Grrl Power #711 – Love is a burning thing…
There was probably a warning about the nature of Grakz’s effect on humanoid metabolism, but it obviously wasn’t in English, and Sydney wasn’t wearing her Universal Translator contact lenses to complement her UT earpiece. Which she also wasn’t wearing at the time.
The contact lenses translate the written word, and also does a 3D overlay thing so everyone’s lips look synced up with what they’re saying. At least that’s how some UT’s handle it. Some don’t do the audio translation, and just project subtitles across the wearer’s field of vision. Those are a lot cheaper.
Huh, look at that, I think I’m slowly getting better at drawing butts.
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Subs before Dubs!
Depends. Some Dubs are really soulless or amateurish, but done well they can add nuance and don’t distract from what all is happening outside the bottom quarter of your fov.
Yea. Plus if your vision is a bit blurry, like mine, it is much less hassle listening to dubbing.
Brother, do I EVER understand! My vision is crap! I still use mostly Subbed though as dubs can be hard to hear depending on how well the audio mix was recorded and it is less likely that I will misunderstand something said at a low volume or in an overlapping conversation. I’ve even started following a few online manga!
Worst dub I ever experienced was a Cardcaptor Sakura movie. Sakura is a ten year old girl, and in the original Japanese sounds like a little girl. The dub had her sounding like a sixty year old woman who chained smoked a carton a day since she was five.
I’m sorry, but I think you meant to say best.
The best translation experience I had was watching a movie which was both dubbed and subtitled. Quite often that is actually irritating, because if either is poorly done then they can say different things, contradict one another and worsen the viewing experience, as that is distracting you from the anime.
However when both are well done then any subtle variation can convey the intricacies of the Japanese language. One can slightly emphasise the factual detail conveyed, whilst the other points out, for example, that it was said with heighted respect. And the best one I saw did so with no impact on the viewing experience, rather it deepened the understanding of the scenes and the emotional dynamics.
Of course you do miss out on both learning snippets of Japanese and appreciating the tonal qualities of the language, but I am OK with the trade off. When done well.
If dealing with average or below average translation, I would always click on a dubbed thumbnail, than a subbed one though. I am too lazy to struggle through reading and figuring out what was meant, or being irritated by having to mentally correct any bad English. The latter typically being far more common in written translations than spoken ones.
Kaizoku Fansubs. They took time out one episode to explain why they won’t translate certain words anymore, because the emotional culture of how the anime uses that word isn’t direct dictionary function, and whatnot.
Which is both a laudable concept and a bit silly. Most words aren’t direct 1 to 1 translations between languages, the amount of potential contextual nuance is insane when it comes to language. The whole point of translation is to do your best to get the intended meaning across the language barrier. Which this can mean being as close as possible to the words used, if you know what they mean, sometimes you can find a less direct but more accurate word to use instead.
Plus, it avoids the “all according to keikaku* *keikaku means plan” situations.
FFKonoko, I had a painful experience in how translation can be an issue.
I like Rammstein. I don’t speak German. One beautiful sounding song of theirs was translated and explained by a friend (the explanation was due to how the german language is structured). He translated it directly and it made no sense whatsoever, until he explained how the german language worked.
That’s when it went from beautiful to straight up horrifying and creepy. I can’t listen to that song anymore as a result.
So yeah, translation can be tricky.
Was that the song “Moskau” by any chance?
I was going to guess ‘Mein Teil’. Really, ‘horrifying and creepy’ describes a fair number of Rammstein tracks.
Sadly I don’t recall the song name anymore. And I know some of their songs have twisted lyrics. After that one song I never bothered to read the lyrics again. I stick with enjoying the beat of the song. Some things are best left untranslated.
It was one about a piano and obsession, that’s all I recall. Sorry. No, it wasn’t Mein Teil.
I watched Final Fantasy Advent Children in subtitle with a friend who understands japanese better than he speaks it. Reno and Rude cuss more than the subtitles and dub both allow.
The worst studio dub that embarrassed me on top of stretching my nerves like over-tightened violin strings, was only because I did not preview it before trying to show family types a great anime they would love – Fushigi Yûgi – Lets just say the chain-smoker analogy would be kind – Turns out the “actress” was the GF of the Media Blasters owner at the time [shudder]
There are some things that are just lost in translation or frankly cannot be translated while still retaining their original context. I remember one fansub where the folks who did the job actually took the time to provide translator notes. Like one phrase.
“I borrowed your kitchen to make this dish.”
The pun was “borrowed” and “the dish” sounded almost identical. I’m sure to a Japanese, the play on words was funny, but translated to english, not funny whatsoever.
I remember the subs for Urusei Yatsura had extensive liner notes explaining the numerous puns found in every episode (Like Shinobu calling Lum “oni no onanokko” was a pun on her literally being a “girl of the oni” and a common insult of calling a woman a “Devil Girl” (Roughly equivalent to calling a woman a “Bitch” in English), and the fact that Ataru’s name means “you’re going to get hit” so when he’s walking past a baseball field and someone shouts “Ataru zo! Ataru!”(look out, you’re going to get hit!) He thinks someone is calling his name and doesn’t duck, and thus gets an errant baseball right in the face.)
What a coincidence, I recently finished reading that Manga (and just finished Masion I decided to do a Rumiko Takahashi binge and started there because it was her first manga. I found it really interesting to see the influence it had on later works, both hers and others. Very obvious links to To Love Ru, Tenchi Muyo and Monster Musume, among others, and of course Ranma.
The creator of the El Hazard anime acknowledges that Jinnai’s English VA is superior to the Japanese one. The rest of the dub is good enough, but Jinnai means that I could never watch the subs again. :)
I’ll have to agree with Larei, a good dub can do wonders for what you’re watching. Dubs used to be horrible, mind scarring level of horrible, but they’ve come a long way. Though in some cases, subtitling is the only option (like if you enjoy foreign films that were only subbed, never dubbed).
As to eyesight going, yeah, that sucks on subtitling. Especially since there aren’t tools to increase the size of the subtitling in most cases.
I’m used to subs, so I stick with them, but I’m not adverse to a good dub.
I’ve listened to some bad dubs, like I switched it back to Japanese because the English was so bad.
On the other hand, there are some *very* high quality dubs out there. Assassination Classroom is a fantastic dub, in fact the scenes with Nagisa interacting with his mom are authentic enough to be slightly traumatizing. Miss Kobyashi’s Dragon Maid is good too. Deadpan snarking doesn’t work as well if its not in your native language.
Magical Index/Scientific Railgun have good dubs too, same studio as Assassination Classroom. And Sword Art Online. So can start playing “heeeey I know that voice!” if you watch em back to back.
Angel Beats is another dub I can recommend.
Log Horizon isn’t just a good dub from the voice acting perspective, they changed aspects of the characters/accents to work better for the English language audience, like making Naotsugu a dudebro.
WorldEnd is another good dub, but it falls into the type of story I call ‘no one gets nice things’, so be warned.
Your Lie in April also has an excellent dub, though in a few cases the idiom comes across better in Japanese, and in a couple the translation is just wrong. (Unfortunately, my favorite examples would be final episode spoilers.)
That said, my son (my tutor in most things anime, I wish he’d learn something from me sometime – other than Grrl Power :) is a sub purist so mostly I’ve watched subs.
Nagisa’s interactions with his mom are slightly traumatizing in any language.
There’s an interaction in the dub version of Clanaad After Story that made me start valuing dubs. The sub version essentially just says “it’s dirty”, as compared to this: https://youtu.be/TyEF28digak
Typoninja, I may have to track down some of Kobyashi’s Dragon Maid dubbed, just to compare. Usually my first exposure these days is fansubbed stuff that’s airing in Japan. But considering some of the snark she uses regularly, you’re probably right.
Though one of the best older dubs (and one of the worst) I ever heard was Slayers. Specifically one character. The voice was 100% spot on. And that is why I’d never be able to watch it dubbed, because the character’s voice was spot on. In short, she was an annoying twit in the anime, and the dub for her, she was an annoying twit. I can’t comment on all the voices, but that one voice was on the nose for the character.
I was permanently scarred from listening to the horrible dub of Sailor Moon when I was watching it on YTV with my daughter. Hard to believe that was 20 years ago. I found the voice for Molly to be incredibly grating on my ears. I was much happier when I bought her the box sets and could watch the subs. So even now I will always try the sub first.
Some subs can be almost a comedy track on their own. Example: the movie, “Battle of Britain”. When the Luftwaffe He-111 bombers from Norway are attacking northern England from Norway, the call sign they use is “tomato einz”, German for “Tomato One” but the sub reads “Heinz Tomatoes”. Great, the Ketchup Attack on England……….
Shades of ‘Attack Of The Killer Tomatoes’…
It really depends on if you want to watch a movie, or read a book
For some people, they only know one language (and in some cases, struggle with even that many) so both are needed (not always at the same time :P) or simply have to give up
You can get both good and bad subs and dubs (have come across bad English subs for English programmes, so it’s not just a case of bad translations)
Nations that regularly dub their content are generally not as proficient in foreign languages as nations that sub. If that is a good reason to sub instead of dub, is up to each and everyone to have an opinion on. Mine is that subtexting is better, but that might be because I grew up with it being the way things are done.
BEST DUB EVER!
https://youtu.be/xT221_ul7uo
Gakkou no Kaidan (Ghost Stories) – MyAnimeList.net
Ghost Stories is the amazing tale of a failed anime that became a cult classic through the absurd dubbing of the now defunct ADV films. The original is quite forgettable and not worth your time, but the infamous dub is DEFINITELY worth watching.
https://myanimelist.net/anime/1281/Gakkou_no_Kaidan
This cannot be hyped enough. The Dub is basically an Abridged version of the original.
The studio that made Ghost Stories made an agreement with ADV to the effect of “Change the dialog all you want, but the names all stay the same(allowing for reversing Family and Given names for characters, and everything is still SET in Japan) and you have to hit the same story beats. we just want to recoup our losses.”
Best dub ever is Samurai Pizza Cats.
They licensed the show, but the translated script that was sent over to them was such unusable trash, they literally just tossed it and made shit up as they went.
It’s basically an Official ‘Abridged’ treatment.
Take a look at “What’s Up, Tiger Lily?”, a 1966 Woody Allen film. He dubbed a Japanese spy film with a completely original story. Something about a rich guy trying to secure a secret egg salad recipe that he was addicted to…
QUOTE: “That guy really has a chicken on his back…” UNQUOTE
The problem with subs is you shouldn’t need to miss what’s happening because you are looking under it at the text.
The problem with dubs is the voice should at least be the same gender as the character talking never mind the other issues like monotone voices badly synced seconds out.
It takes time to learn how to read subtitling. Eventually it becomes second nature and you can follow both at the same time. You know, multitasking and all that. I’ve never missed a moment in a scene because I was busy reading the subtitling.
As to same gender, that I’ll disagree on as there are many Japanese voice actors who do a male character even though they’re female. Obviously this works best for younger male characters, but gender isnt an exclusive. Also a character could have a very effeminate sounding voice, in such cases a female voice actor could also be quite appropriate.
Lip Syncing is tricky because you could have phrases that are two syllables in Japanese (for example) but 3-5 words in English.
Without dubbing we wouldn’t know that it takes thirty seconds to say:
“Oi, your kung fu’s no good” in Chinese, or that Chinese sound like Australians.
No offence to peoples’ opinions, butt most of these “Sub vs Dub” ‘debates’ sound to me more like “Snob vs Elitist” flamewars: each side pointing out how superior they are and anyone else is inferior and should go away before they corrupt the purity of their beloved vision (in the most politest way possible)
Not all “SvD” debates devolve into that, butt in most cases, there is no room for both let alone the ‘opposing view’: it’s one or the other, and if you pick the ‘wrong’ one, you are not worth the time it takes to block your comments
It’s not snobbery, translation is a bit of an art form, especially between two completely unrelated languages like English and Japanese.
Choices made can have effects on the story,
The most famous example would probably be Secret of Mana for the SNES. The Japanese written language is a good bit more compact than English, so for a translation to fit on the limited space in a cartridge, more than 70% of the dialogue got cut.
2/3rd of the story gone. What do you keep? You could tell entirely different stories just by picking what plot threads to follow.
The people (Actually, one solitary poor bastard on a hell of a deadline in Mana’s case) doing the work on something like that have a massive ability to change what you end up getting.
Not to mention casting is just as important, if not more so, as live action. Would Iron Man be the same if it wasn’t RDJ?
Who the voice actors are, and how they bring the character to life matter. I used the example of Kobyashi’s Dragon main further up. The so named Kobyashi is a dead pan snarker, Anybody who’s spent any time at all online will tell you that text is terrible at conveying tone. With a text only translation you might think the character was simply level headed, instead of being snarky. With a dub, the actor might end up making the character simply sound mean.
Just like movies can suffer from bad casting, your dub could suffer too.
And that’s without even getting into studio meddling, North America gets more uptight about nudity than just about anywhere else, go find a slightly risque show and watch whole scenes vanish between versions.
Log horizon as I mentioned above is a good example of this, Naotsugu is a bit of a perv, but since sex jokes in North America are a big deal, he always gets interrupted in the English dub. He finishes those dirty jokes in the source material.
These issues might not be readily apparent to someone new to the subject, but they can literally change what show you are watching.
Who has to clean the restroom afterwards? It would be inhospitable to make the guest clean the bathroom, I could see a robot quitting and poor Frix has the nose of a canine.
I would reckon they would be self cleaning, failing that they put the bathroom on a thermal cleaning cycle
Safer to eject it into space.
Aaand nuke it.
From orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.
Overall, I’d say I prefer subtitles. I can read fast enough to catch the action, and I rather enjoy listening to the flow and pattern of other languages. That said, there is is good dubs, they’re just a lot rarer for me.
What’s the big deal? Everything is ten times as hot on the way out.
Is that how flares came back?
I always thought they were a bit shitty.
True enough.
It’s when the liver and gall bladder have trouble with it, and it comes back out florescent green that things are horribly wrong…
On the topic of butts, the phrase ‘I hate to see you go, but i love to watch you leave’ comes to mind. :3
Thanks… I really needed that laugh for today!!! All the messed up bathroom scenes from Dumb and Dumber, American Pie, and others just flashed through Syd’s mind… Colon Blow on steroids. Imagine the overboard waste dumps…
Sydney is about to give the phrase “Flaming Shits” a whole new meaning…
memories of “Hermies famous jerked prunes” come to mind “I call it Caribbean Draino!”
A warrior’s drink.
I suspect that this will be…
The Warriors Seat.
Sydney better hope she has recovered fully before they return to Earth. Otherwise she will be put on quarantine for half a year!
As the transition from the flash forwards, at the beginning of the comic, started out by saying “several months later”, this could actually be where we are heading.
And finally the comic will be proceeding ‘in the present’ (albeit not in our present).
Sydney losing her Plot Armor would be a present.
The next page will be her holding onto the last unknown orb and blasting Squiddies with her butt, finally coming around to how she’s the Big guns
:)
Reminds me of when she was testing to confirm that she had to hold the orbs in her hands to use them. One of my favorite cute images of her.
A crescent moon.
*Sydney gets to Earth*
*lands*
“Hi Archon! It’s good to be home.”
*giant shadow appears and covers everything*
*Dabbler looks up horrified*
*camera pans, we see its a squid*
*Dabbler explains how everyone’s just plain fucked now*
*Sydney rolls her eyes*
“Hold on a sec.”
*it blows up and dies*
“So what happened while I was gone?”
Seriously? They’re on a friking starship. In a universe where super powers and aliens contact are common. And neither Sydney’s belt kit nor the ship’s med Bay has anything like Galactus brand imodium, Black Hole suppositories, or Stan Lee grade Pepto bismol??
If it was that simple then the crowd of jaded aliens would not have been so seriously impressed. The galactic equivalent of those things can probably handle 99.9% of digestive problems. Grakz falls within the 0.1%
Moreover, something like that would likely have to be tuned preeetty specifically to a species’s biology. Humans are pretty rare in the spaceways, so I doubt there would be many products designed to facilitate such she could have used, even if such things do exist.
Just so.
I was thinking on similar lines, but was too brain fogged, after a 12.5 hour shift, to be able to convey that. Or even remember that I had that thought, before starting to write the other part.
:-D
Have Cora (or the crew) already phoned Dabbler to make them know that Sydney has already been found and that they are on their way?
* Terms and conditions apply. Minimum subscription period: one galactic year. Only available on premium accounts with fees greater than one quadzillion tons of platinum per galactic month.
A galactic year would be the time it takes the galaxy to turn? Or it would be the time it takes to turn around… I don´t know… the center of the universe? Either way, that would be a lot of time. I wouldn´t trust that communication company.
Well, from MIB we know a galactic week is one hour earth time, so a galactic year is… 52.142yaddayadda hours earth time.
I assume they did so while Sydney was … bathing.
Hi, Xuriel. Yes, we have found Sydney… in the fracture, no less. Yes, the Dayson thing. Yes, she is safe and sound. Taking a bath with Frix right now. Yes, you know, our doctor and… eh… plumber. Yeah… he is the best at what he does.
She felt it, that burning ring of fire. And it burns, burns, burns…………that ring of fire, that ring of fire. Looks like Sydney is getting ready for a really hot re-entry. Personally though, given how much and often she guzzles down the ass ripper food you would have thought her anus would be asbestos lined by now or at least ceramic tiled.
She has expressed concern about spicy food before… but she might also be one who enjoys that sensation.
I’m now reminded of a country song called Ring of Fire. Completely unrelated, but oh man, the song is now making me laugh as a result of the mental imagry!
Yes, the OP in this thread was clearly referring to the Johnny Cash song. Here’s a version without the annoying horns:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-zNQA5Xi4Q
Sounds like a good time to see what Deus and Vale are doing.
And this ends (pun intended) with Sydney in Sick Bay, face down on an examination table with her bare butt up in the air while Frix has some hi-tech medical gizmo bathing her exposed injury with healing rays. Just then the Alari Mom brings in her child to have a scraped knee attended to.
“Back away slowly my child. We’ve been rescued by perverts!”
Love the callback.
Totally whisk-worthy.
There’s going to be so much whisking you’ll think this is the cooking channel.
I guess we now know what it takes to get Sydney to hold still for more than a few seconds.
Poor Sydney!
I listened. The song starts out with the trumpet section:
Toot t’toot t’toot toot toot toot
Toot t’toot t’toot toot toot toot
Toot t’toot t’toot toot toot toot
Toot t’toot t’toot toot toot toot
Then the vocal starts.
If Sydney goes that way, there will be a lot of trumpeting before the screaming starts.
Yup, that song came to mind as well. And its making me laugh.
“. . .and there shall be a mighty burning to herald my coming!”
Oh, no. The portal. . . It’s opening!
And the deamons shall come though it!
Some have theorized what function the “mystery orb” serves, and I like “sick bay”. Since the reaction is basically like a poisoning, maybe we will find out…
i LOVE the effort you put into small details, like how her balls are always slowly orbiting her :)
^ This.
It’s a detail on the level of Thunt (Tarol Hunt), creator of the webcomic Goblins.
Ohhh boy so the love of spicy food may be the one thing she regrets indulging herself, heh I find it funny though. But maybe Sydney will be singing soprano afterwards or something. XD
This just had me laughing. :)
Sidney will be spending the next few hours split between hoping that that was a joke and in total fear that it was the truth, it will be the hours after that that are important.
From that “Glurrrrg” I suspect that Sydney does not have hours.
Her life is probably flashing before her eyes.
Nah, she’s just thinking about everything she’s left behind. Or, rather, what will be left of her behind.
Holy cow. Is it possible that we are witnessing the end of Sydney’s addiction to spicy food?
No, I don’t believe it, not even if Sydney dissolves the toilet.
ALIEN QUEEN: Beware, we are approaching a human ship.
ALIEN: What do we have to fear, your majesty? We bleed acid!
ALIEN QUEEN: I hear that they shit acid.
Yorp my man … you have reminded me of a funny comic. Where a dragon FARTS flame and kills a knight in shining armor.
“That was both embarrassing and disgusting! We breathe fire at our enemies! Breath!” was the response given to him by another dragon.
Now that is terrifying to consider. Syd’s idea of “Adequate” is something that would mean an Emergency Room visit for normal people.
10x hotter coming out sounds at minimum on the order of that North African cactus which is so hot they are testing it to permanently burn out and destroy pain nerves on chronic pain injuries. So yeah, this sounds like Frix is needed ASAP if its not a troll…
I don’t see a bridge overhead.
Oh wait, they were in that just now! Was that on the same deck? Usually the bridge is at the top of the ship.
OK possible troll. Send for some goats, to get definitive proof!
Sydney really looks like she needs a hug.
And a mountain of ice shavings.
Orally injected, or as suppositories? o_O
As a chair.
That could work… until she melts a hole in the chair :P
Last line in the commentary; yes, yes you have. A magnificent butt indeed.
So, are we done with spicy jokes? We’re all out of orifices…er, OK, out of all of the ones attached to the digestive track.
…
Please let’s not explore this thought further. Thanks!
Oh hell no. A careful analysis of the situation indicates that this is stool a very hot topic indeed. We are not the type of people to pass wind on such a burning issue.
I sit enthroned in admiration of the depths of your accomplishments. truly the aroma of your comment reaches far.
Regarding other orifices, I’m afraid Sydney has previously made a start on her eyes. She’s still got one eye and both nostrils to go.
And both ears, though I’m not sure how that would work. I don’t think there are any membranes that can feel the burn there.
And the canoodling zone. Any canoodler that handles her food should remember to wash their hands before canoodling commences.
OK, The foot text got me :).
Sydney is about to go on a vision quest to find her soul mate
Her poor bootyhole. RIP.
I agree, that is a very nicely drawn butt. I’m not even into women, and I must admit that Cora’s is pretty impressive.
Space toilets DO have seat belts and operate under a vacuum, right?
No, the vacuum operates under the toilets
this is where cora learns about “humans are the space orks”, and that meal only causes humans a case of gas. albeit, gas that burns those who smell it.
This is where Sydney learns what species Cora is: Space Troll :P
Since Frix is a Woof, I thought maybe Cora is a Smerph.
Smerph. Very good.
If Cora is a space Smerph, does that mean she’s the only female in her colony? (Or hive, or whatever Smurfs come in.)
I think we’re about to see Sydney in full on tears/crying for the first time in this comic. Not trying to be funny, but I think she’s about to be making the sound of ultimate suffering. Inigo Montoya will be able to relate. His heart made that sound, in this case, it’ll be Sydney’s poor bum.
She already has, during the obstacle course. After she yelled, F*** Batman!!!
“The sounds of suffering and agony can be heard from the bathroom. Followed by two words.”
“The Pain!”
This happened in a game where my character ate (duh to his rigid adherence to a code of honor) in short order, Heavily Spiced Food and then followed it up with tea (which I think had more peppers in it) and finished it off with Chocolate Ex-Lax Cake.
Everyone was laughing at this of course. I “defeated” myself.
well, you know you have eaten spicy enough food when you output molten lava with rich smell of sulphur.
It occurs to me that it must be interesting for Dave to draw Sydney since he is so clearly skilled and enjoys drawing more curvy and “ripped” individuals. Occasionally he slips up and Sydney looks pretty hot if rather flat chested.
You make it sound like flatties can’t be hot…
Had sensual fun with a space woof, exits ship walking funny with her rear end bandaged.
Before Dabbler gets the whole story you KNOW she’s going to make jokes about what happened.
the only ones who won’t make jokes about that are Maxima and Peggy. and i am not betting any money that Peggy will show restraint.
Cora’s kidding. She’s a kidder.
Considering she’s friends with Dabbler, I wouldn’t put it past her to ham it up. Then again, she wasn’t joking about the tentacle closet.
Which makes her trolling now even more likely, and funner :D
*Shudders in horror.*
Cue Darth Vader NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Later
“Well we returned her to her.. What are you excited about?”
“Captain.. whatever she ate interacted weird with whatever came out.. I think she somehow powered the ship for 500 years with.. er.. what is that.”
“Let’s not ask.. just.. fumigate”
+1
o wait – i meant #2… er, +2
Is “Earthfall” a sci-fi reference?
As landfall is an arrival at land on a sea or air journey, Earthfall, by extension, is an arrival at Earth after a space or extra-dimensional journey.