Why Mr. Steve Simmons left Japanese honorifics?

[Puto]

I don't speak a word of French, but if I saw "monsieur" left in subtitles of French material, I don't think it would bother me or make me go "what a bunch of Francophile assholes."

It would kind of annoy me, but only because you're not supposed to write out "monsieur" any more than you should write out "mister", but instead just write "M." like you would write "Mr."

[Gaffer Tape]

It should come as no shock, but substituting "onee-chan" with the sister's name doesn't really come as a no-brainer to me. Although, obviously, neither would I call someone a hack translator for doing so. But when I watch foreign material, I do expect foreignisms to be there. I mean, obviously, right? So if I were new to anime and saw that someone referred to their siblings by such names, it would (and did when I first realized it) cause me to go, "Oh! I guess in Japan, they refer to their siblings like that. I just learned something today!" If you go in with the mentality of, "We must stamp out all foreignisms and make it sound just like American (or whatever) English," well, then, you suddenly lose all of that, and nobody learns anything. It's just like in the earlier American editions of Harry Potter where they replaced all of the British terms with American terms. Not only am I not getting a true to life picture of how British people talk, I'm missing out on learning new words my American brain didn't know, like "trainers" or "jumper." And suddenly it's just become another homogenized product that's desperately afraid to potentially alienate anybody.

[Super Sonic]

Oh, geez, I couldn't begin to tell you how much that would piss me off if I was watching that movie. When I put on foreign language subtitles, I sort of expect them, you know, actually translate what's on the screen. If they were to just up and dubtitle a character's name, I'd completely lose faith in it and assume that everything else it was saying was just something some random script writer made up... which completely goes against my entire purpose of watching things subbed. I've used this example before, but, when I was new to this whole game, I'd watch Tenchi Muyo! subbed, and they'd bypass "big brother" for just "Yosho." At the time, I had no idea what was going on, but they obviously weren't saying "Yosho." So I would spend the whole time paranoid, wondering if I could trust the words on the screen.

You might not care for the recent sub-release of "Transformers: the Headmasters" then. They keep in American names, including calling Convoy "Optimus Prime". Though that might be due to well known fact that American TF fans can be a little crazy and hate the name Convoy with a passion and claim that they'll riot if they ever call Optimus that in a cartoon in the US.

[Super Sonic]

Oh, geez, I couldn't begin to tell you how much that would piss me off if I was watching that movie. When I put on foreign language subtitles, I sort of expect them, you know, actually translate what's on the screen. If they were to just up and dubtitle a character's name, I'd completely lose faith in it and assume that everything else it was saying was just something some random script writer made up... which completely goes against my entire purpose of watching things subbed. I've used this example before, but, when I was new to this whole game, I'd watch Tenchi Muyo! subbed, and they'd bypass "big brother" for just "Yosho." At the time, I had no idea what was going on, but they obviously weren't saying "Yosho." So I would spend the whole time paranoid, wondering if I could trust the words on the screen.

You might not like the recent release of Transformers: the Headmasters then. The subs use American names, including calling Convoy, "Optimus Prime". It was likely due to some US TF fans being crazy and hating the name "Convoy" with a passion.

[JulieYBM]

Oh, geez, I couldn't begin to tell you how much that would piss me off if I was watching that movie. When I put on foreign language subtitles, I sort of expect them, you know, actually translate what's on the screen. If they were to just up and dubtitle a character's name, I'd completely lose faith in it and assume that everything else it was saying was just something some random script writer made up... which completely goes against my entire purpose of watching things subbed. I've used this example before, but, when I was new to this whole game, I'd watch Tenchi Muyo! subbed, and they'd bypass "big brother" for just "Yosho." At the time, I had no idea what was going on, but they obviously weren't saying "Yosho." So I would spend the whole time paranoid, wondering if I could trust the words on the screen.

You might not care for the recent sub-release of "Transformers: the Headmasters" then. They keep in American names, including calling Convoy "Optimus Prime". Though that might be due to well known fact that American TF fans can be a little crazy and hate the name Convoy with a passion and claim that they'll riot if they ever call Optimus that in a cartoon in the US.

I'm...sorry they hate logic.

[NeoKING]

I'll just be the odd-one and say this: I understand the importance of being faithful to the original, but if another dub had already conceived dub-names for the characters then I really don't see the problem in retaining those names in subtitles. I mean, it's only for convenience for the viewers of that language. I guess it doesn't really bother me that much.

[MCDaveG]

But the viewer doesn't have to. If he had wanted to have educational film about Japanese society ranks he would have watched one. Instead he watches pure entertainment series. For some reason the switch between Japanese and his native language doesn't bother him, so I'm sure he will bear exchange of the forms that in most cases have proper equivalent.

I can in my language use honorific kun, which will look like this: Gohan-kun: Gohánek, Videl-kun: Videlka.....

Isn't it rather an equivalent of -chan?

It's hardly to talk about matters of translation without examples. If the series is strictly about country's history or society some untranslated titles or word games can be left, but I can hardly imagine comedy or children's series with things foreign to most of the viewers. Also every translator should remember about traditions- especially when series refer to classical titles translated long ago with different manner. Sorry, the most known translation counts, and Winnie the Pooh here won't be Winifred or whatever you think is more accurate.
Not to speak about geographical names that some stupid translators tend to leave in original form). Also the language marches on and some forms change. If we talk about Japanese terms in Polish they appeared after Japanese-Russian war in 1905, so the traditional form was quite "hard" in pronunciation (szogun), while now the equivalent form is "softer" (siogun). But if you refer to classical TV series it will be always "Szogun" no matter what happens. So, dear translators, the common sense, please.

Leaving honorifics sometimes sounds really odd, especially when setting doesn't say anything about Japanese connotations. In fantasy( DB counts) I prefer the solution that the characters speak in reader's native language, unless it's mentioned they don't.

Hahaha!!! Yeah, Videl-chan!!! WTF

[B]

I'll just be the odd-one and say this: I understand the importance of being faithful to the original, but if another dub had already conceived dub-names for the characters then I really don't see the problem in retaining those names in subtitles. I mean, it's only for convenience for the viewers of that language. I guess it doesn't really bother me that much.

It's been brought up multiple times in this thread that there's audio/visual "collision" (terrible choice of words, sorry) when you hear something, but read another thing that most find unfavorable.

[MCDaveG]

I'm watching the Zeta Gundam now from US DVD releases and the subs are pretty close to the story, but sometimes it's overdubbed.
GF was watching with me and said, that the core is same, but in Japanese, they are saying completely different things sometimes.
There was for example sentence like: Why do you think that? translated as simply, Why?
I noticed some inconsistencies also and I doubt it's for smooth english, it seems like the translator was rather lazy or something like let's fuck the script up in a oldschool Funimation fashion.

(What I'm also pissed about the absence of openings and endings...... US releases always screw this up, why?)

[JulieYBM]

The opening's rights aren't available to Bandai. The ending is used as the DVD menu music, though.

But yeah, the script for the subtitles isn't very accurate. I'm in no way fluent, but even I can tell that there's too many oddities in the script. It's as if the translator didn't take any time to think his wordings through.

[Adamant]

There was for example sentence like: Why do you think that? translated as simply, Why?

Depending on the context, that could easily be the best translation. If the previous line was "I think x", then "Why?" would be a much more natural response than "Why do you think that?"

[MCDaveG]

There was for example sentence like: Why do you think that? translated as simply, Why?

Depending on the context, that could easily be the best translation. If the previous line was "I think x", then "Why?" would be a much more natural response than "Why do you think that?"

Yeah, I thought the same thing and this was really a simple example, since we are on Dragon Ball message board.
There were some heavier alterations of what the character said. But I saw Zeta Gundam a really long time ago with fansubs,
I think these official are accurate at least to the story (like I saw this somewhere in different series), but I have this sense of something is going right over me and the work is done hastily.
GF explained to me one sentence, I don't remember which, that has been translated completely different altough there was no need for it.
Also, she was next to me learning some new Kanji and almost everytime they said something, she translated it and aksed me, what the subtitles read.
And after I was pissed that watching series like that, when your GF is explaining every fourth sentence isn't too much fan, so she took offence
and said: ''Okay, watch your bad subtitles''

PS: One funny notice I did during the Buu saga, when I turned english on Dragon Box. Announcer in Japanese says something like: Well, let's begin the preliminaries.
In english, he turnes on his bitchy-cool persona: Yeeeeeeah, let's hit it dudes! (don't remember if it was dudes or guys, or boys).

[Super Sonic]

MCDaveG, were you watching Zeta with English subs, or Czech subs? Just kinda curious.

As for topic, it does help with some things as sometimes when name suffixes are translated they might not come across as showing certain respects. For example in the Kenshin anime, both dub and subbed, "dono" is translated as Miss when referring to women, but as Sir when referring to men. Miss so-and-so doesn't come across as respectful as it is supposed to.

[Adamant]

MCDaveG, were you watching Zeta with English subs, or Czech subs? Just kinda curious.

As for topic, it does help with some things as sometimes when name suffixes are translated they might not come across as showing certain respects. For example in the Kenshin anime, both dub and subbed, "dono" is translated as Miss when referring to women, but as Sir when referring to men. Miss so-and-so doesn't come across as respectful as it is supposed to.

They could've easily solved that by simply using "Lady" instead, so that's not really an argument for honorifics, that's an argument for taking care when translating.

Funi's One Piece subs have a couple of really awkward lines caused by them translating "nakama" as "friend", but no one (okay, a ton of people, but they're idiots and don't count) see that as an argument for leaving "nakama" untranslated, since the lines could've easily been fixed by substituting "friends" for "crew" or "shipmates".

[obiwan23s]

-chan is for females, -kun is for males.

Not necessarily, but in most cases.

There are exceptions to the rule. One we should all immediately think of is "Gohan-chan," but most of the time you can take it to the bank that if you heard -chan, it was attached to a female character's name.

Maybe you should publish FAQ about that as did the Polish translator of Fullmetal Alchemist...

You definitely have to approach the job with the mindset that the show is bigger than you. I embraced my role in translating First Gundam because after Dragon Ball, it's probably my favorite series ever. The project spawned from a joke I made in a chat room and I just went with it from there. I was able to obtain Japanese language scripts for all 43 episodes and a friend of mine with awesome connections got me a comprehensive list of all character names, mecha and vehicle names and location names that Bandai Entertainment had on file from their work on the movies. So not only was I able to translate from text seamlessly, I didn't have to fart around with romanizations for weird names either; I had them all in front of me ready to plug in. I'd be interested in doing a FAQ, but probably more geared toward how to deal with tricky Japanese idioms that seem to get filed under "always do it like this" with most fan translators. I've never really ran into anything that I couldn't get a workaround for.

[Mountain]

You definitely have to approach the job with the mindset that the show is bigger than you. I embraced my role in translating First Gundam because after Dragon Ball, it's probably my favorite series ever. The project spawned from a joke I made in a chat room and I just went with it from there. I was able to obtain Japanese language scripts for all 43 episodes and a friend of mine with awesome connections got me a comprehensive list of all character names, mecha and vehicle names and location names that Bandai Entertainment had on file from their work on the movies. So not only was I able to translate from text seamlessly, I didn't have to fart around with romanizations for weird names either; I had them all in front of me ready to plug in. I'd be interested in doing a FAQ, but probably more geared toward how to deal with tricky Japanese idioms that seem to get filed under "always do it like this" with most fan translators. I've never really ran into anything that I couldn't get a workaround for.

That's really interesting. I'd love to hear more about it.

[Kendamu]

I'll just be the odd-one and say this: I understand the importance of being faithful to the original, but if another dub had already conceived dub-names for the characters then I really don't see the problem in retaining those names in subtitles. I mean, it's only for convenience for the viewers of that language. I guess it doesn't really bother me that much.

I think that largely depends on the audience involved. Steve Simmons, as a known fan of Dragonball in the online communities, knew what the fans wanted for their subtitled version of the show at the time. So, the resulting subtitles came from what Japanese version fans wanted back when DBZ hit DVD.

If another show had another audience that didn't really care about honorifics and such, then there's no problem leaving them out.

[TripleRach]

I think that largely depends on the audience involved. Steve Simmons, as a known fan of Dragonball in the online communities, knew what the fans wanted for their subtitled version of the show at the time. So, the resulting subtitles came from what Japanese version fans wanted back when DBZ hit DVD.

If another show had another audience that didn't really care about honorifics and such, then there's no problem leaving them out.

For what it's worth, Mr. Simmons doesn't use honorifics in Fullmetal Alchemist (and possibly other shows, but I really don't watch a lot of anime), so I'd imagine he makes those kind of decisions on a case-by-case basis. Which I think is the right thing to do, because different shows have different quirks and needs. I've already explained why I think Dragon Ball is a case where they're worth keeping, but I can't say that that was necessarily his reasoning too.

[jpdbzrulz4sure]

For what it's worth, Mr. Simmons doesn't use honorifics in Fullmetal Alchemist...

He used them in the first FMA series, as well as its movie.

In fact, I'm pretty sure that, at least until sometime in the last couple years or so, he used honorifics in every show he translated, regardless of the setting or whether or not anything made the presence of honorifics necessary (such as jokes).

[TripleRach]

For what it's worth, Mr. Simmons doesn't use honorifics in Fullmetal Alchemist...

He used them in the first FMA series, as well as its movie.

In fact, I'm pretty sure that, at least until sometime in the last couple years or so, he used honorifics in every show he translated, regardless of the setting or whether or not anything made the presence of honorifics necessary (such as jokes).

Huh. Well, like I said, I don't watch a lot of anime (and the first FMA I only saw via the dub on Adult Swim). So there goes that "maybe he picks and chooses" theory.