Shoutout to the that one YouTuber who showed me how to spot a bad fan sub instantly

I kept running into fansubs where the dialogue felt off, like characters were talking in circles. Then this guy pointed out that if the TL notes are longer than the actual episode script, the translator is probably showing off instead of translating. I started checking for that and suddenly half the subs I downloaded made way more sense. Also look for weird formatting like random italics on every other line or subtitles that change font size mid-sentence. That's a red flag that someone used machine translation and did a quick pass. Saved me three hours of frustration last weekend alone. Anyone else got a go to sign that a fansub is gonna be trash before you hit play?

2 comments

2 Comments

shane_martinez4414d ago

The TL notes thing is spot on. Another giveaway for me is when they translate Japanese honorifics as "-san" but then inconsistently use "Mr." or "Ms." for some characters and not others. Tells me the translator was rushing or had no plan for it.

victorross13d ago

Oh man, that's a good catch @shane_martinez44. It's like they flipped a coin for each character's honorific. "This one gets -san, that one gets Mr. but only on Tuesdays." Really makes you wonder if they had a style sheet at all or just guessed as they went. I've seen some translations where a character is called "-chan" in one chapter and "little" in the next like it's no big deal. Drives me up a wall.