In real China, as opposed to Saiunkoku, Shurei’s last name 紅 would be Hong. Kou is just a Japanese “Chinese-style” pronunciation of that character. It does seem odd to me that they would incompletely sinify her name, but that’s not exactly butchering.

Amen! That’s all I have to say.

Your missing my point Uraku.

I fully understand and agree that in China Shuurei’s name would indeeb be Hong. However, at no time during the anime do ANY of the characters refer to her as Hong. It’s always Kou.

If the show was like Cooking Master Boy and done in chinese, again i could understand the change. However again it’s not. It’s done in Japanese, with Japanese termenology. It may well be based on a chinese story, but its done in Japanese.

Then you have to consider the audiance. Speaking for me alone, i know i’d consider it bad translation if im sitting there and here some one say Kou Shuurei, but see Shurei Hong in the subs. It’s confusing enough at the best of times with companies treating us like we’re all 3 year olds and americanising the names and sufixes, but throw into the mix changing japanese names to chinese ones for no reason is just plain stupid.

I do consider that butchering, because they changing it from the original and just adding what they like.

Also her’s isn’t the only name its been done to aswell, most of the names apparently have been changed like that, So we’re going to be hearing one thing, and seeing something totaly different.

When you factor in the cost of the box set (around $35-$40) I find myself wondering if its justifiable.

I can not see myself buying the DVD’s and leaving them as they are. I am tempted to wait for the box set with all the episodes in them, then i’ll rip the episodes and scripts and alter them and have a HQ fan subbed version of my own

I wouldn’t call that “butchering”, more of “slight trimming”. Butchering would be taking it and chopping it into pieces, killing it. In an anime’s case, it would be changing the story dramatically, taking out important parts of the show, and totally giving the characters bad voice acting. à la 4Kids’ One Piece dub.

So they did that for the SUB? I was under the impression that it was just for the dubs, which wouldn’t bother me at all. Name changes are rather stupid and unnecessary, but as long as they aren’t massively mistranslating actual plot-related dialogue I won’t be too irritated. I never watch the dubs, and the subs just help fill in the gaps in my Japanese. Bad move on the company’s part, but I’d still buy the show because its a very good show.

@Uraku
Nope its on both the Dub and Sub

@xXMikotoNakadaiXx
Lets say your sitting watching Asterix, i like to watch it in the original french with english subs. So someone shouts Asterix’s name, you here them, but the sub says Burt. Your telling me that isnt a hatchet job?

To me that would immediatly call into question the rest of the translations, and spoil the fun of watching the show.

I had the same problem with Suck’s releases of Saiun, they translated kun as Young, so we have Shuurei sounding like an OAP calling Eigetsu, Young Eigetsu every five mins.

In official releases there’s no call for changing names or honorifics. Sure noobs to anime will struggle a bit at first, but if they’re genuinely interested it dosent take 30 seconds to find out what they mean.

Companies work from official scripts given to them by the japanese companies, in theory the translation should be much better than the fansubbed version, however they never are.

Oh, and a friend of mine who’s a pro translator was shocked aswell over the name changes of Saiun, she couldnt think of any reason as to why they would do it.

Dubs? Subs?

Raws forever. 以上!

Since when was dubs vs subs about fan-subs vs licensed?

Would have. *Have*, dammit.

English is not a language where you can get away with spelling phonetically, even if most people don’t habitually practice poor enunciation.

i really really hate offical american anime dvd releases. buying it would only promote bad dubbing. wait until companies do a better job of subbing & dubbing

this issue isn’t a debate or even a “great” debate. fansubs ftw

DVD companies need to wake up and realize that yes, people watch fansubs because theyre free, but people ALSO watch fansubs because they dont like their intelligence to be insulted by bad translation….