Snagged the first blog post of the decade, convex won’t be able to one-up me on this for another 10 years :^)
This time, GoodJobMedia gets the honours, since they happened to be the first fansub release I’ve watched this season. Mostly because there are almost no other fansubs around. No favouritism here, I wasn’t involved in this release whatsoever. I gave no input or contribution and didn’t even read the discussions. At most I posted some memes.
Minor one to start off. He’s technically saying the battery has run out. Not specifying could indicate there’s some other issue with the battery. That being said, the next line follows up with “but we just charged it”, so there’s little room for ambiguity. Regardless, I don’t really see the need to avoid the more natural “I bet it’s just out of batteries”.
I think this is a British idiom, and as far as I know, the GJM policy is to use “international” (read: American) English. You could argue that Americans would understand it regardless but Americans would also understand British spelling so it seems a bit contradictory. Even if the usage is accepted in the US, it sounds dumb and there are a dozen better phrases. I’m pretty sure it’s meant to be hyphenated as well.
That second bit reads really awkwardly. Someone’s probably ready to throw some random linguistics terms I don’t care about to tell me it’s actually grammatically correct, but I’m not sure why “Did you wait (long)?” (or literally anything more natural) was discarded as an option.
I like this a lot. I believe GJM went with “milady” previously, but that has a bunch of dumb connotations and doesn’t really fit the bill here. It’s meant to be an expression of affection and attachment (no it doesn’t mean big sister), and “darling” fits the bill perfectly. And is leagues above >sissy.
This line is excessively literal. I can only really see lines that go “you have experience…” being part of some sappy preach about all the hardships that someone has gone through. I don’t think there’s a need to stick to the Japanese wording here. You’ve done a demonstration in Russia, therefore I think you would be suited for this demonstration. The logic is very clear.
A bit overly literal here too, which makes it sound a lot stiffer than it came off to me. “Final word” seems way to overblown - she’s just saying it’s up to Misaka to make the decision.
I’m kind of on the fence about this one. On one hand, she says something along the lines of sad/lonely and jealousy is a pretty different feeling (in most cases). On the other hand, jealousy is the natural reaction in this situation and although it might be a bit of a stretch, it does read better than “it makes me lonely” because that’s not really how you use “lonely” in English. Perhaps something like “It’s a bit unfortunate…” would fit the bill better.
This line also sounds a bit stiff, but in a bad way. Kuroko speaks a lot more politely than most people of her demographic so I can appreciate the sentiment, but “before that” doesn’t seem like the right phrase. I think “by then” is what you want. Pretty minor here, though; mostly a nitpick.
I really don’t like “elite training” here. I don’t even know what it’s meant to mean. The literal translation is more like “special training”, and as much as I hate stock translations, it makes a lot more sense than it does right now. The word used usually refers to a situation where people buckle up and really get to practising before an event, and “elite” just misses the mark completely. Even just “training” on its own would’ve been fine.
This is a really good line. The literal line is “I won’t cause you any trouble”, but the implication is “I have arranged for a substitute partner so as to not trouble you”. Japanese is inherently vague and implied, but it’s not always as ambiguous as it seems. If something is clear, then I highly encourage being explicit. That’s how English is spoken. If I had to nitpick, the line is in response to “don’t worry about it”, so it seems a bit abrupt. Starting with a “no, “ would make it flow a lot better.
I also really liked this line. She says “It felt like she was just putting on a brave face”, but I think this might just be a figure of speech. She’s very confident about what she’s saying, so there’s no need to beat around the bush; just lay out out, plain and simple.
Back to stock translations, not a fan of this one. This isn’t really a phrase I’m used to hearing in English, but it pops up time and time again in anime (and other weeb stuff). “Yeah, she would totally do that” or words to that effect sound a lot more natural to me.
This one’s a tough one. This is a very polite form of address, probably because the girls respect her a lot and they’re rich private school kids or whatever. It still gets me that middle school kids refer to each other with “miss”, but I don’t really have any better ideas. Playing with different kinds of address sounds weird but it’s common in Japanese, and it’s not really a thing that’s easy to convey in English.
Of all the lines I intended to include in this post, I think this is the only one that you might consider a legitimate translation error. She refers to her literally as “Queen”, because that’s her nickname. She’s not using the form of address you would use if you were actually speaking to a queen (“your highness/majesty”, or even “my queen”), it’s just “Queen”. I thought this was pretty clear even without context, but I guess it managed to slip through the gaps somehow.
I don’t know how I feel about using the ability name as a verb. “I’m going to pyrokinesis you”. “I’m going to imagine breaker you”. “I’m going to railgun you”. It sounds all right for some but not for others. I feel like this will end up hurting consistency later on, and there isn’t really a need to shorten it here as far as I can tell. Seems pretty out of character.
“Cover” doesn’t feel like the right word here. It’s too broad and makes it sound more like hate isn’t the right word (and it might actually be love, for example), whereas she’s actually saying hate might be a little too light. There’s a really good opportunity here to play with something like “Hate is a strong word… But perhaps not strong enough”.
The swearing is a pretty good choice to convey how crass she is, but the line is kinda off. “No point” would mean there’s no reason to, but it’s more along the lines of it would negatively affect them. It’s also a rhetorical question, so a “Why the fuck would you put me in the spotlight?” works a lot better.
This is really out of character. “Cut me some slack” is something you say to your superior when you want them to take it easier on you. The guy on the phone is probably his superior by title (unless your level counts, I dunno) but he definitely doesn’t think of anyone as his superior. He just wants the guy to shut up and leave him alone. “Give it a rest”.
I didn’t realise this was a phrase. I looked it up and “bear” seems to be the standard, with “dragon” as a popular runner-up. But I feel like in a setting where there’s actually an entity called DRAGON and dragons (may) exist, it’s adding unnecessary ambiguity where it doesn’t need to be.
Collecting a ticket to reserve a spot in the queue or similar is a pretty common system in Japan but I haven’t come across it elsewhere. Not sure if it’s necessary to specify that the tickets are numbered (unless you really want to argue about removing the implication of forging tickets), and the “no longer distributed today” reads a lot better as “distributed this morning”. If you wanted to really localise, you could probably even get away with just calling it a reservation or preorder.
This one is a bit confusing. It doesn’t really make sense to have super strength if you can’t move while you use it. In this case, “move” means “move from the spot you are standing in”, so he’s still able to swing his arms around or whatever. I guess “in motion” is meant to capture that but it didn’t really come across that way to me. I would change the last bit to “you have to stand still”.
Really literal here too. Being literal isn’t a bad thing inherently but there are better options for this one. “He’s the type of person that just can’t say no” is a much more common way of expressing this sentiment.
I actually raised an eyebrow at this one. Hype squad sounds ridiculous here but my first thought of “cheer(ing) squad” sounded a bit too close to “cheerleader” for comfort. With the benefit of doubt, I looked it up and it turns out this is actually a thing, but I still don’t think it’s appropriate given their characterisation or the way they’re speaking.
As opposed to gathering attention out of the spotlight? Pretty 1:1 with the Japanese here again and it seems a bit redundant to me. Is spotlight the word of the day or something? I feel like I’ve seen it too many times this episode. In this case, I think the ever so slight possibility of introducing ambiguity is outweighed heavily by a more succinct line.
This one is a bit off to me as well. It makes it sound like she has to go through a lot of trouble to erase their memories, but she’s really just saying he’s making more trivial work for her. It’s a mild annoyance, not a “pain”. “Now I have to clean up their memories!” gets the whole puffy cheeks attitude across a lot better.
Considering the tendency to stick pretty heavily to the Japanese in several previous lines, it was interesting to see a rather important adjective being neglected here. It’s not just a bad feeling, it’s a really bad feeling. “Such a bad feeling” fits here pretty well.
Oh, that’s the end. Well, I’m sure there’s no shortage of people whining about GJM subs on /a/ or Nyaa, but I’m arrogant enough to declare that this is probably the only legitimate set of complaints, if you can even call it that. As far as I’m concerned, the quality is still well above whatever competition there is, but if you don’t like it then feel free to yell at me when it’s my turn in a few episodes.