Subtitles on commercial releases *rant*

[Zarxrax]

This past weekend I purchased Azumanga Daioh volume 2 released by ADV films. Upon watching it, I noticed that they had a nasty typo in the subtitle stream. When Koroin's mom is trying to wake Kaorin up, she is supposed to say something along the lines of "What kind of dream is this girl having?" But instead, the subtitle read "Want kind of..." Such a glaringly obvious mistake such as this is simply unforgivable by me. If this were the first time, I would just shrug it off, but for YEARS I have been purchasing titles with horrible subtitling jobs from ADV. This was the last time though, and I have decided that I will never again purchase a DVD from ADV films. The fact that they (continually) make mistakes such as this tells me one thing as a consumer: they do not care about me or other fans of the series, as long as we fill their pockets with our cash every month. I have written to ADV telling them my feelings, and I would encourage anyone who feels similarly to do so as well. If they get enough complaints, perhaps they will actually hire someone to do quality checking. I mean come on... HOW HARD IS IT TO SPEND 25 MINUTES CHECKING OVER AN EPISODE?

It is not just ADV that screws over the subtitle watcher, but many companies. Though I have singled out ADV here, they are not the worst. If you notice any anime company releasing a sub-par subtitle stream on their DVDs, I highly encourage you to let them know your thoughts on the matter.

I am paying a LOT of money for anime DVDs, so is it that wrong that I should expect a subbing job thats at least as good as most fansubs?

Those wishing to contact ADV can do so here: http://www.advfilms.com/contactus.asp

[Kalium]

The Bandai release of Crest of the Stars comes to mind, where they even change their translations partway through.

[HeartbreakerByZep]

It's a real pity.

That reminds me of the ridiculous mistakes in the Kare Kano manga (calling people by someone else's name and reffering incorrectly to people)

[Charizard305]

I've noticed the same things among other titles that I own.

[Calim]

People no company is perfect in their dubbing of any anime so to expect such a thing is arrogant.

[Jimmy Balls-O-Steel]

The only ADV title I own is the Eva Box. I recall there being a typo on the second disc that was a spacing mistake.

The R.O.D. OVA has a pretty horrible subtitling job. Not so much in spelling/grammar, but in that the dialogue was so fucking bad. I'm glad Gaijin worked on the dub, because they did an amazing job with it, and R.O.D. is one of the few titles that I am genuinely happy with exclusively watching the dub. I'd call up examples from the horrible subbing job, but it's been so long that I can't remember exact lines. Bad, bad subs. I've seen Manga Entertainment do much better subs than that.

I must say that Zarxrax is right, though. Given how fucking expensive anime DVD's can be, I see no reason not to expect high quality subtitling and dubbing jobs.

[HeartbreakerByZep]

People no company is perfect in their dubbing of any anime so to expect such a thing is arrogant.

They could atleast proofread. There's no reason a legit DVD should be worse than the best fansubs. And some mistakes (reffering to KK manga) are just annoying and shouldn't happen - you should know the character's names and understand the context within which the dialouge is spoken.

[Arigatomina]

People no company is perfect in their dubbing of any anime so to expect such a thing is arrogant.

Definitely true.

But if it is consistent, spread out over many dvds made by the same company, the same subtitlers, then you need to voice a complaint. Considering how much dvds cost for a single, long series, you would expect them to recognize their common, repeated mistakes and to fix them. Novelists send their work through editors to catch those things, I don't think it's asking too much for subtitlers to do the same. For things like switching 'want' and 'what', that's just a little blurb that any editor would catch. If they made that sort of mistake with the dubbers, you know people would complain and ridicule the company. It isn't asking much to expect the same 'check-over' for subtitles.

We aren't talking about fansubbers here, we're talking about people whose *jobs* are to translate accurately. This is no different from someone complaining to a magazine for being filled with spelling errors. You get what you pay for - if they want people to pay what they ask, then they should give what they're promising, quality work. When a six year old can read a subtitle and catch the mistakes, it's just plain bad. Sure, if it happens once in a few dozen dvds, that's not too strange - no one's perfect. But if it gets consistent, you're doing the company a favor by pointing it out - they're making themselves look bad and demeaning the fans they're charging a high price to.

[Heero_Yuy84]

Hmmm...seems ADV has a reputation for fucking up subs all around...here I was thinking it was just this one show they half assed

(Yeah, I'm prob. the only person here watching it, but hey)

So far got the first three discs for Aura Battler Dunbine...and it seems they can't seem to decide on what they're going to use as spellings for a lot of these things
(So far some of the running inconsistencies being the inserts referring to a ship as Bull Beggar (tech. its official name) while the subs call it Blue Vega and numerous cases of the subtitles spelling Aura Battler names as they sound out...so something that was original 'Drumlo' gets spelt 'Draumaro' or 'Dana O'Shea' to 'Danaeoshee'
...overall, its oddly amusing though...mostly for the fact the HK subs I saw for this series first actually got more of the names right than ADV thus far...then again, Macek isn't exactly the sharpest person to work with an anime, so...)

[J-0080]

I normally don't watch the subtitles on ADV DVDs...but yeah, I can see how it would bug you.