A redacted excerpt from the release description:

These subs are not translated by me, they are though fixed by me if the translation was iffy, and it was, most of the time. The translation this is based on is done by GLL99 as well as GX_ST done for the tv-rips back in the day. Should be 100% fixed, there might be some few left that flew under the radar

Yep, it’s another one of those. You know the kind. “The translation was bad, so I ‘fixed’ it”. Granted, not worded as insufferably as last time. So that should set the scene. You know what you’re getting into. Get your game on.

The phrase used here is “kumo wo tsuku”, (lit: reaches the clouds) which describes someone being very tall. There’s no mention of clothes anywhere, so I have no idea how they came up with this. Why did they think this was an important detail to specify, anyway? What else would he do with his clothes, not wear them?

Update: after thinking about it for several minutes, I still don’t know how they arrived here. Perhaps they misheard “kumo” (cloud) as “fuku” (clothes)—don’t ask me how—but that would introduce another pickup truck full of errors, so I’m going to stop thinking about this.

He’s not Ra Yellow, he’s a Ra Yellow. Not really a translation error, just a very bad literal translation. Would go more along the lines of “Ra Yellows don’t stand a chance” or similar.

This is an instance of the translator(s) misunderstanding the grammar structure. Without going into too much detail, both “duelist” and “game designer” refer to his potential future goal, not to his current state. More simply, it should say “He’s aiming to be a game designer, not a duelist”.

Sorry, here’s your hallway back.

Yeah, another super literal translation. If you go word for word with a J→E dictionary, you might end up with something like this, but if you speak English then you’d say “make way” or “step aside” or something.

Sometimes I see lines like this and genuinely wonder how much thought writer really put into it. This directly follows from the previous line, so I have no idea where they were going—your guess is as good as mine.

He’s saying “suji” (reasonable/natural/expected) as in, it’s expected that Yellows make way in the hallway for Blues. As far as I’m aware, this word has nothing to do with math problems. If I were to take another stab in the dark, I’d hazard a guess that maybe he heard “suuji” (number), and just made up the rest of the line.

No mention of fools here either. Judai is telling him not to exclusively hunt the Blues, because he wants to duel too. This one I’m pretty confident on; they misheard “bakari” (only) as “baka” (fool).

Again, no mention of talking weirdly. He’s telling Judai to stop making baseless accusations. The word for “weird” is used, but as part of a template phrase rather than for its standalone meaning.

This one smells like a case of interpreting the tense incorrectly. Judai is saying “If I want to duel you, then I need to bet my rarest card, right?” Also this would be a good place to point out that just because he said “ante rule” in Japanese doesn’t mean you have to write it word for word every time in English.

The original phrase was “dotou no kougeki”, which refers to a continuous onslaught of attacks. This is literally what happened the scene, but instead the translation is something about swords? My only guess is that they heard “tou” (katana) and rolled with it, but that would also be incorrect for a number of reasons.

(?)

There really wasn’t anywhere else on the screen you could’ve put the subtitles?


Normally I don’t refer to the original Japanese to try and keep my posts as accessible as possible, but a lot of the lines were so ridiculous this time that I felt like you’d be missing out if you couldn’t see how they might have arrived at those sentences. If you’re learning Japanese, then maybe this might serve as a resource you can refer to when you want to see what not to do.

I guess “100% fixed” was a bit of an overstatement, and “some few left that flew under the radar” was a bit of an understatement. If all the other posts on this blog weren’t evidence enough, this abomination of N3 guesslations should really cement the fact that just because someone put some English words on a Japanese cartoon doesn’t mean they’re right.