fabricatedlunatic said:
Ouran's a Funimation dub and while they're known for their not entirely faithful adaptations I'd be surprised if their script was peppered with profanity. Anyway, here's what the BBFC say about the third disc (14-20):
Contains frequent moderate sex references and sexual threat
Thank you; I've used the BBFC's Web site before and should have thought to make use of it in answering this. Although looking at it now, they seem only to rate the dubbed versions of video releases and I thought that the reason for the existence of dubtitles was that different translations had to be rated as distinct components (unless that's changed very recently)?
ayase said:
I think that kind of thing went out with the '90s. I can't think of any newer releases that have suffered from old-school Manga style dubbing, and even if they still did it Ouran would be a peculiar choice for such treatment…
With dubs, more or less, (they tend to skirt around such words to avoid having to find analogues for them) but it can still be found in DVD subtitles (the first volume of
Elemental Gelade for one example) and more commonly still in fan translations. Of course, out of the two, I'd rather it were subs that had the coarser translations than dubs, as the latter is more likely to be chosen by children, but the only time I often get to watch anime nowadays is by watching it with my brother of a decade younger: I resent dubbing, and we both resent having to read though barrages of inappropriate expletives.
However, if "plopcakes" were to become the standard translation of
kuso, the problem then is that the same words are still used in adult-aimed TV like
Cowboy Bebop and
Samurai Champloo (it's more the violence and sex references that make the difference) and it would be just as inappropriate for adult characters in them to be swearing like six-year-olds. And that then brings us back to the eternal conflict between consistency and context appropriateness in translating between two languages as different in their typical employment as Japanese and English are. :?
