For the love of subs
Jul. 8th, 2007 02:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
blodeueddBack when anime was a slight (ha!) obsession of mine, I came to be particularly fond of Yuu Yuu Hakusho. At first I fed my fascination with fanfiction, then the manga, available in French, and I awaited each new volume with bated breath. The anime, on the other hand, was a slippery little bastard. The anime club had up to episode 20 or so, then two tapes (eps 50-58, I think) later on in the series featuring Hiei and Kurama at the Ankoku Bujutsukai. I think I wore those two tapes out because: Kurama vs. Karasu. Rowr! Other than that, I managed to find a random bunch of fansubbed episodes online, but that was about it. Which is why when on a trip to Pacific Mall in Toronto in the summer of 2001, I bought Chinese bootlegged VCDs of the second half of the series, original Japanese dialogue with English -- and I use the term loosely -- subs. The image quality is so-so, with unfortunate digital cubist effects in places, but it was better than nothing, right? Besides, at the time I still held firmly to the belief that "This will never be commercially distributed in North America. Neither will Marmalade Boy. Neither will..." Ahem.
Surprisingly, I did not get home and spend three solid days in front of the television. In fact, until last week, I had only watched up to episode 75. But I'm trying to remedy that situation and this time, I'm taking notes! You see, I've come to the conclusion that the horrible quality of the subtitles is due to the fact that they were written by non-native speakers of English who translated a Chinese script without ever having watched the show itself. I'm reasonably certain about this, as evidenced by the fact that the subtitles randomly use the following "versions" of the characters's names: the original Japanese version*, the misspelled original Japanese version (Senisu instead of Sensui, Kurabara instead of Kuwabara, etc.), the Chinese version (Itsuki is Jiu/Jyu/Jyuu, Shizuru is Seiliu, Kuwabara is Washin -- sometimes) or a direct translation (Koenma is "King of Hell jr.", Genkai is "Master Spirit"). Oh, and Puu is sometimes Baby, sometimes Kid B (hommage to Radiohead? ^_^). And the one that may very well annoy me the most, which is something I've seen in North American commercial releases, the first name/last name issue. For example, most characters refer to Yuusuke as Yuusuke; others, most notably Kuwabara, call him Urameshi -- but the subtitles always say Yuusuke! Because the viewers are too dense to understand it's the same person, apparently.
Anyway.
(Subtitles in bold, italics to indicated the actual Japanese dialogue)
"Damn it! You thought stretching out the gesture of win" I have no idea if this refers to the fact that Sensui was making a V sign or something else, I couldn't understand the Japanese. But "the gesture of win" sounds like something full of awesome, right?
"Male Washin revives!" Said by Kuwabara; it was actually his typical "Otoko Kuwabara blablabla" speech, but it makes it sound like there's a female version of him somewhere. Ramna crossover, perhaps?
"Bomb took place suddenly!"
"Sugee" (as in, "That was awesome!" "You rock!") was translated as "You're so capable!" Hee!
"What will happen if the King of Hell jr. takes off his nipple?" Um... O_O Actually, they were talking about the Mafuukan, the pacifier-thingy Koenma always has in his mouth. The subtitles switch from calling it a nipple to calling it a ring after an episode or two.
"Did you be drowned?" LOLcat speak way before its time. Prescient!
"Purple flaming Array!" Man, Sensui's attack sounds rather... flaming. XD
"There's nothing on my mind but getting you down!" says Yuusuke to Sensui. That sounds like a good title for a country song, no?
"let me fight! I beg u!" Gah! The plague of Netspeak!
"Does this guy is appear, really?" Can't remember the exact phrasing in Japanese, but it meant "Does that guy actually exist?"
"I need to win you!" Kuwabara to Yuusuke, in a flashback the former sees while the latter is being killed by Sensui. Kind of puts a new spin on their relationship, eh? >:D In fact, I was rather disappointed by this scene. It was done so simply and effectively in the manga but was dragged out to half an episode in the anime. I think Kuwabara agrees with me, as he later exclaims "Why the thing in the past flash back in mind?"
"Flame of Evil Kill Black Dragon Ball" And that, my friends, is what the subtitlers have Hiei shouting when he launches his super-cool Jaou Ensatsu Kokoryuuha attack. -_-;
"You have good enjoy of it" Engrish at its best.
If I had a bit more patience, I probably would have transcribed the whole of Sensui's dying soliloquy, in which the subtitles veer from badly-written to downright surreal. Starting off with the relatively innocuous "When I die, I feel unimaginable", (you mean this happens often?!) it quickly descends into such gems as "I kiled the monsters are feel divtiness" (whaaaat?) and "We are hate on hosting" (what the hell does that even mean?!). At that point I wasn't really paying attention to the Japanese dialogue, I was too busy laughing and trying to write it all down. Even Itsuki gets into the spirit of things with some LOLcat-worthy lines such as "You are not be excessive".
"These folks are devil world small potatoes only?"
"Want to bore me to die?"
"Let's fight heartily"
Other amusing (mis)translations are of various YYHverse phenomena such as reiki (the spiritual energy Yuusuke and other humans have) and youki (the spiritual energy demons such as Kurama and Hiei have), and the ningenkai/reikai/makai (the human, spirit and demon worlds). Usually the translation is straightforward, but there are some amusing instances of reiki being called "spiritual gas" or utterances along the lines of "In his vein the devil nation blood is running." Also, for some reason the different classes of demons (S, A, B, with S being the strongest) are called "S ball", "A ball", etc. But only sometimes. This and other wild inconsistencies are what lead me to believe that not only were the scripts not revised, they were also done by completely different people. Either that, or someone with no short-term memory at all, who fed each separate sentence to Babelfish and didn't even look over the results before cutting and pasting.
One other thing, is it just me, or didn't youko-Kurama have a man's voice during the tournament? Not that I have anything against Oogata Megumi, but it just seems weird for that sexy fox demon to have the voice of a soft-spoken teenager.
Once I'm done watching the series, I suppose I'll have to write an ode to why it's one of my all-time favourites and why Kurama is a total bad-ass and one of the coolest characters ever.
* Though they get even this wrong. Up until the last couple of episodes I watched, Hiei and Kurama's names were consistently substituted for each other. As in, every single time someone said "Hiei", the subtitles informed me they were in fact saying "Kurama", and vice versa. O_O
Surprisingly, I did not get home and spend three solid days in front of the television. In fact, until last week, I had only watched up to episode 75. But I'm trying to remedy that situation and this time, I'm taking notes! You see, I've come to the conclusion that the horrible quality of the subtitles is due to the fact that they were written by non-native speakers of English who translated a Chinese script without ever having watched the show itself. I'm reasonably certain about this, as evidenced by the fact that the subtitles randomly use the following "versions" of the characters's names: the original Japanese version*, the misspelled original Japanese version (Senisu instead of Sensui, Kurabara instead of Kuwabara, etc.), the Chinese version (Itsuki is Jiu/Jyu/Jyuu, Shizuru is Seiliu, Kuwabara is Washin -- sometimes) or a direct translation (Koenma is "King of Hell jr.", Genkai is "Master Spirit"). Oh, and Puu is sometimes Baby, sometimes Kid B (hommage to Radiohead? ^_^). And the one that may very well annoy me the most, which is something I've seen in North American commercial releases, the first name/last name issue. For example, most characters refer to Yuusuke as Yuusuke; others, most notably Kuwabara, call him Urameshi -- but the subtitles always say Yuusuke! Because the viewers are too dense to understand it's the same person, apparently.
Anyway.
(Subtitles in bold, italics to indicated the actual Japanese dialogue)
"Damn it! You thought stretching out the gesture of win" I have no idea if this refers to the fact that Sensui was making a V sign or something else, I couldn't understand the Japanese. But "the gesture of win" sounds like something full of awesome, right?
"Male Washin revives!" Said by Kuwabara; it was actually his typical "Otoko Kuwabara blablabla" speech, but it makes it sound like there's a female version of him somewhere. Ramna crossover, perhaps?
"Bomb took place suddenly!"
"Sugee" (as in, "That was awesome!" "You rock!") was translated as "You're so capable!" Hee!
"What will happen if the King of Hell jr. takes off his nipple?" Um... O_O Actually, they were talking about the Mafuukan, the pacifier-thingy Koenma always has in his mouth. The subtitles switch from calling it a nipple to calling it a ring after an episode or two.
"Did you be drowned?" LOLcat speak way before its time. Prescient!
"Purple flaming Array!" Man, Sensui's attack sounds rather... flaming. XD
"There's nothing on my mind but getting you down!" says Yuusuke to Sensui. That sounds like a good title for a country song, no?
"let me fight! I beg u!" Gah! The plague of Netspeak!
"Does this guy is appear, really?" Can't remember the exact phrasing in Japanese, but it meant "Does that guy actually exist?"
"I need to win you!" Kuwabara to Yuusuke, in a flashback the former sees while the latter is being killed by Sensui. Kind of puts a new spin on their relationship, eh? >:D In fact, I was rather disappointed by this scene. It was done so simply and effectively in the manga but was dragged out to half an episode in the anime. I think Kuwabara agrees with me, as he later exclaims "Why the thing in the past flash back in mind?"
"Flame of Evil Kill Black Dragon Ball" And that, my friends, is what the subtitlers have Hiei shouting when he launches his super-cool Jaou Ensatsu Kokoryuuha attack. -_-;
"You have good enjoy of it" Engrish at its best.
If I had a bit more patience, I probably would have transcribed the whole of Sensui's dying soliloquy, in which the subtitles veer from badly-written to downright surreal. Starting off with the relatively innocuous "When I die, I feel unimaginable", (you mean this happens often?!) it quickly descends into such gems as "I kiled the monsters are feel divtiness" (whaaaat?) and "We are hate on hosting" (what the hell does that even mean?!). At that point I wasn't really paying attention to the Japanese dialogue, I was too busy laughing and trying to write it all down. Even Itsuki gets into the spirit of things with some LOLcat-worthy lines such as "You are not be excessive".
"These folks are devil world small potatoes only?"
"Want to bore me to die?"
"Let's fight heartily"
Other amusing (mis)translations are of various YYHverse phenomena such as reiki (the spiritual energy Yuusuke and other humans have) and youki (the spiritual energy demons such as Kurama and Hiei have), and the ningenkai/reikai/makai (the human, spirit and demon worlds). Usually the translation is straightforward, but there are some amusing instances of reiki being called "spiritual gas" or utterances along the lines of "In his vein the devil nation blood is running." Also, for some reason the different classes of demons (S, A, B, with S being the strongest) are called "S ball", "A ball", etc. But only sometimes. This and other wild inconsistencies are what lead me to believe that not only were the scripts not revised, they were also done by completely different people. Either that, or someone with no short-term memory at all, who fed each separate sentence to Babelfish and didn't even look over the results before cutting and pasting.
One other thing, is it just me, or didn't youko-Kurama have a man's voice during the tournament? Not that I have anything against Oogata Megumi, but it just seems weird for that sexy fox demon to have the voice of a soft-spoken teenager.
Once I'm done watching the series, I suppose I'll have to write an ode to why it's one of my all-time favourites and why Kurama is a total bad-ass and one of the coolest characters ever.
* Though they get even this wrong. Up until the last couple of episodes I watched, Hiei and Kurama's names were consistently substituted for each other. As in, every single time someone said "Hiei", the subtitles informed me they were in fact saying "Kurama", and vice versa. O_O
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Date: 2007-07-13 12:19 pm (UTC)Very much enjoyed the "bad" subtitles. :)