So fansubs, you guys

I'm seeing these videos make the rounds and I think they warrant some discussion. Do yourself a favor and skip the beginning animation segment-- I seriously groaned and closed the window the first time I was linked to it-- and digest the meat. You'll have to click through to Youtube, as it's in five parts. It's a critique of modern fansubbers and the many, many stupid things they do. It's thorough to the point of nitpicking, the Otaking thing pisses me off, I don't agree with everything the guy says, examples like Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei and its blackboard are self-defeating, it frequently dips into the exact same self-aggrandizing as a typical fansubber might take part in, and never mind the furious wanking in the comments, and especially never mind this final, self-inflicted blow to the guy's crediblity... it's deeply flawed, okay? Doesn't he know that Dattebayo is trolling? But I am all for the core arguments.

What's very interesting is that from the ratings and the comments, anime fans-- and especially fansubbers-- do not like these points. There's even a guy calling him a pedophile! Doing things this way is not the norm, and how dare you say that the norm has flaws! Fansubbing is in fact something that people do out of their own free time: they are absolutely entitled to do whatever they want, because they really don't owe anybody anything. The logical jump that people make is that because of this, they are somehow immune to all criticism. Furthermore, that anybody who makes a criticism is a squat, big-headed Hitler with ^s for eyes. That's not how it works.

As far as I'm concerned, fansubbing's dirty little public secret is that the hobby is completely ego-driven. If it wasn't, we'd all be using softsubs. In theory, this is fine: competition will make the fansubbers work harder and everybody benefits, riiight? Of course not. If you follow the scene, you know that's not what happens: a no-nonsense translation is not as good for a fansub group's collective ego as a pile of useless things. Double-digit numbers of groups working on the same popular show, benefitting nobody but their spiritually throbbing internet penises. All the ridiculous effects and karaoke and credits and pidgin English and auto-fellatio that are effectively lampooned in this video: they're all totally out of place in the original work and there's no question in my mind that they actively detract from it.

Fansub groups (of course I don't mean all of them, jeez) overvalue their role in the process. Over and over again, often literally, groups put themselves over the work, and over the people who've done the immeasurably fucking harder work of putting together the anime. Even ADV or Macek were never so shameless about taking credit for the show they translated.

5/31: Edited to skip the first video, and inserted further references (via wildarmsheero) to oh my god this guy's credibility does not exist.

Comments

[piyo]

Thanks for putting this into words. Perhaps later I'll watch the videos you linked to.

I've always thought, why aren't there more softsubs if the point is to endorse anime as an entertainment medium? Then I figure that my idea comes from the old fansubbing attitudes from the 90s and needs adjustment. I only watch raws now, so I must be out of touch with fansubbing nowadays.

[ChaoofNee]

If we're watching the show and listening to the tone of voice, can't we hear the honorifics, anyway? Cripes.

Also, is it just me or is this Otaking (who is neither Toshio Okada nor Steve Pearl) fellow just as egotistical as the fansubbers he so loathes?

[David Cabrera]

Yes, very much so, and it doesn't help the argument any.

[ds]

I only watched a few parts; does he get to the bit with fansubbers and manga scanslators dubbing their own color-commentary into the margins?

It doesn't help that a lot of these groups just aren't that good at handling either language. Seems to me that in practice, a lot of the left-in Japanese stems from groups playing it as close to a literal translation into English as humanly possible, which generates a lot of weird incoherencies (which they often go back and try to patch in turn with more raw Japanese).

[ds]

oh, he gets into that.

Well he's right! It's transparent and annoying!

[Slonie]

Flawed or not, I laughed heartily at the Lord of the Rings and The Last Samurai sections. Points also for including "The Pirate's The Enemy!" ...When I watched that show, that really was in the VHS days.

[Botagel]

Re: "dirty little public secret."

As a former Photoshop monkey for a I assume now long defunct manga scanslations group, I say: wait, any of this is a fucking secret? "Public secret" is pretty much an oxymoron. I remember a conversation where a couple of the guys wanted to delay putting up torrents for our releases (this was just at the start of the Bittorrent boom, for context) so that more people would come to our IRC channel to leech the files from fserves. See, they thought it was cool when the channel had more people with it, even though they usually didn't want to talk to any of them and we all shat the shit in another private staff channel anyway.

Okay, I guess I should actually watch this before I comment but I'm lazy, I'll do it as soon as I press post. Honest.

[astrange]

The animesuki has a bunch of people getting hung up on technical errors and missing everything else. Good thing I never did any of it in the first place!

[Sean]

I started watch this but after the first 3minute clip I closed it.

For God's sake, fansubbing did NOT start with Macross 7 and calling yourself the Otaking is pretty fucking tasteless considering Steve Pearl passed away recently.

But fansubbers are still jerks.

[wildarmsheero]

I generally agree with his stance on translation notes and screen clutter, but his tone is way arrogant.

And yeah, getting on any Shinbo show about too many subs is silly since ADV's release of Pani Poni Dash is just like the fansub, especially with the ADVid Notes turned on.

[SDShamshel]

Citing Final Fantasy 7 as a good example of translation is also ridiculous, seeing as it's notorious for having a number of errors.

The guy makes a lot of good points, but not understand the nature of Shinbo shows, or that the characters IN One Piece give their names the way they do shows a lack of knowledge on his part.

The Viz translation does not call her "Robin Nico."