Akiba Tsuu 01 ver 2 changes

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takenoko
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Akiba Tsuu 01 ver 2 changes

Post by takenoko »

So I met the very talented and thoughtful writer Peter S. Beagle yesterday (Have you read the Last Unicorn? If not, you should, it's quite good.) He was really inspiring, and just as sagacious and thoughtful in person as he was in his books.

Someone asked him, "What is your biggest regret as an artist."

To which he replied, "My biggest regret is that I'm not another artist." He explained that he was the product of many great people who inspired and influenced him and that despite his talents, there were just some things he would never be able to do, because he knew his limits.

I'm a pretty good translator, but I'm not a native Japanese. I didn't grow up in an environment hearing the language, nor have I lived in Japan myself. So when I come across something that's full of references and inside jokes, it's pretty hard to avoid making mistakes for me. That's my limit.

But Peter continued, he said he grew to accept that aspect of himself. And he still churns out really good writing, as he showed in his reading yesterday.

And thus, we must continue too. We (mostly me) have to be more careful in our work and try to avoid making the same mistakes. It's not that we can't do these things, it's just they require more attention and care than the conversational dialogue that occurs in our usual weekly shows. Probably should have been more guarded against mistakes, but it's been a while since we worked on Akiba, and we had to push out that as well as Garo and Wizard.

So we apologize if things weren't perfect in episode one. I know that for some people, even one mistake is one too many. We're releasing a version 2 for episode 1 and we'll just have to try our best to avoid mistakes for episode 2.

Anyway, I hope by showing the changes that people will understand the involved nature of translating for this show, and maybe see how mistakes happen. I didn't include all the stuff that got changed since some of them were just changed to make it have better phrasing, but these are the major ones where stuff was fundamentally wrong. A lot of these are me just leaving details out or completely mishearing what the lines are.
==========

Misheard Super cool and with Super gallery

The font I chose for Jetman doesn't have a ! so I had to manually replace those. Looks like one slipped through, hence the weird symbol after Bird Blaster

Changed a couple lines in the ending to:
-Nichi Asa no ko which means Nichi Asa kid. Surprised I messed up there, but just wasn't thinking
-Robo ga fuetara sugu ni kansei (kau ze) - I get more robos, soon I'll have them all (Buy them)

00:08 "Take a little nap" to "Take a good look"

Actual line: Soko onene mama yoku mitenasai
onene おねんね (n,vs) bed-time (for a baby)

I knew that the yoku mitenasai part was contradictory to the napping part, that's why it got left out. I was more interested in Malshiina taunting the AkibaRangers at their helplessness.

So I changed it to "Lie there and just watch!" The new version includes the "just watch" part, but I dunno, doesn't seem to do as good a job at showing how helpless the AkibaRangers are in that moment.

01:39 maniau not maniakku "We couldn't make it in time [to finish everything]"

Hakase's phrase in the opening is also tricky. It sounds deceptively similar to the original phrasing, but it's actually different. I'm sure the similarities in the phrasing were intentional though:
We quickly put together this sea of delusion...
We couldn't quite finish everything though...

04:16 igai na last to ka
"it has an unexpected ending"

23:32 missing "17th" before "Super Sentai"
Actually got that when translating episode 2. Also changed the line "me ordinary?" to "17th?"
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Re: Akiba Tsuu 01 ver 2 changes

Post by Darkwings »

Imo, the real flaw would be noticing those errors and yet deciding to not do a ver2.
The same things you said are valid for a lot of professional translators, the difference is that most of them don't care as long as they get paid.
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Re: Akiba Tsuu 01 ver 2 changes

Post by BuraddoRun »

I met Mr. Beagle at a con a few years ago myself. He is a very insightful and friendly man. And it's awesome that he actually takes the time to speak to fans when he meets them. He'll shake your hand, look you in the eyes, and have a conversation with you. I believe he genuinely appreciates his fans and actually enjoys MEETING them. I haven't READ The Last Unicorn, but it was one of my favorite movies when I was a kid (and I own the blu-ray) so I've watched it many times. He wrote the screenplay for that as well. I'm glad you got to meet him as well, and I'm glad he inspired you in the work you do.

I don't post much (this is what, my 2nd post) but I've been a lurker for awhile now and I have of course downloaded many shows from your site. But I definitely understand that translating is difficult, and I appreciate you caring enough to do a Ver. 2 to correct the mistakes you've found. I loved your translation of Akibaranger, and look forward to enjoying Akibaranger 2 these next few months as well. Thank you for everything you do!
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Re: Akiba Tsuu 01 ver 2 changes

Post by takenoko »

Oh man, Peter was so good! Just a delight of a man. He told funny jokes, and he was really easy to talk to. I didn't really have that much to say to him, since I'm me, but it was nice to see him talk with my sister.

You should totally read the book, it's amazing. It will really make you appreciate the snippets of the dialogue that made it into the movie (of which Peter also wrote the screenplay). And there's subtle differences that make me like the book a little bit more, as much as I adored the movie as a child.

I had the Blu-ray/DVD combo, so Peter signed, the blu-ray, then the DVD, then took out the front cover and signed that as well. It was like, wow, my item is triple blessed. I was late to his reading of a new tale of Schmendrick because I wanted to pick up the graphic novel.

Also, apologies for the off topic jag. If it becomes too much I'll just split this into a separate thread.

But yeah, thank you for your kind words! I appreciate the critics because they help make our work better, but our subs are really for guys/gals like you. If you like the way we do things, that's all we can ask for.

I've seen a lot of people complain that our QC is useless, but that's totally not the case. They're my co-writers in this venture and the subs you read are as much their work as it is mine. Probably more so since their feedback contributes to the script on at least two or more levels. And if they catch the mistakes, that's aces. But they're not translators, so it's really more my fault if stuff really inscrutable Japanese stuff slips past them. I don't mind if people criticize my work, but lay off the QCers. I cannot express enough how important their work is for the group.

Edit: Speaking of which, I should really thank Spinelsun for going above and beyond in his QC duties. He rounded up all the mistakes he could find and we tried to address them all. So on the back end, the version two we're releasing is really our third or fourth encode XD
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Re: Akiba Tsuu 01 ver 2 changes

Post by Ashki »

I remember some years back (about 14... has it really been that long? O_o;; ), I was transhacking NES games. Being a dictionary translator, I knew my skills were quite limited and I was prone to mistakes... but one learns best by doing, and so I made an effort to translate several games nobody else wanted to tackle. Working on Gundam Gatchapon Senshi 3, for example, I had to create a "scrunched font" because there was no dictionary file in the ROM (a dictionary file allows a game to reference common words with a single bit of hex code and makes life very easy for translation work, plus words tend to fit the dialogue boxes easier). But there was one project I took up later on which I later discovered was being done by a team. They'd nearly completed that translation, so I donated my modified title screen. Unfortunately, they didn't like my interpretation of the title, so I ended up modding it for them.

I also have a friend who worked with Rainbow Translations and went down in history with them as the first non-professional team to translate a Game Gear title. In honour of the occasion, they kept his direct translation (usually, a translated script goes through a lot of editing to make it more floral and less blunt or boring). I thought it was really cool to go through the game seeing the text that raw (you guys should drop an ep like that sometime as a "special bonus" so people can get a feel of the work that goes into polishing up a script translation).

This "incident" (if you could even call it that) brings both of these back to my almost nonexistant memory. There's a reason I have stuck with TVN since Ryuki when other teams pump out episodes a week faster. And this is precisely that reason. Not only do you guys take the time to colour-code dialogue and produce appropriate fonts for each type of character, but you aren't afraid to go back and fix what many of us never knew was broken. Sure, I suddenly want to show people Agito and find you've completely restarted it, but I know it's worth the wait because the last version was already amazing and you're still going to improve it!

For a recent example: Last week, I downloaded Cosmowarrior Zero, now that someone's subbed it (I saw the first two eps raw when it first came out). But having watched episode 1, I was incredibly annoyed and ready to delete the entire show without watching it. This came down to one line. The ship's about to leave dock, and they state - in English - "removing gantries". This is repeated a couple times, yet the subtitles say something like "The cranes are breaking away" (like I said, it's been a few days, so that's not a direct quote, but might as well be). The team released the episode (and presumably the entire series) apparently without a QC team. That is why I'll always wait the extra days/weeks (or even years, in the case of Kuuga) for the TVN versions.


Mistakes happen. Fixing those mistakes early on instead of ignoring them... that's largely a TVN-exclusive, and trust me, we're all grateful for it!
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Re: Akiba Tsuu 01 ver 2 changes

Post by takenoko »

Yeah, maybe it's time to revive the mistakes submission thread. I was hoping people'd use the wiki for that purpose, but that doesn't seem to be a thing.
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Re: Akiba Tsuu 01 ver 2 changes

Post by Dark Ren »

takenoko wrote:Yeah, maybe it's time to revive the mistakes submission thread. I was hoping people'd use the wiki for that purpose, but that doesn't seem to be a thing.
Go for it, take. We need that thread
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