Fortunately the main complaint that MightyOtaking expresses is easily resolved with container files such as the .mkv format. Annoyances like translators notes and explanations of what a character is doing when they’re doing something uniquely Japanese can be turned on and off as needed by the viewer. Even the translations of signs and printed matter can be turned on and off, if the fan subber built the .mkv file correctly. And for me that’s great, because sometimes I don’t mind a little cultural education, but sometimes I just want to watch the giant robots.

“Fansubbing” is indeed “funsubbing.”
My fellows absolutely love watching other people’s subs and finding mistakes, to see what they do, aside from watching the series. They laugh at encoding methods of others, those kind of things, It adds to THEIR entertainment. Even though I’m part of the team, I think I’m the resident team killjoy/bore, but I stick to it.

I once told off a typesetter who placed their group name inside Toei’s own triangular logo. I am a fansubber with rather old-school methods, such as no-licensed-series, no-karaoke, no-honorifics rule. But I don’t rock the boat, because there’s no point getting stressed trying to convince a fellow to another point of view. Likewise, I don’t join a group then tell their leader to change this and that. You might get something like “Go form your own group then.” or the euphemistic “If that makes you happy, good luck..”

Some of the things he points out are kind of silly and he seems to be attempted to pick a fight. Like arguing against using honorifics. This is just something that has been accepted by fansubbers at this point. It really doesn’t have any effect on the story.

One example of where honorifics had a big impact on the dialog is in Dragon Ball Z (using DBZ as an example is going to risk my reputation but… so be it) the Ginyu Force refers to Vegeta as “Vegeta-Chan”. There really is no way to translate this to give an equivalent impact. “Little Vegeta” or referring to him as “her” might have gotten the message across in the same way but not in the exact way the author intended.

The Japanese in jokes will fly by many people, true, but I’d rather look them up on my own time rather than have an anime spoon feed me my laughs by using extensive notes.

I don’t agree that English is inferior. It’s neither better nor worse, but since pretty much everyone in the states speaks it, American fansubbers making fansubs for Americans should at least try and reach out to new fans by translating as much as possible. Words like kimono and sushi are going to pretty much stay as is, but the chan can be “honey” or “sweetie” and sensei can be “professor”, “doctor”, “teacher”, “elder”, etc. The same feelings can be conveyed with a little extra work.

Anybody who has watched his share of anime WILL have developed a curiosity for Japanese culture, will have developed some basic otaku culture. Those are essential to truly appreciate anime. Just like jumping straight into “Lucky Star” when you haven’t seen any anime before. 99% of the jokes will fly straight by you without you ever knowing they’re there. A lot of the same with “Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei”.

I believe plain English has it’s place, however, in some cases, it is definitely inferior.

I don’t believe fansubbing should be split. I believe newcomers should be directed to “culturally neutral” animes before going on to other stuff.

By culturally neutral, I mean stuff like Hellsing or Full Metal Alchemist. They’re not exactly neutral but you can get into them without any previous experience.

@Caitlin, that’s true. But it seems especially true when it’s something or someone we admire and we see them going down a dark path. Perhaps anime is something Otaking really loves and can’t bear to see devolve into what he highlighted. Tough love mayhap?

@Genome227, I agree that fansubbing should be split. Because let’s face it, the fansubbers who are doing this aren’t going to throw away their crazy fonts and culture notes and start down the path of righteousness. And if that’s what makes certain fans happy, so be it. It doesn’t make me happy, but there are other fansubbers out there- if I were to start watching more fansubs.

I think he may have a point that distribution companies might start making their subs similar to this because they believe this is what fans want. If so, I think they’d lose money, since fans who pay for their anime will be like, WTF is this?

I actually do see where he’s coming from. I’ve seen a lot of fansubs (and professional subs/dubs, for that matter) that randomly leave Japanese words untranslated. Not only does this alienate the audience, it means that something that once meant, I don’t know, ‘Strawberry’ (ichigo) is just a random foreign word to most people, of course that kind of thing is going to change the meaning/impact from what was originally intended. Same goes for a multitude of ’special moves’ – those names where mostly descriptive titles in there original form, so why not have that in English too? On the other hand, that’s also the reason some fansubbers have taken to trying to translate on-screen text in a fashion that mimics the original, so I’m kind of confused as to why he did such a complete 180 on that. At least they’re making an effort, that’s more than you can say for certain ‘professionals’.
Yet, personally, I do like certain (most) things left alone, the many honorifics from the Sgt Frog series, for example, are something I’d rather people did not change, even though I do see what ‘Otaking’ is getting at.

To me the most sensible solution seems to be to split up some of the fansubbing, have some groups focus on translations that maintain Japanese words and others that try to make as literal and full a translation as possible. For that matter it wouldn’t be too hard to provide versions with explanations in and out of the actual animation or create openings clear of excessive clutter as well as versions with that karaoke effect. This way we’d have more ‘accessible’ versions of fansubs around for those just developing an interest in Anime without having to ruin things for those that like fansubs just fine as they are.

Side note; Love how he fails to mention the many times ‘professional’ translators have done the exact things he hates, such as Bleach still using zanpakut? in the ‘official’ translation, as well as ignoring many well crafted fansubs. Clearly the professionals are without fault and the rest of us need to stop supporting these ‘illegal’ (I still can’t believe he said that) translations straight away!

~227