This post was written by Dark_Sage. He is Dark_Sage.
Ignoring the otherwise shitty parts of the release, I found this localization to be the best. I’ll go into that in a separate section of the review.
Release format: MKV (8-bit, 400 MB), LQ MP4 (224 MB)
Japanesiness: No honorifics.
Group website: http://aesirsubs.wordpress.com/
8thsin’s translation critique: N/A
Ji-hi’s screenshot comparisons: N/A
Karaoke.
Opening. Their hands were tied in terms of what they could do. The Japanese at the way bottom is hardsubbed by the animation company. I thought it was all right for what they were working with.
Ending. Again, hardsubbed bottom karaoke. Thanks a lot, Japan.
I’d like to note that although it’s hard to work with the karaoke here, Chihiro managed to do the best job with it.
Chihiro > Aesir > Doremi > Cure-Anxious
Typesetting.
There’s typesetting. It’s not impressive, but it’s there.
Script.
I like my subs readable. This isn’t helping.
If I had a comma for every time they messed up question marks in this release, I’d have around five commas. I don’t know why I’d be collecting commas though.
“Well, that’s no fun, is it?!”
Too many m’s, guys. No English word has more than two of the same letter in a row, so keep with that rule for your subs. This error happened a couple times in the release.
“You do look a bit disorganized, but I’d say you’re actually pretty reliable.”
The comma is necessary, I’m sorry. Here, I’ll lend you one of the five I got earlier.
/>This, folks is what we call a double dipper. Two whole errors, lucky us! (Typo + annoying comma splice)
“You’re embarrassing Hoshizora, so lay off.”
The second sentence is a leading one. “Leading sentence”. I think I made that up. Anyway, what I mean is that the sentence is meant to lead to a certain action, which indicates ellipses would be useful. For example, “Now, off you go…”
“Thank you, Miss Hino. Now, if you’d like to take your seat…” (The “Now” part isn’t necessary but I feel it makes the line read smoother.)
-,
+and
“But happiness is… when there’s a sparkle in your eyes and a pounding in your heart!”
Ya need another comma here. Fuck, I’m running out of these things.
“I’m not sure how that makes too much sense, but…”
“seeya” is not a word.
“All right then. I’ll see ya tomorrow!” (Stealth changed Alright to All right, cuz fuck “Alright”)
‘Kay! Bye!
‘Kay is meant to be a substitute for Okay and because the one letter is missing, you put the apostrophe in its place just like you do if you’re gonna drop the “g” from a word that ends with it. raping -> rapin’ for example.
This passes by too quickly. Also, lol English. “Any good person would protect her!” (Yes, decent is a better word, but we need to cut out a syllable for readability.)
These two lines should have different colors so people can tell them apart. Standards, people! Also, it’s “Well then, you two can die together!”
“the pair of you” isn’t very good English.
What in the Holy God of Fansubbing’s righteous name is this shit? Why make the transformation sequence so retarded?
This… doesn’t make any sense. How do we draw out the “e” sound?
Seriously, try pronouncing this. I’m scare-eee’d? Ugh.
“I’m scared!” No need for lengtheners. ._.
But if you MUST lengthen it, lengthen the “a”, because that’s what’s being pronounced. “I’m scaaaaared!”
Localization.
The whole theme of the episode was “Girl obsessed with fairy tales”. Other groups had:
Chihiro: The wolf is here!
Doremi: The wolf is here!
Cure-Anxious: A wolf has showed up, kuru~
The idea here is “Joke that lightens up the mood in the classroom.” Aesir was the only group that attempted to translate this in a manner that an English speaker would understand. For those that don’t get what they did here, they’re referring to a really old, really bad joke that’s a standard “lame joke” to tell.
*set up is two dudes talking or something and then one ends a line in “er” and the other du
de interprets it somewhat sexually with “___ ‘er? I hardly know her!” For example,
“Hey man, you into playing poker?”
“Poke her? I hardly know her!”
(Get it? Cuz Poker sounds like “Poke her” and “poke her” implies sexual intercourse?)
Anyway, the point of the joke is not to be funny, but to be as lame as possible so you laugh through the failure.
While Aesir succeeded in making a joke for the English audience, the other groups kept the shitty Japanese pun. Only Cure-Anxious even bothered to TL Note it — the others just kept it in Japanese with no explanation. Great job.
Chihiro: Judging from that, you’ve got a little brother who loves star gazing…
Chihiro: And his name… lemme think…
Chihiro: It’s Hoshizora Mitarou!
Doremi: So you have a younger brother who loves looking at the stars…
Doremi: And his name is… Let’s see… Hoshizora Mitaro!
Cure-Anxious: And you’ve got a little brother who loves looking at the stars.
Cure-Anxious: His name is… Let’s see…
Cure-Anxious: Hoshizora Mitaro! [TL: Also means, “Let’s look at the stars!”)
[Note: I need to include this note here because WordPress won’t work without it. This last image won’t show without a line in this exact spot. What a shitty blog tool.]
A running joke in every fucking anime is that Osakans speak differently from most Japanese. So the speech should be different. If you’ve ever watched Azumanga Daioh, you’ll know exactly what I mean.
Chihiro: Last year I transferred from Osaka, so I totally get how you feel.
Doremi: I transferred here from Osaka last year. I know all about what you’re going through.
Cure-Anxious: I moved here from Osaka last year, so I know exactly what’s it’s like to be new student.
Watchability: Watchable.
Overall grade: B-
I doubt I’ll be recommending another PreCure group, honestly. This script was way too much fucking fun, and when I compared it with the other groups’… there was just no comparison. So while other groups might get better grades, I’m probably gonna end up recommending Aesir anyway.
“Too many m’s, guys. No English word has more than three of the same letter in a row”
But that was only 3 m’s (can I assume you meant “two of the same?”).
Yes, that’s what I meant.
Granted, when you have a word stretching across the whole screen I can see the problem, but I’ve never really had a problem with extending words within reasonable limits for emphasis/effect. In fact, if you’re going to extend a word I might recommend at least three letters, because only two letters looks like a typo. e.g. “Here I goo!” vs. “Here I goooo!”
I also rather like the “a sparkle in your eyes, a pounding in your heart!” line. Not grammatical of course, but IMO it’s fine for dialogue. I’m certain I’ve seen this sort of construction before. I can’t quite explain it, but the impression I get is that the character is not making a list, but rather restating the second half of the sentence.
Maybe if you replaced the comma with a dash it would work better. “Happiness is when there’s a sparkle in your eyes– a pounding in your heart!”
May I suggest the tilde~ for extensions? No? Fine. You’re right in that for certain words it’s best to extend the line. Hell, I’ve done it myself. For a regular word like “Hmm”, though? Eh, I’m not feeling it.
I can see where you’re going with the poetic aspects of the line, but that’s really not what I got out of it. The girl’s not exactly the dramatic speaker. The dash would suffice if you’re hellbent on keeping that phrasing intact, but I’m not seeing the need here.
i sew the episode in diffrent sub group which did better job and not like the subs you watched
O… kay?
the words you fixed in your review was in the subbed episode i watched.and by the way did you sew there is 7 colores in the decor pact?this mean we will have 7 pretty cure and not 5
If you believe that the line must stay intact, then replace the comma with a semi-colon.
“Happiness is when there’s a sparkle in your eyes; a pounding in your heart”.
Semi-colons can be used to make lists too.
For fuck’s sake why do most encoders not know how to crop? Also for elongation I think it’s better to do do it like “I’m scared~!” instead of adding letters.
Guess I should refresh before I post, D_S already beat me in the tilde suggestion.
Black space amounted to a pixel on each side so… I honestly didn’t notice.
More like 2 pixels and it’s still inexcusable for an encoder not to fix that shit:
crop(2,0,-2,0)
spline36resize(1280,720)
Is that too complicated to understand?
Your OCD is getting the best of you.
It matters.
This entire blog is OCD. We need MOAR OCD.
I will blame a lot of the errors you pointed out on a combination of my own retardation and not actually having an editor.
But I’ll try and keep them in mind in future. Thanks, I guess! It’s nice having actual useful critique.
A B from D_S without an editor is pretty darn good. Be proud!
Yeah, Magenta’s phraseology (hee) is quite good. He’s one of the few translators that I’ve really enjoyed editing for in the past. He and Kokizzzle and blakbunnie27 are all top notch…
Hmm, well looks like I might go for these ones. Dunno why I didn’t since Magenta is a pretty cool guy. Although, there is his admitted possibility of quitting.