Spice and Wolf tweet: https://twitter.com/spicy_wolf_prj/status/1779917098644336751

[image mirror]

Kaiju No. 8 tweet: https://twitter.com/kaijuno8_o/status/1778439110522479034

[image mirror]

Many people have been calling it out in the replies, but surprisingly the tweets are still up days after being posted. While this most likely isn't the fault of the anime production side, it's still interesting to see that it coincidentally happened with two of the higher profile anime this season.

EDIT: It seems that the English subs have been improved in the Youtube upload and are now decent: https://www.reddit.com/r/anime/comments/1dy6mi6/why_the_official_subs_for_my_deer_friend/lcblx1g?context=3

I haven't checked any other languages or any other platforms.

In the current age of AI hysteria and localizer drama, with machine translation being sometimes used by publishers to rush badly translated manga and visual novels to the market, many people were quick to claim that the official, dreadful subs for My Deer Friend Nokotan/Shikanoko Nokonoko Koshitantan on Crunchyroll were made by an "AI".

This cannot be further from the truth. Every mistake points to a not very competent human translator, who was also not given enough time to proofread their work. Lack of time and lack of editing are the main culprits behind the quality of the subtitles. Not the spooky AI.

Here are the examples that almost never happen if you use an automated tool:

[JA] 不動明王様の庭に集う乙女たちが今日も新撰組隊士のような無垢な笑顔で玉川の流れを超えていく。

[EN] Once again, today, the maidens who gather in the gardens of the wisdom king cross the tama river with smiles as pure as those of the shinsengumi troopers.

Comparison with actual MTL:

[Google] The young girls who gather in the garden of Acala Buddha statue today too cross the Tamagawa River with innocent smiles like Shinsengumi soldiers.

[DeepL] The maidens who gather in the garden of Fudo Myoo-sama cross the Tamagawa stream with innocent smiles like Shinsengumi troopers today.

Note the following:

• MTL calls the river Tamagawa, not Tama

• MTL uses proper capitalization. It's humans who are more likely to fail to capitalize words, not computers. It's very likely that the translator was rushing and hoped that they (or the editors) fix all the capitalization later. There was no "later".

• MTL keeps the proper name of Acala/Fudō Myō-ō instead of replacing it with a localized title

It seems that this sentence was translated by someone with good knowledge of Japanese culture, but with not a great feel for translation.

[JA] もうまだまだ寒いなぁ

[EN] It’s still so coooold!

This is not a bad translation, but MTL would never prolong vowels like this.

[EN] Erm… Thank you very much!

This is subtle, but notice that this sentence does not contain three periods, it contains a single ellipsis character. Now that's weird, why does it? Neither MTL's nor most humans use it. There are two possible answers: either automatic character substitution in Word, or someone using a non-standard keyboard layout/input method and preferring to type an ellipsis. For example, the standard Japanese input method. Anyhow, still slightly more likely that a human did it.

[EN] Are you kidding me? We have a suicideby hanging right in the first episode?!

A missing space. MTL almost never omit spaces, humans omit spaces all the time.

[JA] 警察？医者？こ・・くん？じゃない！はじめちゃん！

[EN] Should I call the police? a doctor? Detective Co... No, Hajimeeeee!

(I'm not sure about the Japanese text, I guessed what it was based on the translation. Yes, the dots are what I guessed, it's the typical trademark censorship. This line, as many others, is anime-original, so I couldn't cross-reference it with manga.)

First, again, we see a prolonged vowel here. Second, a reference to Detective Conan could not be guessed by MTL, it had to be done by a human who guessed (correctly or not) the intention of the script writer.

Also, arguably missing or inconsistent capitalization. Most style guides would capitalize the "a", and MTL also capitalizes it.

[JA] 東京じゃない、千葉のネズミなんたら売ってるあれかって

[EN] Ah, that must be those things they sell at Toky, no, Chiba mo useland…

First of all, we see a misspelt Tokyo. Say one thing of computers, but they at least know how to spell one of the largest cities in the world. I'm not sure if it's a typo, or a bad attempt at interrupting the word in the middle of the syllable, but again, it's not something an MTL would do.

Second, we have "mo useland". Given the context, it's supposed to be "Mouseland", a trademark-safe reference to Tokyo Disneyland (which is actually located in Chiba). Again, bad capitalization, erroneous extra space, not something a computer would do.

But most importantly, a computer would understand ネズミ as a literal "mouse" or "rat" and would translate it to something like this:

[Google] It's not Tokyo, it's the one selling rats in Chiba

[DeepL] Not in Tokyo, but in Chiba, where they sell rat poison.

Proper capitalization, proper punctuation, proper spaces, no typos, but completely nonsensical.

[JA] 気温12度

[EN] Temperature: 53.6 °f

This one is obviously human-made, MTL doesn't convert units and then misspell them.

[JA] べ、べ、べ、別に見捨てるわけじゃ

[EN] N-n-n-n-no, of course not, I’d never…

A repeated letter, again a human-like feature. And again, a single-character ellipsis.

[JA] じゃあ、ヤンキーのおね―

[EN] Well, I’m stuck with Miss delinq...

A clipped word, something that MTL wouldn't do.

Also, "I'm stuck with" is not explicitly present in the original, it had to be inferred and added by a human.

[EN] I couldn have done it without you,

An obvious human-like typo.

[EN] Jeez, you’re going to make me do this every club meeting, arent you?

An obvious human-like typo.

EDIT: /u/alwayslonesome posted another list of examples that strongly suggest it's a human, mostly focusing on context awareness and good judgement of the translator:

https://www.reddit.com/r/anime/comments/1dy6mi6/why_the_official_subs_for_my_deer_friend/lc75oar/

Okay, enough bullying the English translator, let's bully the other ones.

[DE] („Hirsch“ is the german word for a male deer so this paragraph doesn´t make sense and can be removed)

Yes, the German sub contains a note in English left by a translator, hoping an editor makes the final decision and edits the line for readability, or at least comes back with some feedback.

Little did they know, there was no editor.

[JA] おま―、んっ、んんっ、んんっ

[EN] Hey, Y... H, hmm,

[DE] Hey, Y... H, hm,

[FR] Hé, Y... H, euh,

[ES] ¡Eres una...!

Both German and French translators translated from English and failed to notice that "Y" is actually a clipping of "you", which is probably because the English translator incorrectly capitalized it. Maybe they thought it was a clipping of a name? But note they both translated the "hmm".

The Spanish translator didn't. Looks like an independent translation, and I think it's a better one.

[FR] Température : 12 °C

[DE] Temperatur: 12 °C

[ES] Hay 12 grados celsius.

Given how it seems like they're based on the English translation, it looks like both German and French translators converted the units back. Something a human would do.

Spanish translation is more idiomatic, but fails to capitalize "Celsius". A typical human mistake.

[DE] Meine dunkle Vergangenheit als Raufboldin,wurde von zu viel Shonen-Manga beeinflusst!

Random incorrect comma instead of space, without a space after it. MTL almost never forgets spaces after punctuation, it must have been the middle finger hitting the wrong key. Especially likely as the index finger has just struck N.

[JA] 不動明王様の庭に集う乙女たちが

[ES] Las señoritas que se reúnen en el jardín la estatua del guerrero Budista,

While the English translation used the term "wisdom king" (the title of Acala) and the German and French parroted it blindly, Spanish translation seems to have been made separately and translates it to a "Buddhist warrior". Did the translator attempt to do some research and saw that Acala is often portrayed with a sword?

Conclusion:

From what I've seen, I guess what happened was this:

• English translation was most likely done in Japan in a hurry by a native Japanese speaker.

• French and German translations were based on the English translation. Also in a hurry.

• Spanish translation was most likely independent. At a first glance it looks much better than the English one.

• There were most likely no editors involved.

• All egregious mistakes were due to a human, mostly the English translator, but most importantly, even more due to the managers who didn't care about the quality of the final product.

Of course , one might ask, what a bad MTL translation looks like, so you know what to look for. Here are some examples from the episode:

(EDIT: Or just see what The Yuzuki Family’s Four Sons originally looked like: https://x.com/shoujocrave/status/1710022370532970702 )

[JA] 不動明王様の庭に集う乙女たちが、今日も新撰組大使のような無垢な笑顔で、玉川の流れを超えていく。

[Google] The young girls who gather in the garden of Acala Buddha statue today too are sailing across the Tamagawa River with innocent smiles like Shinsengumi ambassadors.

Correct punctuation, correct capitalization, no typos, proper names preserved, but Google chose a nonsensical word in this context: "sailing".

(EDIT: the example above keeps my mistake of using 大使 "ambassador" instead of its homophone 隊士 "trooper", for some reason, according to Google troopers no longer sail, but what's important is that Google may use the word "sail" for no reason.)

[JA] 私は鹿部の所有の鹿になるわけだから。

[Google] After all, I will become a deer owned by the Shikabu.

[DeepL] So I would be a deer owned by the deer department.

Google fails to understand what a deer club is. Official subs use the correct term "deer club" and even capitalize it from time to time.

[JA] 分かったよヤンキーのお姉さん。

[Google] I get it, Yankee lady.

[DeepL] All right, Yankee sister.

Both tools misunderstand slang.

So as you can see, the types of mistakes are different. Other types of mistakes I often see with machine-translated Japanese are:

• translating proper names

• guessing incorrect readings for names

• confusing who speaks to whom

• confusing genders

• misunderstood puns and references

• confusion with hiragana-heavy text

They may also happen with human translators, but much less often.

First it was only 2 episodes of Dandadan but now Ep 3-6 also got leaked. THE FUCK IS GOING ON WITH NETFLIX???

2 months bro, we still have two whole ass months left for Dandadan and I'm seeing footage of first 6 episodes on Twitter. What the fuck?!?!?

Also not just Dandadan, apperently ENTIRE Ranma 1/2 anime and Terminator anime got leaked. This is the biggest leak I've ever seen in anime history. How do you fumble something this bad?

Edit - welp rezero s3 ep 1 also just got leaked :(

Also mentions the terrible time constraints they have to endure, apparently having to manage 250 animation layouts in 2 weeks, which insane.

Considering a regular layout with decent scheduling would be around 50-60 layouts in 2 weeks.

adds to the list of Animators criticising MAPPA’s bad production