This post was written by Dark_Sage. He is Dark_Sage.
Nice effort from Doki on this. Not a bad choice at all.
File size: 340 MB (HQ MKV), 202 MB (LQ MKV)
Japanesiness: Japanese name order. Honorifics.
Karaoke.
Typesetting. They pretty much typeset everything but the gigantic signboard screen. Understandable, because that was a fuckton to read.
Everyone comma splices o/
Why is there, a comma there?
“I wonder” ! -> question mark needed.
“I guess Hamzou’s a typical guy.”
Why the rephrase? It makes more sense this way when they’re talking about him hiding in Miki’s cleavage.
third-year
But… Miki’s not a child. Rephrase this.
“I guess it’s true that those who sleep well grow well.”
Useless TL note.
The whole sale exchange here could have been done much nicer. I’m not gonna rephrase ~4 lines to show you how, though. :P
Our? Why is that word necessary? Drop it and make the line “That long-awaited producer will finally appear at 765 Pro”
Oh, and I know you TL’d it as 765 Production, but it really should be 765 Productions if you care about English at all.
Time for a few line comparisons.
“Everyone has a secret… or a hundred.”
vs.
“Anyone has a secret or a hundred they wish to be kept.”
“That’s why I look after my younger brothers and sisters, and I take advantage of the sales and limited-time offers at the supermarket to get the shopping done.”
vs.
“So I’m proud of looking after my little sisters and brothers and going to supermarket to buy items on sale during time-service–”
Doki on top. Chibiki on bottom.
Overall grade: B+
I think I’m still gonna have to give the nod to Chibiki over Doki, but this choice isn’t as clear-cut as the “Doki Sucks” hivemind wants it to be. Some of the lines in Chibiki’s release suck compared to Doki’s and the reverse is true as well. I couldn’t come to a clear victor in this regard, so I left it up to other factors.
Chibi gets the nod because of fewer overall errors and the inclusion of two scripts which allow viewers to choose what they want. Either group is fine for this show, though.
Ah, thanks for this. I guess the other “big match-up” would be Chihiro’s and UTW’s Memochou. I think UTW would win it but I’ve yet to compare them myself. Too late and need sleep at the moment.
I realize you review based on the English of the scripts that the fansubs use, but I would like it if you’d also let us know whether or not they are also translating the japonaise properly. Was reading the comments on one of your other reviews and someone said something about the translations themselves being crap.
English is fine, but translation is also important no? Who knows if what they’re translating is what is actually being said. And Japanese is such a complex language, with their proverbs and different way to say things, and words that have very special meaning like ‘Nakama’ which many fansubbers just translate to friend, comrade, etc.
But I do like your work here, and base a lot of my picks from your reviews. Thanks again for that!
Cheers Mate.
I agree that translations are important especially when they change the meaning/impression they give about some subject/person. This is really annoying when I end up in a discussion about an anime with my friends, but to find out that they were fooled by the subs or they didn’t get the correct meaning in some event/dialogue since the subs didn’t convey it well. From my limited experience with Doki, I’ve seen a few guess translations or poor editor changes, which sometimes changes meaning to something completely irrelevant or miss a key meaning because of bad word choice. Sometimes these guesses are obvious but sometimes they aren’t and that’s the scary part.
The author here doesn’t seem to be fluent in Japanese so it is a bit unreasonable to request that considering that he’s only looking at the editor’s ability. I have actually considered starting something similar but reviewing the translations instead, but fitting it into my schedule is not easy.
Sorry if I wasn’t very clear.
I agree. Certainly it’s easier to find someone who can write good English than someone who can translate Japanese (though looking at today’s fansubs, you’d think the opposite was true), but getting a translator to compare different groups’ releases of two shows and pointing out which translate accurately and which just bullshit their way through would be a very helpful addition.
I would really love to add translation accuracy as a significant part of this site. Unfortunately, the difficulties in achieving that are… quite numerous. Finding a top-tier translator with tons of extra time (if it takes ME 1-2 hours to watch each episode, grab screenshots, and write up the posts, I can only imagine how long it’ll take a TLer) is going to be extremely difficult. Especially considering that the burn-out rate on TLs is high enough as-is.
Oh well. It would’ve been great if someone could do Translation reviews too hehe.
Hmm, maybe work with D_S and just review the translation of the top two or three groups, which should narrow it down. If the editing gets an F so much meaning is lost due to the errors that the translation accuracy doesn’t matter much – and so you’d be able to cut out quite a few things that don’t need to be reviewed by you. ;)
There is one thing true of every sub group out there: its quality really depends on the people working on that particular project. Every group is going to have some translators that are better or worse than others, so the amount of inaccuracies and/or guesses depends partly on that. Just because some shows that doki has done in the past have had terrible translations doesn’t mean they all do. Similarly, just because gg (or whoever you prefer) has some sort of reputation for translation quality doesn’t mean all of their releases are 100% free of translation mistakes.
Yeah, I agree that it really depends on the staff list for that project.
Recently, I looked at the scripts for a show from 3 different groups of ranging reputation (UTW, AFFTW, Hatsuyuki) and I noticed that they all screwed up this one line really badly. I actually went and downloaded the same ep from all the available groups just because that mistake really annoyed me considering that it shouldn’t have been a hard TL…
One of the things which really annoy me is when people judge by the group name attached to the release and put down-votes on it without even considering it or vice versa (ie. Some groups (like UTW) tend to get up-votes more easily even if there is a better or equal quality release, which may just get flooded with down-votes and be forgotten).
“So I’m proud of looking after my little sisters and brothers and going to supermarket to buy items on sale during time-service–”
Lol. Wtf. I think i’m an idiot but wth is sale during time-service?
Time service is a japanese thing where they have a limited offer for a couple of minutes/hours, like happy hour =)
way to name a happy hour :P
Happy Hour! =), in hispanic countrys we use too Happy Hour (Hora Feliz) or simply sayed in english: “Happy Hour” xD.
Don’t know why there’s this hate for Doki, nor will I admit that they are perfect, but I myself find them to be one of the most consistent groups out there.
China—>English?
Doki hasn’t used C>E translators for many, many seasons.
People can’t get over it? Anyway the recent reason to hate them was last block in the beginning they did speedsubs and it produced errors. They fixed that mistake pretty fast though.
Our early Nichijou episodes were epic fails, yes. I’d like to see a group translating Nichijou (read, not ripping CR) and produce a decent translation. It’s challenging, because Nichijou is insane.