(cool ellipsis deluge.)

nee-san: sister, onee-chan: sis, onee-sama: dear sister, ane-ue: big sister. Or something like that. Close enough.
Frankly, I doubt that you’ll encounter many scenes and situations in which such translation inaccuracies are going to actually matter.

On top of that, I am convinced that anyone who does appreciate the implications of honorifics are able to pick them out just by listening to the Japanese audio track while reading the subtitles. And I’d rather not see monstrosities like “Hey, Michiko-onee-sama, let’s go meet Souichiro-kun!” in my subs, even if that’s what they’re really saying.

Of course it’s always a bit confusing to clearly read subs that differ from what’s being said, so changing names rather than just omitting honorifics isn’t always a good idea. I also don’t really like reading names in Western order when they’re clearly being said in Eastern order. And I am well aware that there are situations and uses where preserving honorifics is preferable, especially when used as part of a nickname (in ROD TV, for example: Ma-nee, Mi-nee, Nenene-onee-sama (“That’s too hard!”)).

I guess generally I lean towards stronger localization if the anime is set in a Western setting, and a conservative approach – from an English language point of view – to using honorifics if the show is actually set in Japan. But it really depends on the show’s script how well either approach is going to work out, so I’ll refrain from actually taking sides.

sorry ’bout that. edit at will.

edit by jama: done (it’s < strong > and < em >)

important

TL/TC:
Of course this is the very foundation of your fansub. Probably the most devastating position to have someone incompetent in, along with the timer. However, a good editor can compensate for – or cover up – a lot of translation issues. Therefor I think the step up from a mediocre to a good translator will be somewhat less noticeable to the audience than that from a mediocre to a good editor.

ED:
Having a mediocre or even bad editor (assuming one that doesn’t edit much at all) just leaves you pretty much with the unfiltered translator output. Which might or might not be a big deal, depending on your translator.

However, having a good or exceptional editor can really make your release. He may iron out a lot of translation wrinkles such as script inconsistencies, inappropriate tone for a given character or situation, etc,
and ideally make the dialog concise, quick to read and easy to understand while preserving its flavor and nuances.

Not saying that translations should be dumbed down, just that I want to read proper English that’s not unneccessarily convoluted, rather than a word-for-word Engrish pseudo-translation that gratuitously leaves half of the words in Japanese. (With some fansubs, it’s like I’m really looking at English words and Japanese grammar, especially when it comes to ordering of sub clauses.)

Timing:
Seeing how aegisub can take care of flash gaps and scene timing on its own pretty well, the timer would have to make pretty egregious mistakes or suck pretty hard at line splitting and linecharacter association to actually make the timing stand out in a negative way. Actual timing mistakes are very grating though, this is why I consider timing important.

Styling:
Readable no-frills font (black/white) is just fine and requires very little effort. What? Trying to force me to squint at some tiny decorative font in weird colors by hardsubbing or using n+1 different per-character styles so I’d spend 10 minutes on changing them manually? Dropped.

not so important

QC:
Depends on the rest of the staff, really. If you do have to rely on a QC to make your subs watchable, as opposed to actually striving for perfection, there’s something wrong. You don’t actually get an error-ridden release unless someone else sucks at his job.

Enc:
Unless your source is old/broken, a vanilla x264 encode job (or even LOL MUX SCRIPT TO RAW) will usually be perfectly watchable.

Most people will not be able to tell the difference between a mediocre and an outstanding encode of the same source; some even get good and bad encodes backwards (see: groups getting away with upscaled, oversmoothed, warpsharpened video), so beyond adding basic polish to address the most glaring source issues encoding is just a sink for a lot of time and effort for very little gain.

TS:
Just adding \an8 notes for plot-relevant signs is basically sufficient and requires virtually no effort. And consistently styled notes certainly look more “professional” than half-assed signs.

Everything on top of that is nice, but by no means essential and adds very little of actual value to the fansub (setting aside extreme cases like SZS).

I think it’s important that sign translations can be read without having to pause the video. Typeset signs are usually hard to read at a mere glance. The little space that’s usually available for sign typesetting often prevents that.

Also, if you can’t get a moving sign to look right, I’d rather just have the note or a static translation. Bad sign motion is rather ugly and distracting, and it doesn’t improve readability either.

PS: vertical text is hard to read.
PPS: 90° rotated text is hard to read as well.
PPPS: afx logo replication is ridiculous.
PPPPS: The pinnacle of idiotic fansubbing: animated untranslated special attack names (sup K-F).

fuck that noise

Karaoke:
Highly distracting, annoying, often ugly, and pretty much useless.

Show of hands, who does actually sing along? And needs karaoke effects for it? Anyone? It’s just eye candy that takes up a lot of screen estate and can even really ruin a moment in the case of insert songs.

Seriously, what’s the point? A softsubbed song translation should be more than enough. (Optionally romaji lyrics for the two people who actually do want to sing along and fail at learning/remembering the lyrics)

Sorry about the wall of text.

Former timer/ts/enc/qc here by the way.

Many groups also simplify the translation in order to make them “flow” better. People will praise the subbers for their easy-to-understand subs while in reality they left out the hard-to-translate details.

Two things I wanna see disappear from the fansubbing scene.

Now, as for karaoke, it’s definitely not necessary – we don’t _need_ to know the lyrics of the song to enjoy the show, let alone need to see fancy effects with them – but good karaoke can really improve the quality of the overall video. Personally, I really like karaoke when it’s well done, and I find it disappointing when groups don’t do it. However, it is definitely the least important aspect of producing a quality fansub because, while it’s nice, it’s unnecessary.

As for details like soft-subbing vs hard-subbing, I much prefer soft-subs, but I’m not all that particular about fonts. Something that’s serviceable will do the trick as far as I’m concerned, and getting too fancy with the fonts can make the text illegible. As nice as it would be to have the karaoke be soft-subbed, that restricts you to what ass can do, making it impossible to do the fancier effects that require Adobe Fx and the like. Also, it takes more horsepower on the viewer’s machine for them to be rendered, which could be too much for many machines. And not all players do well at producing proper ass karaoke effects. VLC does decently with normal subs but fails miserably when it has to deal with fancy stuff like karaoke effects. MPlayer on the other hand can generally deal with full-on karaoke (though it takes a fair amount of horsepower). So, realistically, I’d say that soft-subbing the normal subs and hard-subbing the karaoke is what makes the most sense. You may or may not want to hard-sub signs as well (moving ones, you probably need to for the same reason as the karaoke effects).

Ideally, all levels of a fansub would be done well – _especially_ when we’re talking about a group that can take months between episodes. Really, speedsubbers at least have the excuse that they’re trying to get the episodes out as quickly as possible. Those that really take their time to produce episodes look bad when they haven’t taken the time to really put out a high quality video with everything done well. Granted, just because you take a long time to release stuff doesn’t mean that you’ve had the time to spend tons of time on it, but I think that it’s generally expected that slow-subs be of high quality.

In any case, everything but karaoke is required, and the better that it is, the better the result. And while karaoke isn’t required, having good karaoke can really improve the result.

I guess you are right …

but…. localization does change the meaning, does it not? As I understand eng localization starts with omitting honorifics. (actually replacing them with english ones – Mr/Miss/etc) But… for example …. then how do you translate difference between “nee-san” and “onee-chan” – and it’s a big though subtle difference ….?

Can you give an example what kind of localization you consider appropriate?

“5. Karaoke. Some ppl want it, others hate it, yet others don’t care. I am the one who hates HARDSUBBED karaoke.”
Well, i don’t know why karaoke is there, but obviously some people like it for it to continue being there. I personally don’t give a rats ass about it, but if it’s there, it oughts to fit in – not be fancy, just fit in the vid. I say if someone wants to make one, either softsub it and make multiple subtitle tracks or hardsub it and make ordered chapters, clean versions, w/e you want. I think that’s okay with everyone. And as i said before, i personally don’t care if it’s there or not ^^