10 Jun, 2008
An Interview With Paul “Otaking” Johnson- Creator of “The Rise And Fall of Anime Fansubs”
Posted by: Rachel In: Interviews
There’s been a strong reaction among fansubbers to Paul “Otaking” Johnson’s “The Rise and Fall of Anime Fansubs” video.
In his video he discusses what’s wrong with modern anime fansubs and the future of subtitles in general. But why make a documentary to vent the pain? Paul was gracious enough to discuss with me his history with anime, his love of translation and just why current fansubs inspired him to create the video to begin with…
Interview With Paul “Otaking” Johnson
Rachel: How long have you been an anime fan?
Paul: Since the late 80s. Though at the time, I didn’t realize it was anime I was watching. My favourite shows here in the UK in the 80s were Ulysses 31, The Mysterious Cities of Gold, etc…all of which looked suspiciously much better than any other “cartoons” on TV at the time.
Later on, I learned the reason why: that they’d been drawn and animated in Japan. When I saw Transformers: The Movie, my eyes almost fell from my skull in shock (it’s not every day you get to see a hand-drawn and beautifully shaded planet torn apart in graphic detail). My interest was peaked. It was when BBC 2 aired Akira in the mid 90s that I became a full-blown otaku. And when I saw the legendary Otaku no Video, I vowed to become the English OtaKing.
Rachel: How does your interest in anime tie into your interest in translating?
Paul:Anime, being in Japanese, is incredibly fun to translate into English. Localisation is extremely challenging and rewarding, and finding a funny pun in English that keeps the same feel as the Japanese one is often like hearing the victory music from Final Fantasy 7 in your head. As a viewer of early subtitles (a special mention must go to Animeigo’s subs of Bubblegum Crisis and Kiseki’s Otaku no Video subs), I like to think I’ve been influenced by the best. Plus I have a passion for what I translate, which always helps.
Part One of “The Rise and Fall of Anime Fansubs”
Rachel: What got you into becoming a professional translator?
Paul:Well, after working at McDonald’s for 4 years, I finally decided to throw off my McDonald’s tie (as in Otaku no Video) and go totally otaku. After doing the University of Sheffield’s Japanese course for 4 years (with one year in Japan) and then an MA in Translation Studies, the path was open to start contacting companies and getting my name out there. Being part of an industry you love is a nice thing…though competition is fierce and often you’ll have to translate boring legal documents just to make enough money to eat.
Rachel: How long have you been a pro translator?
Paul:Around five years now, though I was moonlighting a little whilst still technically on my Japanese course.
Rachel: What projects have you worked on?
Paul:Unfortunately, non-disclosure clauses prevent me from naming titles until they’re on the shelves. I’ve translated several light novels for Del Rey and others, now, and the first one I did (ages ago now) STILL isn’t on the shelves, so a large portion of my name-dropping isn’t allowed unless I want to get sued!
In terms of games, I can say that I worked on in-game text for Half Life 2: Survivor (the Japanese arcade game based on the PC version), a great many instruction manuals featuring a certain Italian plumber and a guy in a pointy green hat, and quite a few press releases for Hudson Soft (Bomberman and the like).
Sadly I haven’t been involved with, say, Silent Hill (a personal favourite), but maybe someday in the future, eh? My pet project would have to be Namco X Capcom, but it seems unlikely that will ever be released in English. Recently, the DS has been kind to me, with many jobs translating games on that platform. A good agency-translator relationship is a must, and for that I’m glad to be working with the Spanish company Localsoft, who really go out of their way to provide me with all the research material and in-game terminology I need, as well as big-ass .pdfs of all manuals, etc.
Rachel: You speak of older fansubs with respect, and maybe a bit of admiration. What work, if any, have you done on fansubs?
Part Two of “The Rise and Fall of Anime Fansubs”
Paul:Well, technically they’re illegal so I’ve never done anything substantial. I did help produce a rather nice fansub of Berserk to show at the Sheffield Anime Society though, but that was an exclusive that nobody has save one guy in Japan. I remember spending up to fifteen minutes arguing with my pro translator friend (the aforementioned guy) about how we needed to get the line “yonder knight!” in there.
Masterpiece lines included “Split the very sod if it you have to!” as a translation of “look everywhere to find him.” Fansubbers really are missing out on a lot of fun localization by insisting on leaving everything in literal Japanese. There’s a lot you can do in English that you can’t in Japanese (particularly with insults and sarcasm).
Rachel: Can you describe what precisely spurred you to create your documentary?
Paul:Anger, rage, hatred and more rage. My housemate was watching that awful Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei sub that I used in my video at the time, and that was the last straw. It was either make the video or throw myself from the Tower of London. I think most fansubbers would prefer if I’d done the latter. And ever since God of War, throwing yourself off large structures is a bit of a cliche anyway…
Rachel: Anger, hatred and rage…but what did your love of anime have do with it, or was it just the rage? Surely there was some love, albeit it tough love….
Paul: It’s because I love anime (well, not so much the modern stuff, but that’s a story for another day) that I hate seeing it ruined by shoddy translations. If fansubs had looked like they do now back in the early 90s, I wouldn’t have been able to understand what was going on and would have dropped the whole “anime” thing out of sheer frustration. Is it such a terrible thing to enjoy anime because of the story, characters and art? Apparently it is, because nowadays you need to love and have a reverential worship of Japanese language and culture to be allowed in.
You have to translate properly into English if you want new people to get into anime too… and what with “pro” DVD companies starting to follow modern fansub methods of leaving things in Japanese and refusing to translate cultural terms, I think that it’s going to be harder and harder for new people to discover anime without feeling excluded from some kind of “clique.” Of course, they can watch the dubs on TV, yes. But there’s one problem with that…The dubs are mostly utterly appalling in terms of voice talent (again, inexcusable when such dubs as Metal Gear and many Streamline Pictures and early Manga ENT. dubs show good dubs are possible.
Manga’s expletive-filled dub of Cyber City Oedo 808 is still one of my favourite dubs of all time!) and the shows as they appear on today’s mainstream TV (One Piece, Dragonball, etc) are so heavily edited they bear little resemblance to the original source matter. I remember well how Cartoon Network re-drew all of the pistols and revolvers in Outlaw Star so that the characters were holding cheesy, non-lethal “ray guns” instead. Or how Dragonball characters were “sent to another dimension” when in the Japanese version script they were dead.
Part three of “The Rise and Fall of Anime Fansubs”
Rachel: Why did you make it and what were you trying to accomplish?
Paul:Well, I never intended anyone to listen, to be honest. Fansubbers and modern anime fans are a cliquey lot who love their magical Japanese language, so I very much doubted anyone would change their ways just because I was presenting some arguments backed by mere academic research and fact. The reason I made it as a video, however, is that a picture paints a thousand words and I could hopefully show some professionalism by getting some hand-drawn animation in there. Although I think we all agree most people would have picked Starscream on the “Narrator Select” screen instead of my whiney, annoying voice.
Rachel: If you got through to some fansubbers with this video, and they reached out to you, how would you be willing to help them, or would you?
Paul: I’d happily put together some kind of article detailing tricky translation issues and how translators of video games/anime in the past have gotten around them. Though, as I’ve said in a number of posts, the best way is probably just to have a go on Snatcher on the Sega CD and see how that was translated. With emulation being what it is, it’s quite easy to contrast both the Japanese and English versions side by side on your basic PC, and experience for yourself how they went about it.
The translation is pretty much a work of art. For full-on localisation (and I’m in two minds about this one, because I think changing character names and countries is a step too far) then Phoenix Wright on the DS gives you all the examples you’d need to get around cultural in-jokes and render them into funny English equivalents.
Rachel: Your video raised much ire in the fansubbing and anime communities. How do you feel your message will get through with that kind of response?
Paul: I think this actual posted response about sums most of it up:
“FUCK YOU, you elitist nazi attention whore faggot, and enjoy your shitsucks old shows in video format with crappy subs. Otaking? Sounds more like Otacunt to me. Also, most fansubs are mach better then what you show. You have only showed the worst ones, which I can count on one hand, you retarded faggot.”
Actually, though, it’s not been that bad. This barely literate specimen was definitely in the minority. I’ve had quite a surprising amount of people agree with my points, and some very civil conversations via Youtube. One guy even said that he is a fansubber and my video has made him think twice about the way he’ll translate in the future.
On the whole, though, I’ve found on many forums, such as Animesuki and Kaizoku-Fansubs, that any opinion voiced in defence of my video is immediately labeled a “troll” and told to shut up. Nobody likes being told they’re wrong, after all, and I don’t expect my video will change a thing. I had to make it, though, or I would have exploded from pent up rage and taken half my house with me. The landlord wouldn’t have been too pleased.
Part four of “The Rise and Fall of Anime Fansubs”
Rachel: You cite many quotes from famous translators on the subject of translating. How do you feel their words as professionals translating literature and film some ten, twenty years ago, are relevant to younger people translating anime for free on their laptops?
Paul:Basically, good schools of thought never get old and this is a translation debate that’s raged since bible translation times whilst still being relevant today. One half thinks the original language is so great that you need to leave it all in the original format, and the other side says that defeats the point of translation, and wants to actually translate it into the target language. As an English translator, I follow Eugene Nida’s school, called “dynamic equivalence” that actually wants to translate Japanese anime, manga and games into English.
Famous examples of this method (and its relevance to today’s market) are games like Phoenix Wright, where all the jokes and puns are expertly localised, or games like the legendary Snatcher on the Sega CD, which is arguably one of the best translations of all time, done by Jeremy Blaustein who then went on to translate Metal Gear Solid into English. And we all know how good and well-received by the gaming press that script was.
Another fine example of dynamic equivalence is Dark Horse’s early manga translations. They’d flip them left to right, English style, they’d convert all honorifics and Japanese terms to English, and do a top class job. Their translations of Appleseed, Dominion and Ghost in the Shell were magnificent, and precisely what got me into reading manga. Totally localised into perfect English, making it a seamless read, whilst losing none of the original plot, story or character names.
Studio Proteus‘ translation of Shirow’s INTRON DEPOT is a flawless masterpiece, perfectly indicative of dynamic equivalence. All of Shirow’s comments are rendered into perfectly conversational English, slang included. If you check it against the Japanese that Shirow actually wrote, it keeps the tone perfectly. The amount of creative thought that must have gone into it is staggering. Modern fansubbers would hate it.
The other school - the one most fansubbers follow - is called “formal equivalence,” and it believes that if you change any of the source text, you lose the meaning and ruin it. Which is why fansubbers leave in honorifics, put everything in Japanese name order and produce incredible lines like the famous “Inawari Shiro’s Kame Hime-sama has sent the meat if a renowned Bushi from Izumo no Kuni for you to enjoy.” Faithful to the Japanese? Yes. Intelligible? Not even slightly.
Ironically, though, these same people enjoy Metal Gear Solid and its translation.
Part five of “The Rise and Fall of Anime Fansubs”
Rachel: What rules, if any, should these volunteers follow and why?
Paul:Definitely the rules of dynamic equivalence, which states that we, as translators, translate MEANING and not WORDS. So what if “onee-sama” has no English equivalent? Get rid of it, and make the difference in status between the two speakers apparent in other ways. The most basic rule of dynamic translation is that the finished product should sound like a natural read in English.
Lines like (as shown in my video) “For your exam…Do your best!” are not a natural read. They’re sticking to the Japanese word order and producing a clumsy mess that can only appeal to a cliquey Wapanese faction. I’m not for one moment saying that Japanese names like “Hiro Tanaka” should be changed to “Brad Spangler,” but what’s wrong with writing “rice balls” instead of “onigiri?” To most fansubbers, that would be tantamount to sacrilege.
To someone who just wants to enjoy the show, it’s plain, common sense. If the viewer has to pause the show to read a long-winded cultural note at the top of the screen explaining that “sensei” means “teacher” in Japanese, then they have failed as a translator and should hang their heads in abject shame. With enough imagination, most Japanese words can be rendered in English. And those that can’t can be gotten around in other ways that are maybe too long-winded to talk about here…
Rachel:Why should they adhere to professionalism when they’re not getting paid as professionals do?
Paul: Fansubs in the past were also free, but it didn’t stop them from translating properly, and in many cases they were better than the official DVD releases (when the official releases eventually came out, that is). Yes, some early fansub groups paid to get them translated (even more proof of dedication to the task, if you ask me), but anyone who says that evrey single 80s and 90s fansub group was paying professional translators to sub their favourite shows is clearly deluded.
Also, as I said, early fansubs were often better than the official subtitles. As has been mentioned on several forums, the OFFICIAL DVD subtitle of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya has Kyon stating “I have a ponytail moe.”
If, as a young kid, I’d bought an official DVD to be met with a translation like that, I wouldn’t know what to think. “What the hell is a moe?” “Why do all the characters have the same surname - san???” You can see the problem when the fansub method is infecting the big companies who really, really should be setting a better example. “I have a ponytail moe” is not English, and it’s the kind of translation a professional DVD company should be ashamed of. Flip the DVD over and what does it say? “English subtitles.” “I have a ponytail moe” makes a mockery of that claim. And that’s just one example of how “fansub-like” many official DVD subtitles are becoming.
If a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well. My video was free and I got paid nothing, but it didn’t stop me researching translation theory for a year or hand drawing and animating the cut scenes just to grab people’s attention (they certainly wouldn’t stick around for my voice, that’s for sure!).
Also, the cancer that is honorifics and screen cluttering cultural notes is starting to infect “professional” manga releases too. Manga in English nowadays is printed Japanese-style, ensuring maximum difficulty for new fans to get into reading it, and this is part of the whole “let’s all be one big Japanese-speaking club” disease perpetuated in no small part by many modern fansubs.
I believe strongly that fansub groups (not all, as I’ve heard it said that there are still some good ones out there who translate properly) need to take a long look at how fansubs used to be done, drop the flashy effects, eat a few slices of humble pie and stop trying to make themselves bigger than the shows that they’d be nothing without. And everyone, without question, should go and read how Dark Horse translated the original Ghost in the Shell manga in the 90s, because it’s a paragon of how Japanese-English translation should be.
Rachel: How do you think the fact that more and more anime are being licensed, impacts the state of fansubbing?
Paul: Well, my main concern here is that the cancer that is honorifics and screen cluttering cultural notes, so beloved by lazy fansubbers, is starting to infect “professional” DVD releases too. This is a massive concern, as several “professional” DVD companies and manga/novel publishers are now leaving in honorifics and cultural notes instead of DOING THEIR JOBS and translating.
More anime being licensed can only be a good thing, but the amount of fly-by-night “let’s jump on the anime bandwagon” companies that are springing up is worrying to say the least. Their translations are practically on par with the worst fansub examples highlighted in my video. Even the once-great Dark Horse is re-releasing their already perfect English translation of Ghost in the Shell, only flipped to appeal to the Wapanese purists and, no doubt, filled with freshly inserted honorifics and notes (I pray to heaven that this isn’t the case). If it is, I’ll have to take down my thirty foot golden statue of Toren Smith,
Rachel: What would you say in your opinion are the main reasons people produce fansubs, contrasting them with the fansubbers from the early days and the present?
Paul: Essentially, fansubs used to be a noble cause. As the video says, it cost a lot of time and money and effort, and they fansubbed because the shows would never see the light of day otherwise, AND because they loved the shows so much they wanted everyone to see them.
Nowadays, it’s all about seeing which group can get the latest episode of Gundam out three seconds ahead of each other, and which group can do the flashiest, most obtrusive and distracting karaoke special effects.
Basically, it’s internet phallus-waving, and I find it disgusting. It should be about the anime, not the egotistical fansubbers who give themselves names like “samurai^pwn-master-sama or “ninjaX-box kid666.”
Rachel: Why do you think fansubs have evolved (or devolved) into some of the examples you give in your video?
Paul: See the above answer. It’s all about competition and ego-stroking now. To “pwn” the competition, fansub groups feel they must clutter the screen with flashing karaoke font and bouncing special attack names that fly across the screen whenever someone launches a punch.
Also, the “cult of weeaboos” has grown to such an extent that modern anime viewers demand a Japanese language lesson with each episode they download. We’re talking people who actually use words like “baka” and “san” in with their everyday conversations at the mall. The fact that anime was never meant to be a Japanese language learning lesson never crosses their minds. I’ve heard mention of fansub groups being flamed because they didn’t include large amounts of cultural notes explaining every little word or Japanese term.
Rachel: What do you say to fans who watch fansubs for the culture “lessons”? How much a part of the problem are they since they insist on all these bells and whistles?
Paul: In short, if you insist on massive amounts of explanation notes and watch anime because it “teaches you Japanese”, then go take a Japanese class instead and leave the rest of us, who just want to enjoy the show, in peace. Anime isn’t for learning Japanese - it’s for watching and enjoying. People like that are holding back fansubbers from producing legible, solid translations in actual straightforward English.
PLUS… if you spoke anime-Japanese for real in Japan, people would think you were insane. It’s not how people really talk there. Japanese people don’t really say “dattebayo” in conversation and “koko wa kisama no hakaba da!” when they’re having a fight in a bar. People who insist on Japanese lessons at the expense of watching the actual show are, in my opinion, being very disrespectful to the staff who sweated to create the anime and meet the strict, backbreaking deadlines. The directors did NOT intend their shows to be watched with three lines of notes covering their art in order to explain what a “nakama-doushi” means to a bunch of “Wapanese” wannabes.
Rachel: How fair are the examples in the video of the current state of fansubs?
Paul:Well, many of the comments I received criticized the video for deliberately picking the worst examples but, to be perfectly honest, I just grabbed a random batch of fansubs and that’s what I ended up with.
As I said before, I’m a professional translator so I’m not in with the fansub “scene” and don’t know which groups are supposedly good or bad, so I just grabbed what I could and took it from there. I really didn’t have the time (nor the inclination) to hand-pick bad examples just to prove my point.
I’m sure there are better fansubs than the ones shown in my video. At least, I sincerely hope there are!
Rachel: Which anime fansubs would you say modern fansubbers should aspire to?
Paul: Definitely Psycho KORps‘ mid 90s fansubs of Macross 7. Simple, easy to read font. Good, solid translation. No karaoke at all and just good, solid translation.
There are many more I could mention but the names escape me at the moment! Central Anime produced some good work in the 90s, too, as I recall. Cathedral Animation, too. All of the subs were simple, so your attention was always on the anime, where it belonged.
My first really bad experience with fansubs was HECTO and their fansubs of Rurouni Kenshin…which were almost entirely wrong and written in some kind of Chinese-English hybrid “grammar.”
Jimaku were another fine group who did excellent, simple, no-nonsense fansubs in the early 90s…though they may have fallen from grace now. I haven’t checked.
Rachel: How do you react to some fansubbers claims that fansubbing is about competition and fun?
Paul:I shall allow “N-Bomb” of the animesuki forum to answer that one for me:
“If you were doing it only as a hobby, you’d keep it to yourself. Bottom line. The fact that you’re releasing it is not some pity candy for the masses, it’s because you want to show off your skills or whatever to people and get praise and popularity for it.”
I don’t think it’s about fun at all. I think it’s about trying to, as they say these days “pwn the competition.”
Rachel: What would you like to see happen with fansubbers and their work?
Paul:I’d like them to bin the honorifics, translation notes, flashy, pointless karaoke effects etc and actually TRANSLATE for a change. Also, I want no more than two lines of song lyrics on an opening sequence. Seriously…What is the point of putting the kanji up there as well? That’s another thing which sickens me.
Basically, make it about the anime again, not the pointless competition.
Rachel: Going back to the irate fansubbing community, what would you like to say to them about the way fansubbing is headed?
Paul:Well, I shall quote the end of my video for this one, although you’d have to watch the Speed Grapher “ultimate fansub” mock-up I produced at the end of part 5 of the documentary first:
“Enjoy the following, because this is the way that fansubs are heading. And this is the kind of translation sandwich you’re going to be forced to feast on every day at the buffet of subtitle hell.”
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We’d like to thank Paul Johnson for giving us the opportunity to interview him!
So, how does his interview change your opinion of fansubs? Do you still feel modern fansubs are fantastic? Or has Paul inspired you to rethink your thoughts on fansubs?
Please share your thoughts on the interview in the comments section!
