Psajdak wrote: Mon Dec 28, 2020 8:02 am
Dubs don't need to be accurate - they only need to be hilarious, and meme-worthy.
For accuracy, watch subs.
I mean, I half-agree, kinda. I don't agree with the "it should be funny" part. I actually wrote about this whole translation accuracy topic (elsewhere) before, so I'll just summarise how I see it:
Translators have two goals. One is to be accurate, and the other is to match the target audience. This goes for both professional translators and hobbyist translators. Professional translators tend to have more casual target audiences than hobbyist translators. Particularly when translating to English from something as foreign as Japanese, a 100 % faithful translation is practically impossible, as you're not only translating language, but also culture. Should you "convert" the culture to match western culture, or should you take the risk of alienating the western readers/viewers who certainly won't understand all the differences that lie between the lines? Professionals will usually lean towards the former, and hobbyists will lean towards the latter, because that's what fits their target audiences better. The professionals can't afford to force their audience to study up, because they won't do that, but hobbyists can, because their audience actually will. Therefore, professional translations will tend to be easier for the average person to get into, and they fit the common fan, while fan-translations will tend to be more accurate to the original, untranslated release, and they fit the more hardcore fan.
(The summary is long because the original text was really long. Like, essay long. I've omitted some talking points.)
Also, I know that there are official subs along with the official dubs, while I mainly just address official versus fanmade. The target audience contrast applies to official subs versus official dubs too, though, as the target audience for the dubs is probably a fair bit more casual than the target audience for the subs.
