This post was written by Dark_Sage. He is Dark_Sage.
This is a review of Commie’s X-Men release. It’s aimed at helping you to choose which fansub group’s release to watch.
Commie
Note: There was no OP and the ED was intrumental, so there’s no karaoke to orgasm over. Also of importance is that the show sucks.
Also, this release wasn’t exceptionally bad, so to fill out this post, I focused on the less extreme errors.
Right, but we’re talking genes and shit so how about something less judgmental like “Sometimes mistakes occur”
Toward, not towards. This isn’t Britannia, guys.*
Also, X-Men, not X-men.
*Assuming they’re editing in American English. If they wanted to use British English, that’d be right.
Try “purpose”
You can choose either:
Her father is an old acquaintance of mine.
or
Her father and I are old acquaintances.
‘fraid you can’t have it both ways, Commie-kun.
This is disconcerting. Ohohoho, yeah I fail.
This comes off another sentence and would make more sense connected to it.
O_0
Again, this comes off another sentence and would make more sense connected to it.
I almost missed this one.
I have a feeling this line was written without them having seen the screen.
Overall grade: B
They did pretty fucking good. Too bad the show sucks.
“You… You’re controlling Jean!”
The convention is that ellipses have three dots, except when they conclude a sentence; then they get a fourth. So either of these is potentially correct:
You… you’re controlling Jean!
You…. You’re controlling Jean!
Since “You…” isn’t exactly a complete sentence, and since the next word is a near repetition of the last, I think the former is correct.
Perfect.
All right, I know “You” isn’t a full sentence. That’s why I have the ellipses to indicate that it’s incomplete.
As for your argument, read the line out loud to see where I’m going to with this. If they left it as “You… you are controlling Jean!” that would work fine cuz “you” sounds the same as “you”. But if you’re arguing that “you” can continue on into “you’re”, you’re a bit off as they sound different.
Not sure I explained that properly. Do ya get my argument?
I do get it, but I don’t quite buy it. I read that ellipsis as a mark of hesitation; an em dash would have done as well: “You— you’re controlling Jean!” It still reads, to me, like one sentence. The repetition of “you” (and yes, I consider “you’re” equivalent to “you are” for this purpose) is not the only reason I think this is one sentence. And you’re missing my real nitpicking, which is that if it’s two sentences, then there needs to be a fourth dot in the ellipsis. “You… You’re controlling Jean!” is wrong either way.
One thing I think you lose sight of is that almost all subtitles are intended to be natural human speech; as such, they feature many idiosyncrasies that don’t belong in general written prose. These are supposed to be real people talking. Real people, even intelligent, educated, native English speakers, do use sloppy grammar, or utter a word, pause, then go in a slightly different direction, particularly when emotional. I agree they’re not supposed to sound like ESL speakers, which all too many fansub translators and probably more than one editor actually are, and so I agree with your spankings of Ayako. But reading actual works of literature, you’ll find that however grammatical the rest of the prose, good dialogue is often “imperfect” (if that word even has any meaning or validity in the realm of human language).
I haven’t watched this yet; is it as dire as the other Marvel anime? I struggled through Iron Man and one episode of Wolverine, but then stopped beating myself about the head and shoulders with a blunt instrument. I swear, I could feel brain cells dying with every heavy metal guitar chord.
Hmmm…. I guess I’ve been using ellipses wrong all along…. Thanks for pointing out the four-dot ellipses. I’ll change my critique of Commie’s release, but I doubt I’ll ever use it in my subs. It’s archaic and distracting, so I’ll continue to use the three-dot ellipses for everything. Please don’t hate me for it.
However, I’m afraid your other argument is a bit off the mark. I’m not knocking slang. I regularly use “gotta” and idioms and various other types of speech that you aren’t likely to find in a country gentleman’s vocabulary. But I’m not going to accept mistakes in subtitles that are detrimental to the overall viewing experience because “sometimes people make mistakes.” To note, if there are mistakes that are meant to be in scripts, the translators will translate it as such and it will be very obvious why they’re there.
And yes, the anime sucks. Don’t bother.
Here’s my argument:
NO ONE FUCKING CARES ABOUT THAT EXTRA DOT.
I like intrumental OPs and EDs