Kudos to the translators who are somehow able to refactor a sentence that is a play on words and change it into another language with a similar effect
this post was submitted on 09 Aug 2025
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All according to keikaku.
Translator's note: Keikaku means plan
While syncing the new translated words with the original mouth movements.
Pretty sure they actually sync the animation to the dub in most things these days.
Cultural jokes are hard to translate and sometimes translators get it wrong, that's totally forgivable.
Most of the time I have seen wrong subtitles its translators adding their own opinion and completely changing the context of conversations just because they dont agree with what was originally said.
I've heard a few people say this, but I think that's incredibly rare these days. At the very least, I almost never see it. In fact I can only think of one instance I've seen in the last 10 years.
Got to love the ones giving the figuratively translation but add in a panel giving the literal translation and cultural context
But seriously, fan subs are often so much better than professional ones. With so much more love and care.
I completely agree.
Honestly my favorite part of fan subs is the karaoke style intro and outro subs. Sometimes with a bouncing ball or something.
Oh yes! And I really miss getting translations for the theme song. I used to have an NGE version where it would alternate between the translation and the Japanese version. That was great.
Fan translations are usually good. There was only one fan translation I've seen that was bad, though, and that's because the dub would often include random comments in brackets, sometimes a whole paragraph long explaining why they translated a word that way. It made the sub distracting and hard to follow because of it.
I honestly wonder how many times somebody spent a full hour trying to figure out a way to take a localized joke and relocalize it for another audience that they are familiar with.
Like, hopefully you're not a misunderstanding and thinking I'm being down on the people that are doing the translation work. Because I've tried to do some translation work myself and I am obviously unequipped for the job, which makes me extremely aware of how difficult a task it is, but like, even so, how difficult is it to take a joke in one language and make it into a joke in a different language with the same vibe?
how difficult is it to take a joke in one language and make it into a joke in a different language with the same vibe?
It can be extremely difficult. Often there are weird constraints like needing to preserve the first letters of one of the words, or two words both sounding similar and having similar meanings. One hour is completely believable to me. When it's done right though it can really elevate the experience. My favorite example I've seen recently is from Yakitate!! Japan when they were making a Fist of the North Star Reference and the localizers changed "You are already germinated brown rice yeast" to "You are already bread".
My favorite example I've seen recently is from Yakitate!! Japan when they were making a Fist of the North Star Reference and the localizers changed "You are already germinated brown rice yeast" to "You are already bread".
I love how the English localized version doubles as a reference
Feel like I'm gonna be shot down for this but: what's this animation from? Looks neat
It's a Chinese Pokemon.
Where the pokemon can die and/or become
spoiler
zombies. Or turn against their human masters and eat them.
And also you can merge with your pokemon like body parts
Excuse me
Tepig?
*Bonk*
Just as keikakku
Hopefully they can at least write English without tripping all over. Fansubs are usually fine for that, but I've seen some awful manga scanlations.
I assume those are mostly done by people for whom English is not their first language.
Or are using machine translation. Some translations even get translated from other, non-Japanese versions to English so you even further lose some of the og.
Reliving the Bible experience with each new chapter.
context
The Bible is famously a translation of a translation of a translation, with a lot of scribal commentary and interpretation becoming word of god in the process.
I assume that if a native English speaker used machine translation to translate something to English and it sounded unnatural they'd correct it, but who knows.
Google translate can often get things extremely wrong without seeming unnatural (this happens more with minor languages)
For example, a Scottish Gaelic vulgar term that roughly translates as "fuck you" means "you're welcome" according to Google translate
English is not my first language, either ...
Though it's not like I'm putting in the work to translate anything myself, so IDK if I should complain that much.
If I wanted local cultural jokes and puns, I wouldn't be watching media from a foreign country. 😬
I too love seeing nonsense idioms translated literally to go with the rampant sexism and racism
Some phrases might not make any sense though
Try to do a direct translation of "you're darn tootin'" and see if the viewers have any idea why the character is accusing the other person of fixing socks while operating a train horn
I am reminded of how so many anime gives characters from Osaka a southern drawl accent in English dubs and even that requires knowing that a lot of people in Japan consider Osaka to be a backwater full of rednecks for it to make sense.
We should be translating Kansai-ben into Bostonian. It's obvious in context; because both are urban dialects.
Most countries had periods with steam locomotion so they would probably understand the idea though it would probably fell jarringly anachronistic.
Though i guess diesel/electric also toot and you probably shouldn't be fixing your socks over crossings on those either
I find it interesting when they try to translate a specific dialect. It's done several ways.
それ以外のすべてに対してだ、キャプション。