This post was written by Dark_Sage. He is Dark_Sage.
Fansubbing’s saviors have arrived with their high-quality, top-tier subs. Let us give thanks.
Table of Contents
Release Information
Episode details.
Release format: MKV (436 MB, 10-bit), AVI (230 MB)
Japanesiness: Honorifics.
English style: American English.
Encoding details: http://pastebin.com/YEKHELma
Speed: Quick (<48 hours)
External links.
Group website: http://utw.me/ http://gotwoot-subs.net/
IRC channel: #[email protected] #[email protected]
8thsin’s translation critique: N/A
Ji-hi’s screenshot comparisons: http://www.ji-hi.net/su12/sao/
SubCompare screenshot comparisons: http://subcompare.com/sword_art_online/
Commie’s fansub reviews: N/A
Visual Review
Karaoke.
Groups just don’t understand karaoke these days. UTWoots does, though. Simple ideals such as “colors that make sense”, “an English font that doesn’t look like it was endorsed by the Blur Man Group”, or “readable karaoke” are for lesser groups to concern themselves with.
UTWoots realizes that many people will skip the karaoke after only watching it once, and with karaoke of this caliber, they hope to inspire everyone else to do the same.
Overall, this was fantastic karaoke; I only vomited once.
Nothing screams competence to me like laggy karaoke. A group which manages to create plain, boring, throwaway karaoke that also lags… well, that takes effort.
I agree with UTWoots’s decision here to overlap the credits. After all, when half the screen is empty of credits, it would make too much sense to place your karaoke on that half to avoid overlap.
After one viewing of this karaoke, no one will want to ever watch it again. Way to keep up with the strategy you used for the OP, UTWoots.
Typesetting.
Lesser groups would attempt to make the typesetting match the Japanese text. Not UTWoots, of course. These people are trailblazers, the saviors of the fansubbing industry! That they would deign to grace us peasant leechers with their unique typesetting philosophy should be considered an honor.
I am truly humbled, UTWoots. Thank you for your immortal fansubbing guidance.
Some would say shoving a group name into a show is hubris, but I say it’s a blessing. It’s as if the skies open up and the clouds break, allowing us to bathe in a golden shower of brilliance.
Thank you for drenching us with your love, UTWoots.
Great text placement. While the original Japanese text tries to be readable with blue font on a light background, UTWoots puts their typesetting over the dark green part of the screen.
This allows people to focus on the Japanese text — as was originally intended by the Japanese animation company — since the English text is hardly readable now.
Brilliant fucking translation, UTW. Everyone on your team deserves to be commended for such an excellent release.
Well this isn’t crowded at all.
Other.
Some would argue that having a defined overlap format is useful. But they aren’t in UTWoots, so their opinion doesn’t matter.
Script Quality
Karaoke.
How does one “open out” feelings? And how does a heart “see long dreams”?
Wait, don’t answer those questions. Don’t you see? UTWoots is trying to help us understand our inner emotions with their Engrish subs. As we struggle to understand them, we will eventually be able to understand ourselves.
And isn’t that what subtitles are supposed to be about? Thanks, UTWoots.
Main Script.
Why yes, this does make great sense. Everyone knows that the 1st Floor boss is found at the top of the tower… on the 100th floor.
Lesser groups wouldn’t understand this. Thank the gods that UTWoots is here to save us from poor-quality translations.
Stiff conversations are the crux of character development!
Used to be the case that only groups like Hadena realized this but thankfully UTWoots understands how to properly translate a show. See, people don’t speak like humans in SAO. And this was something that needed to be brought across in the subs. In this regard, UTWoots did an excellent job.
I must confess that with my limited intelligence I would have improperly edited the lines into something like
“Did you get left out too?”
“Not exactly.”
“They all seemed to know each other so I just kept to myself.”
Good thing they don’t have editors such as myself on their team, otherwise things would have ended very poorly.
Only weaklings would want proper inflections in their subs that allow lines to be read as they’d be naturally said. (In the first screen, the second “they” would be italicized. In the second, the “do” would.)
This reminds of the story of the scorpion and the frog.
One day a scorpion came upon a frog on the bank of a river.
“Good sir, would you mind ferrying me across the river on your back?” the scorpion asked the frog.
“But scorpion-kun, won’t you stab me with your stinger if I do so?” queried the frog.
“Oh frog-san, if I did that, we’d both drown. Clearly, it is not in my best interest to do so.” replied the scorpion.
The frog thought about this for a bit and then decided he would accept the scorpion’s request.
As they crossed the river, the scorpion stabbed the frog. Poison coursing through his body, the frog asked the scorpion, “Why?”
“Well, frog-kun,” replied the scorpion, “it’s in my nature to create shitty subtitles. I don’t even know how to use italics in Aegisub. Sucks for any moron who thought my subtitle release for SAO would be good.”
The frog realized he made a terrible mistake, and then they both drowned.
Sasuga UTWoots. Proper tenses are for the lowest class of fansubbers. And the line makes great sense, clearly backing up his argument that because beta testers are untrustworthy, non-beta testers are also untrustworthy. UTWoots logic FTW.
They needn’t dirty their hands with lines like,
“If they refused to watch our backs in the beginning, how the hell could we trust them in our parties now?”
axe = British English
ax = American English
UTWoots: bridging the cultural divide between British English and American English! While the rest of the subs use sensible American English standards, UTWoots offers an olive branch to our British English-speaking friends. Top form, UTWoots and a cheerio to you all.
Trying English is hard for UTWoots, but they deserve praise for their subs anyway. No other groups can come close to this quality.
(“Try putting some of this on the bread.”)
Actually, that’s butter.
Cream it is. Another excellent translation from UTWoots.
A normal human might say “Get the hell out of there.” but these are not subs provided by normal people.
These subs were delivered to us on high by the greatest fansubbers of all time. Accept this awkward translation as the gift that is. After all, it’s free and that means you can’t complain.
An em-dash is used to cut off lines that are incomplete, not those that are already– UTWoots subs best subs.
The past tense is for the weak. True fansub groups only look at the present and beyond.
You are an inspiration, UTWoots.
here -> this one
Only fools specify.
Literal translations are the best ones. Something like “From now on, don’t compare me to those other beta testers.” would be way too direct and to-the-point.
And missing the point is what UTWoots does best.
Results
Watchability: Watchable.
Visual grade: D+
Script grade: B-
Overall grade: C+
I guess it takes two groups to deliver a subpar CR edit. I wonder how much worse they’d be on their own.
Edit: I will be changing my review set-up to include xy-vsfilter which will make subs like this release appear as intended. Obviously, this will significantly affect their visual grade. But I’m not gonna redo this episode review. I’ll just review episode 3 or later and mark it as re-review.
Is it me or you actually questioned the very translation a couple of times? Not exactly your style, is it now?
Ha-ha, that was refreshing. Well, serves me right for brandname worshiping. Also
>Everyone knows that the 1st Floor boss is found at the top of the tower… on the 100th floor.
Each floor connected to next one by the tower, nothing wrong with this line.
I think there was a discussion about this at one point. “Floor” should really be “Level” in that context, it makes more sense.
“…Today, my party found the stairs going to the top most floor of that tower. That is, tomorrow—or, at the latest, the day after tomorrow—we will reach it: the first floor’s… boss room!”
That’s how it was written in the LN, each floor is composed by a maze, with more floors. It’s confuse, but it’s not really a translating mistake.
I never called it a mistake, but it is a messy concept overall.
Wasn’t really aimed at you, just looked like a good place to post it. Sorry about that.
Ah, no problem mate.
Because the light novel translations are clearly official.
That translation is kind of bad. The meaning behind the original line is that the stairs they found will allow them to advance up the tower a bit and finally make some headway towards the top of the tower (not directly to it), because they hadn’t even gotten up to the 2nd floor at that point. And the boss fight is implied because there’s always a boss fight before moving on to the next floor.
The meaning behind the original line is that Diabel’s party found the boss room “at the top (highest level/floor) of that tower”, where “that tower” means tower to the next floor.
So translation isn’t bad, I would say that anime explanation how things work is rather insufficient.
ofc, but the meaning is. (totally wrong)
Dark Sage, thanks for UTWoot’s SAO, but that was an unexpected grade, so I hope to see NyanTaku’s tonight!
Assuming D_S saw my comment and accepted my request, you won’t be seeing a NyanTaku review until Episode 3 at least.
Oh, gotta wait then, oh, and Jeffrey-sama, what’s with the OP font, in episode 2 of your SAO?
What about it? I don’t see anything wrong with it.
I’m not sure who’s in charge of styling but I’m going to guess asking the KFXer/K-Timer (i.e. Calyrica), assuming your issue with the font is that you don’t like it, is your best bet.
No, I like it, the font’s different, than the first episode, it’s no biggy, but I was pointing it out for fix, for the batch.
I maaaay or may not have forgotten to mux the OP font in.
Possibly.
The dangers of doing thing server-side.
We know about the date sign and the trying thingy. The other stuff you mentioned was a bit of a stretch, though.
Midnight coat sounds like ‘coat for midnight’. (hella gay) ax. wat. butter. wat.
We chose to an8 during certain scenes if the timing overlapped badly. Original TL starting ep 3 btw.
‘that’s not the case’ is fine. you’re really reaching in this review, dude. :/
>original TL
Wow, trying to make the release even worse?
Are you dumb?
No, I think you might be though.
Let me summarize what I think your logic here is.
Wow, we did a pretty poor job editing CR->Hey, let’s edit an original translation which is even harder->This will make our release better.
You really don’t see the problem with this? There are much better solutions like finding a better editor. Not to mention CR’s translation is almost guaranteed to be better and faster than yours, because they have the scripts and more than few hours to translate. Translating a simulcast is the mark of an idiot.
not faster with a cr being a 6 hour delay now. also, i’m saying you’re stupid for thinking you know how good our tls are/which tl we’re using.
Yes, even translating when CR has a 6 hour delay is stupid because you don’t release in less than 6 hours. Also, none of your translators are better than anyone at CR. Sorry!
lrn 2 math. if you net a faster release tling 6 hours early than editing a cr script (start 6 hours later + editing/timing etc time), it’s faster.
(don’t wanna spam up the comment section with mindless bickering, if you wanna talk more, just pm me)
Maybe, but your translator can’t do a better job. Fairly sure the show has no CCs. Mostly I’m annoyed that you think translating this yourself will result in a better release. The translation is fine. The problem is clearly with the editor (and by that I mean I’m not sure they speak English).
PM’d you.
CR’s short delay this week is probably just a one-time thing. They haven’t changed the simulcast time on the show page, so they were probably just running a bit late this week.
That just makes this even funnier.
We knew beforehand about it being an extra hour late this week. Don’t know what their situation is, though.
CR translations are honestly pretty hit-and-miss. Sure, some are great and most are acceptable, but others not so much.
There’s at least one guy they really need to fire. The shows I’m concerned about don’t list the translator credits but it definitely feels like the same TL. Tons of extremely lazy lines (either the translator was struggling with story comprehension or just didn’t give a shit), what I like to call “hipster translations” (insistence on being “creative” with lines, to the point of producing incomprehensible garbage, when a more conservative translation would have made more sense), and stupid dictionary translations where localization is necessary (like ignoring puns in Nichijou, which last I checked was a comedy show. Or ruining the punchline of InuBoku episode 6, which I’m still irked about).
I also remember hearing simulcast translations are pretty rushed. You’re not gonna make a living unless you turn out two, three episodes a day.
*shrug* $0.02
There’s only one show this season (Natsuyuki) where CR is easily worse than the average fan translator. The rest of the shows are either about the same quality (Moyashimon, Yuru Yuri), or considerably better (Tari Tari, Jintai, Space Bros).
Well, those are the only ones I watch/edit this season, but that’s a damn good ratio.
Jintai’s translation sucks. The translator has no sense of character and you get nonsensical clusterfucks like the “masked monster” line.
Episode 1 was bad, but 2 and 3 were great.
I’m not sure what you’re basing your judgments of TL quality on, but 2 had some pretty damn derpy lines (“It’s the chickens! Or I guess you could call them the chickens.” Yeah, did the translator seriously think this was witty?). Watched 3 live so I haven’t seen CR’s version yet. I doubt I’ll be impressed.
Sorry, not everyone (more like not anyone) can translate Romeo well (let alone perfectly). My point is not that the translation is amazing and perfect and has nothing wrong, just that it’s better than fan translators by a mile. I have no seen any fan translation recently that can approach Jintai. That’s all.
I don’t expect perfection, but when a translator lacks the comprehension skills to get a simple joke like that, it hardly inspires confidence in the rest of the translation. There are basic, basic mistakes here (“Just the nuance”? Does the TL not understand how particles work? I thought they taught “de” in first semester Japanese) and in other shows on Crunchy (whoever did InuBoku can’t tell the difference between a noun and an adjective, and also doesn’t know what 適当 means). I’ve seen plenty of fan translations that don’t make me facepalm nearly as much as this “professional” one.
Not to mention the TL is clearly too lazy to do background research (“cut her hair after losing a bet”? But wasn’t it later explained that cutting her hair was punishment for a failure in a previous adventure? Somebody didn’t bother to read novel summaries on Wikipedia…). At the least, a good fan translator will have the dedication to look into the source material.
I’m finishing up the first LN of Jintai at the moment, and yeah, it looks like hell to translate. My sympathies to the localization staff, but I find this unacceptable from a paid service.
Please direct me to these good fan translations because from what I can see they’re either flat-out wrong or too literal to matter.
I’d like to avoid the drama of dragging other fansub group names into the discussion (CR is a paid service, so they’re always an acceptable target). If I mention group names it’s guaranteed to start a shitstorm, and this comment column has gotten thin enough as it is.
In any case, I hope you, of all people, have not forgotten how much of CR’s staff is composed of former fansubbers. Was the last generation of fan translators really that super amazing godly compared to the current one?
Again, I don’t know what you’re basing your judgments of TL accuracy on, but your standards of “too literal to matter” probably differ significantly from my own. Even if I gave examples of fan translations I liked, I’m sure you could lump them under that umbrella, and this is really not the best place to beat a zombified horse of translation style.
No, they aren’t any better than current fantranslators (well, maybe some of them), but they also get way more time and access to the scripts. This automatically improves the translation considerably.
As far as literal goes, I don’t mean you can’t translate literally and still have a good translation, just that part of a good translation is sound good in English which is not very easily if you translate literally.
All that extra time, plus script access, and CR’s translator still messed up basic particles, idioms, and vocabulary? Wow, that takes skill.
As for script access and time, some shows have closed captions, not every fansubber is on a speedsub schedule, and as mentioned earlier, I’m pretty sure the CR translators are just as rushed. They may have a nice buffer, but I’d be surprised if a TL took more than 4 hours average on an episode, considering how many episodes a week you need to do to make a decent living.
Point being, it’s far from certain that a simulcast TL will always be better than a fan TL.
He’s right, I do suck the fat one.
How could they possibly mistake “cream” with “butter” when she clearly said “cream”? Oh, UTWoots, your hearing skills never fail to amaze me!
Except it’s butter. Kneejerk all you want though.
Given that this was one of the (relatively) few changes that I made that stuck, I’d like to point out that there are many kinds of edible cream, and some of them are spread on breads and other baked goods. It could have been clotted cream, for example. See your beloved Wikipedia for more information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cream
Seriously, do you store butter in jars? I heard you were kind of a gourmand, but that’s pushing it.
*tall jars, even
Guess I should explain. Most butter these days are sold in packaged sticks and dishes. If you were to put it into a jar, that would mean removing the wrapper and breaking the outer “skin” of the butter (since most jars aren’t stick-shaped), which increases the surface for oxidation. This means it goes rancid more quickly, and even before it goes completely bad, it’ll taste bitter.
Yeah, the original side story calls it yogurt cream.
Here’s the line straight out of it:
あのヨーグルトクリームがあれば、一コルの黒パンも立派なご馳走だ。
Danke.
Well fuck me with a pair of rusty pliers.
I can’t believe it’s not butter.
Made my day.
Even thought the conversation in the show mention cream?
Goddamnit worudo, nobody asked you.
I love to add oil to fire.^_^ Is that wrong?
http://www.crymore.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/UTWoots_Sword_Art_Online_-_02_720p120D9768.mkv_snapshot_21.51_2012.07.21_16.13.40-1024×576.jpg
What? No comment about this screen, Dark_Sage?
The “Disolve” sign is the studio’s fault.
“Disolve” is part of the show, not the typesetting.
Doesn’t mean it can’t be fixed if someone spends some time on it. This is actually from the frame before, because I wasn’t really paying attention to whatever the screenshot was for, but here:
http://i.minus.com/iSU5KMhJVYB8h.png
I would just need to find a font, etc. etc. The sign from the screenshot could also be done too. It would take more time with 3 different colors…but it CAN be done.
I’m not sure it’s translator’s job to fix mistakes are found in original source…
Besides, all that English everywhere is just for it to be cool to Japanese idiots who never learn proper English. (Blame Fairy Tail for it.)
>if someone spends some time on it.
For the batch, probably.
But they got A+ on Nyaa. They must be the best. Who are you to judge with your screenshots and lines?
Oh, Herkz, you never change.
I’m sure the overlords who helped Nyaa decide who got A+ looked very carefully at all the groups doing this show. The only thing I can assume are the other groups are even worse. This show must be very hard.
>Implying anyone downloads shit based on Uncle Nyaa’s grades.
Well, I’m sure whoever gets A+ on a highly contested show like this does get more downloads. I just think it’s hilarious how biased it is. I wonder if Raze even had to say anything or this time Nyaa just automatically gave it to them without any consideration. I know for some other shows there’s at least like 3-5 lines of discussion.
Okay, I was about to say “look at Hadena’s DLs” but then I compared the Accel World releases, and it looks like people are finally starting to wake up.
Nyaa has grades? Wut. New thing learned every day.
Not grades, just a blue highlight, which means they–whomever “they” are–think it’s the best release.
Every time I see a “UTW” reviews, you’re always there to say “But they got A+ on Nyaa.” Butthurt much?
Not sure how you give the visuals a D+. All the typesetting and karaokes look great to me.
D+ might be harsh but uh it’s not exactly good.
It all looks really good IMO. Dunno how Hatsuyuki gets a C- when they didn’t bother to typeset several signs, and judging from the screenshots, UTWoots’ signs are equal to or better on all accounts. UTWoots’ karaokes are also leagues better. I suspect D_S’s computer sucks and/or his player isn’t configured to play the karaoke properly since he mentioned it lags.
My computer doesn’t suck. The issue is that I’m not using a GotWoot-approved media player. (I’m using CCCP default as the test environment for everyone’s subs.)
Get your xy-vsfilter
It’s not like configuring your player to work with this release will break it for others. You’d be increasing the compatibility and taking nothing away. You shouldn’t rely on a CCCP default install just because that’s what idiot leechers do. Gotta get with the times, man.
The goal is to achieve an experience that most people will get while watching your subs. I figured CCCP default would be the best option considering we fansubbers always told leechers to use that.
CCCP was the target because leechers used to watch stuff in VLC 0.8.6 and WMP and whine about stuff looking like shit. Now that most people have gotten the message (or at least, for example, moved on to VLC 2.0.x), I don’t think it’s unfair to move the bar a little.
You need to do a few additional things (use xy-vsfilter, mainly). The only reason anyone tells anyone to use CCCP is because they don’t want to take the time to explain what needs to be done for proper playback or they don’t know themselves. CCCP isn’t required, it’s just what lazy/dumb people use.
All right, I will add xy-vsfilter to my test suite (sounds super professional, eh?). You’ll get a re-review for episode 3 or later. Still leaving this one up though.
Ask Sutai to help you with the install, it’s tricky.
Not anymore; they now have an installer with the release of xy-vsfilter 3.0.0.53.
Yeah? Is it CCCP compatible?
I have to say that I don’t get this. Why use a fork of a non-standard project as the standard? It only runs on Windows. As an added bonus, the first line on the page indicates that the project is on hiatus.
It’s cool that a subs group makes an effort to have their show look great under optimised conditions, but if it looks like crap on any reasonable system, it should be called out for that.
Because it’s still more updated than vanilla vsfilter and supports useful things like specifying the color matrix in the .ass file.
I’m pretty sure it’ll end up as the included CCCP sub renderer soon enough.
To be fair, xy-vsfilter is not free of bugs. I remember the time we inexplicably broke something in an episode of InuBoku, despite having perfectly legal and well-formed tags in the line. Everything displayed fine in normal vsfilter, but apparently xy’s parser got confused.
RHE’s Nisemonogatari kara used to outright crash xy-vsfilter until they patched it. Good times.
One of the reasons I use normal vsfilter. It also has installer and 64-bit version. Don’t see a point of preferring xy.
No. That’s not true at all. You guys had two simple fades on 1 line. Only 1 simple fade is valid. Sure it should have ignored the second one, but your typesetter didn’t catch the fuck up, and it was problem-free when the fuck up was removed from the line. So it’s a case of avoidable scenarios that weren’t avoided.
I’m not sure which line you’re talking about. I’m referring to the ending song in episode 5 (which doesn’t include any fades) where xy failed to render in-line vector drawing shapes. We carefully checked this one and consulted several people, and it was determined that it was a bug.
http://i.imgur.com/5YVLd.jpg
http://code.google.com/p/xy-vsfilter/issues/detail?id=81
ar thought you were talking about this: http://code.google.com/p/xy-vsfilter/issues/detail?id=78
Oh yeah, that one was a TS derp that we caught and fixed for the batch.
I’m going to try not trolling for once and seriously ask why mplayer isn’t ever recommended. I admittedly haven’t used it extensively in Windows, but it seemed to work more or less the same. With the default gui (smplayer), everything pretty much just works. It doesn’t require any fancy “configuring” and will play anything you can throw at it without the need for shitty codec packs.
To be completely honest, no one mentions it because it is not just a straightforward install and configuration like VLC or CCCP is.
Is there a good reason for it? No, not really. It uses libass and has reasonably OK video quality. However, it is not directshow-based and thus you cannot fee it through any other directshow filters. On Windows, MPC-HC with xy-vsfilter, LAV Filters and MadVR will tend to bring you the best quality while displaying proper subs 99% of the time. The downside is the usage of your system resources.
Good job, keyboard. fee->feed
I thought mplayer was just a binary install on Windows. As for filters, I’m not entirely clear on what you want, but you can do all kinds of craziness with mplayer if you want — the “deblock” filter from the gui is great at making old low-bitrate encodes look decent, and there are a large variety of others if you’re unhappy with the video quality.
I don’t quite get the point about video quality. The encode is the encode and all players will display it pretty much the same (assuming the player can handle these 10 bit shenanigans).
It is a binary install (or just an extraction for the portable version), though of course you can compile it yourself if you really want. I like mplayer (SMPlayer) as well. Out of all players out of the box, it’s what I’d choose. I take around the portable version on my USB flash drive.
Normally I use MPC-HC, LAV Filters, madVR, sometimes some ffdshow or AviSynth video filters, but that’s just because some videos could use a little cleaning up. Also, on some non-anime footage, it could be more useful to be able to select different madVR scaling algorithms.
Please do bother to read my post. I said there’s really no good reason that it isn’t recommended, thus agreeing with you.
I’m talking about mplayer2 & smplayer on WINDOWS, by the way.
You’re right in that an encode is an encode, and all players will “pretty much” display it the same. But like I said, if you want the highest absolute quality, you would use the playback chain I mentioned. gl3 is nice, but not perfect. Subtitle rendering performance is not as good as xy-vsfilter currently (I have subs that do a spin on steins;gate ED, and it cannot handle it). Also, the newest builds of aegisub are using xy-vsfilter, so that’s a good reason to use it. And you can only do that on a directshow player.
Not to mention, you can’t have MadVR do upscaling, and the scaler in mplayer leaves a lot of room for improvement.
Also, there are certain people in the community who do recommend it just because it’s a better version of VLC (in that it renders subtitles MUCH more correctly) and it is pretty much plug and play, but it is far from the perfect solution. Spend the extra 10 minutes and configure a good directshow player to ensure the best future compatibility. Again, I mean this on WINDOWS. But that should have been obvious with the directshow references…
If you use linux and still don’t use mplayer you need to uninstall your linux and go back to windows. Or mac or whatever.
(Yes, I’ve seen posts from people trying to run cccp on wine… goddammit…)
I don’t care about Hatsuyuki because they’re retards. I’m just saying that the pictures of the typesetting in this review make it seems pretty bad.
http://www.crymore.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/UTWoots_Sword_Art_Online_-_02_720p120D9768.mkv_snapshot_00.15_2012.07.21_13.31.12.jpg
Not very good. Try making another layer below that’s whatever color it should be with like 3-5 blur and move it down and to the right a few pixels.
http://www.crymore.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/UTWoots_Sword_Art_Online_-_02_720p120D9768.mkv_snapshot_00.47_2012.07.21_14.05.18.jpg
The group logo looks really out of place.
http://www.crymore.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/UTWoots_Sword_Art_Online_-_02_720p120D9768.mkv_snapshot_02.11_2012.07.21_14.43.17.jpg
Dunno why this is so blurry.
http://www.crymore.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/UTWoots_Sword_Art_Online_-_02_720p120D9768.mkv_snapshot_03.30_2012.07.21_14.54.17.jpg
http://www.crymore.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/UTWoots_Sword_Art_Online_-_02_720p120D9768.mkv_snapshot_04.08_2012.07.21_15.07.21.jpg
Not even close.
http://www.crymore.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/UTWoots_Sword_Art_Online_-_02_720p120D9768.mkv_snapshot_10.20_2012.07.21_15.41.31.jpg
See above. (also, the date is wrong which I’m pretty sure he takes points off for)
http://www.crymore.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/UTWoots_Sword_Art_Online_-_02_720p120D9768.mkv_snapshot_17.33_2012.07.21_15.58.45.jpg
Should be lighter, but this is probably the best so far.
http://www.crymore.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/UTWoots_Sword_Art_Online_-_02_720p120D9768.mkv_snapshot_17.49_2012.07.21_15.59.43.jpg
No.
http://www.crymore.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/UTWoots_Sword_Art_Online_-_02_720p120D9768.mkv_snapshot_20.33_2012.07.21_16.10.26.jpg
Don’t know why “Coat of Midnight” is not above the Japanese text. Also, the colors for the rest are too dark and the alignment is way off.
http://www.crymore.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/UTWoots_Sword_Art_Online_-_02_720p120D9768.mkv_snapshot_21.50_2012.07.21_16.13.35.jpg
Not sure what the typesetter is smoking, but I want whatever they’re having that makes them thinks the fonts look alike.
http://www.crymore.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/UTWoots_Sword_Art_Online_-_02_720p120D9768.mkv_snapshot_21.51_2012.07.21_16.13.40.jpg
Nope.
http://www.crymore.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/UTWoots_Sword_Art_Online_-_02_720p120D9768.mkv_snapshot_21.53_2012.07.21_16.14.01.jpg
See above.
http://www.crymore.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/UTWoots_Sword_Art_Online_-_02_720p120D9768.mkv_snapshot_23.37_2012.07.21_16.18.17.jpg
Border on “Next Episode” is too dark and the bottom part is too blurry.
Now, this is just from looking at some JPGs and only the ones he took screenshots of, but I’d have to say this is not very good. Like, average or below.
tl;dr, but the space for coat of midnight looks smaller above the text
(don’t get your feelings hurt though, i’m sure the ts will read it if he cares)
It is smaller, but less effort because he wouldn’t have to clip it.
doesn’t it look better in the middle, though?
No. Firstly, you can’t even read it since his finger moves over it. Secondly, all the other signs in that picture are above so I’d put it above for consistency.
>2012
>group logo
You spend more time arguing in the comment section than writing for Not Red.
Because this season instead of 1) reviewing episode 1 and 2) having like 2 signs for the shows that have little typesetting I’m waiting. Most shows will probably be at least episode 2 and 3 for reviews, maybe even more.
Sugoi hanashi. Poor frog.
http://www.crymore.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/UTWoots_Sword_Art_Online_-_02_720p120D9768.mkv_snapshot_10.20_2012.07.21_15.41.31-1024×576.jpg
Well fuck a duck. I need to fire myself as a translator. There’s no excuse for this :^
But episode 2 wasn’t done with a translator, it was done with CR’s script.
Unless UTWoots is lying.
Comment: 0,0:00:00.00,0:00:00.00,Default,,0,0,0,,CREDITSNTranslator: CrunchyrollNTLC: RazeNEditor: thecowgoesmooNTimer: Sapphi, janiceNTypesetter: JustawayNEncoder: JustawayNOP Translation: RazeNQC: Raze, Spoggerific
wtf, who credited me as editor?
…the script?
The script has me as editor in the crediTS. A person had to add me to the crediTS; that person would be the one who crediTED me (incorrectly) as an editor.
You’d know better than me who adds those credits.
Well, I was supposed to look at the script too, must have missed it when I scanned through it, lol.
Lol’ed so hard at the 2022年12月3日 translated as December 2nd, 2022.
I didn’t particularly like all of UTWoot’s lines when I watched the episode, but IMHO it makes sense for Kirito and Asuna to sound stiff. They’re supposed to be forever-alone types that can’t even talk to others in a video game. Believe it or not, some awkward people don’t speak fluent Dark_Sage-isms every time they open their mouths. The lines mostly sound like they could have come from humans.
Now, whether or not the awkward lines were intentional or resemble the awkwardness (or lack thereof) of the actual spoken dialogue is a different matter.
That last line doesn’t make too much sense; I’m mostly just talking about the Kirito/Asuna exchange at the top of the section. For the last line, maybe they were looking for this: “From now on, don’t group me with those other testers [beta testers].” And awkward people can still use italics on the “do.”
“Blur Man Group”. At first I thought that this was a typo, but then I got the joke.
How is that that TWO fansubbing group translated the dates wrong.
Have you ever tried reading Arabic numerals? How can ANYONE tell the difference between ‘2’ and ‘3’?! I’m surprised no-one has mistaken ‘月’ and ’日’ yet!
Blame crunchyroll and lazy TLCing :^
Does that mean the TLC that was supposed to TCL that TCLing is a lazy TCL too?
> “UTWoots” named 24 times in the article
Fansubbing’s saviors deserve no less in the SEO department.
About 2% of our traffic is from Google. I wouldn’t worry if I were them.
That scorpion story was priceless. Good job, D_S.
> Cuz “Midnight Coat” would be a terrible name.
The katakana on screen is Engrish for “Coat of Midnight”, hence the translation.
We must preserve the word order of the original Japanese, even if it sounds like shit!
I hope you realize that I’m dripping with sarcasm here.
It would end up confusing and inconsistent when they pronounce coat of midnight on the show and having the translation read midnight coat.
I personally don’t see what’s wrong with Coat of Midnight. RPGs tend to make out concepts as entities in nomenclature a lot, don’t they?
Furthermore, is there something wrong with the word order? ‘Cloak of Darkness’ sounds a lot less retarded than ‘Darkness Cloak’, and is grammatical. Is there any particular reason to alter the words other than your debatable preference?
You don’t call a red coat a “Coat of Red” or a leather coat a “Coat of Leather”.
The ‘red’ in ‘red coat’ modifies the coat to make it red. ‘leather’ in ‘leather coat’ does the same thing. the ‘of midnight’ in ‘coat of midnight’ is meant to signify all of the linguistic connotations of midnight. (darkness, badassness, solitude, etc), just like ‘orb of solitude’ or ‘heart of darkness’.
‘Midnight’ in ‘midnight coat’ would modify the meaning of ‘coat’ to make it sound like a coat that you wear during midnight.
This naming scheme is typical for any fantasy (not just MMO) item that is meant to have thematic connotations, and is a basic feature of English.
Mm, gotcha. Points acknowledged and accepted.
o/
As an exercise, look at “Coat of Red”, some variations on that, and what they imply.
Red Coat
-> ordinary coat that’s colored red
Coat of Red
-> did this coat belong to some dude named Red? Erik the Red? or it’s imbued with a Red element property. doesn’t make sense to use to describe a coat that’s just colored red.
Coat of the Red
-> coat worn by those of the Red Order, or some such
Crimson Coat
-> this sounds potentially bloody, just by making the red more specific
Coat of Crimson
-> doesn’t really make sense
Phrasing matters.
In addition to the point Sapphi made (which I was typing up, before the post showed)…
In many games, even by Western developers, “X of Y” naming really is used for lots of equipment and items.
e.g.
http://baldursgatehaven.net/index.php?topic=31.0
Flipping word orders is fine if the original doesn’t make any sense or has no precedence, but that’s not the case here.
This could all be a non-issue if an rpg word was used like “Cloak” or something…
I’d wear a Cloak of Midnight.
Oh, just read down a bit and saw that it was hardcore engrish. I hate it when they do that.
Is what he’s wearing really a cloak? Looks more like a coat to me, but maybe I’m betraying my ignorance in all manner of overgarments.
I’m not sure which Engrish you’re referring to, but just checking…everybody realizes that what I linked was an item list for Baldur’s Gate (2), the classic and acclaimed D&D-based PC game by BioWare? BioWare’s from English-speaking Canadia; their current famous IPs are Mass Effect and Dragon Age.
Anyway, my point was that “X of Y” names are in Western RPGs as well as JRPGs.
My original suggestion was “midnight cloak” (which sounds badass) but then I looked up what a cloak actually is and they don’t have arms. Coat is a more appropriate term. Midnight coat does sound kinda meh, so I deleted it from the review earlier this morning.
I don’t really have a problem with “Coat of Midnight”. It sounds like a pretty typical item name for a JRPG.
Next topic: Can cream possibly be yellow?!
I’m not sure, but if they outright say it’s cream I’m not gonna disagree. Japan’s weird.
They also put ketchup on rice. Ain’t gunna re-tl it to tomato sauce.
TL Note: Cream means cream.
Reminds me of:
http://img6.imagebanana.com/img/oy2iwxbq/e632bf43aa4d10_full.jpg
XD
“Actually, that’s butter.”
I thought it was some sort of cream, it didn’t even look like butter. Oh well, thanks for a good review, though some of your suggestions felt awkward. “Retreat” works better than “Get the hell out of here” considering the context of a MMO. Then again, who am I to bitch~
http://www.crymore.net/2012/07/fansub-review-utwoots-sword-art-online-episode-02/#comment-24238
I hope he realizes how dubious some of his suggestions are from reading the comment section.
Half the comments are whining about how “coat of midnight” is just fine and shit about how one line in the LN invalidates all logical context in a scene. You really expect that to rock my world?
You don’t handle criticism well, do you?
Idk what specs you machine has but this episode did not lag in my i3 [email protected] so i recommend you to check if your PC doesn’t need some maintenance or idk use other codecs.
I think this review was very well done, my only slight grief would have to be with the “Midnight Coat” comment, but I dont rest the blame on you at all. The reason is the Japanese text for the name of the coat has romaji of “kooto ofu middonaito”. So the actual name is Coat of Midnight, which i also think sounds better than Midnight Coat, but thats just my opinion. Either way I dont blame you, since you cant blame a person for not being able to read a language they dont know.
>kooto ofu middonaito
Ahahaha, Engrishing it for better effect; I like that.
It seems that you don’t understand the trail of though only available to The Enlightened of the fansub business…
“Damn! That stupid fool of a scriptwriter in the japanese animation studio wrote something that won’t sound good in English… Guess we’ll have to rewrite it for him…”
To be fair the Japanese constantly do this all the time. I think “Coat of Midnight” sounds okay in this example but if the name was super hardcore Engrish that sounded totally retarded, you’d be pretty retarded yourself to leave it in.
>Beater
You add no value reviewing a fansub when you don’t understand both Japanese and English.
Wait, this guy reviews fansubs without knowing Japanese?
I see you’re new here.
I don’t fucking understand why would anyone have a single problem with Coat of Midnight. That’s how items are called in RPGs.
Didn’t look like butter to me. At all.
You don’t put butter on top of fucking bread crust, D_S.
Speak for yourself. This is America, we fucking DEEP FRY our butter as well.
Touché.
Shit always blows up when anything with UTW in the name gets a bad grade.
I know, ive noticed that too XD. Its like its taboo to give UTW a bad grade. They aren’t immunte to being critisized even if they are UTW.
In all fairness though, Dark_Sage does seem to be especially harsh on them.
I thought BBCode was supposed to work now? :/
nope it broke.
That’s what I’ve been thinking too. It’s like he’s giving his BEST MAX to bash the groups with a huge fanboy horde. Look at his review of SS-Eclipse’s version of SnS 3 lol
To be fair, those subtitles really were horrible.
Yes, they were. Eclipse is not very good at editing and have no QC.
Yeah, I know that, but my point was about the way Seiji-kun says that to the world lol
Now, I’m not D_S, however, it would only make sense that you would grade someone or in this case, a subgroup, more strictly if they are known to be one of the best. If you were grading two essays, one from a freshman college student and one from an English major who already has his bachelors, you would obviously grade the bachelors much more harsh as the freshman student still has a lot more to learn.
Not if you use a tier system.
I don’t really think my grades should reflect any bias for or against a group, so if one group is more popular than another it shouldn’t affect the overall grade.
I think it’s obvious by now, but I don’t apply the same standards to my tone. So when I get to groups that everybody worships for no apparent reason, you’re not gonna see me stroking any egos. I think this makes them more interesting to read because I don’t think anyone’s coming here for a boring, clinical analysis.
That’s why you’ll sometimes see comments like “Jeez, they got a C+? I thought you were going to give then a D!” (I could write a fucking paper on this and why I do what I do, but I’m on break so I’d rather not.)
Fair, though? Assuming this was the final grade and I wasn’t doing a re-review, the arguments here would only have convinced me into a B for the script. This wasn’t an amazingly perfect script that I just magically found issues with; I did think it could have been better.
The visuals brought it down a lot because it did lag on my computer and the typesetting/karaoke didn’t display right. If I can’t watch part of a show because the karaoke lags, and if the karaoke is unreadable of course I’m going to have issue with it. And that’s going to drag the score down quite a bit.
So I think the score’s legit but I do see how the way I wrote it would cause some confusion.
The problem isn’t your tone, it’s your crazy suggestions, yo.
But o/ for re-review.
You should see my suggestions off the meds. Remember Softenni?
The em-dash after crap was used correctly.
He was actually going to say Crappola, but he was cut off mid-word.
The karaoke didn’t look blurry on mine, it looked very sharp. Maybe it’s my max texture resolution.
The karaoke didn’t lag for me…
Asuna said “Cream” yet you complained that UTWoots didn’t translate it as “butter”?
Did you know that loan words don’t always have the exact same meaning as in the language the word was borrowed from? I know, crazy, right? I hope you’ll still be able to sleep at night in spite of this new revelation.
To be perfectly fair, though, in this instance it does seem–assuming that she actually said クリーム–to mean cream (see http://www.jisho.org/words?jap=クリーム), though it may very well be that usage still varies from how the English word is used.
Neither the karaoke lag, nor it is butter. It seems D_S is giga harsh on UTWoots.
The grade aside, there’s a lot of aggression here. I mean I’ve seen you review F-tier stuff and rate it as an F but still be less harsh.
I could have just missed it, but I also didn’t see either group sting themselves up to be “saviours” either.
I think a review of Episode 3 will be fair because it’s their own translation and no CR script anymore.
There’s nothing really wrong with “Coat of Midnight” That’s how items in MMO’s are called.
Even in a western WoW us client, my characters when I used to play had Vial of Darkness, Wrath of Unchaining, Jaw of Repudiation, Eye of Unmaking, Pauldrons of Radiance, Greatsword of the Sindorie, OTOMH etc etc. It’s just an MMo thing.
Same thing goes for axe/ax, I’ve never played a single mmo that used ax, instead of axe, even western ones.
Both Guild wars 2, and WoW, both made in america use axe in the US clients, you can even see it on the items themselves, http://us.battle.net/wow/en/item/72814
Considering the whole show is about an MMO you should really put some consideration into that in your reviews.
Was cool besides those two, safe.
Why the fuck are you bringing up something I edited out of the review days ago? You should put some consideration into your literacy.
I only read it today and the Axe part is still there.
The coat of midnight thing was my bad I probably read it in another comment instead.