Midaregami

Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water is hardly the most difficult anime series to translate. Does a good editing job cost that much? There are fansub scripts out there, and nobody would’ve known if you’d taken a look at them. Or you could’ve asked me—I’d keep your secret.

It’s bad enough that you’ve managed suck the vigor out of Hanson and Sanson’s wacky exchanges on love and life. You also suceeded, amazingly, in diluting Gargoyle’s pompous speeches to starved shadows of their former selves. This isn’t Mishima or Tanizaki, guys, this is pulp action. It’s not that hard.

But hey, sometimes it happens, and sometimes the editor isn’t paying attention. But could you try to avoid out-and-out mistakes? Because stuff like this is just sad:

Minion: The blast destroyed the airships Dius, Ekis, and Makina!

You don’t have to be an Arthur Waley or a Frederick Schodt to figure out that it’s one airship named “Deus Ex Machina.” And I don’t even have a major in Japanese. I’m so embarrased for you.

Love, Paul.

PS – give me a job. I work cheap.

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 18th, 2004 at 5:32 am and is filed under Translations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.