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Crunchyroll has bad subs?


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everydaygamer



Joined: 10 Jul 2009
Posts: 928
PostPosted: Sun Apr 04, 2010 1:23 pm Reply with quote
so i keep hearing that people's main reason for not watching anime on crunchyroll is because of bad subs. now maybe its cause i don't know much Japanese but I've never noticed anything wrong with the subs they use (other then the occasional typo).

what exactly is the problem?
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ninjapet



Joined: 20 Apr 2009
Posts: 1517
PostPosted: Sun Apr 04, 2010 1:50 pm Reply with quote
There's a few shows where things are mistranslated or the wording of a phrase is off in Engrish land.

Natsu no Arashi! season 2 subs where a big example of this. Names where spelled wrong at times and the subs sounded like Engrish at points.
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sailorsarah08



Joined: 30 Aug 2008
Posts: 471
Location: Houston, Texas
PostPosted: Sun Apr 04, 2010 1:54 pm Reply with quote
everydaygamer wrote:
So I keep hearing that people's main reason for not watching anime on crunchyroll is because of bad subs. Now maybe it's cause I don't know much Japanese but I've never noticed anything wrong with the subs they use (other then the occasional typo).

What exactly is the problem?


I don't watch a lot of crunchyroll for that reason. I do not know Japanese but they confuses their pronouns. While a character is referring to a male, that character will say "she." It's very distracting. It wasn't even a simulcast show, which just means they were too lazy to proof it.
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Mistypearl



Joined: 03 Oct 2008
Posts: 517
PostPosted: Sun Apr 04, 2010 2:59 pm Reply with quote
Sometimes while using crunchyroll it seemed just at certain times the subs seemed...off? But then again I think that's just how the occasional phrase in Japanese looses it's context or meaning when translated into English. I haven't been on crunchyroll in awhile, but don't they have some sort of reporting or feedback system if there is something iffy with the subs such as a character referring to a he as a she? If not, they might need to do something like that.
In general, I feel that the 'subs are bad' excuse is just, well an excuse for not paying the fees, but if it is such a prominent problem, I'm sure there must be some way to alert them of their poor quality subs. (Being optimistic here haha)
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Razzuel



Joined: 27 Dec 2009
Posts: 164
PostPosted: Sun Apr 04, 2010 3:24 pm Reply with quote
No, Crunchyroll's subtitles are not bad. There may be the occasional typo, but most of the time, the subtitles are fine.

The only show that I have watched that has had bad subtitles was Erin The Beast Player, which is unfortunate since Erin The Beast Player is one of my favorite shows. It had a recurrent problem with typos, and some of the proper nouns were spelled differently between the two translators that were working on the show; you could tell that there were two translators because some of the names' spelling in the show would change every other show. The two translators should of communicated with each other, and a better method of quality assurance should have been employed.

I have watched a lot of shows on Crunchyroll, and Erin The Beast Player's subtitles are the only subtitles so far that I have seen that are bad.

I think people just like to bash Crunchyroll because they think it's cool. Their subtitles are fine, and their player is fine. I hear people complain about playback issues, but I rarely have playback issues. I have a 15 Mbps downstream connection, and I can watch the 720p streams on Crunchyroll without a hitch.

Oh, and I don't agree with ninjapet on Natsu no Arashi 2. I am a really anal about the English language, and I don't remember ever having a problem with Natsu no Arashi 2's subtitles. As far as I can remember, they were fine.
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garfield15



Joined: 06 Apr 2009
Posts: 1515
PostPosted: Sun Apr 04, 2010 9:36 pm Reply with quote
There are only three shows I can think of with egregiously bad subs.

1. Erin-This was just awful. It was fine at the beginning, but I think they had more than one person doing the subs because they would vary in quality. I think this one time, they kept calling a character the wrong gender.

2. Nogizaka Haruka 2-This wasn't "bad" subs but the "onii-san=/=cute boy" incident was definitely a sore spot. Then they started putting subs for sound effects like "Ahhh," "hya," and "kya," and the like.

3. Pretty Cure-These are not CR's subs but they are awful. They are like those old bootleg DVD's that had the piss yellow fonts and misspelled names and stuff. And to add insult to injury, they sound quality is HORRIBLE! Fortunately, they fixed that by episode 25. Still, the sound was so bad, I watch the fansubs for a while until that point.

There was this one time when the Gintama simulcast started when they did "straight" subs unlike the regular ones and I couldn't understand the jokes because they didn't explain them Rolling Eyes. It got so annoying, I had to ask support about it and they assured me they got the original subber back on the show.

Other than that, they are no better or worse than official and fansubs. I mean, I wouldn't have had this membership for so long otherwise.
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egoist



Joined: 20 Jun 2008
Posts: 7762
PostPosted: Sun Apr 04, 2010 9:52 pm Reply with quote
The subs on the first episodes of Gintama were hard to read. They were nearly transparent at times, given the white background. I think they've improved that a few episodes later.
Skip Beat! also had too many typos and too many unconstructive lines. I don't know whether they subbed it 1 episode a week, or if they just did the whole show, but I sure hope they could review their subs at least once after it's complete.
I'd say that CR still has a lot of work to do in regards of sub quality. But what really gives them the edge compared to fansubs is their speed and reliability(episode nearly always there as promised, etc.)

I don't really pay much attention nowadays, as I simply use the subs as a reference whenever I can't understand the Japanese track(past experience plus catching whatever the scene is about always help). Lip reading helps too! Except when they're talking through telepathy. Then you'd need to read the flashing lines that appear here and there; that I can't do.
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Shouta-kun



Joined: 04 Apr 2010
Posts: 2
PostPosted: Sun Apr 04, 2010 11:26 pm Reply with quote
Everything does.
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Zalis116
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Joined: 31 Mar 2005
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Location: Kazune City
PostPosted: Mon Apr 05, 2010 12:24 pm Reply with quote
garfield15 wrote:
2. Nogizaka Haruka 2-This wasn't "bad" subs but the "onii-san=/=cute boy" incident was definitely a sore spot. Then they started putting subs for sound effects like "Ahhh," "hya," and "kya," and the like.
I'd disagree with that and say that the Secret of Haruka Nogizaka ~Purezza~ subs truly were awful. Aside from the issues you mentioned, there were frequent spelling/grammar errors, plus they usually failed to change [name] to "you" when it would be expected in English. So you get ridiculously unnatural and awkward conversations that sound like they're talking about someone else, instead of to each other. Like "Why is Haruka here?" instead of "Why are you here, Haruka?"

Quote:
3. Pretty Cure-These are not CR's subs but they are awful. They are like those old bootleg DVD's that had the piss yellow fonts and misspelled names and stuff. And to add insult to injury, they sound quality is HORRIBLE! Fortunately, they fixed that by episode 25. Still, the sound was so bad, I watch the fansubs for a while until that point.


The color wasn't that different from subs on legit DVDs. If you really want to get into 5th-grader-mind bodily-fluid associations, perhaps you'd prefer jizz-white, poop-brown, puke-orange, booger-green, or blood-red subtitles? The worst thing I found about them was the timing -- they'd frequently start too late or end too early. Or they'd go the other way and have excessive lead-in or lead-out. They had me going for the fansubs after 10 or 11 episodes.

I have seen some good CR subs, like on Shugo Chara!, Hyakko, Shin Koihime Musou, and Kanamemo. All of those were accurately translated, and well-written enough to make for an entertaining reading experience. They also weren't excessively literal or overly localized. It all depends on who's working on them, I guess. One thing aside from actual translation and editing that bothers me about CR is their inane line-breaking. It's quite common to see two-line subs with one line spanning the entire width of the screen and then one or two words on the second line. From a readability and sanity standpoint, two short lines in the center of the screen are far better. I'm told that's an issue with CR's subtitle renderer -- it won't break lines unless they reach the edge of the image or have hard line breaks inserted into them by the subtitlers.


Last edited by Zalis116 on Tue Apr 06, 2010 1:05 pm; edited 1 time in total
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ShinobiX



Joined: 03 Jun 2005
Posts: 889
Location: NY
PostPosted: Mon Apr 05, 2010 12:27 pm Reply with quote
[EDIT: If you don't know anything about the subject, don't bother with POSTCOUNT++ posts.]
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Mushi-Man



Joined: 17 Nov 2008
Posts: 1537
Location: KCMO
PostPosted: Mon Apr 05, 2010 3:42 pm Reply with quote
I haven't gotten a chance to use Crunchyroll to it's full extent yet. And I haven't seen the titles that have already been mentioned for having bad subs, so I can't say for sure. But for what I have watched on Crunchyroll I'd say the subs were pretty well done. All I've used CR for so far is Natusme Yujincho, Zeta Gundam, Captain Harlock, and Durarara and I don't really have any complaints about them. They all seemed to be well done and CR tries to be very professional about their work which I really appreciate. But I don't know much Japanese so I couldn't really be sure if they translated something wrong or not. It's hard to tell.
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Shiroi Hane
Encyclopedia Editor


Joined: 25 Oct 2003
Posts: 7578
Location: Wales
PostPosted: Mon Apr 05, 2010 8:35 pm Reply with quote
At the bottom right of every video on Crunchyroll is a button to report problems - including translation errors. If there are problems, you should report them otherwise they will never get better. It does work - I found a grammar error in an older episode I was catching up with, reported it and got distracted by other things so didn't finish the episode till hours later - at which point the error had already been fixed.
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egoist



Joined: 20 Jun 2008
Posts: 7762
PostPosted: Mon Apr 05, 2010 8:45 pm Reply with quote
The problem is that the majority of CR users don't know nothing about Japanese, and couldn't possibly know whether the meaning was changed or whatnot. Would work with typos, but I consider the typos one of the smallest problems, and perhaps the rarest. While I could most likely provide a better line in some cases, there's no guarantee they would accept that as they would need a translator to check it first. But, I'll give it a try whenever I feel like getting out of me bed to do so, as each line would take at least 5 minutes - including the time to explain the details, and situation. Well, if I did that with Gintama I'd be like an unpaid part-timer.
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Ian K



Joined: 18 Dec 2008
Posts: 250
PostPosted: Mon Apr 05, 2010 10:50 pm Reply with quote
In the case of Gintama, at least, I know I've found the fansubbed episodes I've seen much funnier than the dozen or so I watched on Crunchyroll before I gave up. So by that very subjective and personal experience, I would say that Crunchyroll subs (at least for comedy shows) are not ideal, and I hope that Sentai's upcoming DVD release of Gintama improves upon this - it's the only way I'd buy it.

That being said, I've enjoyed more serious shows on Crunchyroll (Natsume Youjinchou, The Time of Eve), and I fully intend to check out some others (DRRR!, Erin, Bantorra, etc).
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chicogrande



Joined: 11 Jun 2004
Posts: 190
Location: Huntsville, Alabama
PostPosted: Tue Apr 06, 2010 12:21 pm Reply with quote
No, Crunchyroll doesn't have bad subs. Their subs are average in a good way.

Edit: I am one that likes subs that interfere as little as possible. I dislike companies that sub every little grunt, sigh and background comment. I think Crunchyroll does a good job from what I've seen so far.


Last edited by chicogrande on Sat Apr 10, 2010 12:31 pm; edited 1 time in total
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