Also called Kotonoha no Niwa. UPDATED
BIG FAT EDIT GOES HERE YO.
I demuxed Commie’s script (or rather grabbed it off AnimeTosho) and the scene that was missing subtitles for me was in fact in the script. I’m not sure what the issue could have been, but Commie DID NOT skip any scenes.
We have four groups contending today. Others have released this short movie, but I’m focusing only on the groups that put out a 720p release. If you just want a recommendation, that’s at the very end. Otherwise, I’ll do a review of the first 20 minutes (the June section) + ending song for each group, as that would be the normal content for an episode review.
Also, just a note for the filesizes here. I’m on a Mac, which rounds differently in converting between kb/mb/gb, so the numbers will be slightly different for you Windows users. However, it still stands that Commie’s is the smallest and CoalGirls is the biggest.
And can I just fangirl for a moment about how beautiful this short film is? I don’t even care about the plot at this point.
CoalGirls
Filesize: 1.91gb (720p)
English: American, no honorifics
Karaoke
Are you… Are you serious? You’re going to just treat this as dialogue even though it’s a song? Really?
Also, the line here is a bit awkwardly phrased, but the rest of the song is not nearly as bad. I’d have done:
You’re strong enough that my unchanging heart doesn’t cause you pain.
But that’s probably editor’s discretion.
Typesetting
Title screen was pretty plain, to be honest. A fancier font could probably have been picked.
Sign on the left is pretty standard, and the sign on the right is completely missing. But that’s not a surprise since…
More missing signs! The poem is missing in all of the releases, though, so I suppose I can’t hold it against them. The forms make me laugh, though. You couldn’t even style that? Really?
This is the worst, though. That styling doesn’t even fit in with the phone screen. Lazy mode + bad styling? Just no.
Script
Oh, boy. Lots of screenshots here. Unfortunately, most of the groups here had some of these errors, since they all used the same base translation and didn’t bother to fix all of them. However, CoalGirls didn’t seem to fix any of them.
Okay, Commie seemed to be able to handle this, but CoalGirls and Doki didn’t. You know what naphthalene is? Moth balls. That’s right. I know what a fucking moth ball is. I don’t want to have to pause the video to go look up what naphthalene is, though!
Doki had this issue, too. I guess “exit” is a verb, but this sounds terrible.
I walked through the station gates or I walked past the station gates or something besides “exit out”.
You don’t need a comma here. (This was fixed in the other two releases.)
Don’t put a comma after a conjunction. The conjunction itself acts as a pause. Would you say:
This is my first time here, but, I think I’ve seen her somewhere…
No! So why would you put the comma here? This is a pet peeve of mine. (This was fixed in the other two releases.)
Each group handled the tanka differently. CoalGirls and Doki kept in the Japanese at the top, which I didn’t really feel was necessary.
This is minor, and all three groups did it, but I thought I’d mention it here. Poetry in general does not conform to standard punctuation rules. However, poetry is also all printed on one page, so you know when a thought ends and another begins. That’s not the case with subtitles. Without ending punctuation of any kind on each line, I don’t know if the thought’s over or if I need to carry the line forward to the next. I’d advocate putting semicolons on the end of each line except the one that requires a question mark. Except Doki didn’t even put the question mark in, so…
Numbers under ten and multiples of ten are spelled out. This should be “five”. (This was fixed in the other two releases.)
Okay, so I’m being picky here. It’s obvious to me which connotation of “ran out” this conversation is meaning, but in general, the brothers don’t use a lot of words to converse. I’d have picked something a bit more definite like, “Left.” or “Not here.” or something. (I think the other two groups had this same issue.)
I think you accidentally a word here. (This was fixed in the other releases.)
Commie had this issue, too. I don’t think Doki did, though. Anyway, this is a beef I have often in subs. Everyone and their mothers wants to translate “ja” to “Well then.” Okay, fine. But if you do that, punctuate it correctly.
Let’s think about what’s going on here. She’s saying “Well,” and then moving on to another thought: “then I’m gonna go live with my boyfriend!” Which means you put a comma after “well”.
Usually, though, people put the comma after “then”. There are two ways in which the word “then” is used at the beginning of a clause:
“If it rains, then I’m gonna need an umbrella.” Here, “then” acts as a conjunction connecting the two thoughts and begins the independent clause.
“First, it will rain. Then, you grab an umbrella.” Here, “then” acts as an ordering word. This usage is usually only seen in how-to articles.
So which way are we using “then” here? Well, we’re not listing steps for how to do something, so the second way is out. Therefore, it’s the first. Indeed, everything following “then” is an independent clause, and “then” is joining “Well” with that independent clause. Thus, no comma after “then”, but a comma after “Well”.
But I’m really just getting ticked here because there’s no comma anywhere in that sentence.
If you use the apostrophe like this, you don’t spell out suppose entirely. I think it’s like ‘spose so or something. I don’t like using this myself, since starting a line with a lowercase letter is messed up in my opinion. I’d do like “Guess so.” to give the same vibe but not have the issue.
Missing a comma after myself. (Can’t remember if this was in the other groups or not.)
All three groups had this line, and it’s not really a mistake. It’s just that this line could be taken multiple ways. It could be taken “Drinking alone” as in she’s drinking by herself – which she probably did before MC-kun showed up, so it’s a valid interpretation. It could also be taken as that she’s drinking without eating anything, which is what he really means. I’d phrase it “Drinking on an empty stomach…” or something like that.
Extra comma. (Fixed in the other two releases.)
Um, this isn’t a sentence. It’s directly connected to the previous line. The line before should have had a comma, and this should have started with a lowercase letter. (This was fixed in the other two releases.)
Needs a comma after “to me”. (Only Commie fixed this.)
I know the rule of colons is lame, but I didn’t write the grammar guidebook. You just have to adhere to the rule that following a colon, you use a lowercase letter. Sorry. (Only Commie fixed this.)
Overall thoughts: Shitty karaoke (if it can be called karaoke), shitty typesetting (in the few cases they typeset anything), and no fixing of issues in the script. Add the fact that they have the biggest filesize to to the bunch, and you get a release that really doesn’t warrant downloading at all.
Commie
Filesize: 1.45gb (720p)
English: American, no honorifics
Karaoke
Very simple. I don’t think the yellow outline works after these few lines, as the background animation cycles through the seasons, and it sometimes clashes a bit or blends in with the colors. Same bad line here as with CoalGirls.
Typesetting
At first I was like, “You can make that font a bit more fancy, can’t you?” But then I was like, “Wow, that fade out is cool!” and so I forgive them.
Only group who put the month on top. I think I prefer it this way.
The sign on the left was done by the company. Lazy mode on the right much? But at least it matches.
Just like I expected, left sign wasn’t typeset, and right sign only had the title of the form. At least they tried, though! What they did looks nice.
A lot of signs weren’t typeset, just like in the CoalGirls version. Not gonna repeat screenshots just for that.
Script
They used the same base translation as CoalGirls, so many of these mistakes are similar, since they were in the source (like the “drinking beer alone” vagueness). I have repeated some of the screenshots just to show that the errors exist, and they’re also some of the more severe ones.
Styling was generally good, but the margins were very tiny.
First, this is how Commie dealt with the poem. At least it’s not a mess like CoalGirls or Doki. However, I do have the same issue with punctuation.
Think about this for a moment: “This morning” “has declared”.
Get rid of the “has” and you’re fine.
All three groups had this, actually. Prefectures can’t expect anything, since they’re inanimate.
Missing a comma after “yourself”. You managed the comma after “freak”, so was it really that hard?
The subs didn’t display here for me, but they do exist, sorry!
Overall thoughts: Mediocre kara, lots of missing typesetting, fairly decent script with a few mistakes that were common to all groups.
Doki
Filesize: 1.64gb (720p)
English: British, no honorifics
Doki usually does honorifics, or they have in the past, so I have nfi why they localized them other than because they were too lazy to change them all. I don’t blame them, really.
Karaoke
Doki has two styles for karaoke: their OP style, which is more cursive, and their ED style. This is their ED style. Yes, it’s plain. No, it doesn’t fit.
Typesetting
I did like what Doki did when the sign came on the screen. However, I like Commie’s fade out effect better.
Sign on the left is the same as Coalgirls, and no one bothered to do the sign on the right.
Doki’s the only group that typeset the letter. Hallelujah! Thank you, Doki!
There are issues with the sign on the right. At first, it looks like they didn’t match the colors at all. However, there was a shadow that was cast over the text, which moved. The styling matched the darker color from the shadow, but no longer matches. This is why you watch your signs to make sure everything’s not completely static. ;-)
I really really really like this. They typeset everything and it looks fantastic.
Script
They used the same base translation as CoalGirls and Commie, so many of these mistakes are similar, since they were in the source (like the “drinking beer alone” vagueness). I have repeated some of the screenshots just to show that the errors exist, and they’re also some of the more severe ones.
As far as the styling, they did really weird things with the outline for the dialogue. It’s blue for normal text and red for thoughts. Since thoughts are also italicized, I really don’t see why the border has to change so much, too, especially when the movie is mostly cool colors. It really stands out, and not in a good way.
I think you accidentally a word here, and that word is “like”. Also, isn’t that styling atrocious?
Here’s Doki’s poem. No capitalization, not even a question mark, let alone punctuation. By far the worst handling of this scene.
This happened a lot in Doki’s script, and it drove me up a wall. I don’t mind their obsession with ellipses. However, when the line calls for a comma, put a fucking comma there instead.
I believe this is British quotation/comma rules, but it looks like shit. Put a comma after thought and before the quotation mark instead of after.
Props to Doki for actually mentioning in the script that these guys are brothers. The other two releases stopped the line with “Hey!”
Unlike Commie, they translated this scene, too.
Overall thoughts: While they fixed some of the script issues that were in the source, they added a lot, too. Their typesetting was a lot more complete than the other groups, but the karaoke was shit.
WhyNot?
Filesize: 1.73gb (720p)
English: American, no honorifics
Their distro was so shit that the torrent only went at 3kb/s most of the time. Sorry. No one’s gonna grab that.
The reason why so much downloaded is that I let it go overnight, and it must have hit some speed bursts.
The TL;DR
WhyNot’s not even a contender here since I couldn’t manage to get their release.
Commie fixed the most script issues. Doki added even more from the original because of their ellipses. Script alone, Commie definitely won.
Doki did the most typesetting, and nearly all of it looked good, but Commie won the title screen. Visually, Doki came out on top.
No one did decent karaoke. They all sucked.
I’d say go with Commie overall, and if you want a ranking, Commie > Doki > CoalGirls, but I’m not happy with any of the offerings there.
Small screenies are small.
Larger screenshots please. I don’t want to have to click on every screen to see what the subtitles are saying.
Hover Zoom.
I just did what WordPress did as default, sorry. I’ll fix that for my future reviews.
Meh, I dled coalgirls. Did Commie even release it in 1080p? Cause I might as well re-dl if they did. Their site seems to be down right now, as well gg and THORA for some strange reason.
Speaking of THORA, they released this movie too.
I like the screenies, they make it faster to scroll down.
>before the quotation mark instead of after.
Every time I read an English book I ask myself: “Why do you do this?”. The comma doesn’t belong to the quote, so it’s much more logical to put it afterwards, isn’t it?
I agree with you in some cases, but that’s the American rule. Maybe Dark_Sage has more wisdom on this.
IIRC, Doki uses British English. Either way, there should be a comma after “thought”.
He does, and he disagrees with you.
http://www.crymore.net/2012/10/06/fansub-review-utw-shinsekai-yori-from-the-new-world-episode-02/
I don’t like the American rules either, but as an American, I’m forced to follow them.
“Now, keep in mind that this comma and period inside the quotation marks business is strictly American usage. The British don’t do it that way. They are inclined to place commas and periods logically rather than conventionally, depending on whether the punctuation belongs to the quotation or to the sentence that contains the quotation, just as we do with question marks and exclamation points.”
“And just why, you may ask, do they belong there? Well, it seems to be the result of historical accident. When type was handset, a period or comma outside of quotation marks at the end of a sentence tended to get knocked out of position, so the printers tucked the little devils inside the quotation marks to keep them safe and out of trouble. But apparently only American printers were more attached to convenience than logic, since British printers continued to risk the misalignment of their periods and commas.”
Source: http://grammartips.homestead.com/inside.html
The more you know ┐( ̄ー ̄)┌
Hey, WhyNot’s release fixed many of the issues you have with the other releases. As for the download speed, I checked myself and I’m getting 600kB/s easily, and it’s increasing as I type this comment.
Follow-up: http://i.imgur.com/6Frfa9u.png
20 minutes to download. Maybe if you don’t have proper internet, fansub reviews aren’t for you. I could mail you a copy on a USB stick if you’d like.
Btw, dear D_S, over @ https://animetosho.org/
they even host files.
In this case, the WhyNot 720p release of The Garden of Words got split up into several parts and uploaded to various upload sites.
I recommend you to pick “anonfiles”. It’s a pretty fast host (~2,5 MBs/s) and you only need to download 4 parts.
https://animetosho.org/view/whynot-garden-words-bd-720p-aac-0b07619a-mkv.667117
I didn’t write this article.
Then just change the first part to “Btw, dear D_S’ underling, …”
>I know the rule of colons is lame, but I didn’t write the grammar guidebook. You just have to adhere to the rule that following a colon, you use a lowercase letter.
False~ It’s actually a question of style. The easy rule to follow is to just lowercase everything after a colon (unless you would otherwise capitalize it), but many style guides advocate the use of a capital letter if the clause following the colon is a complete sentence or if it’s part of a list that doesn’t end at the period. (i.e. “This is what you should do: First, get some flour. Then, bake a cake.”)
The issue could have been avoided entirely if they would have just done:
“First, she thinks of me…
Second, blahblahblah.”
Not to mention that it would have looked better.
For a minute, I thought Nevreen was summoning me :o
I personally use capital letters after a colon but I’ve always known it to be a personal preference kinda thing. Same with having a comma in front of a conjunction – it comes down to personal choice which way you do it. Punctuation has always been pretty flexible and it’s really only there to reduce ambiguity in phrasing, rather than making things grammatically correct.
For this reason, I wouldn’t mark it down as an error. Same with the quotation styling – Doki used British standards, which shouldn’t be commented on *unless* they break their own consistency.
In the end, consistency is king, rather than a rigid adherence to the rules.
“Rule 16
Do not capitalize when only one sentence follows a sentence ending with a colon.
Example:
I love Jane Smiley’s writing: her book, A Thousand Acres, was beautiful.”
“Rule 17
Capitalize when two or more sentences follow a sentence ending with a colon.
Example:
I love Jane Smiley’s writing: Her book, A Thousand Acres, was beautiful. Also, Moo was clever.”
Source: http://www.grammarbook.com/punctuation/capital.asp
But as FalseDawn already stated: consistency is king.
Only one sentence followed each colon. It was like
One: sentence.
Two: sentence.
So I believe the rule holds.
Different stylebooks, different rules.
It’s perfectly permissible to use capital letters even if only one independent clause follows.
>> “Don’t think that’s why mom ran out?”
>> I think you accidentally a word here.
That’s kind of a valid sentence fragment for conversational speech, don’t you think? You know, to leave out the subject, probably “you” before the “don’t” there. Well, leaving “mom” uncapitalized there is an error anyway.
While you can be correct, it still looks odd to me. Maybe if the conversation flowed more like:
“Don’t think that’s why mom ran out? Well, you’re wrong. It is!”
Instead, the conversation was more like:
“Don’t you think that’s why mom ran out?” [guilty silence]
Oh-ho, so now I get to see how the legendary Calyrica works.
http://www.crymore.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Coalgirls_Kotonoha_no_Niwa_1280x720_Blu-ray_FLAC_B3C42369_Jun-27-2013-10.55.55-AM-300×168.jpg
http://www.crymore.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Commie-The-Garden-of-Words-BD-720p-AAC-106D7615_Jun-26-2013-11.46.23-PM-300×168.jpg
Much like haiku, you shouldn’t punctuate tanka, as tanka writers don’t use punctuation.
http://www.crymore.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Commie-The-Garden-of-Words-BD-720p-AAC-106D7615_Jun-26-2013-11.58.59-PM-300×168.jpg
Yes, Commie was missing an entire scene.
http://www.crymore.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Doki-Kotonoha-no-Niwa-1280×720-Hi10P-BD-FLAC-3532D004_Jun-27-2013-12.04.38-PM-300×168.jpg
Removing marks for British conventions and admitting you don’t know any better?
Also, your screenshots should have the timecodes from the video, not the time you took them.
>Removing marks for British conventions and admitting you don’t know any better?
Even by British standards, there needs to be a comma after “thought”. Sorry, Doki.
I do know British conventions. I did work in Doki, you know. Didn’t I grade your editor test?
I know that tanka writers don’t use punctuation. However, like I said, with poetry, you usually read it all at once on a page. However, subtitles are different. You have to let readers know if a thought corresponds to the next or previous line. You guys usually do a good job with that due to your ellipses obsession.
About tankas:
“Decide where capitalization and punctuation may be needed, if at all. Tanka verses normally are not considered full sentences, and the first word in line 1 usually is not capitalized, nor is the last line end-stopped with a period. The idea is to keep the verse open and a bit fragmented or incomplete to encourage the reader to finish the verse in his or her imagination. Internal punctuation, while adding clarification, can stop the pivot line from working both up and down.”
Source: http://tankaonline.com/Quick%20Start%20Guide.htm
poetry ┐( ̄ー ̄)┌
Yes, if you’re reading it as poetry, that is true. But we’re not reading it as poetry. We’re reading it as subtitles.
It’s like if you’re texting your friends. It’s perfectly acceptable to to say, “Gr8, g2g bb.” But if that was read aloud and I needed to write subtitles for it, I’d write, “Great. Got to go. Bye-bye!”
I read it as poetry due to the fact that it is called a tanka. That’s also the reason why you leave Karaoke or other poems sometimes without punctuation at the end of the line. The sudden appearance of Japanese lines at the top of the screen should also give the hint that at this moment something special is showing up.
Btw, your example is a bit off and can’t be compared to the sentence above, because you don’t actually speak the punctuation out loud.
While that’s kind of true, the Japanese lines don’t really add anything to the scene, so it just feels odd to have them. Without them, I have nfi what’s going on, since there’s no prelude to the fact that she’s not making normal conversation.
While that’s true as well, I just wanted to show an example of something that’s different when written normally and written in subtitles. I’m sure better examples could be given that still prove my point, though.
>>Commie fixed the most script issues.
>Didn’t translate an entire scene.
Really?
They fixed the most issues with the original script as in the lines that were present. That they didn’t translate a scene is a big deal, yes. That’s why I said that all three groups’ releases sucked.
ALSO! They did translate the scene, but the subs didn’t show up for me for some reason. I demuxed the script and had some other people test it for me. Issue on my end. Sorry about that!
What about THORA?
They only released 1080p, and I’m on a 13 inch screen, so it’s just going to happen.
What’s screensize got to do with reviewing subs and typesets? It’s not like you need to decide on best encode…
Well, for one, everything has to scale down. That means it might not look 100% as intended. Two, viewing that large of a video and scaling it down both take a lot of processing power. You think a 13-inch laptop is gonna be able to do that?
Nerawareta Gakuen’s prettier.
This movie has no style. Its only appeal is “LOOK AT HOW REALISTIC I AM MAN TECHNOLOGY IS GOOD LEAVES AND WATER DROPS OHHHHH MANNNNNN THAT’S GOOD”. They might as well have used an animeify filter on real video.
no.
Flep did 720p too!!!!
And I used Commie subs for it so it’s not really a candidate for review.
Heh, sorry, I’ve never heard of you guys, so I didn’t look for you. :-\
I’ve never heard of “muhFLEP” before either because I’m doing this alone…
Anyway I just added 2 extra signs to Commie subs without any further changes so it’s not worth a review.
> All three groups had this, actually. Prefectures can’t expect anything, since they’re inanimate.
That’s just the way it’s said.
Learn to draw line between bad and normal.
Well, regardless of if you think prefectures can expect things or not, it’s still wrong. You can put a “should” in there and it’d be fine.
> The prefectures expect rain.
> The prefectures should expect rain.
The rain hasn’t happened yet, and they’re just now being told to expect rain. They didn’t expect rain before.
Maybe I didn’t make myself clear enough when I put up the post.
There should be a comma before thought, that has nothing to do with British conventions. However, it’s fucking retarded that you’d comment on the comma being outside of the quotation mark instead of inside. What relevance does it have other than your own personal taste? In my opinion it looks shit when it’s outside the quotation mark, but there you go.