As some people might know, I’m pretty into the mobile game. I’ve been trying not to pay attention to the subs when watching the anime, but this episode is particularly plot relevant, and I felt like going through the subs. How good are the official subs?
夏ならではのイベントに出演する者、レッスンや体力作りに励む者、校内アルバイトや奉仕活動にいそしむ者、そしてSS出場者である俺たち『Trickstar』にとっては絶好のレベルアップ期間となる。
Let’s start off with this rather long line. The writer obviously tried to cram a lot of information to give viewers an idea of what each unit is up to.
First off, the translation is very difficult to understand because it’s a direct translation with six (!) commas, all of which belong to a huge leading prepositional phrase, leaving the viewers hanging until the very end. Unnecessarily long sentences in subs hinder comprehension. Why not just break them up into shorter sentences?
レッスンや体力作り is technically not “(doing) lessons to build stamina” but rather two separate entities (dance practices and workouts).
They also ignore the mention of 奉仕活動 (volunteer work), a highly relevant detail since we see Knights, a popular unit making up for their PR disaster through community service.
We also see that they put little effort into translating loanwords. “Level up” sounds awkward here because it’s just a wasei-eigo for improvement, as you can see on Wikipedia.
“We’ve got kids performing at summer events, kids focusing on practices and workouts, kids doing on-campus gig work and community service. And there’s us, Trickstar, looking ahead to SS. We’re all using the chance to improve ourselves.”
High school boys definitely speak like this.
Why not a complete sentence?
I just took this screenshot because that’s way too much bread.
というわけで
She’s here to ask them to participate, so it would be much clearer to phrase it like “So I was wondering…”
顔合わせ is a meeting, but it usually refers to a first-time meeting where people are introduced to one another, and that’s what’s happening here.
“We’re meeting new people to discuss Summer Live.” (There’s probably a better way to phrase this.)
“Was a former student”? Good job making it sound like Hiyori is dead.
それが傑作なんだけど
A clear mistranslation.
傑作 does mean “masterpiece” most of the time, but when used sarcastically like this, it means something like “ridiculous” or “hilarious.” It’s the second definition in most dictionaries.
Vertical Japanese text is read from right to left.
“Theme song performer Eden joins the roster!”
They dropped all honorifics except this one, for some reason.
そこの部に昔、伝説っぽくなってる偉大な先輩がいてさ
“An amazing legendary upperclassman”? I’m trying my best not to point out issues that an editor can fix without much effort, but the phrasing is just so sloppy sometimes.
遅くなってごめんね、って形式的に謝るね!
That’s not really what he said. Hiyori does not care about your time. He’s just apologizing as a formality (形式的に謝る), not giving you a formal apology. While both words have “formal” in it, they mean very different things.
“Sorry for being late! Accept my perfunctory apology!”
根気強く交渉し、すこしでも『Trickstar』の利益を生めるように努めなさい
Incorrectly parsed. Not sure how it happened.
”[…] and make it a worthwhile endeavor for Trickstar.”
It’s his catchphrase. They didn’t really try, I guess.
Isn’t my boy cute?
Sounds to me more like they were the only ones doing the performance where they showed off the bunshin no jutsu.
The second line sounds off because it doesn’t reflect the ～だもんね at the end. The point is that he’s trying to sympathize rather than inform. At least italicize the “was.”
一人一人が高みを目指し強く成長することに意味があるね
This might be subtle, but this line is relatively important, and the translation of the line sounds very dumb on its own. The previous lines were “Unity! Teamwork! The power of friendship! They may seem beautiful when said aloud, but it’s ugly when weak creatures parasitize each other.” The point of this last line is that those words only have meaning when each member of the team is working hard. It’s sort of like the difference between wa and ga.
“They’re only meaningful when each person is […]”
The word you’re looking for is “release.” Leo is a bestselling composer, and he’s not talking about this specific concert.
Unfortunately, there were major misinterpretations that should not happen in a professional translation, even when you take into account the fact that the translators are too underpaid to consult the original work. Back to turning the subs off.