Netflix is notoriously bad at this. CR gets a bad rep, but compared to Netflix they’re a godsend.
Why are official subs so awful, they can't even be bothered to translate character names? (Chainsmoker Cat))
Submitted 3 weeks ago by themachinestops@lemmy.dbzer0.com to anime@ani.social
https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/pictrs/image/b13613c6-5fa7-4c5b-b01f-fe2fd79c2111.webp
Comments
ReluctantlyZen@ani.social 3 weeks ago
Crank@ani.social 3 weeks ago It’s annoying when Netflix or Amazon gets exclusive rights to a show. You either need to wait for fansubs (and you’ll only get them for the most popular shows after a wait) or deal with this bullshit.
djsoren19@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
Most official subs are AI these days. Companies are feeding the show’s transcript into the machine and it’s spitting out translations for all the different markets. If it’s not dialogue, it’s not getting translated.
Unboxious@ani.social 2 weeks ago
You have any source at all for that? I’m pretty sure the subs would be way worse if that were actually the case.
djsoren19@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
I don’t have an exact source, I think last I heard on it was over a year ago, but I bet if you search “Crunchyroll” and “ChatGPT Said” it’ll come up. Basically, Crunchyroll was so lazy with the AI translation for an episode that it actually left the ChatGPT Said: in the sub. Idk if Netflix is doing AI as well, they haven’t been caught so blatantly, but I’d be surprised if they weren’t looking into it since I have heard they’ve been looking into AI recently.
Also idk if you’re just lucky but holy hell I’ve seen some dogshit subs recently. Like, fucking up the main character’s catchphrase levels of bad. idk how much worse that can get.
wizblizz@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Chainsmoker cat is not a great phrase, it’s clumsy and hard to say. Yani Neko is actually her name, why is this a big deal?
themachinestops@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
I am talking about the untranslated text bubble, not the name.
dalekcaan@feddit.nl 3 weeks ago
Yeah, whether or not on-screen text is translated seems like a total crapshoot. Some translators go the extra mile and format the translated text to look like the original, but far too many just ignore it entirely.
pglpm@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago Lack of love.
Unboxious@ani.social 3 weeks ago
Lack of money. I’m sure most translators would be happy to do a better job if they were given the time and money necessary to do so.
Also I’m not certain Crunchyroll’s new player can even render the subtitles while also rendering more English text for the name.
bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de 3 weeks ago
Lack of love by whoever paid for the translation.
ReluctantlyZen@ani.social 3 weeks ago
CR’s new player can actually do this, but Chainsmoker Cat is not done by CR. This is on Netflix
Alwaysnownevernotme@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Here to step on a landmine and say the dub is good.
hubertmanne@piefed.social@piefed.social 3 weeks ago I watch dub with caption and often times the caption phrases things in a better way to me.
Unboxious@ani.social 2 weeks ago
I’d bet they’re trying too hard to match mouth flaps or something.
vrek@programming.dev 3 weeks ago
Someone introduced me to “ghost stories”… The English dub of that definitely better
SOAD@ani.social 2 weeks ago
low effort so that the blurays sell for more later probably
degen@midwest.social 3 weeks ago
Ain’t no way they named the cat Yoni Neko
buei@lemmy.sdf.org 2 weeks ago
Always thought fansubs were the best subs… Are there any teams who translated Chainsmoker cat yet? are there any who at least plan to? it would be useful if there was a DB website purely for anime fansub groups
GreenKnight23@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
they do get subbed properly, on dubs.
when you watch it dubbed, flip the sub’s from English-cc to just English. most the time the text is translated.
it’s dumb, like really dumb, that they can’t just include them on one sub.
In all seriousness, there might be style guidelines that explicitly say to not translate proper nouns like character names that have literal translations.
And in most cases this probably makes sense. Frieren is reportedly a bit cringy for people who know German because the series uses on-the-nose German words for basically every character and place. Frieren = freezing, Himmel = heaven, Stark = strong, Fern = far/distant, Heiter = cheerful. There are probably similar examples for Japanese characters in other series, though I cont think of any at the moment.
Chainsmoker Cat is an ideal show to bend that rule though. “Thanks for the help, Chainsmoker Cat!” is legit a better line than “Thanks for the help, Yani Neko!”
It’s like that scene in Coffee and Cigarettes where GZA and RZA from the Wu-tang Clan meet Bill Murray in a cafe, and they constantly refer to him by his full name. Never “Bill” or “Mr Murray”, always “Bill Murray”. It’s not always funnier to do that, but sometimes it just is.
Unboxious@ani.social 3 weeks ago
I assumed OP was talking about the white rectangle that says "Penname: Ochinpo Tatsuo (Dick Tatsuo) Real Name: (I have no idea how to read that sorry Japanese names are hard)
themachinestops@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
Yep, I meant the white rectangle that is why I said untranslated.
Unique_Emerald_Sol_I@ani.social 3 weeks ago
My guess is Tatsuhara and Saori but there’s a few different ways each could be pronounced, it seems.
NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io 3 weeks ago
I think it's Tatsuno Saori, but don't quote me on it.
Oh, whoops lol :3
mo_lave@reddthat.com 3 weeks ago
Chainsmoker Cat?