I am an old dinosaur. The subtitles I was raised on kept all honorifics. They kept all cultural references, and put a little note across the top of the screen in tinier subtitle font explaining it. They sometimes even just explained a pun or a wordplay with a translator note. That is how I know hana can mean flower or nose, kitte can be stamp or cut.
And sometimes, yes, the translation said "All According To Keikaku (TL note: Keikaku means Plan)". Which is dumb and was memed on. But hey, learned a new word, and didn't lose the meaning of the story.
Nowadays, you get the lolcowlizers subtitling in "hey sissy" for "Ohaiyo gozaimasu, Onee-sama".
That pisses me of the most. Honorific are important, while you can translate Tanaka-san as Mr Tanaka it gets more complicated with other honorifics and should just be kept as is.
Damn, they don't do that any more? I watched anime from the very late 90s to the mid-2000s. Most of it was crap VHS or VHS quality video, but I remember many shows that had those types of subs. There wasn't particularly a debate, that was clearly the best and most popular style. Fansubs were clearly the way to go. There WAS a debate over subs vs dubs, but that was basically just geeks vs normies.
I am an old dinosaur. The subtitles I was raised on kept all honorifics. They kept all cultural references, and put a little note across the top of the screen in tinier subtitle font explaining it. They sometimes even just explained a pun or a wordplay with a translator note. That is how I know hana can mean flower or nose, kitte can be stamp or cut.
And sometimes, yes, the translation said "All According To Keikaku (TL note: Keikaku means Plan)". Which is dumb and was memed on. But hey, learned a new word, and didn't lose the meaning of the story.
Nowadays, you get the lolcowlizers subtitling in "hey sissy" for "Ohaiyo gozaimasu, Onee-sama".
I miss the acurate translations with notes explaining the cultural stuff a non-Japanese wouldn't get. :(
That pisses me of the most. Honorific are important, while you can translate Tanaka-san as Mr Tanaka it gets more complicated with other honorifics and should just be kept as is.
Damn, they don't do that any more? I watched anime from the very late 90s to the mid-2000s. Most of it was crap VHS or VHS quality video, but I remember many shows that had those types of subs. There wasn't particularly a debate, that was clearly the best and most popular style. Fansubs were clearly the way to go. There WAS a debate over subs vs dubs, but that was basically just geeks vs normies.