English-release Subtitles

[MisterFlashdude]

I've always been thankful that the english dub DVD's had a Japanese dialouge option. My question is-- How accurate are the subtitles? Are they actually translating what the characters are saying or just... what they think we should see them saying?

[veshira]

I'm pretty sure the Japanese is translated accurately, though I'm not quite sure how the subtitlers handle culture differences as well as different styles of talking in the Japanese language. I haven't really seen that much of the show in Japanese with Funimation subtitles, though.

[Mr. Announcer]

I would say that for the ones I have, they're accurate. Far more than any fansub you can find. They stumble a bit over some idiomatic phrases but it's not like you can blame them for that. They even try to work in some of the character's dialects (for example, sometimes Gokuh will be seen to say ain't) but most don't really have translatable equivalent. They are perfectly reliable for meaning purposes.

[Tsukento]

Dragon Ball's subs are abit iffy with me compared to Dragon Ball Z's and Dragon Ball GT's, and that's mainly because Daimao didn't translate a good majority of Dragon Ball.

The guy who does Dragon Ball's subs isn't bad, though he tends to ignore a few things when translating (something I've noticed highly in the Case Closed/Detective Conan DVDs). Sometimes the way Goku speaks will be ignored or ChiChi's accent will be missing as well. Sometimes even suffixes in people's names will be ignored (biggest problem with the Detective Conan DVDs since Conan refers to Ran as "Ran-neechan" when speaking to her but the subtitles simply show up as Ran and she even scolds him at one point for simply calling her Ran).

Aside from the little minorites, everything's translated just about perfectly. Now if only FUNimation could've done the same with their dubs.

[TripleRach]

Steve's subtitles are probably the most accurate ones I've seen. The preservation of accents and honorifics has already been mentioned, but one other thing that I think stands out is the fact that details in dialogue aren't left out. FUNimation uses a smaller than average font, so the translations aren't as abridged as most.

[Tatsunoboshi Horoko]

Agreed. Clyde's translations are pretty iffy at times. He tends to lose track of a lot of things. I think one was the "Piccolo referring to himself" thing...or something like that. I don't quite remember it all.

Steve's translations are mucho awesome. One of the hardest things to do in translating from another language is get the wording down pact and making sure the tense of the sentences match. He does it, in my opinion.

[linkdude20002001]

Both are good. I don't know which is better though. I've seen Tomato's translation of DB a lot, but only a bit of Daimao's translation of DBZ. I need to watch more DBZ.

[Lobster_Rage155]

Well, actually, Clyde doesn't drop so much now. I know. I've seen some of his more recent translations and I can honestly say that he's just about up to Steve's level. He did do some pretty strange things in the past, but that's long gone now.

Nowadays, Clyde keeps in every kind of honorific imaginable(including nee-chan's and what not) and is more literal to the original script. The majority of Dragon Ball, the first couple eps of Case Closed, and some other things too, were done during his greenhorn days and are, even to Clyde himself, sketchy. Tomato has commented again and again on how much he'd like to go back and re-do all that earlier stuff, so he's certainly not proud of these mistakes.

...Phew.