Well-Rounded Geekery

sasstiel-sassbutt:

arasellle:

justheroverthere:

I’m the person who knows their Hogwarts house but not their blood type

I know mine. it’s

pureblood

this post just got 209348451 times better okay

(Source: perksofbeingahufflepuff)

cacchieressa:

#NO BUT HE CAN’T BE DEAD I CAME ALL THE WAY HERE TO FIGHT WITH HIM #WHY WOULD HE BE DEAD #THIS ISN’T HOW OUR STORY WAS MEANT TO GO

(Source: hottguycelebs)

jennifergearing:

This is the honeybadger of cats.

(Source: ichigoflavor)

l1berum:

OMG HE WAS SLEEPING WITH HIS NOSE JUST ABOVE WATER LEVEL

(Source: pleatedjeans)

(Source: lumineon)

bananadongchronicles:

knives—and—ivory:

iwasjustkidding:

iridescentcatharsis:

macmuffinpro:

picnicinparadise:

HOW DID I NOT KNOW THIS?!

Why do I learn more about math from Tumblr than my 12+ years of formal education????????

No math teacher ever taught me this trick. Got damn.

This is great and all if you know how to subtract things from 100 

Fucking witchcraft holy shit

(Source: cineraria)

boom-diggity-dog:

true.

(Source: worshipgifs)

vengefulbullwinkle:

gallifrey-feels:

earthgirldonna:

feferipixies:

the-fandoms-are-cool:

everythingis19:

cosmicsyzygy:

Look, I made a gif of this most awesome wizard at the Leaky Cauldron!

DUDE IS READING ‘A BRIEF HISTORY OF TIME’ BY STEPHEN HAWKING

I NEVER REALIZED

are you serious

I always assumed wizards just ignored science, because the fact that “magic” exists, can explain anything. But there are MuggleBorn wizards, ones who, until they were eleven, lived in the real world and learned science and things. Did they all just abandon that normal, muggle knowledge, like Harry did? It’s always been there, itching in the back of my mind.

FOUR FOR YOU SCIENCE WIZARD

YOU GO SCIENCE WIZARD

can we point out that he’s doing wandless magic too

like voldemort couldnt even do that shit

molly fuckin weasley couldnt fuckin do that

who are you

pretty sure this whole series has been about the wrong wizard guys

Plot Twist: He is able to do wandless magic because his comprehensive understanding of quantum physics means that he is the only wizard/witch to actually understand how magic works.

You could not possibly understand how happy this makes me.

I have hope for the wizarding world again.

girlsbydaylight:

mochibuni:

girlsbydaylight:

bossanovabyss:

girlsbydaylight:

persisting:

so this is one of i think two instances in which duo and relena interact. please note the complete lack of antagonism and/or resentment. 

though i want to note also that this has another good example of why the dub and translation is pretty bad so far as accuracy — he’s not calling her “good looking” there at all. (i don’t remember exactly what it is though i’d guess it’s something like “ojou-san” or the like, since that’s what he’s called her before. ojou-san is a perfectly polite and unintrusive way to address someone — no “HEY GOOD LOOKIN’” about it.) this dub and translation makes a weird point of having him address relena’s looks a few times, and another weird point of having him comment on heero’s TOTES OBVIOUS attraction to her; in endless waltz they have him saying something like “ANYTHING FOR LOVE, HUH” when heero leaves to rescue her, when in japanese he just says the equivalent of “LOL THAT GUY’S ALWAYS LIKE THIS” because heero’s just left the room abruptly without really explaining what he’s up to. 

anyway. whenever you hear scott mcneil rasping out HEY GOOD LOOKIN or commenting on how heero and relena are in luv you can rest assured that’s not what duo’s actually saying at any point, lol.

From what I can tell, I think I’m in the minority with wanting more literal translations of things, that most people seem to prefer a more localized/informal translation to something that possibly sounds a little stiffer.  (Which is totally fine, different strokes and all that.)  But this is a good example of why I generally prefer a more literal translation and will happily take the way things sound a bit awkward occasionally, because there’s a world of difference between “HEY GOOD LOOKIN’” and “Ojou-san” and what that says about how Duo approaches Relena.

I realize they’re also dealing with the issue of trying to make the words fit the characters’ mouth movements, so that’s going to further restrict them, but sometimes I really scrunch up my face a lot over the difference in translations because it might not impact the scene that much, but it changes a lot about the characters and that’s what I’m here for—the characters.

*wistful*  And once again I wish Duo and Relena had had more scenes together, whyyy does the universe not give me what I want?

Reblogging for translation commentary!

I think—and I know this doesn’t go for everyone—that it really depends on the literal translation vs. the localization change. There are some instances in which I think it’s best to localize. For instance, in the Ace Attorney series of games, most (if not all) of the character names are puns, and there are a ton of pop culture jokes. Translating those literally wouldn’t really work, because the humor would be lost on an American audience. True, you might have some Japanophiles that get the pop culture references, but I imagine they would be few and far between. It’d make the game series reach an even smaller audience than it already does.

So in that case, the names were changed to relevant English puns (e.g. Phoenix’s JP name is Naruhodou, which basically means “I see,” so in English they made his name Phoenix Wright to indicate rising from the ashes (like a turnabout), and the fact that he’s always right), and the pop culture jokes were substituted with relevant/fitting pop culture references from American culture. (e.g. Mia says, “I know whose milkshake brings all the boys to the yard” when the male members of the trial are fawning over Dahlia Hawthorne, and Phoenix once comments that, “This case has more plot holes than that movie The Grid: Revelations!”) In instances like that, I do think it’s better to stray off the beaten path and add in some localization.

However, in this Gundam instance I agree with you. It’s one thing to make a chance because the English speaking audience won’t get the joke. It’s another to change the meaning of the scene—and characterization, at that—altogether. Since you said that he addressed her more respectfully, I probably would have changed the line to something like, “Good morning, madame!” It would have had the same syllables as “morning, good looking!” to match the lip flaps, and it would have been closer to the original without sounding too weird. (I mean, “madame” might sound weird and I could see some girls getting offended if they see it as addressing someone as if they’re older, but it’s respectful and has one syllable more than “miss.”) Alternatively, “Hey, good morning, miss!” could have worked. Or even, “Morning, m’lady!” None of those things are come-ons, and I think they translate all right.

So yeah, tl;dr in some cases I think outright changes are good (even necessary), but in cases like this it really isn’t necessary at all.

I like to think, if I’d taken more time to write a response, I would have written something a lot like this.  There are definitely instances where a more literal translation wouldn’t work and you’re spot on with the Phoenix Wright ones, because that game just… would never have worked with a more literal translation, not if it wanted to have any chance of commercial success.

So, I’m actually not that opposed to some localization, but I’m wary because too often the localization is used as an excuse to take all the Japanese culture out of a series and make it more cartoon-like, which there’s nothing wrong with cartoons, cartoons can be really impactful and meaningful, god knows I’m a fan of a lot of them, but there’s definitely still the idea that anything animated cannot be as good or as deep or as important as something that’s live action.

My gripe comes more from what’s lost and how, often times, there are English equivalents or a simple glossary would do.  The use of honorifics isn’t terribly hard to pick up or to explain and it will tell the watchers/readers a lot about the relationships between the characters.  There are definitely times when a more localized translation will do, sometimes something just doesn’t translate literally, but as a general trend?  I will take the more literal translation because I’ve rarely been burned by that, whereas I’ve been burned by a lot of localized translations, especially in dubs.

And it’s totally cool if people don’t agree with that, if they like the more localized feel, because they like to understand it in terms relative to their own culture or for whatever other reason.  I just personally usually prefer to have as much of the original context preserved as possible.  Often times, if for no other reason than to remember that the creators of the series I’m watching/reading/playing came from a different culture and their reason for putting something in may differ completely from my views of it.

Localization teams can be super awesome if given the time to do their work. For example, the FF12 team wrote the gods’ speech in freaking IAMBIC PENTAMETER because there wasn’t a good way to equivalently translate the manner of speech. So they were like, well, iambic pentameter feels antiquated and has this otherwordly godly sound when spoken and that’s the gist of the manner of speech in the original Japanese, so, WHY NOT?

I remember studying and trying to write in iambic pentameter and I wanted to pull all my hair out, so I was completely floored when I heard the localization team did that.

This story comes to you from the Localization Panel at PAX09 where two localizers talked about their adventures in translating games. One of them even worked on the Ace Attorney series and confirmed that there are grammatical errors due to them being pressed for time. I believe he said Capcom only gave them around 4 to 6 months to translate and localize the game, while Square gave the FF12 team somewhere around a year.

You do make a really good point here, too!  FF12 is another instance where I really liked the localization because you could tell how much time and care they put into it.  It was obviously not meant to be dumbed down or to take out the culture of the story or to just make it more “friendly” for local audiences, but instead it was about conveying the original message as much as they could.

So, while I don’t necessarily always agree with those kinds of changes (though, I admit, I’m struggling to come up with a good example here, of a thoughtful localization that I just simply didn’t care for), I can respect them a lot more, even if I’ll probably always prefer more literal translations 90% of the time.  But in that case, I can agree with the choices they made, because it’s still an intelligent story that’s not taking out the complications of it.  It’s not trying to make the characters sound more kid-friendly (as if children need to be talked down to all the time) or more hip.

Like, a lot of times you can really just feel if they were localizing something because they wanted it to be an easier translation and when they wanted it to keep the original feel but had to go with a less literal translation to convey the same feeling.  If it’s the former, I’ll probably make faces at it.  If it’s the later, I probably enjoyed it or could at least appreciate it.  XD

(Ahhh, this discussion continues to be really fascinating to me!  XD)

vulcanics:

this is it i fucking quit

(Source: stapletoothtiger)

grapesupyournose:

bored when Andrew is still sleeping

punkrats:

Worst wingman ever