This post was written by Dark_Sage. He is Dark_Sage.
Funi is obsessed with commas, but the end-product is actually not that bad.
Table of Contents
Release Information
Episode details.
Visual Review
Typesetting.
Official subs have advanced so far since 2012. Now instead of just \an8’ing a line (\an8 shoves a line to the top-middle of the screen), they \an8 the line and put quotes around the translated sign.
Great job, Funimation!
Translated credits because we totally give a shit about this.
Overall, the typesetting was… actually not too bad. I was surprised that they put in enough effort on the majority of the signs to make it look like they were that way in the original Japanese release.
Other.
The timing in this episode was often off. I don’t usually care about timing but the scene bleeds were annoying.
Black bars suck, the font wasn’t great (but it wasn’t yellow!), and I’m not a fan of using dashes to indicate who’s speaking in a given screen. However, I’m aware that they do face technical limitations, so I suppose this is the best they could do without hardsubbing.
Script Review
Main Script.
You don’t capitalize “sophomore”, so why the fuck would you capitalize “2nd-Year”?
Oh god, “Senpai” in italics? The gates to hell have been opened. But whatever. It’s a valid, if outdated, style.
Also, for those reading this who noticed the “, too” there… Yeah, it’s not strange to see six commas in a sentence in this release. I’ll bitch about them if they’re absolutely wrong, but just know my right eye was twitching the entire time I was watching this.
Maybe this is the 1:1 translation, but it doesn’t make sense as a viewer of the English version.
I could interpret this as “Hmm? This guy’s eyes don’t show emotion.” or “Hmm? This guy’s eyes don’t match his smile.”
Both are similar, but I’d rather have a more specific translation than a wishy-washy one.
I really, really hate this method of stuttering. I think it should be Y-Your here, to match the capitalization of the first letter. “I” wouldn’t be stuttered as “I-i” for example, so why are other words in these subs?
However, I do accept it as a difference in English styles, so I’m not counting it as an issue.
Thanks for the lessons.
…Okay, I’d really like to fault Funi for this, but it actually makes sense in context. Cold Eyes-kun here is saying English words and Confused-chan here doesn’t understand what he’s saying because she never took an English class. So he’s explaining what the words mean to her. So yeah, not actually an issue. Clever work, Funi.
-in fact
+actually
You’d usually use a spaced en-dash here (American English rules with their non-spaced em-dashes are completely fucked and nobody should follow them).
Oh come on. You italicize your “senpai”s and “-chan”s but you don’t italicize word stresses? Priorities, Funi!
“He is a pro.”
Shit like this is why I really don’t like taking the “honto Japanese” approach to subs. You can keep in the honorifics and say “Hey, why are you acting so familiar with me?” (A more liberal line would be “Hey, why are you acting so buddy-buddy with me?”)
See? Works just fine without resorting to… this.
Okay, first off, let’s pretend that only Keiko was telling ghost stories. How would the line look then?
“This is all because Keiko was telling ghost stories!”
Okay, now let’s do the same with Michiru.
“This is all because Michiru was telling ghost stories!”
And now, let’s go with Brownie-chan.
“This is all because me was telling ghost stories!”
OR
“This is all because I was telling ghost stories!”
That right there was a pretty simple trick to figure out whether to use “me” or “I” in situations like this.
Final line:
“This is all because Keiko, Michiru, and I were telling ghost stories!”
Results
Watchability: Watchable.
Visual grade: B-
Script grade: B
Overall grade: B
Well, well, well. This was quite a surprise. Funimation actually performed pretty damn admirably here. I’m glad to see they put in a significant amount of effort into making the subs decent.
I suppose I’d like the script more if they followed all of my preferences (and what really should be considered “best practices”), but it’s not like I’m going to drop their score too much for not subbing just for me.
Overall, this was a better-than-expected effort from Funimation and I hope all their subs are like this. (I really wouldn’t know because I prefer to watch dubs.)
Oh, and boo! Yeah, there weren’t any monsters in this episode so I’m sorry I couldn’t spook you. :(
I’ve actually heard “[blah blah]’s eyes don’t smile” used in American English before, though it certainly isn’t a very common expression. The phrase specifically implies that the smile is faked; as a result, “This guy’s eyes don’t show emotion” does not properly convey the meaning–this hinges on that being the intended meaning in the first place, of course.
On the other hand, “This guy’s eyes don’t match his smile” is certainly closer, and if I saw it in a script I wouldn’t alter it unless (1) the audio was very brief, and/or (2) characterization of the individual who spoke it was the thoughtful, poetic type. It’s a little bit wooden IMO.
Oh, also–parentheses in subtitles? Eww.
PS: Is “Base” means kichi (“base”) 2012’s “keikaku means plan”?
(feel free to combine these two comments)
Eyes are the gateway to the soul; he truth of a person’s
words are beheld in their eyes.
The phrase “Eyes don’t smile” is a shortened simile.
“His eyes don’t smile (like his mouth)” is a candidate
for its long version. In English, the equivalent expression/
phrase would be “His eyes don’t lie.”
>Funi is obsessed with commas
Tell me about it :(
Oh, give them their dues with the signs – they might be using {\a6} now, which is at least a different tag.
The en-dash confused me slightly because it doesn’t follow either rule – in written English, it should be without the spaces and in the fansub medium, we put spaces either side. This opts for a third variant, as yet unknown to English grammar :O
I thought whether or not em and en dashes had spaces was purely a stylistic choice.
It is, but it’s usually uniform — either spaces on both ends or spaces on neither end. Funi went with a space on one end and no space on the other end, which is… weird.
Funimation suck.
“However, I’m aware that they do face technical limitations, so I suppose this is the best they could do without hardsubbing.”
This sarcasm or legit? o.0 <– confused as usual.
Legit. There are technical limitations to DVDs concerning subtitles.
If this was a DVD – you can control position of every displayed pixel as well as give it one of four colors.
There’s a limit to the amount of information for every given line, meaning you can’t do complex redraws, but things like different colors for alternative lines or moving the text close to the sign (and even changing it’s orientation) are very well possible.
If this was a webstream, it depends on what format they used for the subtitles. However, all formats except txt allow for at least different colors and basic text formatting and positioning.
It was a DVD — the “Release Information” contains shots of the DVDs on my lap (which is why my choices were so weird — I was just going off random “spooky” things I found in my room).
I find the honorifics in italics hilarious, personally.
I’m gonna assume they fixed that for their newer releases. (These were 2008 subs.)
Well for Robotics;Notes, they still put honorifics in italics.
Goddamn.
Fixed? It’s a feature!
I dunno, I’d probably give the “me vs I” mistake a pass since it’s something a lot of people do in real life, and apparently Main Character Girl isn’t all that bright anyway.