English Subtitle Translation feels a bit off?

Tofin said:
I finished season 1 a while back and the dialogue didnt really seem that "good" to me. I`m no master in any foreign language so I cant judge. However, the lack of substance in the dialogue did make me lose interest pretty fast; the insanely overpowered MC is what kept me from dropping it. Yes im a child who loves to see the MC slap everything :D.

1sd15 said:

Glad it's not just me who likes seeing that. It's what kept me watching. That and shipping

Tofin said:


I`ve been planning on watching season 2 at some point. Except I haven`t seen anyone say its worth watching. I will most likely just wait for the English Dub to come out so it may be more interesting to me. idk. I personally don`t really like the sound of the Chinese language (sry if that offends anyone). I may watch it in Japanese if it comes out in that dub. The language I watch Animes in is dependant on how the voices sound; watching MHA in English Dub and JJK in Japanese simply because in my head they sound better in those voices.

1sd15 said:
To start: I've just finished watching S1 on Funimation. There was some alright parts but most of it felt a little poor despite decent animation for most of it. I believe that half of this feeling stems from the translation; let me explain...

I've noticed that the subtitles for this always make me do a double take. From my understanding the language has been rather directly translated and nobody has interpreted it.

A few examples spring to mind:

- The sudden use of family terms to correlate a team that everyone around them seems to know isn't actually referring to a family relationship. While this can work I felt like it was suddenly implemented and everyone else seemed to know about it.

- The use of terrible and awful to describe things that are extremely powerful or impressive. While this can work to emphases an effect I found it just threw me off when they used it

- General sentence structure and some references to various cultural points that aren't preconceived English notions. Some shows opt to keep these notions in to ensure you learn then while most will change them over to something that is more relatable

I remember watching a video about translation methods and interpretation beforehand but I can't recall the word they used. This stemmed from me seeing the infamous Pokémon episode where the dubbed calls rice balls donuts. The closest term I can find is trans-creation and it's definition seems to fit to a degree.

My question is: has anyone noticed this too? Is it the same on other sites than Funimation? Am I correct in mentioning trans-creation and is there a real term for it?

trashy_tastes said:

I definitely thought that s2 translations on Funimation were very off too, but I originally discovered the series on Netflix, which only has s1 but much better subs.

1sd15 said:


Oh I didn't know it was on Netflix! Good to know. Hopefully somebody reads this before delving too deep into S1 on Funimation and then switched

trashy_tastes said:

Yeah.
Tian Guan Ci Fu is another very good (and personally my favorite) donghua on Netflix, with great subs.

1sd15 said:


Good to know! Perhaps it's just Funimation and some other bigger names that have done a slightly sloppy job. Three points to Netflix

trashy_tastes said:


Three points in the subtitles category anyway. Still hate how they've recently taken off some of my favorite shows (Kuroshitsuji s1, Chuuni Demo Koi Ga Shitai, etc.), but that's probably a whole other topic/discussion.