Anime & Manga Western Localization Problems

[Agent23]

With Ancient Magus Bride being announced as using both AI and human translators and editors for the English script, English localizers...ahem, my mistake, that's inaccurate, that should be wokalizers, are now crying bitch tears about disrespect and discrimination and the usual woketard buzzwords, with the infamous Katrina Leonoudakis (who proudly bragged numerous times about the piss poor jobs she did on translating the anime she was localizing, with accompanying screenshots, then proceeded to insult anyone who called her out for her lack of professionalism) being prominently featured on the video.

LOL, keep crying, you localizer cunts. It's not disrespect and discrimination, it's taking out the trash. And fuck yes, machine translators like DeepL are more trustworthy than you shitheels. This is the future you chose, scum.

You will always need a proofreader that knows the language, but this will be faster and cheaper, especially if the human part of the work is outsourced to actual Japanese proofreaders or decent enough proofreaders from places like Asian Mexico.

IMHo it will be best to just get a few fans to work on a part-time/gig basis, too, and have them "vote" on the translation.

This is excellent, we get rid of the rent-seeking leftoids fucking up the translations and we might see more direct to customer sales by japanese publishers to fans in the west.


All in all, the consumer benefits and fuck the translators.


I have actually been using a tool called VNTranslator, and while it produces some reall, really weird translations(it uses the google translate and DeepL APIs) it is decent enough to give me an idea as to what the story is.
Improved language models + crowdsourcing would IMHO produce decent enough translations at a fraction of the price.

 

[Agent23]

More coverage of the wokelizer shitshow by Asmongold and Endimiontv:





Rev says desu:



I am really,really glad I only watch subbed content.

 

[Captain X]

Doesn't matter if you only watch subbed when the same people are doing the subtitles.

 

[Agent23]

Doesn't matter if you only watch subbed when the same people are doing the subtitles.

None of the fansub groups I follow are in any way affiliated with that drek.

As Gabe said, PIRACY IS A SERVICE ISSUE.
I am using the superior service, which is also free.

 

[Aldarion]

Doesn't matter if you only watch subbed when the same people are doing the subtitles.

Aren't most anime fan-subbed?

 

[Captain X]

Aren't most anime fan-subbed?

Not anymore. Most of the time they're lazy and grab the subs off the official release from Funimation/Crunchyroll.

 

[Agent23]

Well, I certainly haven't seen any woke shit in releases by Judas/Cleo/Commie and the other ones I usually watch.

 

[Captain X]

 

[Terthna]

The only reason those people have anything to do with anime and/or manga, is because they're seen as popular right now, and they hope to eventually coopt and destroy the community surrounding it; so that they can turn us into yet more foot soldiers/piggy banks for their insane death cult.

It's impossible not to get emotional when it comes to Gurren Lagann.

If I ever get around to rewatching Gurren Lagann, I'm stopping the last episode right after Simon and Nia kiss; because the last few minutes did not happen.

 

[Terthna]

Also there's the whole thing with anime companies now looking to use AI to translate their stuff into English so they can sell directly to fans over here.

Thing is, all "localizers" had to do was not bite the hand that fed them. The Japanese are usually loath to get rid of unnecessary middle men jobs; so it's unlikely that they would have jumped to replacing them with AI translations, if they were not being so blatantly insulted on a regular basis.

 

[Agent23]

The only reason those people have anything to do with anime and/or manga, is because they're seen as popular right now, and they hope to eventually coopt and destroy the community surrounding it; so that they can turn us into yet more foot soldiers/piggy banks for their insane death cult.

Not just that, a lot of the journos ald lolcalizers basically failed into the field.
That and they are bullshit diversity hires with bullshit degrees in greivance mongering studies.

It will be great if Japan just hires a combo of local editors and some Philipinos that might have more of a connection to the west to do localization, not that removing -san and -sama and changing ramen to soup has much value.

If I ever get around to rewatching Gurren Lagann, I'm stopping the last episode right after Simon and Nia kiss; because the last few minutes did not happen.

Whaaa?!!?

Was that the one where Kamina died?

 

[Terthna]

The catch about pirating anime and manga is that the groups who do it have lost that tradition of doing actual fan-subs, and most of them will use the official subtitles or manga translations.

Thankfully, that tradition didn't entirely die (thanks to older, more obscure anime, and franchises like Macross and Pretty Cure; not to mention the tokusatsu genre), and I've noticed that more and more unofficial subtilties are being made as alternatives to the official ones.

 

[Typhonis]

Bah I say....BAH Sion+Yoko 4EVR.

 

[Agent23]

Idiot lolcowizer goes after Asmongold, Asmongold strikes back:


Delicious.

 

[S'task]

I do put them in small paragraphs. It still spits out a bunch of errors. Like reading the characters of someone's name wrong. Repeating sentences. Getting the sex of a person wrong. Randomly alternating between a character being male and female. And more.

While I can't comment on some of the other issues, the issues with getting the sex of a person wrong or switching between male and female actually makes sense when you know just a little bit about Japanese and English. Japanese, while it has pronouns, tends to use them very sparsely especially compared to English, and many of the pronouns it does have are not as strongly gendered as English pronouns, which then leads to considerable ambiguity in Japanese as to the sex of a character unless explicitly shown or stated. In manga this can be made even more complicated by, say, a tomboy character who's art design is clearly female to the reader, but in their speech they use masculine pronouns (which is a typical trait of Japanese tomboy characters, they tend to use the normally masculine-coded first person singular pronoun "Boku" or "Ore".) and by other characters they are referred to by their name but use the normally masculine honorifics of "-kun" rather than "-chan".

 

[Agent23]

While I can't comment on some of the other issues, the issues with getting the sex of a person wrong or switching between male and female actually makes sense when you know just a little bit about Japanese and English. Japanese, while it has pronouns, tends to use them very sparsely especially compared to English, and many of the pronouns it does have are not as strongly gendered as English pronouns, which then leads to considerable ambiguity in Japanese as to the sex of a character unless explicitly shown or stated. In manga this can be made even more complicated by, say, a tomboy character who's art design is clearly female to the reader, but in their speech they use masculine pronouns (which is a typical trait of Japanese tomboy characters, they tend to use the normally masculine-coded first person singular pronoun "Boku" or "Ore".) and by other characters they are referred to by their name but use the normally masculine honorifics of "-kun" rather than "-chan".

Yeah, unfortunately translation has a long ways to go.
I use VN translator to play some lewd games and while for the most part I can understand what is going on neither google nor deepL can differentiate between dick and what I am guessing is pussy/vagina or maybe crotch.

That was the weirdest and most persistent problem.


But all in all, A.I. and even the existing translation tooling are a huge force multiplier that should make many of these jerkoffs irrelevant.

 

[Terthna]

An interesting video that goes into the corruption (and at times, outright disdain towards Japanese creators and their culture) that has permeated the "localization" industry for decades.

 

[Captain X]

Apparently some Japanese developers are bending the knee to Western localizers.

 

[Terthna]

Apparently some Japanese developers are bending the knee to Western localizers.

Sadly, it's not really surprising; not coming from companies like Sega, Bandai Namco, and Square Enix. They've made several attempts over the years to bastardize their creations to try and appeal to "western audiences", based on what they saw as our lowest common denominator; which these days are the regressive left.

 

[Agent23]

Sadly, it's not really surprising; not coming from companies like Sega, Bandai Namco, and Square Enix. They've made several attempts over the years to bastardize their creations to try and appeal to "western audiences", based on what they saw as our lowest common denominator; which these days are the regressive left.

That is not just lowest common denominator, dude, that is also their western "partners" lying to them that the west in general likes woke shit and muh western investors pushing ESG.