Referring to all anime DVDs and their re-releases.

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Itsuo

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Hey Guys, I just had a quick question and if anyone can reply to this, that would be most helpful. Onegai Teacher being one of my starter animes and one of my personal favorites, seems to have a couple of things bugging me. I purchased the limited red box edition with the CD soundtrack years ago and was recently watching it again. I noticed the subbing is actually totally off with both the dubbing of Eng. and Japanese. voice overs... They constantly use the word Ma'am in place of what is obviously Sensei in the Japanese. voice overs...Its not a big deal for some..but then again this is one of many reasons why I'm honestly thinking of going back to downloading rather buying anime DVD's. Does anyone know if the re-releases for example the anime legends version fixes these problems along with any other releases of any other anime? Another example would be Evangelion....If you've been keeping up...they have made multiple re-releases with this show....are any of the subs different? Or is it like a straight port...Thanks guys.
 
A lot of older series drop honorifics like sensei, sempai, chan, san, domo, etc. because there's no equivalent in the English language for them or only use them in the subtitles. Also Japanese and English are two completely different languages so something like honorifics may be taken out so that the greater meaning conversations can be maintained. It all depends on which companies dub or subbed it as far as the translation. In Please Teacher's case it was probabally done because of the controversial nature of the relationship and ages of the characters, but I haven't seen it so I wouldn't know. Also rarely are there any changes to any collections VS singles when it comes to things like dubing and subtitling. The most common difference though is that some companies put the series on less discs or get rid of extras.
 
Ah, I see. Well thanks for the info. Although its kind of sad to see that the fan dubs maintain true to the conversation while the American licensed companies do not. I wish they would change that.
 
Well, you pretty much got your wish already as only the older dubs really did that kind of thing, whereas a lot of shows just leave it in nowadays. It also depends on who dubs it as there's lots of domestic licensing companies and some of them subcontract the translation/subtitling/dub work to specific companies that strictly handle translation and voice work. For instance Bandai and VIZ subcontract out to companies like Ocean Group and Bang Zoom whereas Funimation has it's own in-house recording studio to do everything.

Personally, on the matter of honorifics in general, I say leave the honorifics in the subtitle track and get rid of them in the dub unless they play some crucial role in the story.
 
I prefer honorifics left in the dub (FLCL) if the story takes place in Japan. If it takes place elsewhere then they can drop the honorifics.
 
Itsuo said:
Hey Guys, I just had a quick question and if anyone can reply to this, that would be most helpful. Onegai Teacher being one of my starter anime and one of my personal favorites, seems to have a couple of things bugging me. I purchased the limited red box edition with the CD soundtrack years ago and was recently watching it again. I noticed the subbing is actually totally off with both the dubbing of Eng. and Japanese. voice overs... They constantly use the word Ma'am in place of what is obviously Sensei in the Japanese. voice overs...Its not a big deal for some..but then again this is one of many reasons why I'm honestly thinking of going back to downloading rather buying anime DVD's. Does anyone know if the re-releases for example the anime legends version fixes these problems along with any other releases of any other anime? Another example would be Evangelion....If you've been keeping up...they have made multiple re-releases with this show....are any of the subs different? Or is it like a straight port...Thanks guys.
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It's called "localization." It's what the commercial companies do to avoid alienating new viewers who aren't already hardcore anime fans that know every little honorific and courtesy title. Maybe they thought using "Teacher" all the time would be too awkward in English, so they went with "Ma'am" or "Ms. Kazami" instead. So in short, it's not a mistake -- it's a philosophical choice that you don't happen to agree with.

As for subtitles changing across different re-releases, it does happen sometimes. Many of these are shows that were originally released in the late-VHS/early-DVD era, and got a re-release in the mid-00s or later. Otherwise, some changes usually occur when a show gets re-released by a different company.

Evangelion - subtitles updated between the old 8-disc release and the Platinum version, due to larger fonts being used in the old release. All the later re-releases use the Platinum subs.
Sakura Diaries - subtitles updated between the 4-disc TV-censored edition and the later uncensored releases.
Martian Successor Nadesico - I believe some things were changed between the initial DVDs and the Essential Anime edition. Some of the actual dialogue subtitles were changed, but the most noticeable thing is the use of softsubbed signs instead of hardsubbed overlays. Bubblegum Crisis 2040, also from that era, had a similar treatment.
Lost Universe - translation was updated between the ADV and Nozomi releases, due to the old ADV discs using a larger font. Again, the hardsubs and overlays from the ADV release were changed to softsubs in the Nozomi release.
Slayers - some minor edits between the CPM and Funimation releases. IIRC honorifics were added in the first season, but not later seasons.
Love Hina - According to Funimation's ads, their re-release has a different subtitle track from what the Bandai discs had. (Though it was more in need of a new English dub...)
Various titles transferred from ADV to Funimation had the subtitles changed from ADV's styles to Funimation's styles, including Kanon 2006.
 
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But those honorifics should be there regardless. We shouldnt have the right to change whats already right in another culture. Im also pretty sure people can probably guess that sensei means teacher, but suing ma'am gives off an awkward feel or seems as though they are complete strangers. I don't agree with this and as long as they don't plan on changing it...I probably will be more prone to not buying their DVDs. For actual fan dubs leave it in there with no problems what so ever.
 
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Itsuo said:
But those honorifics should be there regardless. We shouldnt have the right to change whats already right in another culture. Im also pretty sure people can probably guess that sensei means teacher, but suing ma'am gives off an awkward feel or seems as though they are complete strangers. I don't agree with this and as long as they don't plan on changing it...I probably will be more prone to not buying their DVDs. For actual fan dubs leave it in there with no problems what so ever.
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That's funny- I think using ma'am helps to maintain the respectful relationship the characters have- that it's still a teacher/student relationship. It's a pretty fair exchange for sensei.

Go watch the old dub for El Hazard, in its various forms. They left the honorifica and a few harder-to-translate words alone... and you know what? It's actually rather jarring. I remember early on the Alternate World series, we Miz and Fujisawa having a romantic dinner... then she pours him a drink and says 'doozo'. I actually experienced a mental pause for a few seconds while my brain went from being into the show to 'translation mode'- quite frankly, I didn't like it.

You have to remember that translation isn't an excact science, and there's more than one way to change a phrase between languages. Every company's going to do it differently, and not all of them are going to agree with you. Personally, I think it's less respectful th leave words as-is becuase 'it's their culture'... it makes it harder for us to understand, and we can't enjoy the show fully if we're constantly having to mentally adjust to random Japanese terms in the the middle of everything. You might say 'then we should learn'- but if that's the case, then why not just learn Japanese outright and not deal with translations at all?

Finally, if you don't mind me beating a dead horse, DVDs give money back to the creators, and downloads don't. It's one thing to keep a fan translation as a supplement, but the two have very different effects on the market.
 
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Itsuo said:
But those honorifics should be there regardless. We shouldnt have the right to change whats already right in another culture.
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If you believe that, you need to learn Japanese since the act of translation by it's nature is going to change things.

Im also pretty sure people can probably guess that sensei means teacher, but suing ma'am gives off an awkward feel or seems as though they are complete strangers.
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I don't know about things in your country, but here a teacher is a job title, not a name. In person they are referred to as "Miss Jones" or just "Miss" or "Mr Jones" or just "Sir". No-one would put their hand up and say "Teacher, can I go to the toilet?".
If "Ma'am" is how American's commonly refer to their teachers, then translating "Sensei" to "Ma'am" is entirely correct, although it the setting is Japanese you could argue about leaving it as Sensei since the term is quite widely known in English these days.
 
Well, if I do recall correctly, Bang Zoom! Entertainment does keep some of the honorifics when they dubbed Lucky Star and Dokuro-chan. I'm not sure about the subtitles, but I do know that fansubs often keep the honorifics. When I did watched Sketchbook ~full Color'S~ and School Days at Crunchyroll, they did keep the honorifics in the subtitles.

As with the issue of re-releases, I was wondering if me buying a sub-only release would help increase the chances of a re-release of the series with a dub. I knew it happens recently with Clannad, Legends of the Dark King, and Dokuro-chan where they were re-released with a dub due to high sub-only DVD sales.

I'm kinda asking because I originally thought of getting both Toradora! Premium Box Sets for my birthday (in addition to supporting NIS America for getting to the anime business), but I realize that even if I bought the box sets, it probably wouldn't make a big impact to NIS America decision of re-releasing Toradora! with a dub or not (considering that if they used a union studio like Bang Zoom! Entertainment, it would cost around $150,000 to $200,000. Compare to the scale of buying both box sets for $88 at Right Stuf). I later decided to wait out for a complete collection with a dub (though this may be a really risky decision since there is a chance that NIS America may not do well in the anime market).
 
Yeah, I've only had one stingy old college professor who who insisted everyone call her Doctor because "she had a doctorate" but otherwise you use mrs. or mr. In fact I never even did that I just talked to them like I would anyone. Formalities suck.
 
Go watch the old dub for El Hazard, in its various forms. They left the honorifica and a few harder-to-translate words alone... and you know what? It's actually rather jarring. I remember early on the Alternate World series, we Miz and Fujisawa having a romantic dinner... then she pours him a drink and says 'doozo'. I actually experienced a mental pause for a few seconds while my brain went from being into the show to 'translation mode'- quite frankly, I didn't like it.
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A pause sure but little words are easy to understand given visual examples. Doozo, sayonara, hai, -chan, konnichiwa and some other small words are pretty well known colloquially in America. If before a meal a person says bon appetite, is that as jarring as itadakimasu?

I don't get how disturbing it is hearing Japanese words in anime is really is. Everyday in American society we have foreign words being used around us in Western products but that does not net the same response as a dub keeping honorifics. Only in anime fandom.
 
As for why different languages that we don't speak make us humans uneasy, especially when we're immersed in them, it's a psychological matter. It dates back to the trauma and hardship we all went through to learn how to communicate from scratch when we all were babies and helpless and dependant on our parents. It's not an experience most of us want to repeat even if the memories of it are not consciously accessible. It's like an unconscious instinctual reaction. Franky most of the human race feels anxiety when they can not do something so basic as to converse with other people. We can learn another language if we really try, but that takes dedication, and motivation.
 
I am talking about restaurant or party level foreign language awareness. That is nothing to try to break out Scar Wars:The Freudian edition over.
 
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