I just learned recently there’s a lot of drama of “localizers” blatantly mistranslating or inserting their own words to push their ideologies.
I would rather there not be an official translation or localization process, but since non Japanese streaming platforms want to constantly expand their business no matter what, the desires of hardcore anime fans will not be respected as normal people outnumber us, so bad subs will continue to be produced.
Or for people who aren't already familiar with the culture. For instance if you're translating a romance novel or otome game (romance game for women) you'd want to localize the body language it describes men using, because what Japanese women like, American women think is offputting and rapey, and a romance story doesn't work as a romance if it turns the reader off.
> Beyond that official translations often don't come with honorific
This is a giveaway you don't speak Japanese. Honorifics are not actually important or meaning-bearing.
(Last week in public in Japan I heard a woman call a boy "Haru-chan", something that supposedly never happens.)
Actually, if audiences expect this it means translators have to start translating some honorifics you don't know into the ones you do. You probably know さん but not 氏 or ちゃま.
As a Japanese man, you are dead wrong.
Using the wrong honorific or inappropriately not using one at all can be tantamount to shouting "fuck you" to someone here in the Anglosphere, an insult and offence of among the highest order.
>I heard a woman call a boy "Haru-chan", something that supposedly never happens.
That is mundane to a fault.
I didn't mean it like that! I meant when they're being used normally and not meant to stand out. They're normal pleasantries and a bit of character voice, and both those things can be represented in English.
America isn't a honorific-heavy society, but there are certainly people who get offended if you don't call them Dr., etc, but this is rarely a plot point in a TV show and I don't think it's used that often in manga/anime either.
Though I don't find it that bad. My English copy of Count of Monte Cristo does have French honorifics (it uses M/Mme instead of Mr/Mrs) and that doesn't look weird. Japanese stories set in Britain also seem to like using British titles like "Milord" although, um, they don't really do it right.
Meanwhile I've seen subtitles for clips of Japanese vtubers where they don't put /enough/ swearing in. First one I ever saw had Pekora saying something was 気狂い, which they definitely didn't translate right. (Means "crazy" but it's a really bad word, kind of like "retarded".)
I can, but believe what you want. I don't have a need to prove it to others.
>Honorifics are not actually important or meaning-bearing.
This is plain wrong as there are scenes where honorifics are significant. Who uses (or doesn't use) which honorific with which people is important. Characters change the honorific they use with each other. Characters talk about what honorifics people are using.
>something that supposedly never happens.
Says who?
>if audiences expect this it means translators have to start translating some honorifics
Personally, I don't think they need to translate them. The actual meaning of it is usually not important and if it is it could be left up to the viewer or put in a TL note. An exception to this is certain usages of 殿, but this is usually handled by changing the phrasing of the rest of the sentence.
>You probably know さん but not 氏 or ちゃま
I do know them.
That's just a question of character voice. You can also say a translation is inaccurate because in the original the characters were speaking Japanese and now they're speaking English.
But as they say, it can't be helped. You just need to be sure readers can still distinguish who's speaking in the result by making people sound different.
> Says who?
Most language learning material and anime fan common knowledge? Even Wikipedia, though it has some caveats.
And of course there's real life situations where people call girls -kun as well.
Fair, but I do feel that removing it is removing a social dynamic that can not simply be mapped just to the voice of a character.
>Most language learning material.
It happens in anime too, so that material is wrong and off topic from what was being discussed.
This exact same conversation was happening on anime forum boards 20-30 years ago before Japanese streaming platforms knew they were people interested in watching their content overseas. There are gigabytes of forum posts of_fan produced content_ arguing over whether honorifics should be included, if puns should be explained with a "TL note", references to japanese history, etc.
Fansubs ultimately ended up on coalescing on what official subs do today (before official subs even existed), so I don't believe they are doing it because of corporate greed. People prefer somewhat localized content. Fan subs killed most honorifics and translation notes before anyone made a dime doing so.
Localization isn't just bad subs though. Localization is sometimes unavoidable due to differences in language and the cultural usage of the language. Not everything can be directly translated, as that's not how languages work. Sometimes the only way to avoid localization is to not translate, and then it's no longer a translation.
* translating a joke "literally" makes it no longer a joke and so no longer an authentic translation
* the original creators want their work to sell to people who weren't already prepared to like it