may be right for a novel, but for subtitles it just looks weird, especially when one is trying to discern which line is a quote and which one isn’t.

   Some esteemed style rules (I really don’t remember which) say that you should sub multi-line quotes in the following manner:

   – “This is the beginning
   – “of this wonderful
   – “multi-line quote.”

   I had an argument about this with other staff members on one project, because honestly, it just looks like the worst of all worlds to me. Either go with only having the quotes at the very beginning and end, or at the start and end of each line (I’d personally prefer the latter), but this? Goddamn, it just looks so dumb.

   • The stylistic choice isn’t for novels, but for closed captions.

     The choice of how to handle quotation marks differ from person to person, and I honestly hate seeing:

     “Okay, so maybe next time
     we can all do it together!”

   • That’s novel’s styles rule. And a lot of people (including me) prefer that over the the very beginning and the very end that fansub groups like to do.

   • It reminded me of one thing I worked on where a guy and a girl were doing a read-through of a movie script, and the guy kept messing up his lines, finally blurting out “I love you!” to the girl, even though it wasn’t in the script (the girl thought he just made another mistake, btw). Unfortunately, that quotation style isn’t going to allow me to differentiate between when the guy’s simply reciting a line and when he’s doing an accidental confession.

     • Viewer question: in such a case, would it work better having beginning/end quotation marks only, paired with the actual quoted text in italics (or some other non-normal style)?

       I find that novel-style can be confusing when you can’t see the whole text block, and bookending every line in quotes gets unwieldy in longer sections.

       • I guess if you differentiate the quotes using italics or whatever, it will make it easier on the viewers, but I still prefer quoting each subtitle line instead of having just the beginning/end quotation marks.

   • Things would be much simpler if everyone just used quotation marks at the beginning and end of each line that’s part of the quote. It’s visually appealing and allows the viewer to easily distinguish what’s part of the quote and what’s not.

     • Unless the quote multiple things from different sources back-to-back.
       Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. ;)

       • Fair point. Though it’s a rare enough case that I’ll probably stick to the beginning-end quotes on every line style unless I think it’ll be that kind of show.

   • I personally don’t think the novel style format works at all for subtitles.

     That style is used in novels when someone’s talking so much that they have to split it into paragraphs. The quotation mark at the beginning of each paragraph is to quickly signify that the same person is still talking. That’s would never be needed in subtitles unless the entire scene was one single quote or something.

     Subtitles disappear with the next line, something that doesn’t happen in books, so starting each part of the quoted line with a quotation mark is just looks sloppy to me. The audience is perfectly capable of discerning that, if there’s no quotation mark at the end of the first line, then the quote continues to the next. The only time you’d have a problem is, again, if the quote was an obscene number of lines. In that case, then I could see using the novel style, but that’s a last resort if you ask me.

     And the problem with beginning and ending each part of the quote with a quotation mark is that it’s just confusing. A quotation mark at the end means that the quote has ended. It’s unnecessary to force the audience to figure out where one quote ends and one begins. Then you have series like Psycho-Pass or movies like GitS: Innocence where characters occasionally speak, back and forth, in quotes. IF you use quotation marks at the beginning and the end of part of a quote, then that just makes a scene like that all the harder to deal with.

     tl;dr I prefer this style most of the time:

     “Words words words
     words words
     words words words words.”

     • I, for one, either have to rewind back to see if it’s really in quote, or just ignore whether it’s in quote or not. I can’t really discern whether it’s still in the quote, but maybe it’s just me.

3. What about FTW release? Just asking…

   • On it.

4. I had a partial rant concerning your beef with “stock translations”, but since I have a blog now (yay~) I figured I should dump my thoughts there. Link in website field (I dunno if I can html in comments).

   Also, “cheeky kid” was a matter of consistency with season 1, which I translated when I was younger and not as wise (find cheek, insert tongue). It hit me at the start of this season that it was a play on her name; either I didn’t notice or chose to ignore it back in S1. Of course, we did break consistency to make a few revisions this season, and I could have included her nickname among them, but I guess I’m stuck with it now.

   Anyway thanks for the review~ I will try harder next time.

   • Oh, two things I forgot to say. I actually looked up the phrase “born under the star of” to see if it was a thing. The search turned up phrases like “born under a lucky star” and “born under a wandering star”, as well as people asking “what star was I born under?” so I think it’s idiomatically fine. Otherwise, I would have used an alternative like what you suggested.

     Also, you picked what I considered my weakest script (episode 3 was my strongest), but all the better to get critique on that, so I shouldn’t complain.

   • Okay, I guess I was right about Komachi’s nickname, although I don’t have any original solutions on how to go about writing it out ┐(￣ー￣)┌

     Yes, there’s a whole bunch of material out there about people being born under certain stars (starting with Albert Kings “Born Under A Bad Sign”), but, I dunno, the phrase still sounds furrin to me (and yes, I am fully aware that I rail against Japanese-sounding translations when I myself shamelessly use honorifics, “Senpai” and other crap in my scripts).

     And lastly, if that was your weakest script, then all I have to say is… wow.

5. >Cookie-cutter

   Someone obviously hasn’t watched the OVA this and ~hitotose~ is based off of. It’s actually got a pretty unique style compared to most slice of life stuff.

   The series itself is a little on the mediocre side at times, but “cookie-cutter” isn’t a term I’d use to describe this series at all.

   I get the feeling kokujin-kun would say Aria The Animation/Natural/Origination was “cookie-cutter” because he would fail to catch the point of the show which is the ambiance.

   Tamayura isn’t even in the same league as Aria as far as sheer goodness goes, but they are similar shows in that respect.

   • I tried watching Aria once. Fell asleep halfway through the episode.

     I guess it was just too “relaxing” for me.