When it comes to subtitles quality, do you agree with Nabokov's views on translation?

Yea, I also agree with this statements.

In today industry, localizers tend to be the 3rd 'evil' changing, or rather twisting text to align with their own world viewpoint. Considering in many cases, it's to conform to their viewpoint, rather then society viewpoint (regardless if their views agree with the former), one could say he is wrong. Though I still believe what he say capture the whole translation industry 'evil'.

@Cielord Interestingly, unlike "professionals" machine translation only commits the first evil of the ones he mentioned - errors due to its imperfections. I hope one day translation won't require human input at all.

@Shizuna When it comes to machines completely replacing humans in the translation industry, I'm quite divided.

I do believe that a machine doing the 1st 'evil' is preferable to a human doing the 3rd one. Though I believe the most preferable option is for human translators to not commit any of those evils.

@Cielord Perhaps. I guess after so many years of vandalism I'm just very pessimistic about human translators.

I think for the people who don't think this is a big deal have not seen what some of the dubs look like. I don't watch dubs so I don't know the extent of the 3rd level of translation hell but one example that was brought to my attention was a scene in dragonmaid where Lucoa is seen wearing a skimpy outfit which in the original kobayashi is kinda like "aren't you embarrased wearing that" and Lucoa says something like "but it looks cute doe" (or something similar, I am sorry I am too lazy to find the episode and check). But thats not the point, the point is what it was changed to, which is Lucoa saying she is wearing her skimpy outfit to "smash the patriarchy"...

I hope this speaks for itself but in case you need me to spell out to you why this is bad, these guys are literally writing a fanfic inside the show. There is absolutely 0 respect for the source material, or for the integrity of the translation. This is no longer a translation at this point, but an literal parody that is being passed off as authentic.

This doesn't affect me personally cause I know enough Japanese to follow the dialogue and only use the subs for reference but it genuinely makes me sad that people actually get away with something like this. I can only hope it is a vast minority of shows that are effectively "rewritten" in this manner.

@Lucifrost I have nothing against parodies, but I hope you are not saying this to excuse this behaviour. This is an official translation we are talking about here, by one of the biggest western anime providers (I am 99% sure it was a crunchyroll job). Like I said, what you have here is a parody being marketed as the original to people who either don't know any better or do not care. Quite frankly, its repulsive. Imagine how you would feel if you were the author, for people to spit on your work like this and for the audience to think you wrote it that way.

@Anjuro
I am excusing it for the reason that very same company presumably provided a version with subtitles that are more to your liking.

@Lucifrost Well I believe you are giving charity to the devil then. If it was explicitly marketed as a parody I would not bat an eye, but for a person who wants to experience the show by listening to the dialogue this is the product they got, for them this is what the story is.

This argument of "you can get the accurate story elsewhere therefore its ok" makes no sense (Not to mention, why would the translator change their translation in the sub? That's like admitting the dub is misrepresenting the story but the sub needs to be more accurate for some reason). If I save a cat in the morning that doesn't give me the right to kick an old lady off a balcony in the afternoon, If the manga is faithfully translated does that give the anime the right to replace the dialogue with scat? (the music genre where lyrics are gibberish). The role of a translator is to translate, not to write fanfiction.

The problem with literal word for word translations, is that there are a lot of words that don't have a 1 to 1 equivalent. Someone above mentioned that a "literal" translation would for example be translating "San" to "Mr/Mrs" which isn't accurate. "Mr/Mrs" is a term of respect often given to someone older, or someone in seniority. Whereas "San" is often also used by high school students referring to each other, when was the last time you saw a teenager refer to their own classmate as "Mr/Mrs?"Most often than not, honorifics are translated very situationally and are usually dropped all together in high school settings.

Other examples are things like "Tsundere" which has no single English word that matches. In order to translate it literally, you would have to write out a whole sentence, just to translate that one word. Or even a phrase like "Itadakimasu" which I have seen translated every which way except the literal way, because it's more of a cultural concept, then an actual phrase of meaning.

I think the best solution is to simply start introducing new words into the English language. "Tsundere" already has a meaning, rather than trying to find an equivalent English word or phrase to replace it, we should simply insert it as is, seeing as it's a new concept, and new things need names. So, just use the name it already has. When I watch or read something in English, and I come across a word I don't know, I don't lambast the author/writer for using new words, instead I just look up what the word means, and add it to my vocabulary.

I think this would be fairly easy to do with Japanese words or phrases that don't have simple 1 to 1 translation. We are living in an increasingly smaller world, where cultural bordars are slowly dwindling, and where everyone has access to an internet of information. And anime/Japanese culture is becoming far more well known. We no longer need to go out of our way to try to conform a piece of work to an audience that has no knowledge of a language/culture, and no way of learning about it. Japan has been doing it for a long time, integrating English words and phrases that don't have 1 to 1 comparison, and I think we should do the same.

Heading back to honorifics, I was actually playing Mass Effect recently and was quite surprised when I ran across a character who used Japanese honorifics, despite the entire game being in English. And apart from my initial shock and having to do a double take to make sure I heard what I actually heard (especially from such an old game) it didn't sound wrong or out of place. I was messing with adding honorifics to English names and sentences, and it really doesn't sound weird at all. If someone referred to me as Jack-san, or Jack-chan, I found it flows just as naturally in English as it does in Japanese.

Now I'm not advocating for introducing honorifics into everyday life, but for anime translations, I say leave the honorifics intact where possible, and not just in the sub, but in the dub version as well. Especially if the show takes place in Japan, where it's part of the culture. (The same with the use of last/first names) Shows outside of Japan, or in fictional setting have a little more leeway. One of my favorite parts about getting into anime, is how much I have learned about the Japanese culture and language, and I think that we are at a point in global society, where we can start leaving some of these cultural aspects alone, and rather than changing them to fit whatever culture is watching them, instead just start introducing those people to Japanese Culture, the culture that created the stories they are consuming. It's the only way for them to truly fully understand the work they are viewing.

It would be a slow process, but one that I think would reap the most benefits.

No, there was never anything about "smashing" the patriarchy. Here are the actual lines, from S1 Ep 12 4:50:


Honestly, Tooru's last line is a greater departure from the JP script, yet it's the "patriarchal" bit from Lucoa that made everyone lose their minds. (Even though a society that criticizes well-endowed women for exposing too much skin and tells them to dress more modestly could reasonably be described as "patriarchal.") I post these quotes not in the expectation of changing people's minds on this, but to present a picture of "this is what the dub actually said."
Nope, the dub was made by Funimation before they were ever associated with CR. And one controversial line is hardly "effectively rewriting the show." Yes, it it a vast minority of shows, and even a vast minority of lines within those shows affected by changes like this. It's just that a half-dozen or so examples over the past decade have been endlessly repeated and exaggerated by the culture warriors and clickbait artists out there, to the point where the anime viewerbase gets this distorted, funhouse-mirror vision of official localizations. People are welcome to their own opinions, but not their own alternative realities.

@-YaoiBoy-
You reminded me of the Corpse Party Blood Drive translation. It's narrated in 1st person even though the Japanese is 3rd person. The translator explained that he disliked the game and wanted it to be more like the 1st Corpse Party (a common complaint, at least among western fans). The result is that characters now narrate events they can't possibly be aware of.

I think translations can be improved by providing more exposure to translators. If we know who translated a given work, we can choose to support good translators over bad ones.

@Lucifrost
Thanks :) wow, that's a big one! And it was still allowed? Interesting. Seems like a pretty significant change, especially considering how it impacts the whole narrative. If it was a common complaint, I'd say that it should have just remained the way it was originally, so that people could just dislike it for what it is. I really see no reason to introduce such changes or trying to "fix" it, aside from the translator's "I want to!", because it would just garner more credit and praise from the fans of the 1st game - undeservedly so. I don't know if it actually did get a better reception or not, but just an assumption that it might've happened.