60 thoughts on “Translation Review (Pass/Fail): [DameDesuYo] Working!!! – 01”

1. I prefer “senpai-kouhai bond” because it’s more specific than work colleagues.

   • https://warosu.org/data/fa/img/0085/66/1406736001013.jpg

     • Great argument.

     • You failed. …again

2. >Okay, that’s a hell of a lot better, but the folks at DDY have still decided, with a clear conscience it seems, to put the “senpai-kouhai” abomination in the default track.

   Blame Begna. He is fucking weaboo. Anyway, I like DDY as group, but I can’t stand honorifics… it’s goddamn 2015 already.

   • It’s interesting to me that everyone who does not like honorifics says “it’s 2015 already” as if the date has any relevance at all on whether or not honorifics should be included. Another one I’ve seen is that you can “just listen to the audio and hear the honorifics, you don’t need it in the subs.” What that argument says is that, really, the honorifics are still important context but you should have to listen and pick it out yourself. As someone who listens only for tone and not for words and has no interest in learning japanese, I’d much rather it be in the subtitles for me.

     As for being a weeaboo, I’ll take that title if you really want to give it to me, but, that being said, you’re probably more of a weeaboo than me. I watch fewer than 8 shows a season, almost exclusively the shows my group does. I do not buy anything japanese (with the exception of blurays for the group) or have a preference for japanese products, culture or words in my everyday life.

     If you’re the type of person that cares enough about anime to read crymore, follow fansubbers and their drama, and be actually offended by the way anime is subtitled, you’re probably a weeaboo. In 2015, no less!

     Ironically, I am an ultra-liberal editor… for everything but honorifics and “senpai.” I feel that those cannot be properly localized to satisfy the real intent of their use. This issue becomes abundently clear when a show decides to directly discuss the use of an honorific or make a joke about them. The localized edits of these are confusing and wrong at worst and awkward at best. Very rarely there might be a really good english substitute for those, but only then if the group has been dealing with honorifics in a way that lends itself to that.

     Feel free to explain why you think honorifics should specifically be left out. I am open to the discussion, but I doubt you’ll change my mind.

     • >I watch fewer than 8 shows a season
       fucking casual

       • >using casual meme
         >2015
         0/10 try harder

     • >Feel free to explain why you think
       >honorifics should specifically be left out.

       http://i.imgur.com/PH0NmhJ.jpg

       • Come on, kokujin xD your name even has an honorific in it!

         • Okay, more seriously, there’s this post. For the record, as a card-carrying weeboo myself, I disagree with him, though I understand where he’s coming from thanks to badly translated Korean doramas ┐(￣ー￣)┌

           • I don’t really think of it in the cultural sense. But I’ve explained my opinion more thoroughly below.

           • Suggesting we call Ton-chan Snappy

             Commie pls hire him

             • He probably is part of commie.

           • I pretty much agree with everything he said. Begna, I can see why you might want to include them out of “laziness” though (aka avoiding potential localization headaches if they make a big deal out of honorifics later on, due to not being able to predict the future).

             I think the key point is that your question shouldn’t be, “why should I bend over backwards to exclude them”, but rather, “why should I bend over backwards to include them”. They aren’t a thing that should be included in the first place.

             Consider the opposite case — if you were localizing an English show into Japanese, you wouldn’t typically insist on Mr. Smith being translated as ミスター・スミス (MISUTA SMITH) because that’s the only way to preserve interpersonal relationship information. You’d usually just call him スミスさん (Smith-san). I’m sure there are cases where you would really want to preserve the MISUTAR, but that would be the exception, not the norm.

             • Mr. and -san have different connotations though. Not saying it shouldn’t be localized somehow but pretty lazy thing to just translate Mr. to -san.

             • It’s actually relatively common to keep “Mr. Smith” as “Mr. Smith” rather than translating the honorific into the closest local equivalent in foreign subtitles of English shows and movies. It’s generally done because honorific usage is so different between languages any attempts at translating around them just looks awkward.

               I assume English is your first language and you’ve never watched a whole lot of such subbed material?

               Also, while I’m admittedly no expert, don’t English subtitles of Spanish and French media generally keep “Señor” and “Monsieur” as “Señor” and “Monsieur” rather than localize them into “Mr.”?

               • Yeah, English is my main language so I haven’t watched that much subbed material. I guess it might depend on the language. From what I have seen of English > Hindi and especially English > Japanese dubs/subs, they usually don’t try to retain English honorifics and such. Hindi is a bit of a special case because it’s sort of common to actually use English honorifics in mixed Hindi/English.

                 Romance languages are also a bit of a different case because the honorifics used are essentially directly related to the equivalent English ones. They also are used in the same way grammatically. So English subtitles often use the foreign Romance honorifics for foreign flavor (whose meaning is still easily well-understood), while in the reverse case, they often (from what little I’ve seen) translate into the target language because English (I assume) isn’t considered to have much flavor. Might be wrong about that last part, someone correct me if they’re a native Spanish/French/Portuguese/etc. speaker.

                 • My first language is Norwegian, and English honorifics are usually – not always, but usually – kept in English in subs for English media.

                 • The thing is that honorifcs find its place on the english semantic pretty well, more than other languages. My primary language is the brasilian portuguese and it doesn’t as softly. And as it can contain information that can’t be perfectly localizated there’s no loss in leaving them there. Obviously, if it isn’t left there, I can just use my ears and my brain a bit more when trying to get the characters.

                   • Brazilian encoding. Sasuga LotusGG.
                     TL note: Sasuga means as expected of.

                   • HUE(last,”br”)

     • Probably because honorific suffixes are a part of the Japanese language and not English, so an English translation would ideally not use them unless it is for flavor and that flavor’s meaning is made clear through other context clues in the writing. Alternately, simply drop the honorifics because those same context clues encode the information in question.

       And… wait, what? Can I paraphrase your argument here? “I don’t know Japanese but I really want to see random fragments of Japanese grammar in the English subtitles that I need to understand the Japanese dialogue that I have no interest in learning how to understand myself”? Is that roughly correct? I’m not seeing the logic.

       • Sure, that’s part of it. But if I could understand Japanese, like yourself, I probably wouldnt be bothering with subtitles anyway. The hard truth is that I don’t have time to learn japanese, even if I weren’t spending time fansubbing. Very few anime fans do. And of the ones that do have time, how many have bothered to do so? So is my decision not to any worse than anyone else’s?

         I feel that, unfortunately, no one has managed to properly localize honorifics in a way that really gets the meaning across. And almost no one has proven themselves capable of handling situations where honorifics are discussed directly in the subtitles.

         Admittedly, there are cases where I have felt that the honorifics are unneeded or it’s just being said because it’s standard in Japanese. But you never know going into a season that it won’t become more. How I think of it is extra context. Reminders or revelations of their interpersonal relationships. Where you feel that information may be useless, I find a more complete picture.

         For example, in a recent episode of Classroom Crisis, the teacher is speaking with his new boss and the two are using honorifics. They have a discussion based around who should have to adress whom with titles of respect. In the end, they decide to abandon formalities and go without the honorifics.

         How is an editor to deal with that? What if, in previous episodes, the decision was made to just use their names with no titles and no thought was given for one deferring to the other with respect in the way that they speak? The editor either has to write story or awkwardly add some english formalities to the scene where it is relevant, making them act out of character.

         While part of my opinion is based around pure preference, some of it is also utility in the fansubbing that we do.

         There are also interesting professional analogies to the honorifics situation and whether or not they should be ignored or if they should cross language barriers. As an avid reader of fantasy novels in my earlier life, I came across lots of examples where non-english languages were spoken by human and non-human races. Did the writers and editors of those novels think that their readers would not be able to figure out what the titles and honorifics meant and so localize it when it is affixed to a line spoken in english? No. They assumed that their readership is intelligent and capable of understanding it and using it as a tool to inform themselves on the world that they are creating in their work.

         That is the context in which I see honorifics: world building, relationship interpretation, and basic plotline, even. When I look at those three things and the information I, as a non-japanese speaking person, would lose when watching subtitled anime without the honorifics, I feel like I would no longer be experiencing the story in its entirety.

         • It always amazes me how autistic people are about subtitles.

       • Honorifics tells you a lot about character relationship with one another. And they can’t be properly translated 90% of the time.

         “You can get by the context” is not a great argument. There is a lot that can possibly be inferred by context, you shouldn’t leave it out of the script because of that.

         Also what you just did is not called paraphrasing it is called a strawman

       • @ Begna: When I look at the general state of subtitles, I would say that you’re typically losing WAY MORE of the story from badly-worded sentences and missed nuances than from honorifics not being included.

         I dunno, I find this notion that honorifics are like this untranslatable essence that, if not placed into the subtitle to exactly mirror the spoken Japanese word, causes you to miss out on so much rich interpersonal meaning, is a total load of nonsense. I would hypothesize that the root cause of that nonsensical view is that you don’t know Japanese, so you latch onto the few things you’re sort of familiar with and ascribe disproportionate importance to them. That’s actually pretty normal, I suppose.

         But what confuses me is the assertion that you have no interest in knowing what is being said, to the point of thinking that listening for the honorifics is an unappetizing suggestion. Typically someone’s opinion about what stuff means and the relative importance of that stuff is based on their current level of understanding in that field. You didn’t just say that you don’t really know Japanese — you said you have no interest in learning it at all. So where does your opinion about the relative importance of honorifics come from? Are you saying you have an avid interest in the interpersonal linguistic aspects of Japanese culture but zero interest in the Japanese language? The two are tied together very strongly.

         @ Anonymous: It is pretty much straight paraphrasing. The point I was trying to make with that is pretty much the same as what I wrote in the above paragraph.

         • Oh I see so I’m gonna paraphrase you here
           “Honorifics don’t really tell you anything about character relationship. The only reason you think they do is because you don’t know Japanese”

           This is what you meant to say isn’t it?

         • Maybe I am latching on to it and assigning disproportionate weight to them… But, nevertheless, when I watch subs with honorifics, I usually take more out of it than I do from those without.

           As for being untranslatable… sometimes you can just leave them out. Other times, they’re going to completely mess up a scene for you. I don’t know if you have experience fansubbing but I’ve found that, more often than not, in the shows we’ve chosen to leave honorifics out of, it ends up coming back to bite us in the ass and being very hard to work around. So in that regard, there is probably even a touch of laziness involved in my opinion. The honorifics are easy enough to understand and I don’t lose anything by including them. What do I gain by bending over backwards to exclude them? That being said, DDY has included multiple tracks in most occasions that a staff member voices the opinion that they would prefer not to use honorifics. That is the pragmatic part of my preference.

           On your last point, just because I have no interest in a language does not mean I have no interest in the story being conveyed in it. Quite the opposite, in fact. If I thought that dubs were accurate representations or if the VAs didn’t just sound retarded, I’d probably watch dubs.

           My lack of interest lies in the fact that I have no use for it outside of what is, without doubt, a temporary hobby of fansubbing. To spend countless hours learning it for this would simply be a waste of my time that I would be better off developing skills relevant to my line of work.

   • Well, I’m not sure which shows you are watching then, because as far as I know, the majority of subs this season have honorifics in them.

     I mean, “senpai-kouhai bond” is rather eyebrow-raising, but honorifics are still the norm in shows set in Japan, like it or not (I honestly don’t care either way).

   • The reality is that no matter how much you call someone a weeaboo, you are still the one spending your free time watching a Japanese cartoon.

     • Joke is on you, I don’t even watch anime anymore I’m just here for the drama

   • Eat your hamburgers and kill yourself nigga.

3. >DDY, YOU DRIED OUT FLAKES OF MOLDY CUMSTAINS, WHY DON’T YOU ALL GO FUCK YOURSELVES WITH A DUFFEL BAG FULL OF LUBRICATED HORSE COCKS, YOU LOUSY SHITASS SHITBIRDS…
   The little kouhais triggered Kokujin-kun-senpai-san with weeboz talk. Oh well…

   • Classy.

4. Kokujin, if I may ask, what is confusing about the line in the OP? An unshuffled deck of cards has the same order every time. Thus you’ll always know your hand when it is dealt to you. As I understand the line in japanese, it is something like “if you don’t shuffle [things up], you’ll stay a good girl.” In other words, “if you don’t change anything, things will always be the same.” But the theme (and title) of the song is gambling and playing cards So the line makes perfect sense to me to stick with the euphemism.

   • I guess there was too much disconnect between the original Japanese and the translation for me, but now I see what you were going for.

     Though I’d probably go with some form of “play them straight” for the second half.

5. Shit like what you identified in the last screenshots bugs the hell out of me. It’s dumb and distracting.

   • It might be distracting for you, can’t argue there. As for dumb, some people actually enjoy those kind of effects, when they fit the situation.

     • yes, dumb people

     • It never really fits the situation because if it did you wouldn’t even notice there was something going on with the subs.
       That’s the whole point, this distracts you from the anime and makes you focus on the subs.

       No I’m not talking about every effect. I’m only talking about the distracting ones that don’t blend in the scene.

       • …….. ….. ………..

       • Have you ever considered that maybe your brain simply lacks the processing power to share attention between the subs and the anime itself…?

         • Hilarious. But no subs effects shouldn’t call attention to themselves they should blend in and be unnoticeable.

     • I enjoy it. Please continue.

6. Only dump people don’t enjoy effects. So yes, you are dumb.

   • >calling someone dumb
     >can’t even reply to the right post

   • End your life you fucking retard.

     • You’re a funny guy

       • I didn’t realise I stumbled onto /a/.

         • /a/ is everywhere

         • What is /a/? Something to do with anime?

           • 4chan’s anime board.

             • Oh, I see. Because of the Anonymous thing.

               • Mostly the “you’re dumb”, “no you’re dumb, retard”, but yes, the anonymous adds to the illusion.

                 • I always wonder why anon is talking to himself :^)

                   • Because he is dumb.
                     Duh.

                 • ++ suicide

7. I rather enjoy sub effects like the “Yamada!” in the last picture; it really adds to the experience for me.

8. begna112,
   [/url]
   I’ve watched your Owari and your Gurashi, and i’ve not seen any “easter eggs”.
   Most of your did you know things are clearly fakes that sometimes raises a chuckle from me, but this one appeared and now I’m not sure.