Page 2 of 2

A/V Engineers required?

Posted: Fri Aug 09, 2002 10:34 pm
by AndyThomas
Urm, hang on - we seem to be talking about 2 different concepts now. Having just stuck some fansub Gundam in the video, it doesn't involve English voice actors. It's just subtitled.Doing a fandub would be a whole different ball game. Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't you have to take the whole soundtrack off in order to add English voices? In which case you'd lose out on all the music, unless there are distinct channels? Obviously the professional studios do that, although I know some people dislike dubbed versions.Shane, I'm not quite clear whether you're suggesting a fandub of the entire series or just the snippets we don't have? Do we actually have the right voice actors to fill them in with - you're not in touch with Denise Bryer, are you, Mike? If you're talking about redoing the whole series with a new translation as well as new music - well, I doubt amateurs could do that.Of course, the other thing we're ignoring here is that fansubs are intended to be for Japanese series that haven't been dubbed into English. Star Fleet has been (and Gundam has now, I believe). Whilst it would be interesting to have a new translation from the Japanese, releasing the original Japanese with English subtitles after an English release would actually be against the spirit of fansubs. You're also messing around the Japanese right holders, of course...I think the best starting point if you wanted to embark on something like this would be to tape the entire Japanese version, and then give it to someone to translate. That in and of itself is a massive task - it took me long enough to write my episode guide whilst watching the whole series, let alone having to capture everything word for word whilst translating!Anyway, once a script had been produced like that, it could be compared to the English version we already have. I think that in and of itself could be quite interesting. If someone then wanted to go on to do the fansub, well, you're looking at applying that new script to over 8 hours of episodes with precision timing.Again, that doesn't strike me as anything that general amateurs could do - as Happosai says, you'd be looking at a dedicated fansub team and I think the time scale would be significant. You also need to consider what format all this would be done in - you've got to be able to merge the subs into the Japanese footage, which means it's got to be converted from laserdisc into something more usable by today's standards.This is all quite stream of consciousness stuff - I'm just thinking out loud. It just strikes me that this could be a very expensive and long drawn out process, basically. I suppose you could try and do it on a smaller scale with just episode 25 (or 13 or whichever it actually is!) because that would be quite novel, given that there's never been (to our knowledge) an English version of that episode at all. You'd then have a working methodology for doing the rest...

A/V Engineers required?

Posted: Sat Aug 10, 2002 2:09 am
by Happosai
FanDUBS?! Hehe...from an anime perspective, commercial dubs are bad enough...from what I've heard, amateur dubs fall into 2 catagories: 1) humorous parodies; 2) astonishingly bad results that make you long to hear a commercial dub, no matter how bad...! No, fandubs really weren't what I was thinking of...!To clarify, many anime fans prefer subtitles over dubs, since dubs generally aren't as accurate a translation as subtitles -- dialogue is changed so that it "lipsynchs", often the scripts are more "Westernised" (changes to the storyline, jokes, names, etc.), and, for some reason, Western voice actors used in anime dubs are usually pretty crap!Fan translations *are* produced for anime that has only ever been available in English as a dub, either as fansubbed episodes or as scripts. If the dubbed version is no longer in print (as with Star Fleet), then fansubs are generally acceptable...it it's something that is still easily available, then scripts are more likely.My suggestion for a fansub of X Bomber is based on an assumption that when it was adapting to produce Star Fleet, changes were made to the original story...I don't think this isn't something any of us knows for sure, but seeing as they changed many of the names, the music, and the title of the show, I suspect that this is the case (many other Japanese shows that had a Western version produced in the 70s/80s also have significant differences from the original, from things like BotP, where extra footage was inserted, to Monkey!, where the scripts were actually written from scratch and bear little resemblence to the original).From what I can gather, the biggest step in producing a fansub is getting someone to transcribe (Japanese material generally doesn't contain Japanese subtitles) and translate the original Japanese into English...usually what happens is that a first draft literal translation is produced, then it is modified to make it more understandable in English...this can be difficult is the original dialogue contains things that are difficult to put in English, such as cultural references, word-play, etc. However, with a straight action series like X Bomber, I doubt there would be anything particularly difficult to translate.The technical side of producing the subtitled material is pretty striaghtforward. Timing scripts is little more than sitting through the episodes and making a note of when things are being said...it's more time consuming than anything...the tools available for subtitling digital material make it pretty easy to do.[Happosai]

A/V Engineers required?

Posted: Sat Aug 10, 2002 5:58 am
by Shane
Well as I've said the video files for Ep. 25 are up on my site, so that would be your starting point for translation. I would also reiterate that I don't think that there is any hidden material within X Bomber, Star Fleet is a scene by scene copy of X Bomber and in no way a cut and paste affair like some translated anime particularly BOTP. If I am to be honest I was quite disapointed when I finally got the laser disc set because the only new material is those 3 short scenes in Ep. 25. and it cost me a fortune to get hold of a working laser disc player. Ok there might be some really subtle differences in the translation but the story is the same. Would it not be wiser to just base the subtitles on the English language version? It strikes me that the UK production people have already done the hard work for you. You could always change the English names back to the Japanese originals etc.There doesn't appear to be any subtitles on the Laser Discs themselves, but what I have got is the entire dialog script for Space Quest for F01 in Japanese which is printed within the booklet that you get with the set. The Space Quest disc must have been used as a bonus oddity as it's the full English language version with no subtitles hence the script that comes with the set.I don't know if translating this would help as it's probably just a copy of the English dialog.Shane.

A/V Engineers required?

Posted: Sat Aug 10, 2002 9:45 am
by AndyThomas
Heh, that's a strange twist of fate - here we are talking about translating Japanese to English when the Japanese once did the same thing in reverse on Space Quest!I agree with Shane - if you look at the Manga Max article, the descriptions of the episodes are effectively identical. Plus, although I take your point on the lip synch issue re: dubbing, this is a puppet show. The range of facial expression is more limited than in a conventional anime, so I suspect that the English language we've got is pretty optimised.The only real question mark we've had is over the Prof Hagen - Shiro Hagen connection, and perhaps as Happosai says the odd cultural thing where the translation hasn't quite worked.The comment about the Japanese material not having Japanese subtitles made me chuckle ;)

A/V Engineers required?

Posted: Sat Aug 10, 2002 10:18 am
by Shane
Heh, well yes a similar case would be my Laputa DVD which only has cantonese subtitling. Luckily I've still got a video recording of the English language version which was last shown on tv in 1992. So I can at least follow whats going on. Still waiting for a proper release of the English dubbed version though....Shane.