Forum:Attitude toward official sources on this wiki

Original Topic
I am a big Bleach fan, and I am really pleased that this wiki is extensive as it is. However, the precedence I see being given to fan scanlations over official translations is a little troubling. While I personally don't like, for example, the romanization "Visored" that is none the less the official romanization of the world, whether I like it or not, and I definitely think that in cases where the official and fan interpretation of word differ, we should mention both but precedence should be given to the official interpretation. Only in cases like "Shinigami" versus "Soul Reaper" do I think it's generally okay to keep the generally accepted term, but only because the term has been left untranslated altogether---using "shinigami" over "soul reaper" is fine, but using "death god" over "soul reaper" is not.

Basically, adhering to fan-made scanlations, which I admit I read and imagine most of us here do, over the official translation makes the whole wiki look like reference for fanon rather than canon information of Bleach. Which hurts the creditability of the endeavor itself. I imagine this will be a very unpopular opinion, but I still think that Bleach Wiki should move away from this practice.

We adhere to the original Japanese. Dubing, even Viz translations do not just do a straight translation they also to cultural translation and that introduces inaccuracies. For example, because the Viz translation has everybody refer to everybody else by their first name with only occasionally has someone refer to as Ms or Mr - it does in fact take away from the story. Use of honorifics and the type of honorifics does say something about the intimacy or the lack their off between characters, as well as saying something about the characters general respect level. This is lost when Viz drops the -sama, -san, -chan because it might confuse their audience and one of the reasons I feel ripped off every time I buy a Viz volume because I have to mentally put the honorifics back in when I am reading the story. So, NO, I cannot support Viz translations or dubbings over the original Japanese. Tinni 05:32, September 30, 2009 (UTC)

I generally don't object to what your mentioning. Where there are matters specific to Japanese culture, I would agree that it is best to use the original Japanese as the primary text. I am more concerned with Bleach specific terminology and naming, which can often be obscure even for someone who has studied Japanese. In cases where a technique or an item is not simply given as is in Japanese, if we prefer an unofficial to an official translation of the meaning, we are preferring the interpretation of someone whose has no credentials we can be sure of and no connection to actual author over someone who has credentials and at least a potential connection to the author. If you think I am being unfair to scanlators, I can only give this example: http://manga.bleachexile.com/bleach-chapter-66-page-19.html to show that scanlations are to be treated with at least more distrust on such matters than I see here. Daisekihan 05:55, September 30, 2009 (UTC)


 * I am not trying to resurrect a dead topic and for all I know Daisekihan not longer comes here. But I felt that I should say something to give a bit of context to Daisekihan claim because it just sitting there was bothering me. The specific example sited by Daisekihan was a result of the scanlation group, Manga-Rain, translation from Chinese to English. Instead of Japanese to English. This is also true of another example Daisekihan brought up on the talk page of Hanataro. This is by no means "definitive" proof that scanlators cannot be trusted. If anything, this is just proof that all translations need to be approached with caution. Fan scanlation groups are frequently analysised for their quality by native Japanese fans as well as fans whose native tongue is english but who are fluent in Japanese. So they are not without scrutiny and problems with translations are quickly caught. The problem with Viz translations have always been that they adapt the manga and do not just do a straight translation. They also have their own terminology. We don't use the term "Soul Reaper", so we don't have to use the term "Vastored" (or whatever Viz uses). Nor do we have to use adhere to their translation of release commands, or for that matter the dubs. Both of which adapt things to make more sense in English but Kubo writes to make sense in Japanese first. That is why the spanish terms used in the manga are so mangled. So the long and short of it is, neither Viz nor the dubs are the primary source of this site, simply because they adapt the manga and do not do a straight translation. Tinni 11:46, November 29, 2009 (UTC)

Thus, "Soul Reaper" is not the translation of "Shinigami" but its transliteration in the case of Bleach, eventually for the Shinigami's duty which is ripping souls. No matter what, in Japanese "Shinigami" means literally "God of Death" (example: Hades). Anyway, in Bleach "Soul Reaper" appellation would be the most precise. In so many cases, even the official translations were far to be accurate, as well as Tite Kubo who took some liberty to translate in English from Japanese without following the English or Japanese academic translation rules decided by the two countries' Ministry of Education. Of course, he is the only who could decide the naming of his characters, but the translators job would be harder too. For example: TK translated ノイトラ (Noitora) in Nnoitra, but the double N (Nn) doesn't exist in Japanese, without talking about some translation of Grimmjow jaguaerjacquez or jaguarjacque or else...Ace of Spade 09:44, September 30, 2009 (UTC)

Ok the question of translation or rather the translation source Bleach wiki uses has been brought up again in Talk:Shunsui_Kyōraku. Perhaps it is time for an official policy on translation that explains which translation is used and what weight is put on Viz translation. That seems to be contentious issue here. At the same time, perhaps some mention can be made regarding the weight placed on dialogue coming from dubbed episodes too. Tinni 17:06, November 25, 2009 (UTC)

Evaluation of Translated Sources
I thought I would start putting information on the various translation sources for Bleach. I encourage everybody to share what they know about the scanlators and stuff. I will add more when I have time. Tinni 11:49, November 26, 2009 (UTC)

Manga-Rain: Manga-Rain is generally considered good, however, they translate from Chinese to English. Not Japanese to English. As a result they have been known to do some strange things with translations.

Manga7: Seems to be the fore-runners of Maximum 7 and has an affiliation with Bleach 7. However, the quality seems to be indifferent.

Maximum 7: Generally considered good but has been known to produce confusing translation and some have been blatantly wrong. Although in their defence, they only trip-up when Kubo decides to be vague/confusing.

Ju-ni: Generally considered one of the best translations out there.

Viz: Does an adaptive translation, that does americanize certain dialogue. In addition, has produced totally incoherent dialogue and have their own terminology for many things.

Sleepyfans: Usually the fasts but not necessarily the most accurate. They also omit Japanese suffixes.

Bleach Addicted: Another group that has recently gotten started. They have high quality images and use Cnet translations. So their translation quality can be considered high.

Sugooi: They appear to be a new scanlation group that's trying to get started. They used Cnet translations for the first few releases, which they got out before Sleepyfan, but since then they have had a new translator for each chapter. Their image quality is great but translation quality is subject to translator used.

I agree with what Tinni said about all of the above groups. Additionally, Sleepyfans often make blatant mistakes (like getting Hitsugaya's release command wrong when he teamed up with the Vizard against Harribel) and their sentences sometimes do not make complete sense. Here are some other ones I have come across:

Binktopia: They completely rewrite the dialogue to spice it up (eg Baraggan saying he would skull f*** Soifon/Hachi). I've been told they started doing that as they wanted to provide an alternative to the word-for-word translators and make it more entertaining, and that they used to release a proper, word-for-word scan as well (though they no longer seem to do the literal translation anymore).

Cnet : Not a scanlation group, but rather a translator. His work is used by some scan groups. I keep being told he is one of the best out there, and in my experience his translations are typically on par with Ju-Ni. He includes notes on why he translated certain things the way he did.

Franky-House: Don't know much about them, other than they are better than Sleepyfans (both in terms of translations & image quality) and sometimes release the chapter before them. I believe they do the One Piece scans on onemanga.

Hueco Mundo Crew: I know virtually nothing about this group, just that they beat sleepyfans a couple of times.

Mangastream: A new group which released ch.383 very quickly today. Since they're new and no other scans have come out yet, I can't really judge how good they are.

That's all the groups I've come across. --Yyp 21:28, November 26, 2009 (UTC)