How to fansub: an example
I’ve been watching Kanon lately. Despite what Anime World Order may tell you, it’s a beautifully rendered comedy anime, only held down by how it becomes an incredibly stupidly written drama anime when it’s forced to pay attention to its own plot.
The other good thing about it is the fansubs. As everyone who saw The melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya knows, a.f.k totally has the best translations ever.
The right way to fansub, from Kanon ep. 20. (sorry about squinty text)
If you know your Japanese first-person pronouns, you might notice that this isn’t a literal translation at all, but it’s still perfect and carries the meaning very well. If you don’t know anything about the language, well, you wouldn’t gain anything from having it explained, except being distracted from the actual show.
Unfortunately, fansub groups tend to…. not do this. Here’s one of my favorite examples:
The wrong way to fansub, from Welcome to the NHK episode I forget.
I realized when writing this that we put a translation note in Gakuen Alice 20 the other day; I’ll have to try harder.
This completely ignores other problems, like the dreaded song karaoke, or how about four or five other groups all do different bad jobs at the same time on popular shows, but I’ll leave those for later.
As for no-karaoke and low-drama sources, I recommend a.f.k, Triad, our own S. ADTRW, and our good e-friends at iitran.
(Seriously, what is up with that anison image?)