Ask John: What’s Wrong With the Blood+ DVD Subtitles?

Question:
I was watching the first DVD of Blood+ the other day and noticed something strange. I am by no means an expert in Japanese language, but I’m slowly learning and can pick out words here and there. At one point in the episode, Saya responds simply “arigatou” (which even I know means “thank you”), yet the subtitle said “The Ocean”. This really puzzled me until I switched to the dubbed English language and saw that it was the dubbed line. So, my question: what is the policy for doing subtitles for anime? Do they vary from company to company or series to series? I had always assumed that the subtitles would translate the Japanese as accurately as possible, not follow the English dub, which I know gets rewritten to varying degrees.

Answer:
With rare exceptions, subtitle translations contained on DVDs issued by companies within America’s core anime distribution industry may be trusted to be accurate and literal. The integrity of subtitles provided by new distributors, or distributors without a vested interest in appealing to hardcore, discerning anime fans, however, are more suspect. Generally America’s primary anime distribution firms strive for authentic and accurate subtitle translations because their livelihood is based on satisfying the expectations and demands of highly critical anime fans.

Commercial anime translations typically have access to the original Japanese production scripts, which allow translators to precisely determine exactly what’s spoken in the dialogue. Subtitle translations from the American anime industry are generally reliable, but do vary somewhat. Synch-Point’s I’m Gonna Be An Angel DVDs are notable for including a choice of conventional literal subtitles and “fan oriented” subtitles that retained Japanese family-name-first name sequence, honorifics, and select Japanese terms and phrases. I’ve been told by a reliable source that AD Vision had (or has) a standing policy of abbreviating or ignoring segments of spoken dialogue when necessary to ensure that no more than two lines of translated dialogue text appear on screen at once, but this tendency still maintains a semblance of accuracy to the original spoken dialogue.

Dubtitles, the English dub script literally printed on screen in place of a literal translation of the original spoken dialogue, are a cheap shortcut that eliminate the need to produce an accurate subtitle track. Contrary to frequent defensive statements from aggravated anime fans, it’s not absolutely necessary to be fluent in Japanese language to be able to recognize an obviously inaccurate subtitle translation. Your own example proves that fact. Dubtitles may be even easier to recognize when subtitles appear on screen when there’s no spoken Japanese dialogue, or when dialogue in the original Japanese isn’t subtitled and isn’t included in the English language audio. Dubtitles most commonly appear in anime DVDs produced by studios that aren’t conscious of hardcore fan desire for accurate translations, or distributors that simply don’t care about hardcore fan desires. Illumitoon’s initial DVD releases, which were primarily targeted at mainstream American consumers, were dubtitled. Toei’s short-lived line of American DVD releases employed a bizarre hybrid of dubtitles and closed captioning. Regrettably, Sony’s new DVD release of the Blood+ television series is also dubtitled because the release is primarily targeted at mainstream consumers that have watched the English dubbed episodes on the Cartoon Network rather than fans interested in the authentic, original Japanese version of the show. Likewise, Warner Bros.’ new American DVD release of the Appleseed: Ex Machina movie – again, a title targeted at mainstream consumers and produced by a studio outside of America’s primary anime industry – appears to be dubtitled.

Unfortunately there’s usually no way to know if a DVD release is dubtitled until it hits consumers and reviews begin to appear online. There’s no consistent, reliable predictor for dubtitled or inaccurate subtitles because America’s core anime industry has released a handful of dubtitled DVDs, and the periphery distribution industry has released titles with accurate subtitles. Typically Japanese licensors may make stipulations about excluding proper names or specific references in subtitles, but Japanese licensors typically don’t stipulate precisely how accurate dialogue translations must be.