Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Policy on translations

I feel that it is appropriate to express our policies on translation, to avoid confusion and to attempt to diffuse some controversy.

1.  Our translations will never be literal translations.  Personally, I feel that when you translate an anime series, you are trying to tell a story in another language.  The languages are structurally different, and often there isn't an exact match to what is being said.  Even if there is an "exact match" between languages, it is often nonsense in one language and not the other. 

2.  Honorifics will be used depending on the setting of the series.  For example, we do not use Japanese honorifics for A Little Princess Sara and Pollyanna.  They would not appropriate for the setting.

3.  Blatant translation errors that are caught after release usually will merit a version 2 release.

Of course, the policies above do not prevent us from trying to have a good of a translation as possible, nor does it prevent us from trying to give a series the best treatment possible.  This basically also states our opinion on differing philosophies of translation.

3 comments:

  1. I've read that once a group started doing a series, you will not do it anymore. Dog of Flanders is being sub already by Silver Zero Subs.... does that mean you're dropping it already?

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  2. Yes, that means we will be dropping A Dog of Flanders (although to tell you the truth, we were not making much progress on it, a lot of it is my fault). I will be making an announcement in a later post today about our schedule for the next month.

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  3. That's perfectly alright with me. I'm just happy that The Dog of Flanders is getting subbed in general. I'm grateful that you at least considered it. Of course, there's also the 1992 series to think about (the Japanese RAW episodes are on Veoh! Yay!). That's not being subbed right now.

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