Here is a note to all fansub groups: Please make sure that your translator actually speaks Japanese! And please make sure that you have at least one other team member on the project who speaks Japanese so that he/she can make sure that the translator isn’t pretending to know Japanese by making random guesses and checking Babelfish!
NEVER TRUST YOUR TRANSLATORS WITHOUT SEEKING A SECOND OPINION!!! (I was one. I know what we do.)
Now here’s a sad, sad example of a “fansub” gone horribly wrong. The following translations are from Doremi-OTOME’s fansub of Mai-Otome DVD Special 8. The torrent can be found here (way at the bottom).
The translator is very cunning. He sounds like he knows what he’s talking about. But really, I am not certain if he even speaks a single word of Japanese after watching this piece of wombat dung.
Evidence 1
Sounds like reasonable translation? Well here’s what Mai really said in that exact scene:
ç§ã€å®¶å‡ºåŒç„¶ã¨å¦åœ’ã«æ¥ã¡ã‚ƒã£ãŸã‚“ã ã‘ã©ã€
I entered the school after running away from home,
é‹è‰¯ãæ´åŠ©ã—ã¦ãれるãŠå®¶ãŒã‚ã£ã¦
luckily there was a family who offered to help me
Wow! That sounds like a completely different story now, doesn’t it?!?! How the fuck did the translator miss SO HARD that he nearly landed in a totally whole new continent! Imagine if I didn’t know Japanese and believed in this asshat’s lies. He’s creating a whole new anime with his “translations”.
Evidence 2
Again, this sounds completely reasonable doesn’t it? Well SURPRISE!!!
ã¿ã‚“ãªè‰¯ã„人é”ã ã£ãŸã—ã€ä½•ã‚ˆã‚Šæ¡ä»¶ãŒç ´æ ¼ãªãらã„よã‹ã£ãŸã®ã‚ˆã€‚
Everyone was so nice to me and the conditions were just too good.
Wow. Another brilliant translation. I can’t even figure out which word he might have mistaken to produce “trouble”, so I conclude that the translator just made the whole thing up out of thin air. Please also notice that the translator is using present tense. I guess the editor went fishing too, huh?
Evidence 3
最åˆã¯é€ƒã’よã†ã¨ã‚‚ã—ãŸã‚“ã ã‘ã©ãã€
I tried escaping at first,
ãã®åº¦ã«æ•ã¾ã£ã¡ã‚ƒã£ã¦
but I got caught everytime.
The meaning is changed, but hey, at least he got all the keywords right! CHEERS!!!
Evidence 4
ã§ã¾ãã€æ¯Žæ—¥ã“ã®åã¨ã“ã®è°·ã§éŽã”ã—ã¦ã„ã‚‹ã†ã¡ã«
So, during the time I spent in this valley together with her, I unknowingly…
ã†ã¡ã«ï¼Ÿ
Unknowingly?
ã™ã£ã‹ã‚Šé¦´æŸ“ã‚“ã§ã—ã¾ã„ã¾ã—ãŸ
I got attached to her completely.
ãŠå‰ã¨ã„ã†å¥´ã¯æ˜”ã‹ã‚‰å…¨ã変ã‚ã£ã¦ã„ãªã„
You have not changed a bit since then.
I must confess that my translation for the second line isn’t very accurate.
ã†ã¡ã« (uchi ni) is used to mean “within a period of time”.
ã†ã¡ (uchi) means “house”.
The translator, in his infinite wisdom, confused the two and just went along with it even though it makes no fucking sense if you stop and think about it for even 1 nanosecond.
The last line is even more hilarious. The translator confused 変ã‚ã‚‹ (kawaru) with ã‹ã‚ã„ã„ (kawaii) and the meaning of the sentence was TOTALLY RAPED in the most gruesome and inhuman manner possible. For the love of Haruhi and all that is good, what kind of “Japanese translator” confuses “to change” with “cute”!?
Maybe he’s really just a narutard who knows nothing but “NEKO NEKO KAWAII DESU”. Holy shit, I saved the best for the last!
Evidence 5
ã“ã‚Œã¯ç§ã«ã®æŒ‘戦ã§ã™ã‹ã€æ°·é›ªã®éŠ€æ°´æ™¶ã€‚
Are you challenging me to battle, Silver Crystal of Ice?
ã‚ã£ã€ã„や・・・ã‚ã®ãƒ»ãƒ»ãƒ»
Ah, no…I didn’t…
ãªã‚‰ã°ãŠç›¸æ‰‹ã—ã¾ã—ょã†
Very well, I accept.
Cool. I think this speaks for itself. The translator just had to screw up the funniest part of the video.
EDIT 2
Thanks for informing me that Ladholyman isn’t responsible for the mess up because he only translates from Chinese subs. You can read my follow-up here. But I’ll keep the remarks below for the sake of completeness and preserving history and all that jazz. Just imagine that I’m talking to the Chinese translator instead. :P
END EDIT
Mr. “Translator”: If you can’t figure out what they are saying, please be honest and tell the rest of your team. Your team members do not speak Japanese and trust you enough that they didn’t get a second translator to expose your little lies. You betrayed their trust. If you want to bullshit, at least do it with style like “Mass Naked Child Event” or something. Be creative!
Listen up fansub groups! DON’T let this guy translate anything! Not a single word! Not even if it’s in English!
The rest of those guys are probably cool, but Doremi deserves a good ass-kicking for not having a translation checker. Come on, it’s so fucking basic that it’s not even funny.
This has been a public service announcement brought to you by DarkMirage. I know if you’ve been naughty or good, so don’t even try to %$#%# around with me!
EDIT: I have to add that these are NOT the only mistakes in this 4:32 short video. And also, the first scene is relatively free of mistakes because it was taken from one of the main episodes, meaning the “translator” probably “borrowed” the translation.
Was it parody sub? But this post is very funny.
It wasn’t. Or they made a huge mistake and forgot to tell us.
The original lines are funnier anyway.
wow, that was pretty O.O
DM is out to save the world from bad fansubs! *cue for some cheesy hero entrance theme*… scratch the theme, he deserves something better.
This is a good post though… but doremi was already and is still meh.
wow, I probably wouldn’t have know if otherwise…maybe the nut transliterated everything and put it through some online translator.
no wonder i thought the grammar was dead funny.
You’re wrong, it is funny :)
They should have just thrown the story out the window and made their own.
Maybe they could have done a story about a female child molester that runs a lesbian whorehouse, and meets an old rival/lover… that wants to expose her.
Now imagine, Russian translators rarely care to find anyone who at least claims himself being able to understand Japanese. Those guys just translate english hardsubs (resulting with softsub)…
Second-hand translation.
One can just go crazy after using such. It’s definitely NOT fun. It’s brain killing.
reminds me of the parody sub of FF AC
DarkMirage, instead of complaining about Ladholyman from Doremi Fansubs why don’t you go help him? I should add that he’s doing the translation from Chinese to English, so the one who screwed up is the Japanese to Chinese translator and not Ladholyman. So go complain about Chinese fansubs groups instead.
I happen to know that Doremi (at least ladholyman) cross-translates from Chinese. Which means that they usually pick a Chinese fansub and then translate from there.
Therefore, depending on the quality of the “original” translation, the result ranges from excellent to very poor. This was a clear example of a very bad pick. But if you take other shows, for example their “Strawberry Panic”, the translations are really good.
So I’d suggest to relax a bit with the screaming.
I’m gonna apologize for ladholyman on this one. We goofed, and I admit it, we goofed up bad. We have a slight problem, Ladholyman used chinese subs to translate from, but he forgot to check the translation. I’m not too crazy about subbing from chinese subs, but Ladholyman seems to get things done that way without to much headache. I’m gonna recommend thta our backup translator (Chinese, Japanese, English) do the translation work this time around and make sure that we get it right.
-Mike
Doremi Fansubs Webmaster/Public Relations Officer
martelle@doremi-fansubs.com
hehhehe strangely i though it there was something off with the subtitles eheheh
though i’m not proficient with japanese, after a certain number of animes watched, you get a hang of most of non-technical mumbo-jumbo
its more like fansubs are racing against each other and forget to do the proof-reading(that’s where we get the v2;v3 eps) and when they get an episode too filled up with uncommon words(techinical mumbo-jumbo or complicated thoughs) you notice a delay on release (since u get used to see a certain show on trackers in certain days)… but thats… well the demand =p
but y’know… we also have our share of guilty here. compared to a few years ago, the flow of releases increased, so ppl tend to expect that every single series should be translated, etc etc.
also, instead of joining a certain group that’s already releasing stuff and improve their FANjob. what we get nowadays is ppl making a crappy group starting halfway of some series just cos the former isnt doing the subs fast enough.
well, that’s general speak. on this case… let’s just hope they learned that they’re in need of some good proof-reader and, of course, make this post reach anyone who’s in charge of translating stuff. otherwise its meaningless rant.
Doremi seems to be doing a pretty good job on Keroro Gunsou, and I’m pretty sure Ladyholyman is the translator for that series as well. I speak pretty much just a lick of Japanese, so I can’t be sure, but the episodes I’ve seen that contain stuff that’s been portrayed in what I’ve read of the manga (Tokyopop translation) seem to be pretty spot on, and the show’s certainly funny enough with their fansub. Maybe this was a bit of a rush job and they were an editor down or something. I understand how this would upset you, especially since you’re a former fansub translator, but everyone has a bad day.
Oi oi… meeega-bashing happening here *dons asbestos* ^_^
I’ll out myself first: While I’m not really a Doremi member (I’m usually working for Eclipse, Lunar or ZX), I’m helping out as encoder for one of their releases (Strawberry Panic), so I’m a little bit biased.
I haven’t been involved in this one particular release, but I can easily imagine what happened: Ladholyman usually cross-translates from Chinese fansubs to English. That’s fairly common knowledge in anime circles, and it usually works out very well (because normally the quality of the used chinese fansubs is high). I’d still contest that for most releases the quality of the Doremi translations are fairly good – this one episode being a notable exception to the rule. Very likely the chinese source was very poor this time.
Now – this is your blog, your rules, your decision to do it. But don’t you think you’re overdoing it a little bit here? This kind of rambling and personal dissing makes for a good and enjoyable reading, but it’s also the kind of stuff which makes people realize that it’s not worth wasting your time on fansubbing if this is the thank you when you happen to slip – which happens to everyone, even the best. Especially when you’re having little time due to switching to college. And while YOU can still enjoy the animes raw, many thousand people downloadingand enjoying Doremi releases (usually without a reason to complain) would certainly be unhappy if ladholyman simply gave you the middle finger and stopped *shrug*
Just a thought. And my 0.015 €
I work for Doremi and it’s safe to say, that we screwed up royally and that’s that. We all make mistakes and ladholyman was excited to get into UC Berkley, so he must’ve screwed up.
-Mike
Doremi Fansubs Webmaster/Public Relations Officer
BOO BOO BOO~~~
I am not proficient in Japanese and had I understand Japanese, I would’ve been disheartened too if I saw totally-off-translations like this, but maybe you should’ve contacted the translator to find out what happens before u start bashing people. Just my 2cents.
DM >> You’re being too sensitive. If what Mentar said was true, I don’t see a problem in Chinese->English translations for fansubs. There aren’t many willing Japanese translators out there. So to improvise on the situation, they rely on Chinese subs which are easier to translate. Never did they say the translator was translating from Japanese raw did they? Maybe because Chinese subs are mentioned so I’m siding with them.
And Mentar >> When people can’t watch raws it doesn’t mean they don’t have the right to know that the translations are wrong. That’s like Sony exclaiming “Everyone’s saying it but no one actually knows what’s a rootkit”.
As for the “Please make sure that your translator actually speaks Japanese!” comment, I just found it very elitistic. As much as I don’t like to use the word “elitist”, your above comment was rather caustic, which ironically results in your post becoming just another Anime Junkies to Urban Vision email v2.0.
//I just found it very elitistic.//
That’s the was he is apparently, telling fansubbing groups how to do their jobs while simultaneously being beyond the morally unsavory task of fansubbing himself. It’s lucky that Doremi seems to be good sports and are starting to redo the translation and not telling DM to go **** himself
LianYL: You’re certainly right there. It’s also fair to point out the translation errors – of course. But I think the smackdown was a bit harsh for that – this kind of dissing really gets people to quit, which would be a shame. Also, DarkMirage’s tirade basically implied that the quality of Doremi subs in general was AJ niveau, and that’s flat-out wrong in my opinion. We (almost certainly) have a case of a bad translation template here. Which is the exception rather than the norm.
Finally, I’ve talked to ladholyman quite a bit, and he’s a great guy. Cut the guy some slack, he’s done alot for the anime world :)
Mentar: seems like you skipped the thing about “make sure that your translator actually speaks Japanese!” Cross-translating from Chinese fansubs? Now that makes a sense, if I try to remember all those unbelieveable translations… Try and run some complex sentence through a translation program, you’ll be freaked by results.
Now ofcourse, it’s not like anyone’s paid for the job, but WTF? Freezing your name into frame so proudly after doing shit?..
Mentar: the problem is a lil bit wider than just some ladholyman messing up translation for a 4-min DVD special. The problem is quality of modern fansub.
have you ever watched Lamune fansub by C1?..
“the first scene is relatively free of mistakes”, at least one thing ought to be corrected at around 0:13 of the video. I’m not that good in Japanese but I think she says something about Mai being selected to succeed a famous gem, “yuumei na ishi wo tsugu koto ga kimatteita”.
Am I wrong in reading this post, and immediately breaking out laughing afterwards, both at the tone of the post as well as the content? Doremi screwed up the translation this time, and that’s for certain… but I used to be in the #animejunkies channel way back when, and this is NOTHING compared to the Mass Naked Child Events thing, or half of Gundam SEED. :D
I have to side with Mentar on this in that while there were probably mistakes in the Mai Otome special (I don’t speak Japanese, but some of the translations triggered something in my mind), a person can still get a sense of what is going on.
I’m defending Doremi b/c without them, I wouldn’t have been able to watch 54 eps of Keroro Gunso (which has some kind of curse on it). And while they get a few things wrong (like translating Angel Mois’ attack to “Apocolypse” when she’s saying in English “Armageddon”), they’re generally pretty good about it. The Mai Otome specials are the same in that no other group has picked them up (are they licensed?). I know for a fact that they picked up Keroro Gunso b/c they saw the Keron SF arc and thought that the series was pretty good and a lot of people are grateful for that.
So I’m just saying that before slapping what is probably the worst insult in fansubbing, take the group’s work as a whole.
Correction on last post: they started Keroro Gunso on ep. 9 so its actually 46 episodes, but still quite an accomplishment.
Well, the topic touches me because I’ma BIG ass fanatic of Doremi’s Strawberry Panic.
Dunno if DM was too harsh or not, but there are 2 things I’d like to point:
1. Fansubs are pretty different from other hobbies. Why? Because most fansubbers pride themselves in their translation accuracy and video quality. Video quality can be bad at times (it’s pretty hard to find a good raw sometimes), but the translation can’t be half-assed. As simple as that.
2. Because of 1, fans are used to high quality. And people used to high quality doesn’t like bad translations. Even more if they don’t know Japanese and therefore they can be easily fooled. That really can piss someone off.
So, maybe the right thing for Doremi to do is to investigate what really happened (bad Chinese translation, a lying translatir, etc.)
And that’s all. Impressions from a former Mai-OTOME leecher.
Nothing happened. I translated from a bad Chinese sub. If it irks you that much, I’ll do a v2. Thanks for letting me know about this.
And you’re right. I don’t know a lick of Japanese. (In fact, I’m taking Japanese 1A right now at Berkeley, so I know 20 hiragana as of today) I never realized that people actually watch my subs, so I would like it if you can check our translations for the specials.
As Mentar said, it’s your blog, and because of this post, you get a shiny v2 in a few days. Hop by our IRC channel if you have any more suggestions about my crappiness.
Hey, it’s not as bad as Gerald Roberts.
I just want to say that I mostly agree with what Mentar brought up in his post. I am a personal friend (and ex-translator for Keroro under Doremi) of Maceart and Ladholyman, and I must say in defense of them that this time particularily is a hard time for them both. They’re actually in their first week of college, and you know how hecktic things can be. Yes, they made a mistake. Yes, this is annoying to the viewers. But they didn’t do it on purpose. And I believe DM is taking this too far by saying “DON’T let this guy translate anything” without watching at least the other half of Doremi’s releases: Keroro. There could’ve been so many factors in the mistranslation of this episode, and I know for a fact that they did their best with a chinese script. Yes, they should’ve gotten someone who’s fluent with japanese to double check, but not every group has one, which is why blogs such as yours exist; not to point fingers at someone, but to bring the mistakes to light.
It sounds like there are some Doremi fanboys replying to this. The turth is that their encodes are usually crap and their translations are equally as bad. They are a low-grade fansubbing group like most are. Beware.
OK, so I’m not the only one who thought during that episode that all of the translations soooooooooooo weren’t matching with the dialogue.
That’s nothing, you should see what For Richer or Poorer did to episode 18 of Ouran.
I don’t think they even tried. In defense of FRoP, apparently they only did it while Lunar was delayed, so I wasn’t expecting perfection at all, but many of the the lines were absolutely, 100% different, like they didn’t even have the audio for the scene and just came up with something to link the last scene and the next scene together.
More shitty fansubs:
http://silverfire.isadouchebag.net/pdf/noein09_%5BShinsenQC%5D.pdf
http://silverfire.isadouchebag.net/pdf/eureka41_%5BSeraphQC%5D.pdf
http://silverfire.isadouchebag.net/pdf/nhk01_%5BAnimeAssassinsQC%5D.pdf
Enjoy :P
Hundreds of errors from groups that don’t care about quality at all.
>>That’s nothing, you should see what For Richer or Poorer did to episode 18 of Ouran.
Whew! Now I’m glad I waited for Lunar to catch up instead of jumping on the FRoP subs.
Me too.
Hey. ;) I’d like to further my own opinion that the release this time really did seem rushed. To be fair to Lad, the scenes you say were borrowed were likely translated on the spot — knowing him myself, I doubt he’d reference past episodes unless they were his own work. The special itself, as far as I know, went unQC’d by members outside of the core team actually working on it, so shame on us for letting that slip.
I’m skeptical about bd_ having edited the script; if he did, he’d have to have done it without listening to the audio track. Why? He knows Japanese; he’d have caught said errors and more lest he only be looking at the text (the fact that some grammatical errors slipped by further makes me think otherwise).
I don’t follow the specials myself (currently only QCing/TL checking for SPanic 19+), so I don’t know of their quality nor the work that goes into them, but I know Doremi has, as of late, been stretched for resources. With more attention being allocated to resources, and less to fansubbing (especially with Lad+Mace having just entered college), I can appreciate why these mishaps might occasionally occur.
This was a BadRelease(TM), but to say Doremi is AJ 2.0 is a bit much IMHO.
And I thought something was a little wrong with the translation. Hooray! DM saves the day.
Even though DOREMI is doing a great job for translating for free, blah blah if you don’t like blah blah don’t watch it kinda of thing, I think just because they are fansubbers means they get automatic protection from all wrong doings.
It’s like cooking free food people for charity, and the food taste really bad. Might as well do a good job out of it.
But erm, yeah you’re a little harsh DM.
For one, editors and quality checkers should’ve caught the absolutely nonsensical dialogues. Even without any Japanese knowledge, I would’ve questioned the reliability of the source and its accuracy. In my opinion, not only the translator and the lack of a translation checker should be blamed, I believe anybody who had anything to do with the script should be held responsible.
Lianyl, it’s not that it’s easier to translate from Chinese to English rather than Japanese to English, since there are just as many or even more CN –> EN translators than JP –> EN translators. Nobody would complain if the translations were accurate. But the fact is, there’s a chance of inaccuracy happening, hence it’s not too reliable to cross-translate and is discouraged. The translation in the end can turn out substantially altered, straying off from its original translation. An average leecher may not be able to tell, but you can usually find minor errors in cross-translating, like wrong tenses, missing words, and such.
Anyway, Mentar, if somebody donated you a broken computer, would you gladly accept it? Just because it’s free, don’t take for granted that everybody will be grateful for it.
I don’t see any problem with this blog, just because it’s true that there’s a big rise in the number of crappy groups recently, and most of them fail in translation and editing, which happens to be the important part of fansubbing. Some believe speed is better, well, this is what you get.
“And also, the first scene is relatively free of mistakes because it was taken from one of the main episodes, meaning the “translator” probably “borrowed” the translation.”
Wait a minute… the original “translation” was also by Ladholyman. He… copy pasted from his own subs? Paradox perhaps?
Anyways, I was only the timer, so I can’t do anything about that.
Perhaps a little harsh, but it is understandable that one can be very upset when an episode from a series that you like a lot is pretty much screwed over by the translations. I mean, for those of us who don’t really know japanese, it’s easy to take these fansubs for granted and trust that they are accurate. After all, they are one of the very few sources from which we can obtain our daily doses of anime. Thus we put our trust in them to give us at least accurate translations. Most of the time I wouldn’t mind waiting longer just for a QCed version, if it means that I’m getting a sub of at least reasonable quality. If I’m really eager to watch the episode, at most i’ll just watch the raw first and wait for the sub.
I’m not saying that Ladholyman did this on purpose, or he’s a bad subber or anything, but perhaps they could have checked the sub before releasing it to the public. It’s like sending a lousy letter to the forums of your newspaper (and if they publish it); it can really draw some flak from the public. What i’m trying to say here is that things can really turn ugly when you produce pretty bad work for the public.
A shiny v2 for you. Thank you, ex-fansubber!
Well, for those who are interested, they’ve released a ‘fixed’ version. DLing now to see how the dialogue reads.
I guess someone pointed them to this blog entry?
Nope DM was right on. I downloaded this and watched before reading this blog entry. Even witj my limited japanese, I knew something was off, even to the point of watching the credits. When I saw LH’s name as translator I just took the translations as being good.
But…. the dialog was still too strange …
Maybe they were bad chinese subs, however DM is right QC your work!
I don’t speak a word of japanese. I have nothing to do with Doremi. I don’t think your complaints are unfounded.
But I think you went about this in the meanest, rudest, most unhelpful way possible. He may have done a totally crappy job, but your insults are absolutely uncalled for. Bad days and mistakes happen. That’s what v2’s are for.
It’s one thing to call them out for a bad translation, it’s another thing to try to humiliate them in order to stroke your own ego.
Meh. AnimeJunkies translated from Korean scripts and everyone complained
So now translating from Chinese is perfectly fine.
You can see why I’m not fansubbing anymore.
I do not think that my insults are unfounded. Fansubs do it for the fame. If they were doing it for the “good of it”, they’d have put more effort into quality control. There’s nothing wrong with doing it for fame since everyone is doing it. But if you are going to stick your group name onto something, you better make sure that you don’t mind people like me judging you for it.
So the excuse is that the Chinese translation sucked. Then why didn’t you check the Chinese translation? Translating two times is bad enough already, at least make sure the first translation is fateful enough to the original. Doremi didn’t. An honest mistake? How the fuck? It’s clearly deliberate laziness.
Ok, I apologize. The translator wasn’t lying. The team was just lazy.
But really, I know how translators work and we tend to bluff our way through lines that we don’t know. In fact that’s probably what the original Chinese translator did.
And to the previous comment: Since when did people have to be useful and helpful when they whine on the Internet? Maybe you got this blog mixed up with some NGO? :P
wow, that was a useless rant
dont like someones translation?..go watch another.
better yet, translate it yourself.
a bad translator is still hundred times cooler than some lame person picking out errors.
i wonder… why he “came” now after 8 or more specials to tell us about this “translator” .. ladholysomething was the translator of specials 4-8 of doremi’s mai otome … if he really does a real bad job… why the other 3 went well? isnt it cheesy to just complain after all specials are out? … wonder if he did a good job with the others and just fucked this one … or the guy who is complaining got something aganist him… who knows i dont care :P i just watch this anime because is ecchi ^^
Downloaded. Some of the dialogue’s cleaned up (especially the ‘running away’ bits), so that’s something. And, of course… they credited DM for his work.
btw… thinking about v2’s 3’s and stuff… i wonder when they will make a easly patcheable file so we can repair originals without much work ^^ :P is kinda paintfull when ya get 350mbs of a file and just 10/20 minutes after you see a nice v2… and the day after a nice v3 then… u feel like: WTF a 700mbs lost O_o? at least the guys in hong fire uses srt and gives ya the raw but hell sorting files with a srt sometimes get messy