The Rise and Fall of Anime Fansubs

If there's one thing that on-line communities bring you far, far more often than their real life counterparts, it's full scale arguments over the 'right' or 'wrong' way to perform any given task. From grammar Nazis upward, everyone has an opinion on these things, and fansubbing is no different in this respect, treated with reverence by some and vitriol by others.

Thus, if you've ever had any thoughts (be they negative or positive) yourself, it's well worth checking out a series of recently posted YouTube videos by a guy calling himself OtaKing, charting what he clearly feels is crass carelessness and unprofessionalism by the fansub community at large. The video is in five parts, so I've embedded them all in order here:

Despite its length, OtaKing's complaints boil down to a handful of points:

- Lazy or non-existent translations. There's certainly a point to be made here, where some sentences in your average fansubbed episode simply make no sense at all, sometimes to the huge detriment of the anime. Also under debate is the juxtaposing of Japanese words into the subtitles for various reasons, which personally I'm a little more on the fence about. While a lot of the -chans and -sans have no real place, there are occasions when I think the argument can be made for actually leaving the original Japanese in place. Sure, those moments are few and far between, but I'm not entirely sure you can have a 'one rule fits all' mentality for this kind of thing.

- Translation notes. Again, this isn't something you can say should never happen as OtaKing does to my mind. Yes, there are some unnecessary notes popping up in a lot of fansubbed series these days, and they really should be left to either an accompanying text file or as a separate section at the end of an episode, but that doesn't mean there aren't cases where they can be useful in the heat of the moment.

- Translation of signage and the like. Quite simply, I don't know what OtaKing's problem is here. Is using fancy graphics to place English translations next to or over signs and the like offensive? No. Sure, it isn't how you'd see it in Japan, but if we wanted that then we'd be watching the RAWs, wouldn't we?! There may be bad examples of how to do it out there, but overall it's a useful part of the experience, and actually less distracting than noting the translation elsewhere in my experience. Take a series like Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei for example, and this kind of subtitling is absolutely crucial - While it may mean that a lot of information is thrown at you, take a look at that show without subtitles and you'll see that there's just as much to make out going on even if you're a native Japanese speaker.

- Overbearing subtitles and fansub group promotion in opening/ending titles. Again, this is a mixed bag from my experience, where some groups do a reasonable job where others are completely over the top. I've never been one to worry hugely about title sequences though, so I guess it just doesn't bother me much.

Overall then, there are interesting points for consideration here, but sadly I fear that they will largely be lost as the 'documentary' moved from simply pointing these things out towards an 'all fansubbers are morons' mentality which really isn't fair. Sure, the translations aren't always professional, but considering that these guys and girls aren't professionals, and with limited time to boot, that's hardly surprising. Certainly, I don't doubt that some fansub groups could do a much better job than they currently achieve, but simply slagging them off isn't the way to make them change things.

If I were a fansubber (if only I had that kind of skill and knowledge of Japanese), I think I'd take two points home from this debate:

- Try to translate everything 100% where possible, and in a way that creates flowing English. It looks and sounds better, of that there can be no doubt, and OtaKing does have a point that the use of so many Japanese words sans translation (do you see what I did there?) could well be off-putting to newcomers. Indeed, one of the things I try to do when reviewing anime either here or for UK Anime is to avoid using Japanese terms to describe a series or character (i.e. tsundere, shounen and so on) - Not that I have anything against doing this, but I'd rather use my grasp of my primary language to explain things rather than falling into the trap of referring to entrenched Japanese descriptions for subsets of anime. I'll be the first to admit that I don't always avoid it, but I try my best.

- Keep translation notes out of the body of work itself whenever possible. As OtaKing points out, many of these notes aren't provided with the Japanese broadcast, so why should we need it? I don't have a problem with some notes at the end of an episode after the credits have rolled, but even then - I think we all know how to use Google these days if some historical reference or the like has really stumped us.

Despite all this, there is one major point where I disagree hugely with OtaKing. While he seems to be insinuating that the current state of fansubbing is killing anime, and that things were 'better in his day' (how many times have we heard that assertion throughout our lives?), I would in fact argue the exact opposite - While quality is undoubtedly important, the sheer quantity of anime now served to its fans in the West is bringing more and more people on-board the wave of awesome that is anime, and for that I can only salute the fansubbers for their time and efforts. There's always room for improvement, but as far as I can tell the output of most fansub groups is really pretty good, especially considering the short timeframes before an episode is typically released.