Fansub Review: [AFFTW-Hatsuyuki] Black Rock Shooter (Episode 02)

This post was written by Dark_Sage. He is Dark_Sage.

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The typesetter did their job. The kfxer did their job. Where the fuck was the rest of the staff?

Release format: MKV (381 MB, 8-bit)

Japanesiness: Honorifics. “Nee-chan” used. “Soumen” used (some Japanese food).

Group website: http://www.animefansftw.com/blog/  http://hatsuyuki-fansubs.com/

8thsin’s translation critique: http://8ths.in/2011/12/02/winter-2012-anime-subtitle-comparison/#Black

Ji-hi’s screenshot comparisons: http://www.ji-hi.net/wi11/brs11/

 

Karaoke.

 

Opening. The karaoke looks kind of stupid, and honestly, it really is, but I liked it anyway. Good taste can go fuck itself, because the kara here is fun. Shit’s bouncing all over the place, “B”, “R”, and “S” jump randomly across the screen, followed by stars. Everything’s fading and streaming like a room does when you’ve had way too much to drink. It’s the very definition of kfx wankery, but it’s kawaii as it can get. Extra credit to A-H.

 

Ending. It was all right.

 

Typesetting.

I wasn’t expecting anyone to TS this. Naisu.

A few frames later, the phone drops down and the typesetting follows right after it. Nice.

Yeah, the typesetting was fine. If only the script could be anywhere near as competently managed.

 

Script.

You have no idea how much this hurts to read.

“Could you stop talking?” is the English interpretation of… whatever that was.

“in good terms”? Oh no. The rest of this release is going to be shitty Engrish, isn’t it?

“I really want to be on good terms with Takanashi-san.”

Because this is totally how real people talk. Good job, AFFTW-Hatsuyuki!

“I’ve received three texts from Takanashi-san.”

“No matter how bad it hurts…” Okay, that’s fi–

“…or gets wounded,” Wait, what the fuck?

“you’re not the one who’s in pain.” …

Welp, that’s it. Time to pack up the English. Better find a new language because this one’s been ruined by fuckwits.

With English like this, who needs Japanese?

I know picking on this is kinda trivial compared to some of these other errors, but whatever.

“It’s funny, isn’t it?”

The culmination of BRS’s rage and disgust with the situation Takanashi is in is… “That’s weird”? Holy shit. Way to fucking miss the point of such a pivotal scene by using such piss-poor language.

What’s next? A rape scene where the victim goes, “That was really mean! I’m feeling slightly sad.”?

More like “Don’t go!”

Where’d you get your translator from? Babelfish?

I know Japan doesn’t do plurals, but holy shit did you fuck this up.

It’s not her leg that’s in question, it’s her “legs”.

It’s not her arm that’s in question, it’s her “arms”.

How does this kind of thing happen? Weren’t their QCs on this release? An editor? A TLC? Hell, even a fucking translator? Or did you guys just find closed captions and run that shit through Google Translate? I’m speechless. This is fucking unacceptable.

What the hell is she even saying here? This makes no fucking sense. You can’t just throw English down and hope it works.

I’m nearly 100% certain it’s “smiling”, not “laughing”. Yes, Hatsuyuki, there’s a difference between the two.

I lost it here. When you translate the very fucking base of their relationship wrong… when you’re so inept at English that you’re rolling the dice for script quality on every line… something needs to stop. Namely, the heartbeats of everyone involved in this release.

What they meant to say in the first line was “Can you really not get by without me?” (I’d make this line sound less shitty, but I think Hatsuyuki’s failure will mask my own.)

 

Watchability: Hah.

Overall grade: D-

I would have given them an F, but the karaoke was so kawaii desu that I let them reside in D-tier (hooray for extra credit!). When I’m bitching about mistranslations, something’s fucking wrong.

You should avoid this garbage as best you can. Nothing good can come of watching it besides reveling in the fact that you probably know more Japanese than anyone involved in this release.

38 thoughts on “Fansub Review: [AFFTW-Hatsuyuki] Black Rock Shooter (Episode 02)”

  1. Haven’t seen the episode yet, but I guarantee you the word they translated as “weird” was either “hen” or “okashii”, both of which, in context, should have been “There’s something wrong with that!” or “That’s not right!”

    I always find these sort of “Japanese-isms” to be interesting. Often it’s a case of overly-literal translations, but sometimes there are phrases that just can’t be helped. Even professional translations will have lines that can easily be back-translated if you know what to look for. There were definitely a few in the FMA movie, dubbed by Funimation, that I watched a few weeks ago (gee, I wonder which Japanese phrase “pardon the intrusion” could have corresponded to?).

    Uh, sorry for the tangent. Props for the review as usual!

    Reply
    • Ah, don’t worry about going off on a tangent or anything. I’d encourage you to say whatever you want to. I’m surely not the only one here who’s interested in hearing fansubbing/translation-related stories.

      Reply
    • Line in question was:

      そんなの可笑しい!絶対可笑しい!
      sonna no okashii! zettai okashii!

      I would’ve had it as what you suggested, but together. So “That’s not right! There’s something wrong with that!”. Can’t really think of anything better, but the translation they put was too literal.

      Reply
  2. Dammit, and here I was hoping you’d review their ep1 and get mad that they’d bothered to add their group name to the title screen but not actually typeset the title :(

    Reply
  3. I’m the editor for this show, and I’d like to thank you for your criticism. I’m a new editor for Hatsuyuki, and this is my first real show. Judging from this, it looks like I lack sufficient phrasing skills, so I guess it’s something I’ll work on. I’ve got no excuses. As an editor, I should’ve been more vigilant, and I should’ve fixed these errors.

    Reply
  4. 14:31 – “All of these; I did all of these!”
    -> “After all this, even after all this!” Translation error.

    14:40 – “I was laughing?”
    -> “I was smiling”. Context error.

    16:19 – “Can’t you get by without me?”
    -> “So without me you’re hopeless?”

    16:22 – “That’s right!”
    -> Should be fine. Could’ve also been “of course!” but I haven’t watched this show so I can’t really comment about the context this is in.

    Reply
  5. why is it
    – the typesetter did their job.
    and not “his”?

    this isn’t just nitpicking. i really am trying to advance my english whenever the chance arises, but mostly in passive form.

    Reply
    • I didn’t bother to read the Wiki article Aera linked, so I’m just gonna explain it to you myself.

      Yes, “they” is not technically correct. I should have used “his” or “her” there, depending on the gender of the typesetter. However, the English language runs into a bit of a problem when the gender of the person is unknown. You can assume the gender of the person to be male or female and just go with that, but if you don’t want to assume the gender, the only proper way to display that is to say “his/her” so the line would read “The typesetter did his/her job.” (Read aloud, you pronounce this “The typesetter did his or her job.”)

      Now, this is going out of style because it sounds like shit. It’s still the more academic way to phrase the line (and it’s how you’d do it on a quiz or test or something), but when people talk to one another, we never use “his/her”. Instead, we use “their” to reflect gender ambiguity. This is extremely widespread and it’s just how normal people talk. So that’s why I used “their” there.

      If you have any more questions, ask away.

      Reply
  6. also, D_S, ever thought of reviewing light novels? there is a shit ton of hilarity to be found in those.
    my brain was fucked to hell and back just by reading 1/4 of Index chapter 1.
    example: “The most common topic here wa the most common.”

    Reply
  7. “The typesetter did their job. The kfxer did their job. Where the fuck was the rest of the staff?”

    “something needs to stop. Namely, the heartbeats of everyone involved in this release.”

    Don’t wish for everyone to die!

    Reply
  8. I could tell this release was going to be shit just from groups involved, so I didn’t even bother reviewing. Looks like I wasn’t wrong.

    I haven’t seen this episode yet, but I have to say, “I’ve received three texts from Takanashi-san.” is pretty different from the original (assuming the original was an accurate literal TL). “in total” is necessary in that sentence because it completely changes emphasis that (i’m assuming) that’s the total number received from her until some kind of tragedy, and she’s looking back to the past for narration. It changes nuance quite a bit without that key term. Sometimes the original dialogue is intentionally stiff, redundant, or convoluted etc, and the smoothest colloquial subs aren’t always the most appropriate IMO. The original line this group had was bad though… just that “total” seems like a keyword in that line.

    Also, I can’t agree with 「そんなのおかしい!絶対おかしい!」 translated differently within the same line/scene. That’s just bad aural-visual harmony, and 「絶対」’s intended effect on the audience is “rephrasing”: the character said something first, and didn’t think the tone was strong enough, so she rephrased it with an additional modifier to emphasize the first statement -> “It’s wrong. it’s absolutely wrong!” or “It’s not acceptable. It definitely is not acceptable!” etc

    Reply
    • I think it’s actually two texts that she’s received and not three (at least as far as I can remember from watching the show) but yeah, the point of that line is that she’s only ever received two (?) texts from Takanashi and they both said the same thing (“I’m sorry.”) So she’s upset that Takanashi hasn’t done more to open up to her.

      I pretty much agree with you in this case regarding the repeated line (I’d probably personally go with something like “That’s just not right! It’s not right at all!”) but I’m not sure I can in principle since wouldn’t there be a lot of cases where it’d sound natural to repeat the same word in Japanese but not so much in English?

      Reply
    • While I understand putting 2 different lines for the rephrasing on 絶対, it’s a bit awkward in English repeating the same thing twice (as Xythar said).

      Reply

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