That tweet has my support.
It's ok to have issues with a translation, but some people can be completely insufferable about it.
It's ok to have issues with a translation, but some people can be completely insufferable about it.
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Amanda Winn Lee telling Evangelion fans to "learn Japanese and translate yourself or eat a dick" and to "STFU" in recent tweet about translation
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She's angry about how she got shit for her translation taking too many liberties and now the new translation is being attacked for being too literal. When you've been getting shit for 20+ years and then this happens, it's easy for the fandom to look entirely unpleasable.
People working in entertainment need to start doing this more and stop pandering. Studios themselves more so than the individuals.
I won't pretend to be a linguistic expert but is 'eat a dick' exclusively a homophobic insult in 2019? I thought it was the equivalent of telling someone to 'Go fuck yourself'.
And people have valid complaints, but it's easy to just ignore that entirely if you assume it's all coming from the same schizophrenic person.
And I'm not justifying giving shit. Maybe twitter is worked up into a froth over this, which isn't appropriate, but there's a lot of level headed and legit objections on the threads we've had here about it.
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To continue from my last post, here is somebody trying to translate a Japanese meme caption and the little issues there are to keep the original meaning :
http://learnjapaneseonline.info/2014/08/09/localization-why-anime-translations-are-so-wrong/
Here's also a translator speaking about when it is needed to localize text, and when is it better to do a more literal translation :
https://legendsoflocalization.com/when-is-it-okay-to-localize-and-not-localize/
Gotcha. Would it be fair to say that the people complaining know a thing or two about Japanese and the nuance intended? Or is the translation just glaringly literal and thus, obviously "wrong"?
While I generally shy away from anime I have been interested in watching NGE since reading Wizard as a kid but the complaints have put a damper on my interest. Someone convince me otherwise.
That kind of language has always been offensive and it's sole purpose is to hurt others. I mean do you guys use this kind of vulgarity in your day to day life?
Using "eat a dick" with the context of one of the main complaints being the erasure of LGBT elements was not the best choice of words.
I can't tell you wether people complaining actually know something or not. I'm not a mind reader. My Japanese knowledge is basically enough to know a huge list of what I don't know.
Lotta pearl clutching over language used and not the actual harassment this woman has recieved for 20 years.
Tone police are exhausting.
So we shouldn't hold all people to the same standards of decency? If she was a republican, you'd all be asking for her head on a plate. But fine, I'll stop. I simply don't like this kind of language.
'Go pound sand' does not express the same feeling and its old fashioned. Terrible translation 5/10
Folks good at Twitter are so inspirational.
I'm a fan. (Not a follower because I don't have a Twitter account.)
This is news to me. I never connected that phrase with being overtly homophobic.
Is it used frequently as a slur in recent years?
I'm queer, went to the first pride parade in JC and loudly told the literal handful of Nazi protestors in attendance to suck my dick.
Yes? She's using it in a negative context, saying that if you like dicks you're bad.
But you're unwilling to give her an exception for the ammount of toxic garbage she's been recieving from fans for more than two decades. I thought we were allies to women under fire who didn't really do anything wrong, but apparently she deserves to be cancelled because of some harsh language. Got it. Guess this here is a black and white binary for some people.
if there are people who dislike one but like another, they should just watch the one they like. if they dislike both, its the dick eating factory for them.
this tweet is absolutely correct and lol at people going "not a good look 😕" in this thread
I definitely liked the original translation of this tweet better, that's for sure.
It's about time one of them told off the hardcore Eva fanbase who have relentlessly pestered some of the voice actors about the translations of Eva over the years.
People went overboard on the ADV translation, that's for sure. But there are a couple outright mistranslations sprinkled throughout the series, and particularly in End of Eva. Also some outright weird dubbing choices in End (the "hit em again" and splat).
I'll stan the ADV dub till the day I die though. Literal translations suck
I'll stan the ADV dub till the day I die though. Literal translations suck
If she was a republican then i wouldn't care because it'd have nothing to do with anything.
And she insulted some people she's tired of dealing with, what's the issue? Is the mere fact that a human isn't a saint, at all times, that much of an issue to you?
This would make sense if the people criticizing the recent Netflix dub for being too literal were the same people who gave her (utterly undeserved) hell for the 1997 dub.
The problem is, uuuuuhhhh. They're not.
I mean, I get it. I get why she'd be pissed off about all the shit Evangelion fans have been giving her for 2 decades, and shitty weebs deserve to be shit on, but conflating the criticisms of like, other actual translation professionals in the industry who've been chiming in and commenting on how they wouldn't have worded certain lines in the new Netflix dub or how awkwardly stilted they can be, as well as LGBT+ fans who are tired of having to point out LGBT issues is for the 230534948th time, with the whining that spewed from entitled cis straight male fans who harassed her back then for the old dub is...
The problem is, uuuuuhhhh. They're not.
I mean, I get it. I get why she'd be pissed off about all the shit Evangelion fans have been giving her for 2 decades, and shitty weebs deserve to be shit on, but conflating the criticisms of like, other actual translation professionals in the industry who've been chiming in and commenting on how they wouldn't have worded certain lines in the new Netflix dub or how awkwardly stilted they can be, as well as LGBT+ fans who are tired of having to point out LGBT issues is for the 230534948th time, with the whining that spewed from entitled cis straight male fans who harassed her back then for the old dub is...
The thing I've struggled with in most of the conversations that have popped up about the Netflix translation is that many of them are either fairly uninformed and/or they assume bad faith on the part of the translator. It's very easy for someone who doesn't know anything about the other language to point at two words that are different and assume that the change is a mistake (or sabotage), without knowing how that might come about.
There are things I'd criticize with Netflix's translation, but not in this way.
For an example of where the Netflix translation falls short in this way, when Misato and Asuka first meet in Episode 8, Misato asks her "あなたも背伸びたんじゃない?" Here, 背 is height, and 伸びる is grow, so the Netflix subtitles translate it as "Hey, have you grown in height?" That conveys the correct meaning, but the phrasing is strange to a native speaker. "Hey, have you gotten taller?" would more accurately reflect how a speaker would ask the same question.
For example, the two controversial examples that I've seen with this translation (from the Japanese "suki" and "sect") are both entirely defensible translations, in the context of the scene in which they're presented. There are arguable reasons why you might choose one approach over another, depending on what you want to emphasize, but in both cases, neither the ADV approach nor the Netflix approach is wrong. Yet the conversation seems to always begin from an assumption that the changes were made to intentionally push a harmful political message, expressed reflexively on social media by people who don't seem to have given much thought as to why those choices were made.
There are things I'd criticize with Netflix's translation, but not in this way.
Language is a means of expressing ideas. Different languages go about expressing the same ideas in different ways, through different rules of grammar, expressions, and words. While a bilingual dictionary may make it seem like you could translate by mapping one language's words to their corresponding dictionary entry in the other, it can be a great deal more complicated. Words or expressions that might seem similar can actually carry very different meanings. A good translation properly conveys the ideas of the original to the translated language's audience, even if that requires the use of different phrasing or words.
For an example of where the Netflix translation falls short in this way, when Misato and Asuka first meet in Episode 8, Misato asks her "あなたも背伸びたんじゃない?" Here, 背 is height, and 伸びる is grow, so the Netflix subtitles translate it as "Hey, have you grown in height?" That conveys the correct meaning, but the phrasing is strange to a native speaker. "Hey, have you gotten taller?" would more accurately reflect how a speaker would ask the same question.
Never said she should be cancelled. All I said was she shouldn't stoop to their level.
I understand she's been harassed for decades but in a vacuum she comes off as a loon.
Nothing is black and white, that's the point. They hit her and she's hitting back, eye for an eye.
Also, my main issue was with her using "eat a dick", mostly because folks here typically don't tolerate gendered or sexuality based insults
Once again, she doesn't seem like a person I'd want to meet that's all.
There's also another tweet about "flay you alive if you tone police me!", I mean that's pretty badass but I don't like it when people talk in cartoon-ish threats
A better example for how nebulous and infuriating translating can be sometimes is to translate it lierally as "Hey, have you height grown?"
I'm not going to entertain your bad faith posturing, sorry not sorry.
Punch Nazis? Never! When they go low we go high. Love wins in the battlefields of the astral planes.
Yea, telling a translator which words she should have used instead is a bad look on my part, I concede, sorry.
Not do thread whine, but do we really need three threads about this subject?
There's only one version that's accessible in HD though
Don't bother, once again whenever it's inconvenient for them, LGTBQ people get brush aside.
no you should punch nazis
i'm like three letters of that acronym but I guess you've decided I don't matter, that's fine, that's cool and Good Actually
Is the solution to being frustrated and angry while dealing with harassment, writing a potentially homophobic and inflammatory tweet?
Again, if I posted that Tweet on ERA as a text post, instant ban for me.
I don't want to take this as truth but sometimes I do wonder.
Basically, this person was harassed so they get a "get out of jail free" card and can do no wrong (however large or small)
So you don't take issue hence no one else should?
Pointing out LGBT erasure and then being told to eat a dick is more exhausting, actually.
So you tell me I'm wrong, won't say why and when I ask you what does it mean then you run away. Got it.
I disagree as part of that group. I also didn't harass her so I take no ownership over having to participate in said dick eating.
Cause you're not discussing this in good faith. There's no reason to engage further.
