[Fish Sandwich]

Quote:

Originally Posted by xiiliea

It doesn't mean I translated that part haphazardly without care.

Of course not, but I think the scale is a little different here. "Laziness" was a poor choice of words on my part. What I meant was more, if you don't have any enthusiasm for what you're working on, the quality of that work is naturally going to suffer at least a bit.

Thinking a scene in a movie is tacked on is one thing, but if your response to an entire film is, and I quote, "FUCK THIS MOVIE", the subs you're making for it probably aren't going to have that extra layer of tender love and care, you know?

It's why I maintain Aesir's subs for Gaim, even with all the grief you can give them for umlauts and Ornacs, are the gold standard for what a fansub can be. Everyone working on that show loved it to bits and you can see it in every line of dialogue. There was a ton of thought put into stuff like how the characters "sounded" and what seemingly innocuous lines meant in the grander scheme of the overall narrative, all because they were so engaged by it.

To use an example from a different show, that kind of passion for what you're translating can be the difference between a climactic, heartwarming speech ending like this:



and like this:



The one that sounds totally limp is the officially licensed release, by the way. I'm not a translator or anything, so obviously I can't speak with too much authority on the subject, but hopefully you can see what I'm saying here. Both of those lines are correctly translated, but only one of them actually accounts for the fact that the viewer is supposed to be feeling something.