Fansub Review: [Hiryuu] Softenni (Episode 10)

I’ll probably finish off this season’s reviews tomorrow night. o/

For now, though, we’ve got Hiryuu with Softenni.

OP/ED. Not too good, but at least they have them. Might wanna check your English lines there, bros.

Typesetting. It’s not great, but it’s sufficient. But the font for the main episode is terrible.

Never do this again.

Awkward. This will be a common theme with this release. Try something like

“It would be a pity if that prevented you from enjoying soft tennis.” (The “that” referring to a previous line where she was talking about Eli not having a partner)

If this is actually how the joke is written in Japanese, it needs to be re-done to make it funny for an English-speaking audience. If not funny, at least make it understandable.

The second sentence is troubling as in can be read in two vastly different ways (Stop trying to escape. Join us.   OR     Stop trying to escape and join us at the same time.). Try this

“There’s no escape, so just join us!”

If that’s too different from the original line, I’m sure you can still rephrase it.

I’m not really qualified to talk about what exactly the Japanese text translates to, but our translator in Ayako-Nishishi had something similar to “Huh?! But she looked like she was happy to give us the slip!”

Acting like “all’s well” is not what she did. Rather, it was a little grin similar to a “just as planned” moment.

This was basically bad dialogue considering the context.

I don’t think “lay down the beat” is the idiom you’re looking for. That deals with music, not soft tennis club recruiting.

Two choices here:

Yes… She’s a second-year student at Shiradama Middle… or she would be, if she were still alive.

Yes… She would be a second-year student at Shiradama Middle… if she were still alive.

What did I just read?

I love properly-formed ellipses…

What you’re looking for is “did you hit your head on something?”

Uhh. try “(Died when she was 12)”

I don’t give a shit if the God of Literal Japanese translations came down and promised you eternal life for writing shittily-worded sentences. Don’t fucking do this.

“But Sis can only take over my body for a limited time.”

Top-tier subs translate the meaning, not the exact words.

Add commas or colons after the names here.

He’s questioning why she calls out the names of students and publicly announces their scores. Please try to convey this.

“Why does she have to announce the scores that people got?”

…

“These are orders from the top:”

Oh wow. Okay, let me give you some background on these shots. It’s important.

The girls start out by saying “Yes, we can!” in English. Then Kotone tells them to do it in Japanese. So they say it in Japanese, but slightly wrong. Eli corrects them because they’re saying it wrong.

That’s the joke, that’s the setup. So what did Hiryuu do?

They have it as “Yes, we can!” in perfect English all the time throughout this scene, which renders the “joke” invalid.

The fuck is up with TLs and their obsession with adding “properly” to everything? No. Get rid of that.

No.

“Women have to rely on their intuition!”

There is no reason anyone should fuck this up. No reason. This is such a fucking common phrase that if you don’t know it, you have no business editing. God dammit.

Memorize everything I just marked down.

We didn’t think her intuition would be 100% accurate.

Anything along those lines would work. Just go for something natural.

 

Overall grade: D+

Good subs are about more than just making sure you dotted your i’s and crossed your t’s. The goal here is to make natural, convincing English that properly conveys the meaning and flavor of the original Japanese version. This was a poorly-worded release that made Softenni slightly less than fun than it should be to watch it.

 

Hiryuu, Firebird, I have nothing against you guys. Obviously, fixing Softenni isn’t gonna matter (you’re almost done with the series anyway), but if you were able to get anything of value from this critique, I seriously hope you apply it to your releases in the new season. These are easy things to fix if you’re aware of them.