I was just thinking that a lot of debate comes from the English subtitles and that is almost wholly dependent on how good the translation is. If you personally don't know Japanese, then you have to trust the translator and that is not always a fool-proof way to get the most accurate quotes.
Does anyone know if there are transcripts of the Japanese episodes in the Japanese language? I figure if they are all in printed form then it would remove some variables and allow people to translate the quotes themselves to kind of double-check the translations.
Japanese-Language Episode Transcripts?
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Re: Japanese-Language Episode Transcripts?
Yes there are. I would have to look into what the adress for the site that used to host them but i think it was at kitsunekku or something.
Re: Japanese-Language Episode Transcripts?
Yep, they're out there! This site hosts transcriptions of Japanese closed-caption tracks for multiple series, and as the OP suggests, I and others have indeed used them to weigh in on dialogue-related debates before.
Just be careful about dragging these through machine translation to weigh in, as essentially any of the official subtitle-track translations we have are faithful enough that doing so is only likely to obfuscate things more, rather than less. Outside of a very small handful of instances, most of which are already documented, Mandelin, Simmons, and Toei's subtitle tracks for the series are all incredibly accurate. DB doesn't really have any official subtitle translations bad enough, or even just loosely handled enough, to regularly call them into question.
Mostly these are just useful if you want to know the exact diction used in Japanese, for some reason. Everyone who's worked on the official subtitle tracks is a pro; they know what they're doing.
Just be careful about dragging these through machine translation to weigh in, as essentially any of the official subtitle-track translations we have are faithful enough that doing so is only likely to obfuscate things more, rather than less. Outside of a very small handful of instances, most of which are already documented, Mandelin, Simmons, and Toei's subtitle tracks for the series are all incredibly accurate. DB doesn't really have any official subtitle translations bad enough, or even just loosely handled enough, to regularly call them into question.
Mostly these are just useful if you want to know the exact diction used in Japanese, for some reason. Everyone who's worked on the official subtitle tracks is a pro; they know what they're doing.
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TheGreatness25
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Re: Japanese-Language Episode Transcripts?
I've had the Steve Simmons subtitles extracted for years. I wish that they'd release merchandise with the dub subtitles too, but they haven't since the singles, leaving the Saiyan and the Namek arcs, the first DB movie, and first three Z movies, Kai, and Super without a way to get the dub subtitles from the DVDs/Blu-rays. I'd appreciate those more.