English Anime Localizer Claims ‘My Deer Friend Nokotan’ Subtitle Controversy Is An Example Of Why “We Need To Educate Japanese Companies On What Good Localization Looks Like”
An English localizer is citing the recent debacle regarding Remow’s English-language sub release of My Deer Friend Nokotan as an example of why the West needs to educate Japanese studios as to what “good localization looks like”.
While watching the July 7th season premiere of the adorable animal slice of life comedy anime My Deer Friend Nokotan, fans noticed that something was amiss with the anime’s English language subtitles.
From choppy capitalization, to randomly inserted punctuation, to the occasional nonsensical line, almost every line of the episode’s subtitles were marred with some sort of blatant error.
Faced with such a bizarre translation, many fans began to speculate that the botch job may have been the work of AI.
And thought it currently remains unknown whether the subs were done by machine or human hand, the mere speculation of the fact prompted yet another round of AI localization discourse.
Enter notorious Japanese-to-English localizer Katrina Leonoudakis.
Perhaps best known for proudly boasting about how she ran roughshod over HIDIVE’s English subtitles for My Life As Inukai-San’s Dog and standing in defense of the ‘trans’-lation of I Think I Turned My Childhood Friend Into a Girl, Leonoudakis placed the blame for My Deer Friend Nokotan‘s terrible subtitles squarely on the shoulders of the various Japanese studios involved in its production.
“Speaking of Nokotan, a few people have pointed out oddities in the English subtitles, too, mainly a ton of missed capitalizations for sentences/proper nouns and a lack of split subtitles,” she stated. “What’s going on with this series? Did the licensor outsource the TL instead of using CR?”
“It’s not unheard of for JP companies to ‘do their own loc’, but when they don’t know how localization works, or what good loc looks like, it often ends up with disasters like these,” she then acknowledged “(source: I’ve been hired a good amount of times to fix prodco-provided translations!).”
“This is why educating creators — whether they’re filmmakers, animation companies, writers, game developers, etc — is so important,” the Tokyo Mew Mew New localizer emphasized. “Good translation is a profit enabler. Bad translation just makes you look cheap and uncaring.”
The Gushing with Magical Girls English localizer continued on her My Deer Friend Nokotan localization crusade in response to @LittleBitofJean’s tweet on the anime’s English dub.
“This is… one of the strangest localization decisions I’ve seen in a long time,” she stated, “Even if the sub script is extremely workable, adapters in all languages have to tool it for lip flaps, shot lengths, etc. The only reason I can see them doing this? The Japanese company told them to.”
“I work with dub studios around the world as part of my job, and a lot of the discussions we have revolves around adjusting important lines of dialogue for lip motions in ADR,” she added. “It’s the trickiest part of ADR scriptwriting — and what makes a dub go from good to great.”
Following her detour onto the topic of ADR, the Tokyo Mew Mew New localizer proceeded to provide her analysis on Nocotan’s English language dub.
“I can guarantee you this was NOT the decision of whichever ADR writer or director that was in the booth with the VAs/ Someone on high (likely in Japan) said to use the script they were given,” she speculated. “And god dammit they’ve really done their best. Kudos to the VAs, for sure.”
“I’ve worked on projects where the Japanese licensor has demanded we use their dub script,” she explained. “I’ve been a voice in the argument for why we should or shouldn’t change certain dialogue lines. We had to pick and choose our battles to change the WORST ones. This isn’t surprising.”
To this end, Leonoudakis re-iterated, “this is why we need to educate companies on what good localization looks like, and how to do it. Because when they try to do it themselves, you end up with… this.”
“I feel so bad for all the voice actors excitedly coming to social media to announce their roles — many of them, their first anime roles!,” she ultimately concluded. “Unfortunately, they’re saddled with a script they didn’t ask for, and a boatload of upset fans who are now going to ask them: ‘Why?'”
An updated version of the English sub release of My Deer Friend Nokotan‘s first episode has since been uploaded to Remow’s YouTube channel.
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