Translation review: [Asenshi] Dansai Bunri no Crime Edge 01 This entry was posted by Vale.
Time to change the site’s name to Extremely Biased Reviews™.
Casually omitting words? I don’t mind this.
This seems weird at first. It’s because the ambiguity of Japanese that there is a whole anime centered around the parallel of cutting the girl’s hair and cutting her herself.
He’s thinking he should keep this Platonic, but he can’t resist saying the next line as his goodbye.
眠れる森の姫 is the Japanese title for Sleeping Beauty.
He’s remembering what that girl said at the start of the episode… wrong. So before you’d complain about inconsistency, let me point out that the Japanese is slightly different too.
Point: 1) the scissors are old 2) he’d used them when he was little 3) this sentence is bad.
You can’t really call it a hobby since he said it himself that he hadn’t done it for a long time. 趣味 (shumi) isn’t necessarily “hobby” – it can mean “fetish” too for example.
I’d rather use “cheat” than “betray”.
For the second half of the line I’d rather go with “now isn’t that wonderful” or “your point being?” even.
This line should be cut in halves.
“If it’s my life, I wish someone’d kill me right now.” Referring to how a girl’s hair is her life.
I’m under the impression that she’s telling him he mustn’t do anything (unless he wants to fight them to the death).
His grandfather knocked because he was worried, that’s obvious. Kiri’s asking what’s (supposed to be) wrong with his name.
Pun on how “hair” and “god” are homophones in Japanese. The way they handled it wouldn’t be bad… only it’s mistimed .
The ending translation’s okay. At least not too obviously wrong.
Conclusion: Okay
Accuracy: 6/10; Flow: 7/10; Atmosphere: 7/10
This show is so retarded it was difficult to pay attention to the subs (judging from the hidden comments in the subs, Asenshi staff think so too: “kill me, typing this line out hurt so much I don’t wanna go on living”). In general the translation wouldn’t be bad, but way too many of actually important lines are messed up.
[ack, wordpress swallowed my examples; please disregard the first comment and read this instead:]
Hello vale, thanks for the review.
I was/am the editor for this release and I’m kinda weird in how I like bad reviews of scripts I’m responsible for more than good ones (you can’t learn from the latter), but I have to admit I’m somewhat confused by a couple of screens and lines you’re criticizing. Care to further comment on those, since the score seems kind of low compared to the relative gravity of the mistakes you mention?
[眠れる森の姫] – as far as I’ve been told, [Sleeping Beauty] is not [眠れる森の姫] but [眠れる森の美女], and we respected that the title went for [姫] instead of [美女]; no reason to force a reference into where one isn’t necessarily intended
[I gave haircuts with these scissors that belonged to my childhood home.] – I deliberately went for a liberal edit here because I wasn’t happy with more literal lines and because the visuals were suggestive enough; I assumed that the visual implications (age difference [1], him as a kid cutting hair [2]), coupled with the line, would make abundantly clear that the scissors are old [1] and, well, that he was cutting hair with them when he was a kid [2]. If the line reads bad [3], it reads bad though, I can always accept that criticism.
[It’s become something of a hobby I can’t drop any more.] – Yeah, the inconsistency is my fault. (I assume you checked that he didn’t say anything here that could be understood that way, though?) I decided against [“fetish”]though since it’s too strong a term at this point; he’s not exactly aware of this being a fetish slash murderous urge as of yet.
[Oh, is that so? Now let’s see here…] – I was and still am under the impression that his little act is about turning his back on Kashiko and ostentatiously going back to doodling in his notebook.
[She’s got an aura…] – To be honest, I don’t really get what you mean here.
[I wish… / someone would take my life right now.] – I agree, missed opportunity (though certainly not wrong).
[Haimura Kiri, / you don’t have to do anything.] – I agree here too, tone is slightly off even if this line is probably still within acceptable parameters.
[So what do you want, Grandpa?] – probably another mistake on my part, I guess I have to apologize to Aera…
[… my goddess.] – Could have been handled better, yeah, that was a communication fuckup.
The rest of the screens are comments or alternative, basically equivalent edits; I assume you are not considering these as mistakes.
If I count what I agree with as mistakes (and add another mistake [“We’ve brought you living supplies/dinnerware.”] you either missed or had the luck to miss thanks to the v2~) and consider their gravity, I’m not really sure how we could end up with grades as meh as these.
I’m not saying that they’re undeserved, it’s not up to me to say that and it’s not up to me to challenge your standards either, but the screens and lines you selected kinda don’t really show how your grade is backed.
Ianu
As for the sleeping beauty thing, I know that it’s a different phrase. Nonetheless, it’s an obvious reference. Or would you not associate to “Snow White” when you see “Snow Black”?
Sure I would, but I wouldn’t edit “Snow Black” into “Snow White” when it is “Snow Black” and not “Snow White” in the original.
Neither would you literally translate the Japanese into something totally unrelated.