Subs

To me, there is a certain nuance that comes with retaining the native audio of a piece work that is lost through the dubbing process.  In a general sense, this is the reason I prefer subs over dubs.  There are a few reasons which are all primarily related to language.  The first reason has to do with grammar structures within Japanese.  Instead of repeating myself, I have another post that goes over the topic here.  Now that that’s taken care of, I can move one.

The second reason, known to many who favor subtitles, is honorifics.  The most common honorifics are さん (san) , くん (kun), 様(sama), and ちゃん (chan).  I’m sure most people have an understanding of each of these honorifics but here’s a quick recap: さん is most commonly used honorific.  It is used with strangers, with acquaintances, or when in doubt.  くん is primarily used with males, though you sometimes see it used on females.  It is generally used between people who better  know each other but is used more by a person who’s status is above the person to whom he/she is speaking (i.e. boss to subordinate, teacher to student, etc.) sometimes in a condescending way.  様is used when speaking with someone of a higher “status”.  I use status loosely as it can be something like a customer at a store who would be called お客様 (okyaku-sama) who has a higher status as they are serviced by the staff of a store.  It could also be someone respected such as a priest.  ちゃん is more of an endearing honorific used between close friends and to younger children.

The idea and subtleties that come through the use (or omission, which is just as important) of honorifics is something that is retained through the use of subtitles.  It is, of course, retained through the Japanese audio, however, it is often left off of the subtitles themselves.  A couple years ago at the Industry panel with Funimation, someone asked why it was this way.  The short answer was that you can still hear them say it.  I can accept that answer, but my preference is still with having that on the text.  There are two specific reasons for this.  One, it’s already hard enough to tell who’s line is who’s when two character’s lines are on screen as they are used whenever names are said (unless, of course, they’re omitted).  Two, some people may not notice it due to not understanding enough of the language to identify situations when honorifics are used, changed, or omitted.  Fansubs took a unique spin on subtitles by sometimes using colored outlines, often denoted by a character’s primary color which was generally their hair, to denote who’s speaking.These reasons matter little to me as I have enough of an understanding of the language to just use subtitles as a supplement.  However, not only would honorifics on the subtitles help differentiate character’s lines, but also give a visual cue that a conversation’s tone might be changing.

The third reason is very similar to honorifics in that it has to do when referring to people; only this time it is referring to oneself instead of another person.  In Japanese, there are many ways to say “I”: 私 (watashi, U), あたし(atashi, F), 僕 (boku, M), and 俺 (ore, M) to name a few of the most common heard.  私 is the basic unisex version that can be used in almost any situation.  あたし is used by females and, as my of my professors once joked, makes a girl sound “gaudy” (she said it, not me) meaning that it was similar to valley girl talk.  僕 is the general term used by males of any age, though anime directs it more towards younger boys and it stops around young adult age in most cases.  俺 is the “tough-guy” type way of referring to oneself used by males.  It is often used by characters who could be considered “rough around the edges”.  As a side note, the anime and manga exclusive use of 俺様 (ore-sama) is basically the most arrogant way to refer to oneself.  It should also be noted that although 僕 and 俺 are used by men, you sometimes hear females refer to themselves to reflect tom-boyish type behaviors.  An example away from the world of anime and manga would be Scout Finch.  In all likelihood she would refer to herself with 僕 if she was a character in some anime or manga to accentuate her tom-boyish behaviors.  Since I’m pretty sure To Kill a Mockingbird is a required book in most parts of the country people should have some recollection of who Scout is.  But I digress.

The best example (I hope I’m remembering the right series and characters) I can think of regarding the use of “I” is in Hayate the Combat Butler.  Wataru usually uses 俺 to refer to himself to regain some lost ground due to his position in relation to the other characters.  However, as noted by Nagi’s face when she heard it, he immediately switched to the less arrogant 僕 upon talking to Isumi, on whom he has a crush.  On the other hand in Prince of Tennis  Atobe does the exact opposite by utilizing 俺様 to be more arrogant.  It’s even better in his catchphrase: 俺様の美技に酔いな (ore-sama no bigi ni yoi na) which is generally translated as “Be awed at the sight of my prowess” just adding on to the effect.

Lastly, moving away from actual words used, is the way things are said.  Maintaining the original audio track means you retain the original emotion and way things are said.  To me, this is a huge deal.  This is where my preference of subs extends beyond the realm of anime and Japanese because when, ceteris paribus, the original actors from the original countries are likely to know how to say their lines closer to the creator’s ideals than going through a foreign language dubbing process.  Being as objective as I possibly can, I will say that actors of the West (Hollywood) are leaps and bounds ahead of their counterparts in the East (China, Korea, Japan) but Japanese voice actors are leaps and bounds ahead of their Western counterparts.  I mean, Asian movies are pretty hilariously bad sometimes.

The idea, though, is to maintain original audio with a subtitle track to whatever language is needed.  Take, for example, the Ip Man movies.  I would prefer to watch them in Chinese as I wouldn’t expect an English dubber to understand how Chinese people speak.  Likewise I would rather watch a movie produce in Bollywood in Hindi and read the subtitles.

Ah, Squid Girl. A perfectly awesome series that goes on about absolutely nothing. I simply love those kinds of shows (among which Lucky Star and Aria are included). It’s not that they go on about nothing, but they’re nothing like Eva or similar series with their grand story lines. But, since this is my first Explorations entry (I need a better name for it) I guess I’ll try and explain what I hope to accomplish.

The idea is for me to delve into a series and bring out the small things. Generally it’ll be related to the language used because most of the time translating it into English doesn’t really work. That happens to be the case with Squid girl (though some people may beg to differ). While it is my aim to not derail into a subs > dubs argument, that is probably the very foundation of this little segment. However, let’s move on to Squid Girl!

First, a quick description courtesy of Wikipedia:

A squid girl named Ika Musume vows to conquer humanity as revenge for its pollution of the ocean. Her first task is to make the Lemon beach house, owned by the Aizawa sisters, her base of operations. However, when she accidentally breaks a hole in their wall, she is forced to work as a waitress to pay off the damages.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squid_girl

You can read about it there, but the character in question is Squid Girl (Ika Musume). Yes, she has no name other than Squid Girl so that’s what I’ll be calling her (that also happens to be one of my favorite parts of the show). The important thing to know about her (in relation to this entry) is that she has two basic speech patterns: ending sentences with 〜でゲソ and over using the 〜じゃなイカ negative ending. Let’s start with the first pattern.

〜でゲソ (~degeso)
If you know anything about the Japanese language, then you know the effect of this ending. She uses 〜でゲソ as a replacement for the coupla 〜です (~desu). This is where the translations don’t really make sense. The first problem is that couplas don’t exactly exist in English. I guess an easy way of thinking about it is that the entire ” 〜です。” encapsulates the entire meaning of a period in English as well as pointing out the politeness of the sentence. Not the best comparison, but I have nothing else that comes to mind. Yes, there is the dictionary definition which makes it a linking verb, however for the purpose of this little article, that makes things too complicated.

However, the fact that Japanese has a coupla allows for the personality of the speaker to jump out to the audience. While 〜です means nothing in and of itself, Squid Girl’s use of 〜でゲソ does. Befitting her origins, ゲソ literally means squid tentacles (see where I’m going with this?). An example would be in episode 1 around 4:42 where she says 分かったでゲソ (wakatta degeso) which, as they say, means “I understand”. However, the unsaid portion which extends from the coupla is not shown via the subtitle nor could it be related to the audience via dubs. In essence, the use of her alternative coupla tells the audience she’s saying “I understand (and I am something squid related)”. While, as I said, this can’t be related by either sub nor dub, the effect is there (if you have a basic understanding of Japanese) with the subs because you can still hear her say 〜でゲソ at the end of her sentences. The same things could be said about her use of 〜じゃなイカ as her second pattern of speech.

〜じゃなイカ (~janaika)
Just as I stated above, if you know a little about Japanese, you would recognize this as the informal negative form of nouns and な-adjectives. She overuses this form due to the emphasis she puts in the イカ portion. Once again, this is to tell everybody that she’s a squid since イカ means… well, squid. That’s also the reason the イカ portion is in katakana rather than hiragana when written normally.

An example of her usage of this pattern would be around 6:30 in episode one. She says そんなこと分かるわけないじゃなイカ？！(sonna koto wakaruwakenai janaika?!) which, as the subtitles say, means “How am I supposed to know all that?!” and is a fairly common expression though not in the exact form Squid Girl says it. This is a bit more difficult to show due to the fact that, phonetically, it exactly the same to its normal spelling in hiragana. The emphasis lies in the constant repetition she uses and the emphasis she puts on the 〜じゃなイカ part of the sentence. It’s a bit more subtle than 〜でゲソ but she’s once again reinforcing the fact that she’s a squid.

So, hopefully with that little blurb, the basic idea comes across. I want to be able to explain the small things in various series that often get lost in translation because there is no suitable way of expressing it in English (or whatever other language… though I can only speak for English). To me, a lot of the reason I enjoy watching anime is because of the small nuances that Japanese has that English doesn’t. Perhaps one time I will go over mimetic words (things like キラキラ, the sound of something sparkling) since that’s another thing I love about Japanese.

If you found this interesting, watch Squid Girl on Crunchyroll!
http://www.crunchyroll.com/squid-girl

But for now, I leave you with this (Japan has come a long way from Gojira!):