US Rendition's Dangaio and Gunbuster [REVIEW]
Dan Su
I just got US Renditions' subtitled Dangaio and Gunbuster videos. The
picture quality for Gunbuster is pretty good but the picture quality for
Dangaio is superb (Anyone else have the same experience? Maybe it's just my
copy). The fonts used for the subtitling are very sharp and readable.
US Renditions used an interesting coloring scheme for their subtitles.
They used green subtitles for the translations to song lyrics, yellow
subtitles for regular dialogue, and white subtitles for characters' thoughts.
Furthermore, they used slanted fonts for any voices that sounded unnatural
i.e. voices coming from a loudspeaker or intercom, and the Bunker Pirates'
voices (in Dangaio). What does everyone think of this scheme? Does it
insult your intelligence? I suspect that US Renditions just want to show
off their fonts :-)
The translations themselves seemed to be pretty accurate (some of it
is a matter of personal taste) but the most blatant errors that stood out
(for this first-year Japanese student anyways) are:
1) In Dangaio, is it 'Bunker Pirates' or 'Banker Pirates'?
US Renditions decided on the latter but I prefer the former.
2) In Dangaio, US Renditions decided to translate all the lines that were
supposed to read 'Psychic' as 'Side-Kick'. This is a pretty bad mistake
considering it's already in English :-)
Examples: 'Side-Kick Sword!' and 'Side-Kick Wave!' :-(
3) When the Dangaio team go to Earth and witness the destruction caused by
Gilbert's mech, Rol comments, "What a stupid android." The Japanese
line is "sugoi robot da" which I would translate as "What a powerful
robot/mech." Stupid does not sound right in this context. In fact,
I've never heard of "sugoi" translated as "stupid". Usually it means
something like "awesome".
4) The Gunbuster translation seems to be better than the Dangaio one. I
didn't catch any major errors but I have one little nitpick and that
involves the inconsistency of translating "onesama" (literally, older
sister). This occurs when Noriko calls out to Amano Kazumi (her partner
and fellow schoolmate. Kazumi is her first name). In one scene,
"onesama" is translated as "Amano" and a few seconds later we see it
translated as "Kazumi" (it should be "Amano" since "onesama" has a more
honorific connotation than just "ne-san").
5) In Gunbuster, there's a small typo in the subtitles. When Kazumi
attacks Jung-Freud with her "Lightning Kick", the subtitles read,
"Lightening Kick".
In conclusion, these videos represent a major boon to anime in America.
US renditions did a pretty good job on the translations and they went to all
the trouble of translating the opening and ending songs as well as the credits.
Does anyone know what their future projects include?
Can someone post a review of Animeigo's Madox-01? Thanks.
-Dan Su
c60...@buddy.berkeley.edu
--
(in the heat of battle)
Jung-Freud: Not bad, Rose Queen!
Kazumi: Watch out. Roses have thorns!
Mark F. Newton
About US Renditions translating "one-san", I think that's the way I
would have done it. There are cultural differences in translating
some things, and if they were literal, it wouldn't play in Peoria.
In other words, if they used "sister", everyone would think that
they were related. The same with oba-san, etc...
I understand the usage to an extent, because among Filipinos and
Hawaiians (my heritage) an older people are referred as "auntie"
and "uncle", even if they are not related, such as your parent's
friends. (Now you wonder how I got "Newton-John", eh?)
Mata ne da-cha...
--
Mark Newton-John
(ames att sun)!pacbell! \ Sakura-mendo, CA
ucdavis!csusac! - sactoh0!mfolivo
uunet!mmsac! / the good guys!
KATSUYUKI SUZUKI
>
>About US Renditions translating "one-san", I think that's the way I
>would have done it. There are cultural differences in translating
>some things, and if they were literal, it wouldn't play in Peoria.
>In other words, if they used "sister", everyone would think that
>they were related. The same with oba-san, etc...
>
This also happened when we showed subtitled "Lupin III Castle of Cagliostro(sp?)
". Claris called Lupin as "ojisama", which is literally "uncle", and the
subtitle was uncle. Many people misunderstood that Lupin and Claris are
related. It should have been "Mr. Lupin", I think.
About Gunbuster, "Onesama" should have been translated as "Miss Amano", since
"Onesama" is very respectful expression.
Katsu Suzuki
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Dept of Aerospace Engineering