This is the result of a ton of research into Crunchyroll's recent subtitle changes that have tanked the service's first-party presentation quality to an all-time low. The article ended up being quite long, so I highly appreciate anyone taking the time to read it in full!
One thing I've noticed is that they outright refuse to let you pick english audio and english subs, despite the audio and the subs being two different settings that theoretically should be independent of each other.
This article badly needs an editor. Even though it's a topic I'm very interested in (and with the perspective of being semi-fluent in Japanese), it's so rambling and visually messy that I gave up halfway through.
The mass market has already responded that they want dubbed anime. It doesn't make sense to invest into subtitles. Maybe it's time to accept that you are not the target audience anymore of western anime distributors.
> With such typesetting-hostile standards to deal with, Crunchyroll had basically two choices for how to make sublicensing to Amazon and Netflix work with their existing subtitles that feature actual typesetting: Either 1) try to negotiate with the services for permission to make use of more TTML capabilities (that the subtitle renderers of said services should already support!) or 2) start mangling subtitles with typesetting into something compatible with the awful subtitling standards of the general streaming services.
Couldn't they also provide Amazon and Netflix a version of the video stream with baked in subtitles?
Tried watching some CR content on Amazon Prime. Unusable. The subs are garbage. Better quality from Netflix which is a freaking random host not even anime focused. Had to cancel the CR sub. Literally unwatchable
A similar issue has been plaguing the manga industry since "The Great Scanlator Purge" that took place a few years ago, leaving only the "official" Viz media-contracted translators in the wake of the ruins. For some reason, this change came with a general unwillingness on the translators part to correct, or translate, concepts that virtually all fan translators would've been happy to do.
Here's some examples (there are many more):
1) the explanation of puns and hidden meanings in the kanji used to describe names, locations, special abilities, jokes, which honorifics are being used currently (if any), etc. of which there are usually many. Understanding/being aware of this context used to be absolutely vital to the experience of reading manga.
2) there's a relatively new manga called "Versus", in which humans from parallel earths, in parallel universes all merge into the same universe, and their planets are also merged together. In the english version, Viz translates one of those worlds as "Indignia", which doesn't mean anything. However, the Japanese for this world is "怒ど神しん界かい" (Doshinkai), which is literally interpreted as "World of the Angry God", or "Mad God World". They took it upon themselves to make similar changes for all the other worlds, obscuring their original meanings as intended by the author... why? Beats me. Now, one could make the argument that "Mad God World" doesn't sound good in english, so the Viz translators change is an improvement, which is not unreasonable. However, any half-decent fan translator would've simply left a footnote like "the literal Japanese interpretation is X; I changed it to Indignia because...". Problem solved! Don't just retcon things because you feel like it without explaining yourself. And if you won't explain yourself, then leave it as is.
3) english One Piece readers often have no idea just how many things are lost in translation; One Piece is filled to the brim with puns, double-entendre's, and foreshadowing, which has always been a significant part of its appeal, and is now nowhere to be found via the official providers.
4) Physical signs, such as things written on buildings, on somebody's clothing, or even on a stop sign, are usually not translated.
5) cover pages! You wouldn't know it anymore, but manga often has cover pages (often officially colorized) with extra comments and tidbits from the authors. Fans would include these pages in their scanlations. Viz pretends they don't exist.
I can only imagine the thought process of whoever's making these decisions at Viz (or its parent company Shueisha) resembles something like "westerners don't care about that stuff. Stop wasting precious time and resources trying to explain it". They don't quite seem to understand how badly they have diluted the manga reading experience in the west, especially for those of us that grew up reading this stuff, way before it reached mainstream popularity.
Netflix implements "imgsub"[1] - it actually delivers a zipped archive of transparent images to the player. So technically they can pre-render positioned typesetted subtitles on server and render them as images overlay, as long as there's no animated text effects.
In general, streaming services have to ensure maximum compatibility when playing their contents on all kinds of devices - high end and low end. For which on low end device it could be very resource constraining to render typesetted subtitles. There are other platforms where all video playback have to be managed by the platform system frameworks with limited format support, and streaming services can't do much about it.
The priority of streaming service is extending their market reach, and I think Crunchyroll itself is facing the same challenge of market reaching.
I think the right solution is trying to get typesetted subtitles, and the end-to-end workflow - creation, packaging, delivery, rendering with adaptation (device capabilities, user preferences, localizations etc) all standardized. A more efficient workflow is needed, so a single source of subtitle is able to generate a set of renditions suitable for different player render capabilities. Chrunchyroll should actively participate in these standard bodies and push for adaption for more features and support in the streaming industry.
Yeah, ASS rendering was a big problem for me when I was making some online subtitling software. I ended up on using https://github.com/ThaUnknown/jassub + using Mediabunny to render a "subtitles" media track on top rendered on a canvas.
As someone who doesn't watch anime, this article reminds me of when a coworker sends a screenshot with zero context and says something like "is this supposed to be like this?" Maybe it's a spectrum thing, but I find it beyond lazy and insulting.
In the article, there's zero explanation of what the actual issue is, at least in the first few paragraphs. It just seems to say the subtitles are bad with some examples and puts the burden on the reader to determine why.
Is the issue the subtitle's location on the screen ? Contrast or font? Quality of translations? Again, it's probably a spectrum thing, but without any context I find it overwhelming and overstimulating.
I cannot imagine how much more difficult of life you make yourself with this kind of reaction to someone writing extensively on an article nobody forced - much less even asked - you to read.
Basically they are intending to limit their own options of how subtitles can be displayed. The limit of not being able to position multiple subtitles at specific position is the biggest thing imo. To go with the first screenshots the post has:
For the first it is translating the info box on the left and just adding it above its dialog subtitles. This has a few problems.
First the text overlaps the text in the box, not the worst thing here but that can sometimes make things hard to read and imo doesn't look good.
Third with two dialogs to translate (like tv in background plus people in foreground) you could probably better indicate where what is coming from with the ability to position it.
As someone who has spent decidedly too many hours in Aegisubs to create at least somewhat decent subtitles, for projects which have long ago gone the way of the DMCA, these changes feel quite insulting. ASS has been a perfectly cromulent subtitle format and should've been widely adopted.
Though on a related topic, on Netflix it is not just the subtitling that is bad, the translations are awful too. They are cutting every corner so hard I fear they might become a circle.
Netflix has started showing simplified subtitles recently. We watch with subtitles on and these inaccurate subtitles are infuriating. It's part of their "second screen" strategy I think - people are on their phones while they're watching, so don't make them try too hard to read the subs.
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[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 51.7 ms ] threadMy wife is deaf and I like dubbed so I can use my laptop while we chill but she literally needs subtitles so it's super annoying when a show either
1. Has no subtitles for dubbed.
2. Their subtitles are just the subbed version's subtitles which are drastically different from what the dubbed VAs are actually saying.
3. Has subtitles for some episodes but none for others seemingly randomly.
Couldn't they also provide Amazon and Netflix a version of the video stream with baked in subtitles?
Here's some examples (there are many more):
1) the explanation of puns and hidden meanings in the kanji used to describe names, locations, special abilities, jokes, which honorifics are being used currently (if any), etc. of which there are usually many. Understanding/being aware of this context used to be absolutely vital to the experience of reading manga.
2) there's a relatively new manga called "Versus", in which humans from parallel earths, in parallel universes all merge into the same universe, and their planets are also merged together. In the english version, Viz translates one of those worlds as "Indignia", which doesn't mean anything. However, the Japanese for this world is "怒ど神しん界かい" (Doshinkai), which is literally interpreted as "World of the Angry God", or "Mad God World". They took it upon themselves to make similar changes for all the other worlds, obscuring their original meanings as intended by the author... why? Beats me. Now, one could make the argument that "Mad God World" doesn't sound good in english, so the Viz translators change is an improvement, which is not unreasonable. However, any half-decent fan translator would've simply left a footnote like "the literal Japanese interpretation is X; I changed it to Indignia because...". Problem solved! Don't just retcon things because you feel like it without explaining yourself. And if you won't explain yourself, then leave it as is.
3) english One Piece readers often have no idea just how many things are lost in translation; One Piece is filled to the brim with puns, double-entendre's, and foreshadowing, which has always been a significant part of its appeal, and is now nowhere to be found via the official providers.
4) Physical signs, such as things written on buildings, on somebody's clothing, or even on a stop sign, are usually not translated.
5) cover pages! You wouldn't know it anymore, but manga often has cover pages (often officially colorized) with extra comments and tidbits from the authors. Fans would include these pages in their scanlations. Viz pretends they don't exist.
I can only imagine the thought process of whoever's making these decisions at Viz (or its parent company Shueisha) resembles something like "westerners don't care about that stuff. Stop wasting precious time and resources trying to explain it". They don't quite seem to understand how badly they have diluted the manga reading experience in the west, especially for those of us that grew up reading this stuff, way before it reached mainstream popularity.
In general, streaming services have to ensure maximum compatibility when playing their contents on all kinds of devices - high end and low end. For which on low end device it could be very resource constraining to render typesetted subtitles. There are other platforms where all video playback have to be managed by the platform system frameworks with limited format support, and streaming services can't do much about it.
The priority of streaming service is extending their market reach, and I think Crunchyroll itself is facing the same challenge of market reaching.
I think the right solution is trying to get typesetted subtitles, and the end-to-end workflow - creation, packaging, delivery, rendering with adaptation (device capabilities, user preferences, localizations etc) all standardized. A more efficient workflow is needed, so a single source of subtitle is able to generate a set of renditions suitable for different player render capabilities. Chrunchyroll should actively participate in these standard bodies and push for adaption for more features and support in the streaming industry.
[1]: https://netflixsubs.app/docs/netflix/features/imgsub
"natural world" -> "national world"
"cede power" -> "seed power"
I guess they're just machine transcribing it without oversight now?
The result works pretty well, e.g. https://www.translate.mom/app/task/2UicdIqRBg0f
In the article, there's zero explanation of what the actual issue is, at least in the first few paragraphs. It just seems to say the subtitles are bad with some examples and puts the burden on the reader to determine why.
Is the issue the subtitle's location on the screen ? Contrast or font? Quality of translations? Again, it's probably a spectrum thing, but without any context I find it overwhelming and overstimulating.
I cannot imagine how much more difficult of life you make yourself with this kind of reaction to someone writing extensively on an article nobody forced - much less even asked - you to read.
For the first it is translating the info box on the left and just adding it above its dialog subtitles. This has a few problems. First the text overlaps the text in the box, not the worst thing here but that can sometimes make things hard to read and imo doesn't look good.
Second it can make it hard to know what is being translated if there are multiple text fragments on screen. Take this screenshot from the article https://daiz.moe/content/crunchyroll/dumbell-funi-4.jpg how are you supposed to know which belong to which muscle? Or this where only one of the rows is translated and you don't even know which https://daiz.moe/content/crunchyroll/mha-funi-hulu.jpg
Third with two dialogs to translate (like tv in background plus people in foreground) you could probably better indicate where what is coming from with the ability to position it.
Though on a related topic, on Netflix it is not just the subtitling that is bad, the translations are awful too. They are cutting every corner so hard I fear they might become a circle.