I think CGP Grey's video "This Video Will Make You Angry" perfectly applies to this: those content creators use the animosity that has been dormant in English Dub scenes ever since the days of 4Kids One Piece or Warriors of the Wind and conflated it with the hoopla involving the Dragon Maid dub to build a boogeyman to keep people talking, since Anger is what sells.

I was waiting for the Kill la Kill comment pic, it’s infamous amongst that community lmao

I have two sides: Deffending localizers and the prospect of A.I never being able to catch up to nuances within the text. the other side of me just wants john werry gone no matter what

In one of the episodes of SHY, a character says something along the lines of, ‘It’s rude to assume someone’s gender.’ The first comment I saw was from someone asking, ‘Is this the actual dialogue, or is it just cringe-worthy localization?’ It’s crazy how people can instantly become blinded by rage. The scene shows a girl mistaking an androgynous boy for a girl, which makes the boy sad. After that much context, I believe the line could be interpreted from the body language alone.

I feel like the people who really need to watch this video are not going to and those who will are gonna rage quit after 3 minutes.

14:02 I am pretty sure there was a guy on Twitter who literally found multiple examples in dragon maid its just that the patriarchal one is the most well none example

this was a breath of fresh air, this discourse is so annoying because the loudest voices on it have 0 idea about how translation works

I'd say the shiro tabi example would still be a poor localization, as changing the doctors cultural footwear into gloves does still change the character. It makes it more American and western ethnocentristic when a translation note of formal sock like garments would give readers the same context as well as keep to a similar description of the character. Too much localization gives us such works as the original Persona 1, where the character Mark is turned black for Western diversity, only to then receive accidental racism towards him due to an unfortunate translation, to name an egregious example. There are other translations and localizations that are held in contempt by various anime fans, there are afterall several compilations of these, the Jamie Marchie Dragon Maid clip is just seen as the worst due to how unexpected and unnecessary it is, in combination with her writing off all her critics as being misogynistic and incel-esque. For Rev, I'd say it mostly comes down to it firstly being his opinion like how this video is the opinion of Apathtra, and secondly that his audience doesn't really care for the other controversies, which is a shame to me, that's why I watch both channels.

I've been thinking about localization recently when I learned the Solo Leveling anime is localized differently for Japan. They change the characters names to japanese names and korean locations to japanese. They only applied these changes for Japan and the international release is faithful to the source material. Apparently it's common for things like manwha to do that. I find that whole localization topic interesting. edit: wanted to add that Korea does the same thing with Japanese media. I understand it's part of japanese-korean politics but that's kinda eye roll tbh

The term "woke" just as the words "nazi" and "fascist" lost all meaning due to overuse on things that arent really applicable Im generally annoyed by people using any of those three What really bothers people, besides the translations themselves, are the actions and things the localizers say. Many of them openly antagonizing the public.

12:08 I actually heard the opposite that it wasn’t because of america gun control and that people took that and ran but since you literally showed an image what I can only assume is an interview of fujimoto saying exactly that I guess I was misinformed. Anyway really REALLY liked this video 10/1

I want to say that I feel like we focus too much onto the political aspect of the argument rather than the other aspects too it. I don’t like modern localization because it uses modern terms, Slang, and political ideas because those ideas instantly date any form of media. Just as an example look at Mario and Luigi Partners in time. Overall it’s a great game plays well and has a fun story. However their is a very dated moment early in the game where you fight brainwashed Koopa troopa’s the Koopa’s talk to you in a cutscene and they speak in ‘Leet speak’ which for those who don’t know or don’t remember was an early form of Internet communication that often shortened words and phrases to make it look ‘cool’ or ‘hacker like’ that moment aged liked since almost no one uses leet speak anymore and the joke will fly over people’s heads entirely. As well you mentioned modern politics but those also changes with the time as older talking points that used to be Liberal are considered Conservative. Politics changes with the times so that also dates a piece of media in the long term. To add to that you point to One piece as an example of a political series. I’ve read one piece and what political messages are you getting. The series Themes is about dreams and freedom. Any political messages you get from that are from your own personal views. As one can say that it’s about fighting corrupt governments and systems of power since The Main Cast fights a corrupt government. I can also say the series is about Monarchism and rightful heirs to power since many arcs end with the original Kings of a kingdom put back into power or a new king is chosen. To wrap this around back to my original point. The problem with focusing on political aspect of this debate is that it misses a very large factor in that political debates and ideas change with the times and adding any form of modern politics will heavily date a piece of media and how you interpret it can also massively change how you perceive the media going further in time. If in 40 years Japanese work cultures shift to be more employee friendly and less strict then a ton of series plot points dies immediately Zom 100. Dragon Maid. Agreesitiko are all series whose main characters are affected by Japanese work cultures and if that culture just doesn’t exist anymore their plots become very dated and way harder to connect to a future audience.

I'm brazilian, there are dozens of GOOD Shakespeare translations here, and they are all completely different from each other. Some priorize the rhythm, some prioritize the lyrical aspects, the poetry, some prioritize the fact that it was meant to be played in a theater, some try to evoke that ol'english shakesperean feel, others modernize it to preserve the original intent with how raw and vulgar he was. All of these are valid localizations, it's impossible to have one that does it all. Anime and manga are no different. You can localize the same series a dozen of times and come out with a dozen different scripts, all perfectly valid, however, each prioritizing one or another aspect, focusing on a different demographic. And for several decades, before official translations were popular, that was the actual scene. Different fansub groups have different philosophies and you could always stick with the ones you liked the most. But now with official versions, we need one translation to fit the needs of everyone, and that's just not possible.

I really like that funny dog image asa please keep using it

- I think an issue people have is that well you don't necessarily see Kurosawa movies or Haruki Murakami books being "localized" but more "translated" so I think there's still 4kids stigma about changes being more heavy handed. - I think the problem with localizing in regards to adpating to different cultures is that well, how much should be done? Should yen be changed to dollars? Should honorifics be preserved? Should well known terms like Tsundere be kept like Sushi? i feel most works end with a weird mish-mash that is at best inconsistent. - There's also a thing that rarely gets discussed with the english script of games and movies being used as the base for other languages. Like Parasite changed a prestigious Korean University for Oxford for the english subtitles and I watched the movie with spanish subtitles and they kept it as Oxford. - I think people tend to have problems with punched up memes, slang, references and academic/social justice terms. Like with the Dragon Maid dub anothe video discussed the dub also using the term cultural appropriation and argued why it made sense for them to use it because they are college educated but Kobayashi and her friend are IT professionals, who in personal experience even in the USA tend to be very "anti-woke." Same with a panel of Uzaki calling people bigots and personally those kind of words sound too much like liberal Americans and just sound as off as characters swearing excessively in old dubs and fan translations. - There's many examples but I think people just restort to the Dragon Maid example because it has the word patriarchy. Meanwhile when Fire Emblem Engage changed characters wanting to eat Karaage to Stir Fried Veggies just comes off more as at worst a vegan agenda or that fried chicken would come off as too modern. Still have seen plenty of examples from the Yakuza games, The Trails series, Fire Emblem Fates, Final Fantasy Games, various visual novels etc. - The problem tends to be how it affects the tone. A lot of works are perceived as being more comedic or way more serious than they were intended to because changes in localization tilted the tone in one direction. Final Fantasy 5 is interesting because Sakaguchi wanted a more serious story and Kitase added a lot more humor and the localization added even more humor so people think the game is a satire or parody of RPGs when it wasn't intended. - Ultimately it comes down to trust and it's hard to trust even one line when in those compilations I see people sneak in stuff or their preferences or the translator of One Piece making Morgans make bird puns because they felt like having him speak that way for that chapter.

It's nice to see a video on this subject that actually talks about the nuances of localization and translation without just handwaving them away as being inaccurate because it doesn't convey the actual meaning of it. While this isn't coming from Japanese, when reading stuff that's been machine translated from chinese (The Chrono Jotter is the main one I've actually looked into both languages for) and comparing it to the original wording oftentime while the meaning of it is technically correct, it fails to capture a lot of the nuances of what's going on in the language or straight up changes the meaning of things through translating the ideas being communicated too directly. One of the worst I've seen of direct translations being sued is from the VN mentioned above how when the main character sees two girls kissing she describes it as 'criminal.' Now, this can technically be used due to the fact that the actual meaning here, scandalous, could be replaced with criminal in some circumstances in the one that's it's used as a simple comment on it instead completely changes the meaning of it as the context itself doesn't tell you why it would be criminal only that there were two girls there who are romantically interested in each other, and the main character leaves them alone and crucially one of the two has something that they are holding against the other. The result of this when reading it makes it sound like one of the characters is likely assaulting one of the other characters, and that the Main character is sort of okay with it thanks purely to the words being translated too litteraly, and most of the issues involved could be solved by simply replacing it with 'Scandalous.' And... I don't want to say that's a perfect translation, since it very much doesn't describe the main characters ideas on what is happening there. But it is much better then what's given. That's far from the only example of this, there are a TON throughout the entire VN, but it's the one that most stood out to me. And, I wish more people could understand the issues that come as a result from translations being too rigid since examples like this one aren't uncommon in a lot of translated stuff. Not all of it is purely language, some of it is visual, but the same issue stands that a lot of people don't understand that localization and translation very much play into each other in order for making things understandable to a foreign audience. And I wish more people could simply realize that, and not buy into a lot of the ideological arguments about this.

You popped with this thumbnail boi, hope it brings the right crowd!

Thank you for making these videos ❤

I gotta be real. This video is kinda of a gross over simplification of the issue, but I will agree. That AI is not an ideal substitute and many anti censorship people are filled with many conservatives using buzz words. I don't find this video any less biased and lacking in nuance though. I think you should do more research as well. Edit: I should probably add. I don't mean it in a bad faith way though. I kinda came off somewhat passive agressive I think. I genuinely just want the best for your content and hope you look into the topic some more perspectives and sources. You're getting past the surface of it at least. So you're in a better direction than most.

Cooked as always. The worst part of the discussions around localisation most of the time turning to ''woke'' is that it takes away from the nuance regarding the topic. Some series that I find to have excellent localisations such as Like a Dragon or Ace Attorney can be pretty liberal with their adaptions, and I could totally understand that people would critique them. However, I feel such conversations are never in good faith. People have such knee-jerk reactions to things such as slang or memes existing in a script, when they can be perfectly appropriate for the situation. It feels like if the script does not match the original down to the word order, people get mad. It sucks even more since bad localisations can be pretty hard to spot. As long as the grammar and punctuation is fine, most people are not even going to notice anything is wrong. Cases such as Fire Emblem Fates show that there is merit in debating how much a script should be ''punched up'' from the original. It should be talked about. However, whenever it is talked about, it is always from the same ''holier than thou'' shtick. I just wish the discussions around these sorts of things could be much more frank, rather than always spiralling into culture war nonsense.

I am seated for this

As someone more to the right than you, I actually think you handled this well. I liked it more than I thought I would at least. Keep up the great work. Re Zero Minor Spoilers Something however I’m worried about is how Re Zero season 3 will get translated/localized like Subaru being a lolicon/lolimancer being changed to pedophile which pedophile is a stronger word than the Loki ones and Felix/Ferris being called trans which I can understand more but I think Felix/Ferris’s identity is more complex than just being trans. Bigger arc 7/season 4 spoilers Subaru being Natsumi would also probably be called trans even though it’s more of a way for him to put on a mask to be a hero and to be someone greater then what he is now.

While I agree with most of the things said in this video as of course anime has politics in it already, and of course ai cant perfectly translate languages (yet). I disagree with some of the points still: - Obviously yes AI taking over translations would lead to possibly inaccurate translations, but we/they are not advocating for only AI to translate. After all in the videos of the person you showed, multiple times it was mentioned to be human assisted translations. You get the base gist from the AI and then you refine it with a human giving back some of the nuance. I don't think any of the "not extreme" sides were saying they dont want a single localizer to keep their job and be completely replaced with AI. - The example with Dragon Maid is brought up solely because of how blatantly wrong it is and how the person responsible for said script say what it actually said and decided to change it for pretty much no reason. Their are other examples that are equally and known and as aggregious (look at Fire Emblem Fates) but that one is brought as an obvious one. It is not like the other examples dont exist, they are just not as bad. -Maybe I am different from others, but, I believe it is only considered "woke" if what was put in was done blatantly to have some political message. Even then, if that is the case it is not always "woke" if it is handled with proper care (meaning it is bad when no effort was made for anything that is not just the message: plot, design, etc.). In anime, what would be better to call woke are things that were put in the dub that werent in the sub. There shouldn't be much trouble just saying the english sub lines for dub, even if they need minor changes, as its not like the english sub has some suttle nuance that needs changes when simply spoken out loud. So while lines like "mansplaining" could possibly make sense with the logic of how the character thinks, but the fact it was added in despite the sub being just as fine makes it go from an eh line into an eh line with an english word only used by a certain belief group. -No idea why you brought up lolicon if all you're point was, was that he cares more about some problems more than other problems (whether or not he knows of them). Also the arguement of whether or not it exists in reality or affects reality does not work with localozation as nobody is wishing harm on people for having the word "yeet" in place of the words they actually used. Also localization does affect reality as it literally affects how you perceive the messaging of the episode or series you are watching. -Bonus: We also shouldnt act like the comments with 11 views are the majority of opinions nor that Jamie Marchi deserves none or not as much backlash. Her own responses to the dub, to other versions of the dub, to literally saying (maybe jokingly but she doubled down so not sure) that she responsible for writing lines that people dont like because she write those type of lines.

Thank you, finally some reason when it comes to localisations I have seen some bad localisations, sure and some have butchered characters kinda but thinking it's always someone coming for the viewer and some agenda is far more dumb to hear than seeing some line that seems a little off The dangers in my heart example especially, it did seem a little odd to me after watching the episode but after seeing the outrage of how the whole episode was ruined because of one word was what made me lose my hope

I had forgotten about the Dragon Maid controversy until this.

I heavily appreciate the nuanced discussion of the topic without slander and trying to grab a more objective approach. I get so desensitized to some topics when they come to a black and white issue and this helps me get a better grasp on the situation without the annoying riggamarole

I find it funny that these people do not know anybody who speaks Japanese, and they do not know any localizers/translators themselves.

I am relatively new to your channel (got into it through Re Zero) and I want to say that you are genuinely a breath of fresh air in the generally reactionary, anti SJW type environment that anything Japanese tends to create around itself.

Some thoughts that I have on the whole localization drama: - I get that simply doing a literal translation is not good, and there will be cases where you can change some cultural references, or reinforce some aspects of the work, but I also think there's a line you can't cross, and that line might be different for each work. - One topic I saw some people complaining is when localizers put a lot of memes or internet slang, which by itself can be problematic because not only there's a decebt chance it will get dated, but there are many times that it may just feel out of place. - About wokeness, for me I'd usually consider woke if it feels that they're more concerned about their agenda than about making something good. So, for example, I don't think a show would be woke because it has a gay character, but if they take a character that wasn't gay and make him gay, than that's different. For the translations/dubs, the main things that could make me think that translation was "woke" would be if a character starts using terms you mostly see in very specific circles, or if they change jokes that were targeted towards minority groups. - The way some localizers make their situation look worse for me, even if part of it might be justified due to the harassement they received. There was also the controversy over LoveCom after one of the guys who worked on the localization admitted they thought the original work was bad and intentionally changed a lot of stuff but I don't know if this was before or after you posted this video -About AI, I think even withou lt this controversy, this would be inevitable. Having AI doing a roigh translation and then some person making the adjustments just feels like it's the natural development for this type of work, considering how the tecnology is evolving

But in order to figure it out, we need to first look at the old localization that took place in the 90s and 2000s.

I stayed on the toilet for way too long watching this good video btw

There have been poor localization that butcher the source material for decades now, and it's a shame because there are numerous localizers that do a good job at conveying the text in the right way (keeping both the message and the way it is communicated intact) while making the dialogue come across as more believable in english. Those that do a good job now suffer because we have so many examples of it being done poorly. But I am personally absolutely tired of this, tired of a middle man getting to decide what gets to appear in someone else's work instead of the consumer deciding whether they want to engage with the subject material or not. Those bad localizers aren't the majority, but the issue still keeps happening and I'd like to see it stop. For example Persona 1's localization on ps1 is... well let's just say that they changed a japanese character, who is often called as a monkey, into a black person. Then for a more recent example there is the "I Think I Turned My Childhood Friend Into A Girl" which is a gay romance manga but the localizer changed it from a crossdressing story into a story about a transgender character.

I just can't be bothered to care about people complaining about 'woke' shit in 2024. That was played out by 2021 and now every 13 year old and engagement farmer on Twitter has rendered it into utter meaninglessness. If we could get rid the guy who ruined the Baki manga translations, though, that'd be sweet lol Great video!

Hot take but 4kids is what made OG Yugioh iconic. Seto Kaiba is way better in the dub than he ever was in the sub, and I will defend that to my grave. Also, the 4kids One Piece op is a bop.

asa!!

Amazing video 🎉 and thank you for talking about this. It’s really annoying on how you’ll have people in nerd communities complaining about wokeness and politics in media when media has always been political. The only difference is how they are written and how they excute their ideas. I also find three things that are really funny to me. 1- any type of media that doesn’t have a straight cis white male as the main characters or isn’t a focus on is suddenly political which shouldn’t be the case but unfortunately it is. 2- media that treats its minorities characters like what conservatives think those minority groups are. They aren’t woke. They are tokenized. 3- and lastly I find it so funny that SOME weebs will call anime/manga anti woke and dumb stuff like that. But when it break it down some of the most popular anime are the Wokest thing I have seen that is amazingly written

When the translation whas made by fantranslation you had different versionn of translation so a least one would likely match you taste To be fair usa just have the same issus that we had year ago in france and still have sometime overall i agreed that japan is not permable to change for exemple one of the bigest change in animation is the forbiden of nudity and violenence that hapen in 2008 beford 2008 you could have in public japaness tv nudity in family friendly show where now day nudity in anime have become prety rare even for echi anime ( but since 1or 2 years it semme to again come back i seen some show that air tv with nudity )

People think early anime didn’t have politics because they weren’t looking for it, there is a bias programmed into our brain that is you only notice stuff when you are looking for it, some people watched anime without looking for politics and then got surprised that it was political, like Gigguk saying in the trash taste podcast that One piece isn’t political, he wasn’t looking for it he didn’t see it, any ways people in general talk shit because that don’t understand, so like the video said do your own research and reach your own conclusion.

A funny example that is often hated on ai the somnium files both games have a optional comment in large support for lgbt groups and people and for some reason despite having a non binary person as a primary side character people think that it was added funnly enoph there is a mistralated exreamly minor eye ball that has like 2 lines to be male instead of non-binary people just like complaining yes sometimes people make mistakes on rare acasions maybe intentionally misinterpret a line but thats probably less then 1% but people just want to complain beliveing there belifes are what is right

I feel like you missed the entire point of why everybody is mad.

Ykw i found it kinda funny that with all these poor source materials, that got disrespected by some corrupted translators, they never really draw me in . i guess they need ruin PEAK for me to actually to be part of the hate train.

I'm woke!

are you Nah id win Stand proud you are strong because you are the one who left it all behind and his overwhelming intensity or are you with this treasure I summon always bet on hakari I am you because you are but would you lose Rika-chan honored two.

They should do a direct translation and then add an extra note for context like fan sub 15 or so years ago. That's my preferred option.

I don't have any problems with Rev, and kind of enjoy listening to his drama videos in the back from time to time, but I can't stand how hard he tries to deflect any lolicon criticism, to the point of being completely disconnected from reality. The term "loli" literally comes from "Lolita" a book about a groomer and his victim, a little girl he calls "Lolita". "Lolicon" is a person with a loli complex. The "lolita" fashion style is about incorporating childish themes. The "loli" characters are either characters who are children (the more traditional definition) or characters that have a child-like appearance. You can't disassociate that term from the concept of children, but the dude will spout with a straight face it's "just a body type". And this is not even the worse one, because he honest to god claims that the english word "cunny", used for longer than he exists to refer to vaginas, more specifically of young girls, somehow, in his mind, means "cute and funny".

its also y thers so maney difnert spellings to cuz ther maney difnert lagweges that are invole spelling in difnert ways to hav a nices day

You criticize the conservative side alot, but I think that if the series was written with such ideas in mind it should be kept that way. Not to stop liberal ideas from being in media, but because thats how it was created and will lose its culteral significance if altered drastically. I don't subscribe to eiether political side, but I felt the woke section was a little long and disrupted the flow of the video. I forgot it was about translation and localization for a bit. Still love your videos work at your own pace.

Dogasu moans and whines about how Pokemon was whitewashed after it became popular.

People still talk about that one dragon maid line? Imagine doing what’s generally considered a kinda bad localization FOR ONE LINE and then getting harassed for 7 YEARS.

Yeah Japan has been trying to be more and more progressive nowadays. Of course it's still not there yet

Dragon Maid was 15 years ago God Damm get a life.