Yeah nothing happened in 2023 but as usual it’s the boomersubs that bring me back. I was listening to some kino the other day, so what better way to celebrate than giving some now-40-year-olds the Kinmoku treatment?
It’s so vindicating when the very first line is wrong. His name is Fujiwara Sai. There’s a whole Heian period history lesson around where the “no” comes from (and why it’s not really used anymore), but suffice to say that this rendering is ambiguous. Fujiwara no Sai would at least be less confusing if you really wanted to keep it.
You know how in English, “hand” is the thing with the fingers but it’s also what you call the playing cards you’re holding? In Japanese, “hand” can similarly refer to one move (like in chess, or—god forbid—go).
These guys aren’t out here trying to stop a soccer ball, they’re chasing some kind of miraculous go play. This is pretty much the central theme of the show so getting it wrong here is a big blunder.
Over half of the lines in the OP are wrong*. Like not even translated wrong, just heard wrong. In some instances I can see why it’d be ambiguous, but in other places I have no idea how they heard what they did. I suppose official lyrics took a while to scan back in 2001, but is it unreasonable to assume someone would’ve picked up on the nonsense translation and pointed it out?
*Yes, I counted.
Fansub credits still bring a tear to my eye 🥲
No lies detected.
Remember the good ol’ days, when shitposting in fansubs was the norm? Nowadays you can just say 🌮 tacos 🌮 and you’re living rent-free in /a/’s head for a year and a half.
It’s lines like these that make me question if a project team has any native English speakers. Surely “what exactly happened?” is the natural order here? Though honestly I would just stop translating word-for-word and go with “what happened?”.
How strange?
Unassuming line but I’m glad to see it. “I don’t know” and “I don’t care” are the same word in Japanese, and all too often you see translators defaulting to the more common “I don’t know”, even when it doesn’t make any sense. Props for not only recognizing it correctly but also picking a good line that worked in context.
The dreaded trailing sentence. If you’ve read my other blogs you’d know how I feel about this. Just make something up, man.
“Girl” is a pretty light insult. Was there someone Christian on the team that didn’t want to cuss?
Also why is the punctuation and styling all over the place? Oh right, there was no QC on the team. It wasn’t an important part of the fansubbing process anyway.
I can’t believe they localized tissues. They are blatantly ignoring the author’s intentions and desecrating this pure and untainted Japanese masterpiece with their fanfic of Western political agenda. They should’ve just left it as ティッシュ and put in a TL note so that viewers can learn about Japanese culture, instead of assuming that we’re too unintelligent to grasp the traditional Japanese concept of hygiene.
Kaga’s not this nice, at least not in this episode. He’s not offering to help out of the goodness of his heart, he’s offering an exchange. Bit of an important clause to leave out of this one.
Tsutsui didn’t say tournament, he said team match. While it usually is a tournament (and does end up being a tournament), the important part to convey is that they’d have to play in a team together.
Kaga’s also not this mean. He’s saying he’ll beat him up until he apologizes for his earlier cheek. Smells like a guesslation.
Never mind, this smells even more like a guesslation. Tsutsui’s telling Kaga to bugger off so I’m not sure why this is even a question. Kaga hasn’t even done anything yet.
This isn’t a question either. It’s Hikaru declaring that he’s also gutsy, in response to Kaga’s ballsiness.
Kaga’s actually saying he refuses to accept that someone like Hikaru would understand how he feels. Getting pretty sloppy as the episode goes on, huh?
Also what’s going on with the distortion at the top? I’ve seen artifacts multiple times this episode so maybe the encoder needs to be called out too :^)
Holy comma splice, that’s a run-on sentence and a half.
This one also doesn’t quite get the nuance right. Kaga’s not being toyed with, he’s being put on the back foot and playing catch-up due to their difference in skill. Respect for your opponent and for the game are also important themes in the show, so getting this wrong can really affect how characters are perceived.
Even the fat kid doesn’t get a break. I dunno how bottlecap can sound like rice ball. It doesn’t even look like a jelly donut, come on. Are they just making fun of him for being fat? If so I’m all for it.
The TL note we never knew we needed. What else can I say, these were definitely 2001 fansubs. Standards may have risen in recent years, but the quality of fansubs has not :^)
Don’t let this shitpost keep you from watching Hikago though. E-F is probably still the best release, and I’m told the translator gets better at his job as the series progresses. I won’t come back to tell you if that’s true but you’d hope he would improve over the course of a show that ran for 2 years.