Blind Idiot Translation/Anime and Manga: Difference between revisions

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** The title itself ''is'' actually officially translated as "Tetrad' Smerti", and the opening read "Zapiska ''angela'' smerti" (Death angel's note).
** Also in the first live-action movie Naomi Misora gets a comforting [http://img121.imageshack.us/img121/9255/pdvd001h.png letter] from the FBI.
** There's [http://en.[wikipedia.org/wiki/Mu_%28negative%29:Mu chr(28)negativechr(29)|a Japanese response word]] which means "Your question cannot be answered, because it depends on incorrect assumptions". That word is ''mu''. It's what you might reply with if you can't answer either yes or no. At the very end of the series, the last three rules tell us about the afterlife in that setting: ''"All humans will, without exception, eventually die; After they die, the place they go is MU. (Nothingness); Once dead, they can never come back to life."'' The problem is that if you look at the Japanese rule for "the place they go is mu", and at the original [[Word of God|text for the author's explanation]] that is translated as "death is nothingness", it's pretty clear that they're using this "your question is invalid" sense of "mu" -- people don't go anywhere after they die, because there is nowhere for them to go! Yet thanks to the (perfectly understandable) wording of the translation, fandom is awash in people who think there's [[The Nothing After Death|a world of nothingness called Mu where people are supposed to go after they die]], or even [[Epileptic Trees|that the shinigami realm is the afterlife]]. This is despite ample [[Word of God]] stating that the message of the ''whole story'' was that this life is all there is and [[Downer Ending|death is final and forever]].
* The dub of the ''Garzey's Wing'' features this. Likely the translator just translated it verbatim from Japanese and CPM didn't bother with a script editor. [http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/buried-treasure/2007-09-20 A review (with clips) is available here]. Watch as Chris wrings his hands in stress and says "I must somehow make sense of our convoluted situation." in a dull monotone.
{{quote|"Oh my god! I feel like I just had a dream!!"|"He's just a human. Humans are just human."}}
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** The dub also had trouble getting the attack names right. One example has Gou using the right name to fire Shin Getter's Getter Beam in the first episode, but the next time he used it, he called it "Fire Ray". Hell, the never said "Open Get" even though that was English to start with. Although, it did give Ryoma some interesting lines.
{{quote| Ryoma: Laugh while you have a head old man! <and> Payback is a bitch you bloated corpse!}}
* The [[Viz Media|Viz]] translation of the ''[[Read or Die (Anime)|Read or Die]]'' manga was often overly literal. It gave Yomiko's organization as the "Library of England". While that's technically a literally correct translation, the organization in question is the [http://en.[wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Library:British Library|British Library]]. Maybe a case of [[Creator Provincialism]], if the American translators had never heard of a British institution, or had never seen the (nicely translated) TV series that had come out the year before.
** [[Manga Entertainment]]'s translation of the OVA had an error involving the post-it notes left by Nenene Sumiregawa for Yomiko, which are seen near the beginning of the first episode. These say things such as "Clean this up. -- Nenene". However, the translators apparently didn't recognize that Nenene was supposed to be a person's name (which is understandable, since she doesn't actually appear on-screen in the OVA), and interpreted it as the question-tag particle "ne" repeated three times. As a result, the on screen translation of this note is "Clean this up! Up! Up!" (and similar things for the other notes).
* Kiseki Films' subtitles for ''[[Super Dimension Fortress Macross|Macross]]: [[The Movie|Do You Remember Love?]]'' completely change the meaning of some lines. For example, the line "We fell into the engine block" became "My engine blocks are angry at me", and the line "He screwed up during an acrobatic maneuver" became "Well... you seem to jump back and forth between subjects like an acrobat".
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*** Also in some of the official subs, when the attack names are being said in Japanese, the English dub names are displayed on the subs. For a particularly egregious example, when Skull Satamon's analysis names his primary attack as "Nail Bone," the subs say "Bone Blaster" - which, incidentally, was the Frontier dub's subsequent rename for the attack, after the 02 dub had retained the original name.
* A fansub of episodes 80-132 of the "Red Jacket" ''[[Lupin III]]'' series features some hilariously bad subtitles. For starters, Zenigata is frequently referred to as "Old Bro/Brother." "Tottsan", Lupin's nickname for Zenigata, is short for otou-san, a slightly playful term for "father." The subtitles often refer to Zenigata as Keibu, which is technically correct, considering that it's the Japanese word for "Inspector." Guest characters in various episodes are often given really bizarre names. For example, Sherlock Holmes III is referred to as "Fuji the Third," and Joe, Jigen's mentor in the use of firearms, is referred to as "God" or "God of the Underworld." Mount Kilimanjaro is translated as "Go there," and the Louvre is translated as "The art museum."
** On a lesser note, the Streamline dub of ''[[The CastleofCastle of Cagliostro (Anime)|The Castleof Cagliostro]]'' also features forays into blind idiot translation. When Zenigata meets the Count, he introduces himself as [[Department of Redundancy Department|Inspector Keibu]] Zenigata.
*** Streamline's Cagliostro dub falls more under [[Macekre]] than Blind Idiot Translation, for various reasons (some legal). And to be fair, Zenigata's given name is not widely known outside the Lupin fandom (it's Kouichi).
* ''[[Bleach (Manga)|Bleach]]'' has a nice, albeit subtle, example of what might be called "Spangrish." On the third OST, Chad gets a nice little theme song with the Spanish title "Domino del Chad." Direct English translation? ''[[Spell My Name With a "The"|Domain of the Chad.]]''