Translation Review: [Nishi-Taku] Tamayura ~more aggressive~ – 02

September 27, 2013August 1, 2013 by kokujin-kun

This post was written by kokujin-kun. He is not Dark_Sage.

So… what was this episode supposed to be about again?

Release Information

Translation

Other Observations

Final Grade

Release Information

Episode details.

Release format: MKV ( 201MB, 10-bit)

Wap Level: Full Wap (“[O]nee-sama” used both as a proper noun and an honorific, for example)

English style: American English.

Speed: Quick (<48 hours)

External links.

Group website: http://nishishisubs.wordpress.com http://evetaku.com

IRC channel: #[email protected] #[email protected]

Fansub.co screenshot comparisons:

Subbusu screenshot comparisons:

Translation

Karaoke.

OP. Literal translation of this line is “I like you when you have your honest face,” but luckily Nishi-Taku realized that the singer was talking about taking pictures and adapted it that way. Rest of the OP is just as sensible and poetic.

ED. You notice how the English lyric here doesn’t match with what the above Japanese says? That’s because they decided to translate the song into natural English instead of Yoda-speak. Of course, the ED is handled well.

Main Script.

Actually Dark-Haired What’s-Her-Face-chan (aka Maon) says “His name is Kameramera. He’s an Aquarius born in Cameroon…” Not a mistake, just pointing out how much more retarded this line could have been.

This sounded like a narration instead of a spoken dialogue, which wouldn’t normally require any quotation marks.

As funny as this and the next four lines are, they’re wrong. Norie’s actually saying “Turtle! Nan! Dez!” Apparently none of the other groups got this line right either.

This is how they decided to treat Fuu’s verbal tic of adding the node copula at the end of a lot of her sentences. My reaction to this falls somewhere between neutral and “ummmm,” mainly because it makes me think of some stereotypical Cockney person in my head.

I would have went with “social studies field trip.”

Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t komachakure supposed to be a play on the name Komachi?

I will now like to interrupt this poo-flinging to highlighting a bunch of lines that really impressed me (meaning I will likely steal them for my own scripts).

Like how they handled Norie’s hamtastic line.

My first draft of this line: “It’s only because you got finished early and came to make fun of me.”

My first draft: “Well, those things happen too.”

My first draft: “That is very reassuring!”

My first draft: “From the very beginning it’s just one obstacle after another.”

My first draft: “Even if you aren’t able to do it at the start, you’ll get better as time goes on.”

First draft: “Then isn’t that good?”

First draft: “What’s with what you said just now?”

Needless to say, their versions of the lines are better than whatever generic translations I would have come up with right on the spot.

I learned a new phrase :)

Learned another new word, but it probably won’t be something I’d employ any time soon.

It’s a simple line (a, minna) but even translators who should know better would translate the line to “Ah, everybody!” or some other dumbassery. It might seem like a non-issue to others, but kudos to Nishi-Taku for actually writing this line in natural English.

One of the few literalish-sounding lines in the script. I’d probably go with, “I was destined to take up the camera!” or something.

Another line that used a well-worn stock phrase. One can easily tell that this “Potte” character used the word ganbaru in this line.

Other Observations

It appears Nishi-Taku is in the “treat dialogue scripts like prose” camp and decided not to bookend each line that is part of a quote with quotation marks and opted instead to put the quotation marks around the entire quote said by the character, even if it takes up multiple lines. This practice may be right for a novel, but for subtitles it just looks weird, especially when one is trying to discern which line is a quote and which one isn’t.

“the Photography Club”

Final Grade: A

The Tamayura series is an anodyne, sleep-inducing, cookie-cutter slice-of-life dramedy that stars a annoyingly meek high-school everygirl who we’re supposed to find “cute,” but who is really just in desperate need of an intervention provided by some wise-cracking male lead from a Key visual novel (and even then it’ll still suck). It was a total chore to watch this episode, and honestly the only thing I enjoyed about this show is the subs. All things being equal, this release could have very well been the first A-plus I have given this season, since I found myself taking notes on how to spice up a script. However, in order to get an A-plus, the release needs to be free of errors, and unfortunately that “Turtle-riffic” thing happened.

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24 thoughts on “Translation Review: [Nishi-Taku] Tamayura ~more aggressive~ – 02”

Nevreen

August 2, 2013 at 12:50 am

The real question is: how aggressive was lyger’s translation?
Reply
- PolynAzn
  
  August 2, 2013 at 1:38 am
  
  Nevreen pls
  Reply
- temp_late
  
  August 2, 2013 at 2:01 am
  
  Turtleriffic!
  Reply
- kokujin-kun
  
  August 2, 2013 at 1:24 pm
  
  Too aguresshibu, so much so that the show doesn’t even deserve it.
  Reply
  - corocoro
    
    August 2, 2013 at 2:04 pm
    
    lyger’s too good for this show? :p
    Reply
    - kokujin-kun
      
      August 2, 2013 at 3:07 pm
      
      That, and the fact it looks like he actually… enjoys it
      Reply
Daiz

August 2, 2013 at 5:30 pm

>It appears Nishi-Taku is in the “treat dialogue scripts like prose” camp and decided not to bookend each line that is part of a quote with quotation marks and opted instead to put the quotation marks around the entire quote said by the character, even if it takes up multiple lines. This practice may be right for a novel, but for subtitles it just looks weird, especially when one is trying to discern which line is a quote and which one isn’t.

Some esteemed style rules (I really don’t remember which) say that you should sub multi-line quotes in the following manner:

– “This is the beginning
– “of this wonderful
– “multi-line quote.”

I had an argument about this with other staff members on one project, because honestly, it just looks like the worst of all worlds to me. Either go with only having the quotes at the very beginning and end, or at the start and end of each line (I’d personally prefer the latter), but this? Goddamn, it just looks so dumb.
Reply
- Kusion
  
  August 2, 2013 at 6:55 pm
  
  The stylistic choice isn’t for novels, but for closed captions.
  
  The choice of how to handle quotation marks differ from person to person, and I honestly hate seeing:
  
  “Okay, so maybe next time
  we can all do it together!”
  Reply
- innocenat
  
  August 2, 2013 at 9:06 pm
  
  That’s novel’s styles rule. And a lot of people (including me) prefer that over the the very beginning and the very end that fansub groups like to do.
  Reply
- kokujin-kun
  
  August 3, 2013 at 1:07 am
  
  It reminded me of one thing I worked on where a guy and a girl were doing a read-through of a movie script, and the guy kept messing up his lines, finally blurting out “I love you!” to the girl, even though it wasn’t in the script (the girl thought he just made another mistake, btw). Unfortunately, that quotation style isn’t going to allow me to differentiate between when the guy’s simply reciting a line and when he’s doing an accidental confession.
  Reply
  - G.
    
    August 3, 2013 at 8:03 am
    
    Viewer question: in such a case, would it work better having beginning/end quotation marks only, paired with the actual quoted text in italics (or some other non-normal style)?
    
    I find that novel-style can be confusing when you can’t see the whole text block, and bookending every line in quotes gets unwieldy in longer sections.
    Reply
    - kokujin-kun
      
      August 4, 2013 at 6:11 pm
      
      I guess if you differentiate the quotes using italics or whatever, it will make it easier on the viewers, but I still prefer quoting each subtitle line instead of having just the beginning/end quotation marks.
      Reply
- Nevreen
  
  August 3, 2013 at 1:35 am
  
  Things would be much simpler if everyone just used quotation marks at the beginning and end of each line that’s part of the quote. It’s visually appealing and allows the viewer to easily distinguish what’s part of the quote and what’s not.
  Reply
  - corocoro
    
    August 3, 2013 at 3:38 am
    
    Unless the quote multiple things from different sources back-to-back.
    Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. ;)
    Reply
    - Nevreen
      
      August 3, 2013 at 10:24 am
      
      Fair point. Though it’s a rare enough case that I’ll probably stick to the beginning-end quotes on every line style unless I think it’ll be that kind of show.
      Reply
- Nyangoro
  
  August 3, 2013 at 3:48 am
  
  I personally don’t think the novel style format works at all for subtitles.
  
  That style is used in novels when someone’s talking so much that they have to split it into paragraphs. The quotation mark at the beginning of each paragraph is to quickly signify that the same person is still talking. That’s would never be needed in subtitles unless the entire scene was one single quote or something.
  
  Subtitles disappear with the next line, something that doesn’t happen in books, so starting each part of the quoted line with a quotation mark is just looks sloppy to me. The audience is perfectly capable of discerning that, if there’s no quotation mark at the end of the first line, then the quote continues to the next. The only time you’d have a problem is, again, if the quote was an obscene number of lines. In that case, then I could see using the novel style, but that’s a last resort if you ask me.
  
  And the problem with beginning and ending each part of the quote with a quotation mark is that it’s just confusing. A quotation mark at the end means that the quote has ended. It’s unnecessary to force the audience to figure out where one quote ends and one begins. Then you have series like Psycho-Pass or movies like GitS: Innocence where characters occasionally speak, back and forth, in quotes. IF you use quotation marks at the beginning and the end of part of a quote, then that just makes a scene like that all the harder to deal with.
  
  tl;dr I prefer this style most of the time:
  
  “Words words words
  words words
  words words words words.”
  Reply
  - innocenat
    
    August 3, 2013 at 10:09 am
    
    I, for one, either have to rewind back to see if it’s really in quote, or just ignore whether it’s in quote or not. I can’t really discern whether it’s still in the quote, but maybe it’s just me.
    Reply
RomiiYui

August 4, 2013 at 5:41 pm

What about FTW release? Just asking…
Reply
- kokujin-kun
  
  August 4, 2013 at 6:12 pm
  
  On it.
  Reply
lygerzero0zero

August 6, 2013 at 5:50 am

I had a partial rant concerning your beef with “stock translations”, but since I have a blog now (yay~) I figured I should dump my thoughts there. Link in website field (I dunno if I can html in comments).

Also, “cheeky kid” was a matter of consistency with season 1, which I translated when I was younger and not as wise (find cheek, insert tongue). It hit me at the start of this season that it was a play on her name; either I didn’t notice or chose to ignore it back in S1. Of course, we did break consistency to make a few revisions this season, and I could have included her nickname among them, but I guess I’m stuck with it now.

Anyway thanks for the review~ I will try harder next time.
Reply
- lygerzero0zero
  
  August 6, 2013 at 6:09 am
  
  Oh, two things I forgot to say. I actually looked up the phrase “born under the star of” to see if it was a thing. The search turned up phrases like “born under a lucky star” and “born under a wandering star”, as well as people asking “what star was I born under?” so I think it’s idiomatically fine. Otherwise, I would have used an alternative like what you suggested.
  
  Also, you picked what I considered my weakest script (episode 3 was my strongest), but all the better to get critique on that, so I shouldn’t complain.
  Reply
- kokujin-kun
  
  August 6, 2013 at 3:12 pm
  
  Okay, I guess I was right about Komachi’s nickname, although I don’t have any original solutions on how to go about writing it out ┐(￣ー￣)┌
  
  Yes, there’s a whole bunch of material out there about people being born under certain stars (starting with Albert Kings “Born Under A Bad Sign”), but, I dunno, the phrase still sounds furrin to me (and yes, I am fully aware that I rail against Japanese-sounding translations when I myself shamelessly use honorifics, “Senpai” and other crap in my scripts).
  
  And lastly, if that was your weakest script, then all I have to say is… wow.
  Reply
yeller

August 6, 2013 at 11:00 pm

>Cookie-cutter

Someone obviously hasn’t watched the OVA this and ~hitotose~ is based off of. It’s actually got a pretty unique style compared to most slice of life stuff.

The series itself is a little on the mediocre side at times, but “cookie-cutter” isn’t a term I’d use to describe this series at all.

I get the feeling kokujin-kun would say Aria The Animation/Natural/Origination was “cookie-cutter” because he would fail to catch the point of the show which is the ambiance.

Tamayura isn’t even in the same league as Aria as far as sheer goodness goes, but they are similar shows in that respect.
Reply
- kokujin-kun
  
  August 7, 2013 at 12:26 am
  
  I tried watching Aria once. Fell asleep halfway through the episode.
  
  I guess it was just too “relaxing” for me.
  Reply