I haven’t really been watching any fansubs lately, but convex said he’s too busy to watch Prince of Tennis with me until next month so I took the opportunity to chip away at my backlog. Going for another oldie this time: BPS - Battle Programmer Shirase. The show itself is from 2003, and according to AniDB, Anime-Influx subbed it within a month after it finished airing. With that in mind, let’s take a look at how they went.
First thing I noticed was their use of “free”, and then “rogue”. “Free” actually means “freelancer” here; as far as I know, “free” isn’t a common abbreviation for “freelancer” in English. “Rogue” should also be something like “independent”, as in he has no allegiances. This is kind of redundant, so I would’ve just skipped it altogether. While I’m here, I may as well point out that the semicolon, albeit not technically wrong, isn’t a great choice for subtitles just for readability.
I don’t know the fancy language words to tell you exactly why this is wrong, but I have a feeling these aren’t quite sentences. Probably something like there’s no subject. Anyway, these are meant to be rhetorical questions.
Tense is wrong here. He’s still called Battle Programmer Shirase.
I actually kind of miss seeing fansubber credits typeset into the actual credits. Not enough to bring it back, but I don’t think I’ve seen a release over the past several years that still does this. Good angle too. 👀
Not related to the subs at all but there are so many things wrong here. What kind of hacker goes out of his way to draw ascii on a graphical environment to explicitly reveal himself? I get that it’s not meant to be realistic but come on.
Technically, she says “animal-like thing”. Unfortunately, saying something like that in English is clunky no matter how you twist it so I think they made a pretty good call here by just keeping it succinct.
This is the first line this guy ever says. It’s pretty confusing to use pronouns without establishing context first. Partially the show’s fault, but it works in Japanese. I’d probably with something like “a certain man” though, to keep it a bit more natural in English.
BPS is his name (well, nickname) so it doesn’t really make sense to use an article here. Granted, this is also what you get when you trust Japanese people to speak English. His nickname is kind of like a title and nickname mashed together. Natural instinct would encourage “the battle programmer, Shirase”, but alas, I think you just need to put that aside and treat it as what it is: a name.
The literal translation here is “you should watch out for that guy”. However, a line like that makes it sound like he’s inherently and perpetually dangerous, like a wild animal. The line they went with gets the meaning across a lot better: he can be dangerous, so don’t cross him.
This line starts with “if you piss him off”, which they tied in nicely with the previous line. Unfortunately, they missed a lot of detail otherwise. “The nearest precinct” isn’t quite right; it’s actually about the (Tokyo) metropolitan police department. Also, it’s not any old arrest warrant. He’s saying the guy will be listed as a repeat molester and underwear thief.
I feel like I mention this every time, but the repetition here really isn’t necessary. But if you must, the 2nd “he’s” should be capitalised. “Terrible” is also pretty far off. It’s a lot closer to something like “terrifying”. Shirase is being described as scary, not evil. Though, it looks like “terrible” is the first result in a J→E dictionary. 🤔
This show sure has a lot of face close-ups. Anyway, the tense is kind of mixed up here too. The rumours were true.
Is he trudging through a disassembly on Windows 98™ or something?
Oh he’s just on IRC. I don’t blame them for not typesetting this one. Most groups in 2019 probably still wouldn’t. It scrolls pretty fast, and there’s a whole lot of text.
Speaking of typesetting, they actually did a pretty good job for a 2003/4 release. These signs aren’t too shabby. They do a better job than official subs do in 2019.
Not really sure what the point of this TL note is. You don’t really need a lesson on Akiba being the electric town; he shows the electronic he bought right after. If you really wanted to localise the place, you could just say “the electronics district”, but I don’t think it’s strange for a show set in Japan to refer to places in Japan. Also, “I know about that” is needlessly stiff and dismissive. I would go more along the lines of “yes, I’m aware”.
So the place name gets a TL note but the Japanese word doesn’t, all right. I don’t really know what I’d call this, though. It’s not really a thing in the West. Maybe a fan-made anime SCSI host adapter? You can see the anime character on it anyway. Also as an extra nitpick, the x68 is probably a play on x86, which is stylised with a lower-case “x”. Not really sure what that has to do with SCSI controllers though.
That’s a really cool… Beanbag? Cushion? Not sure but I want one.
The wording here is pretty ambiguous. It makes it sound like she’s going to be late to class, but that’s not the case. She’s telling her daughter she’ll be back home late, because she’s going to be busy with class. Just needed to add a “home” into the first line and change “for” to “because of” in the second one.
Kind of abrupt, but I got to the end of the episode and ran out of things to say, and I don’t really know how to transition into a conclusion on these blogs. All things said and done, it was actually a pretty decent release. There were a few minor mistakes and a bit of lost detail, but still quite watchable overall. I think the shortcomings can be chalked off as lower standards back in the day. There were a couple of lines I liked too, and the show itself is kinda cool. I’d give this one a recommendation.