This post was written by Dark_Sage. He is Dark_Sage.
Screw what I said in my summer 2012 preview; this is an excellent show. (Note: Edited down to a B after comparisons in Doki’s 03 release)
Table of Contents
Release Information
Episode details.
Release format: MKV (326 MB, 10-bit)
Japanesiness: No honorifics.
English style: American English (best English).
Encoding details: http://pastebin.com/D6FrqpG5
Speed: Quick (<48 hours)
External links.
Group website: http://commiesubs.com/
IRC channel: #[email protected]
8thsin’s translation critique: N/A
Ji-hi’s screenshot comparisons: http://www.ji-hi.net/su12/jinrui/
SubCompare screenshot comparisons: http://subcompare.com/jinrui/index.html
Commie’s fansub reviews: http://notredreviews.wordpress.com/summer-2012-reviews/#jintai
Review
Karaoke.
Opening. It’s just white text, but it’s handled appropriately. No real issues with this.
Rating: Okay.
Ending. While white worked in the opening, it doesn’t really fit here. The font is cute, but a cute choice is not necessarily a good choice.
Rating: Bad.
Typesetting.
Cambrian explosion? Brilliant. The CR TL deserves a raise for this one. The original author deserves to have his ideas interpreted in proper anime form.
Wow. That karma came back quick.
Everything was typeset except one sign and I thought it was done decently. So yeah, I liked what they did here.
Other
I noticed this happened once, though I assume it was also an issue in other screens too.
Script Quality
Karaoke.
No issues with the karaoke.
Main Script.
I don’t know if a food shortage itself can get dire. Situations can get dire, but a food shortage seems more of a symptom of a dire situation that one itself.
“If everyone is hunting, our food situation must be getting dire.”
There is nothing wrong with this as a sentence in, say, a book. My issue here is with how “liaising” sounds. Gist is, it doesn’t seem like a natural word anyone would use aloud, let alone in their internal thoughts.
I will concede that this is mostly an editing style choice rather than a particular issue, so I won’t hold it against Commie. But I did feel it was something that should be brought up.
This is an awkward sentence. I’m going to suggest an edit that slightly diverges from the current meaning but gets a similar point across.
“But I can’t make much more than gum with what I have.”
This is a very weird line to use. Yes, it refers back to circulation of food they were talking about earlier, but why not a more common phrase?
“These were found in the village recently?” <- This links better to the next line (“It sounds like people are confused because a whole pile just showed up.”) with the added benefit of not portraying a weird situation of goods circulation in the village.
“At that moment, the two mysteries became one.”
How often must I harp on this issue? Use question marks for questions.
Commie really spiced up this character’s speech from the Crunchyroll version. Excellent decision, herkz.
This should be adjectified. difficult to find -> difficult-to-find
Results
Watchability: Quite watchable.
Visual grade: B-
Script grade: B+ B
Overall grade: B+ B
This is a good release from Commie. If you’re interested in the show, it’s not a slice-of-life, happy-go-lucky, “cute girl finds friendship and peace” anime. This was better than expected.
Let’s see if I can get some Sword Art or Kokoro reviews out today.
Yeah man, the contrast in this show is, like, godtier or something.
The way the MC speaks is like that intentionally. Making the changes you suggest would change her character :(
Best new show.
> How often must I harp on this issue? Use question marks for questions.
Rhetorical questions don’t necessarily require a question mark; strictly speaking, it’s a stylistic choice. I agree that it’s generally better to add a question mark, even if the question is rhetorical, but you can argue it either way. A lot of times, the context of the line or the character’s intonation are pretty good indicators of whether or not a question mark is necessary.
I’m not advocating the omission of the question mark here because it’s hard to tell from just the screenshot whether I’d have put one in or not, but you bring up this kind of “mistake” fairly frequently in your reviews and I’m kind of interested to hear your thoughts on the issue.
Question marks are used for questions. Whether the questions need a response or not is irrelevant. That’s pretty much all there is to it.
Case study:
1. Isn’t he a weirdo?
2. Isn’t he a weirdo.
The omission of the question mark in the second sentence completely changes the meaning. The first one is truly a question requiring an answer: “Do you think that guy is weird?” The second one is a statement of opinion that doesn’t require or even encourage a response: “That guy seems weird to me.”
In the same vein, the case you pointed out in this review could take on two different meanings based on the punctuation:
1. So this is FairyCo, huh?
2. So this is FairyCo, huh.
The first sentence is a question the character would ask someone else as confirmation: “So this is FairyCo, right?” In the second sentence, it’s a monologue where the “huh” exists solely to add emphasis. You could easily change it to simply read: “So this is FairyCo.”
Yes, you just repeated to me what I already knew about redundant questions. I would like now to ask you what the second word in “redundant question” is.
I’m disappointed you’re so inflexible about this issue, considering the diverging opinions on it. You often encourage a looser application of grammatical rules in subs in favor of emulating natural speech or improving readability, so I was hoping for a more nuanced opinion.
I suppose we’ll have to agree to disagree.
I personally think that Nevreen is right… I think the word means “so, this is FairyCo… I see… It depends on how we pronounce the sentence and based on the dialogue, i think Nevreen opinion is valid.. well, just my opinion though…
I also agree with Nevreen. A period is not confusing, and it carries a much different nuance than a question mark in these situations. It’s a structure worth consideration in some circumstances, at least.
In this case, a question mark would not match the context or audio at all. It’s better to rephrase the whole thing or leave the punctuation as a period. A question mark would probably be a translation error IMHO and the worst option.
>question marks on questions are translation errors
Haha, oh wow.
It’s making a question out of a statement that’s not a question that’s the error. I thought that was clear?
Either you consider the line to not be a question and use a period, or if you want question marks on anything that looks like it could be a question, you rephrase it so it no longer could work at all with a question mark.
Or am I looking at the wrong line? I don’t have the Commie release. Anybody have a literal TL of what’s being said? Is it a question in Japanese?
It’s the same thing here as saying “What?!” in a context where you don’t actually desire a response.
The question mark in “What?!” conveys confusion and surprise. There’s neither a question nor any surprise in this line (maybe my interpretation is off though). The way I read and hear it, it seems like the “huh” could and perhaps should be dropped entirely. If it was just there for filler, tack on an extra word at the beginning instead, which even matches the audio.
Probably “error” is much too strong a word for what I meant earlier.
This is really about the use of punctuation for effect versus sticking to the rulebook. In almost all circumstances I would be on the side of the rulebook, but I think there’s at least room for discussion on this count.
I must say, I’m rather torn on this issue. As opposed to exclamation marks, question marks are mandatory in English, as opposed to Japanese. While question marks imply intonation, this purpose is secondary. Obviously it can be deduced from the audio how the line is delivered. On the other hand, I can’t think of a good way to transcribe, for example, a character stating ‘what’ with a flat intonation without using a full stop. I suppose it really does come down to a matter of style, but for fansubs, where the core audience can here the delivery of the line, there isn’t much justification for breaching conventions.
Oh, and Dark_Sage, I hope your new comment system’ll fix the glitch where most of the content is obscured when typing a multi-tiered reply. (I do like to see what I’m typing!)
Maybe this is a minority opinion, but I think that flow, tone, intonation, and matching the audio are the important aspects for short, throwaway lines.
I’d turn that around and say that -because- the audience can hear the delivery of the line, the text should match the feel of the audio, or they will clash. I’d try to avoid clashing and drawing attention to unimportant lines, which viewers pretty much already understand without any subtitles. (On the other hand, a grammatical error will also draw attention…)
For conversations and longer lines, viewers go into subtitle-reading mode, so these considerations become less important.
Are you sure you really want to go down the slippery slope of marking tones, etc. above grammar? If we really prioritise transcribing audio, thensurelyacharacterthat speakswithoutpausesshouldhavethe incomprehensible speechtranscribedtoo. Or what about a character that’s rising their tone at the end of each phrase? Would you prefer? to see this? reflected? in the subs? Look, if such details can be incorporated into the subs, then go for your life, but there’s no reason to break grammatical rules for such a small detail viewers can figure out for themselves.
So I went to the leading authority on this subject (wikipedia) and it confirmed what I knew – that rhetorical questions don’t necessarily need to have question marks but that I like to have them all there stylistically. However, something to consider:
“In the 1580s, English printer Henry Denham invented a “rhetorical question mark” for use at the end of a rhetorical question; however, it died out of use in the 17th century. It was the reverse of an ordinary question mark, so that instead of the main opening pointing back into the sentence, it opened away from it.”
Should we bring this back and make it a standard for fansub editing? :D
>leading authority on style
>wikipedia
I don’t even need to say anything at this point, do I?
Was my sarcasm too subtle yet again?
I considered your comment to be sarcastic initially, but couldn’t extract much meaning from it interpreting it as such. Apologies for the misunderstanding.
Purely as a segue into the next section of my comment. We Brits do that for fun :D
But the first paragraph is more serious than the second…
Perhaps I’m just over-analysing your comment…
Indeed. That way lies madness.
“In the second sentence, it’s a monologue where the “huh” exists solely to add emphasis. You could easily change it to simply read: “So this is FairyCo.””
If you need that “huh” so much, you could go with:
“So this is FairyCo. Huh.”
It’s pretty much the same, but is less likely (I think) to get mistaken for a mis-punctuated question.
Both are acceptable. “So this is FairyCo, huh” doesn’t have to be a question, and if it’s not intended as a question then it obviously shouldn’t have a question mark.
tl;dr the line is fine as is.
Good to see they chose “mankind” instead of “humanity”, since it’s easier to play with the semantics of the former. Wasn’t a fan of the way CR did the “modern-humans” thing.
(This was mentioned briefly in one of the trailers and elaborated on in the book, but the gist is that the human race has declined and the fairies are now the dominant species, to the point where if you were to say “mankind [jinrui]” it would refer to the fairies, and not the humans, who would be “old mankind”. Using “humanity” leaves you in the awkward situation of saying that “humanity” doesn’t refer to humans anymore)
Yeah, there were a lot of lines that read really dumb with “human” instead of “man” as well.
What ever you do Sage, review UTwoots for SAO and Doki for Kokoro Connect, Im looking forward to seeing those tonight!
PS. For Tari Tari the recommended group is AnimeTL-Broken
>Cambrian explosion? Brilliant. The CR TL deserves a raise for this one.
That’s very generous of you, though the original Japanese author might want some credit.
Was that a literal translation, then?
Yep.
I shall update my statement accordingly.
Yeah, Jintai probably has some of the best original writing of any anime adaptation ever.
Could’ve sworn the “liaising” part was also in Crunchyroll’s subs. Some of the odd phrasings might’ve come from the author’s “unique” style of writing too; Romeo Tanaka’s famous for that.
It was definitely a “unique” script. It felt a lot different than what I was expecting. There were a number of lines I paused on, thought to myself “I want to do this differently”, but then ultimately avoided commenting on because my changes would be less suitable for a review and more suitable for my own edits. It’s been a while since a release has done that to me to this degree.
The main chick talks like a book. Streamlining her English would not be accurate.
Thanks for the warning, but I wear cleats on slippery slopes.
I don’t advocate taking anything to the extreme; your examples are pretty good for showing why that’s retarded. For this case, I did mention earlier that I would just take the “huh” out, and I did support sticking to the rulebook the vast majority of the time.
We should be interested in case-by-case judgment calls, not rules.
You did at least claim them to be important. Anyway, on the case of rhetorical questions, I can’t think of any real cases where I’d think it most appropriate to omit a question mark. If you were really going to go the extra mile with intonation, you may as well just embolden or italicise the natural emphases for the sentence to convey the tone. There may be some exceptional circumstances, but I think that stands as a decent hard-and-fast rule.
>Screw what I said in my summer 2012 preview
You’re always wrong with the seasons preview so I don’t take what you say seriously anyway.
This seems interesting and the scrip looks good. Thanks for the review.
Present_Sage is always right. But yeah, Past_Sage sometimes makes mistakes.
What about Drunk_Sage?
What happened to the review from Doki?
Broken Link
http://www.crymore.net/2012/08/fansub-review-doki-jinrui-wa-suitai-shimashita-episode-03/
A full month’s worth of reviews were lost during a site migration. I can’t get them back.
Do you remember if Doki’s was better/worse?
I believe it was worse, since I watched the entire show through with Commie’s.