6 ms·

The irony of the situation is that it's unprofitable to license anime for the US precisely because the fansubbing community already distributes "free" copies, a

by peroo 13y ago

The irony of the situation is that it's unprofitable to license anime for the US precisely because the fansubbing community already distributes "free" copies, and most anime-fans consume the majority of their content that way.

radoslawc 13y ago
What's even more ironic, is that no one is willing to pay for poor quality subtitles, which is frequently the case with the ones provided by companies.
- peroo 13y ago
  That's presumably a result of razor-thin margins and quick turnarounds. Competing on quality against free labor is quite hard.
  - millerc 13y ago
    ...which is precisely what is meant when one says "there's no market for this". At this point, content owners have the choice of either being permissive, or clamping down on the community using IP laws.
- Fuxy 13y ago
  The interesting part is they could just donate a generous amount to the community in exchange for the use of their translations in the "official" release. It's a win-win from what i see it. Community gets funding they don't have to pay for another translation and make a little more profit.
lmm 13y ago
The thing is, the fansubbed product is better. The user experience is as good as with Kindle books, and better than any commercial video service - the translation quality of modern internet streaming services like Crunchyroll is actually good enough to compete with fansubs. But the video quality isn't, and I can't stream on my commute.
- eloisant 13y ago
  Well, no. Fansubs are usually very poor quality translation. Not only do hey leave English mistakes in the subs, but they leave half of the stuff in Japanese (chan, sempai, sensei, etc.) because those are words their audience understand anyway. Well, sorry but "sensei" just means "doctor", "professor" or "teacher" depending on the context, it's not some mysterious magic title that can't be translated.
  - Pxtl 13y ago
    Idunno, sometimes the translations do lose some context. I've lost interest in anime since then, but when I was younger I saw a fansub of Princess Mononoke before I saw the official sub... and yeah, leaving some of the monster's names untranslated made more sense. Calling the creatures the Deer God and the Demon instead of Tatagami and Shishigami created a bunch of connotative problems. AFAIK, those aren't even real words in Japanese, so translating them wasn't necessary - they were names, titles, not things needing translating. By translating Tatagami into "demon" they created the impression that the beast was evil instead of angry and cursed. By calling the Shishigami the "Deer God" it created the impression that it was the god of the Deer instead of the god of the forest itself. The folks watching it with me found the Disney sub confusing when I had no trouble keeping up with the original. So there's a balancing act, and I'll agree that otakus are too quick to leave stuff untranslated, commercial translators are too agressive at picking a word that doesn't fit.
  - aidenn0 13y ago
    Translation is hard. Honorifics end up being a place where fansubbers just give up. On the other hand, consider a series in which character A calls character B "B kun" while character C calls character B "B sempai". Most of the time it doesn't matter enough to try and bother with a good way of translating that, but sometimes it comes up in the plot, perhaps several episodes into the show. Choosing to leave those untranslated isn't anything new, nor unique to fansubs. The Early '90s AnimeEigo translation of the Aa! Megamisamaa OVA left them untranslated in some cases, with a note on the top of the screen. Yes, fansubs could use better copy-editing, but so could some professional subs. The biggeset offender is that I have seen several instances of English loan-words left in their rōmaji spelling rather than their proper English spellings in commercial subtitles. Some of the higher production value translations will go for a very literal subtitle translation and a highly figurative dub translation. An example of this is the "Tenchi Forever" restaurant scene translation where The dub is roughly: Waiter: "Would you like coffee after your meal?" Diner: "No" and the subtitle is Waiter: "Would you like tea with that" Diner: "Yes" (That one particularly sticks out in my mind since if you watch with sub+dub at the same time you have someone speaking "no" with a subtitle of "yes")
rfnslyr 13y ago
I disagree. If the legitimate source becomes easier to acquire, people will migrate. For example, I always youtubed/torrented music. I finally got Spotify and it completely replaced it because it's easier to access. Sure I'm "losing" $10 per month that I could otherwise save, but this service does everything for me. Indexing, discovery, and syncing.

by peroo 13y ago

radoslawc 13y ago

What's even more ironic, is that no one is willing to pay for poor quality subtitles, which is frequently the case with the ones provided by companies.

peroo 13y ago
That's presumably a result of razor-thin margins and quick turnarounds. Competing on quality against free labor is quite hard.
- millerc 13y ago
  ...which is precisely what is meant when one says "there's no market for this". At this point, content owners have the choice of either being permissive, or clamping down on the community using IP laws.
Fuxy 13y ago
The interesting part is they could just donate a generous amount to the community in exchange for the use of their translations in the "official" release. It's a win-win from what i see it. Community gets funding they don't have to pay for another translation and make a little more profit.

lmm 13y ago

The thing is, the fansubbed product is better. The user experience is as good as with Kindle books, and better than any commercial video service - the translation quality of modern internet streaming services like Crunchyroll is actually good enough to compete with fansubs. But the video quality isn't, and I can't stream on my commute.

eloisant 13y ago
Well, no. Fansubs are usually very poor quality translation. Not only do hey leave English mistakes in the subs, but they leave half of the stuff in Japanese (chan, sempai, sensei, etc.) because those are words their audience understand anyway. Well, sorry but "sensei" just means "doctor", "professor" or "teacher" depending on the context, it's not some mysterious magic title that can't be translated.
- Pxtl 13y ago
  Idunno, sometimes the translations do lose some context. I've lost interest in anime since then, but when I was younger I saw a fansub of Princess Mononoke before I saw the official sub... and yeah, leaving some of the monster's names untranslated made more sense. Calling the creatures the Deer God and the Demon instead of Tatagami and Shishigami created a bunch of connotative problems. AFAIK, those aren't even real words in Japanese, so translating them wasn't necessary - they were names, titles, not things needing translating. By translating Tatagami into "demon" they created the impression that the beast was evil instead of angry and cursed. By calling the Shishigami the "Deer God" it created the impression that it was the god of the Deer instead of the god of the forest itself. The folks watching it with me found the Disney sub confusing when I had no trouble keeping up with the original. So there's a balancing act, and I'll agree that otakus are too quick to leave stuff untranslated, commercial translators are too agressive at picking a word that doesn't fit.
- aidenn0 13y ago
  Translation is hard. Honorifics end up being a place where fansubbers just give up. On the other hand, consider a series in which character A calls character B "B kun" while character C calls character B "B sempai". Most of the time it doesn't matter enough to try and bother with a good way of translating that, but sometimes it comes up in the plot, perhaps several episodes into the show. Choosing to leave those untranslated isn't anything new, nor unique to fansubs. The Early '90s AnimeEigo translation of the Aa! Megamisamaa OVA left them untranslated in some cases, with a note on the top of the screen. Yes, fansubs could use better copy-editing, but so could some professional subs. The biggeset offender is that I have seen several instances of English loan-words left in their rōmaji spelling rather than their proper English spellings in commercial subtitles. Some of the higher production value translations will go for a very literal subtitle translation and a highly figurative dub translation. An example of this is the "Tenchi Forever" restaurant scene translation where The dub is roughly: Waiter: "Would you like coffee after your meal?" Diner: "No" and the subtitle is Waiter: "Would you like tea with that" Diner: "Yes" (That one particularly sticks out in my mind since if you watch with sub+dub at the same time you have someone speaking "no" with a subtitle of "yes")

rfnslyr 13y ago

I disagree. If the legitimate source becomes easier to acquire, people will migrate. For example, I always youtubed/torrented music. I finally got Spotify and it completely replaced it because it's easier to access. Sure I'm "losing" $10 per month that I could otherwise save, but this service does everything for me. Indexing, discovery, and syncing.