Robbl
Adventurer
Still better than yellow subs
Subtitle colours and credits: personal preferences debate!
- Thread starter Robbl
- Start date
TiggsPanther
Completely Average High School Student
The problem with the subtitles issue, too, is that it's very subjective.
Some people seriously hate yellow subtitles, find them ugly or whatever and would genuinely prefer to see a version with white subs.
I'm the opposite. Although for me it's less a preference or down to aesthetics, more that I actually find white subtitles harder to read and easier to wash out in bright scenes. I need the subtitles to be yellow to be able to easily read them, but that doesn't make them any more acceptable for those who prefer white.
sniper_samurai
Mad Scientist
I'm the exact same, even have the soft subs set to be yellow on my media tank.
So, choice of identical white or yellow subs on all future releases? Utterly baffling newbies, but giving those of us who were here an interesting anecdote for years to come.
US companies can also do big or small subs as options to further accommodate those with vastly different television sizes.
I personally don't mind at all - I often watch with ugly closed captions anyway - but I'm curious how much extra hassle it would be.
(Why true formattable soft subtitles aren't part of the standard I will never understand.)
R
US companies can also do big or small subs as options to further accommodate those with vastly different television sizes.
I personally don't mind at all - I often watch with ugly closed captions anyway - but I'm curious how much extra hassle it would be.
(Why true formattable soft subtitles aren't part of the standard I will never understand.)
R
Buzz201
Mad Scientist
Shame. It would be nice if it was just a simple formatting flag you could set. If BD ever has a proper successor before physical media eats itself entirely, the subtitling needs to be set up better for companies with complicated requirements.
R
fabio de lunatico
Claymore
Not that I want to keep beating this dead horse, but...
But I am curious about the readability point. Full disclosure: I'm 35 and I've spent a large portion of my life slumped zombie-like in front of a PC monitor and have gratutiously engaged in a solo activity that is believed to cause blindness. And yet these subtitles are as clear as day to me on a 32 inch TV from two metres away, and that's about as extreme as an example as you'll get. Does anyone think they would have trouble reading those? Buzz makes a good point about the early Funimation Blu-ray subtitles that used a thin font and practically non-existent outline, but apart from that I've never seen white subtitles that are remotely difficult to read.
What's wrong with English credits in an English language release? I mean, unless you're fluent in Japanese you're either watching your cartoons with words on the bottom of the screen or with English dialogue. In both cases that's not how they were intented to be watched.
That's an entirely reasonable point and I want to make it clear that I wouldn't criticise anyone for their preferences. It's just that my experience over the last several years has conditioned me into thinking that white is the standard and that only anime distributors that have existed since the VHS era persist with yellow.
But I am curious about the readability point. Full disclosure: I'm 35 and I've spent a large portion of my life slumped zombie-like in front of a PC monitor and have gratutiously engaged in a solo activity that is believed to cause blindness. And yet these subtitles are as clear as day to me on a 32 inch TV from two metres away, and that's about as extreme as an example as you'll get. Does anyone think they would have trouble reading those? Buzz makes a good point about the early Funimation Blu-ray subtitles that used a thin font and practically non-existent outline, but apart from that I've never seen white subtitles that are remotely difficult to read.
It's annoying when you buy something and cannot reference the original credits anywhere. To give a specific example, there are a lot of homonymous Japanese names which are written with different characters and it is literally impossible to tell which of several potential staff members was involved when only looking at English-translated credits. There are also often a ton of errors in the English language subtitles which make it even harder to discern the minutiae of who exactly was behind the show you just watched (I've seen all kinds of things from translated Japanese personal names to mangled mistransliterations of ambiguous kanji, not to mention variations in house styles when romanising Japanese phonetics between different series - or seasons of the same series). Sure, the Internet exists, but if you paid £50 for a BD release it's a reasonable expectation to have a reference copy when Internet sources are contradictory or downright suspicious.
Then there are cases where the Japanese credits are deliberately placed neatly in gaps in the credit sequences but the English ones are sort of splurged all over the animation willy-nilly, or cases where the credits judder or display aliasing issues not present in the originals, which aren't exactly life-or-death scenarios but they're ugly nonetheless. Sub fans will also find the prominence given to dub actors and crews - whose performances aren't even part of the show they're watching - frustrating. I don't personally go crazy over it myself, but if I had the choice it would always be Japanese credits for me with English ones as an alternate angle, bonus feature or post-credits scroll. I never, ever skip credits, hence the strangely detailed response ^^;
(I know actually being able to read the credits is a minority stance in western fandom, but it would be nice if my local releases accommodated that rather than forcing me to import the Japanese editions every time I want to know who voiced Child A in the background of a scene in the Japanese audio. Even when I was a new fan I remember trying to decipher and recognise some of the name kanji for my favourite voice actors/actresses, exactly the same way I originally learnt to read English. Everyone has to start somewhere!)
R
fabio de lunatico
Claymore
Yeah, there probably aren't many fans quite as... enthusiastic as you ^_^; But I do know what you mean about trying to decipher kanji (oh, the wacky readings many of them use for names) in credits since I've been learning Japanese on/off for a while now. On this particular issue I don't have a preference either way, but I agree it would be nice to at least have the Japanese credits somewhere on the disc. Funimation tried the alternate angle thing but found that it negatively impacted video quality, but I do believe they try to replicate the style and positioning of the Japanese credits.
Blaize
Hunter
I'm just going to throw my opinion out there that I actually prefer yellow subs. Simply as there is far far less chance of them clashing with anything on the show. White subtitles can clash quite alot.
Also a dim yellow is alot easier on the eyes compared to a bright white.
@Rui Couldn't you have just used ANN encylopedia for looking up actors/actresses? It's pretty thorough.
Also a dim yellow is alot easier on the eyes compared to a bright white.
@Rui Couldn't you have just used ANN encylopedia for looking up actors/actresses? It's pretty thorough.
Sadly not. The information from the encyclopaedia has to come from somewhere (users), and it's often wrong due to mistakes in their additions amplified by mistakes in the material they're copying from (westernised credits). Many entries have all kinds of errors ranging from transposed word order in names to simple typos. I spent months trying to fix one entry where a character's name was mistranslated as a title (think 'John Smith' being credited as 'Lord' for literally no logical reason, it's not even a title the character has) and it's still wrong now even though it's abundantly obvious that it's incorrect and a ton of legitimate evidence has been provided. It's a nice site but not useful to me as a reliable reference tool.
If you want the definitive information why not trust the source material itself? Unless it's been purged to protect people from the dangerous influence of 'unreadable' Japanese text. I know I'm coming across as a massive nerd here but accuracy is important to me, as is respecting the actual creators rather than made-up mistranslated non-people.
Edit: Going to split this discussion into its own topic as we seem to have enough passionate purists like Rui-the-massive-nerd to justify a full topic.
R
thedoctor2016
Mushi-shi
For me i think its font size and how thick the letters are. If they are too thin white/yellow i dont like them. If they are thicker and clearer then I like them. As I liked Outlaw Stars as they were big and clear
I think the fact I watch so much streaming means I am more accustomed to the idea of white subtitles and so prefer them above yellow subs. It does depend on the thickness of the outline though as otherwise, they can blend in too well with the background and simply be awkward to read.
I'm not fond of yellow subtitles whatever way we slice it. The majority of the time (and this is definitely the case if it came from Sentai), they're ugly and just not that pleasing to the eye. It doesn't ruin a show for me and wouldn't prevent me buying a release, but I'd probably still complain about it a tad.
As far as credits go I also agree that I prefer the Japanese credits. I'm not someone who can read Japanese (although hopefully one day), but like Rui said I don't feel English credits are that well thought out sometimes when it comes to the design of an OP/ED and they're just splashed out wherever they can be.
I'm not fond of yellow subtitles whatever way we slice it. The majority of the time (and this is definitely the case if it came from Sentai), they're ugly and just not that pleasing to the eye. It doesn't ruin a show for me and wouldn't prevent me buying a release, but I'd probably still complain about it a tad.
As far as credits go I also agree that I prefer the Japanese credits. I'm not someone who can read Japanese (although hopefully one day), but like Rui said I don't feel English credits are that well thought out sometimes when it comes to the design of an OP/ED and they're just splashed out wherever they can be.
Lutga
Mad Scientist
Same, from getting used to watching CR I've grown accustomed to chunkier subs with thick black outlines. So now when I see slim subs they seem weird / harder to read for me. Likewise, yellow subs now make me think 'old fashioned' - a throwback to old DVDs.
Either way - whatever subs we have now - white or yellow - are light years better than the crusty, grainy old subs of DVD days. Or god-forbid, the hardsubs of VHS days (a few early DVD prints of live action asian movies like Battle Royale still used the grained in hardsubs from the VHS print)
Personally I prefer English credits - I can get the Japanese credits when watching the show streaming, whereas if I've bought the Blu-Ray, It's usually so I can watch the dub - and personally I like the extra care an attention Funimation goes to to actually re-do the entire OP sequences to put English credits in, synched to the music and in an appropriate font.
In contrast to Sentai who either through decision / cost / lack of technical know-how just avoid this and slap the translated subs in a rolling black screen at the end of each ep.
Either way - whatever subs we have now - white or yellow - are light years better than the crusty, grainy old subs of DVD days. Or god-forbid, the hardsubs of VHS days (a few early DVD prints of live action asian movies like Battle Royale still used the grained in hardsubs from the VHS print)
Personally I prefer English credits - I can get the Japanese credits when watching the show streaming, whereas if I've bought the Blu-Ray, It's usually so I can watch the dub - and personally I like the extra care an attention Funimation goes to to actually re-do the entire OP sequences to put English credits in, synched to the music and in an appropriate font.
In contrast to Sentai who either through decision / cost / lack of technical know-how just avoid this and slap the translated subs in a rolling black screen at the end of each ep.
I'm certainly not knocking the times when they get this right, but they have also made massive mistakes along the way. My 'My Bride is a Mermaid' discs look like absolute garbage because they upsampled the ending artwork into a pixellated mess to try to purge the Japanese credits from existence.
(Of course in some cases they're simply at a major disadvantage because the nature of the languages means there aren't enough spaces of appropriate size for English text. Or the original credits were unusually amazing, like the 'twitching' Japanese credits in the JJBA openings.)
R
Lutga
Mad Scientist
Yeah that's a pretty bad case. For the most part though, it seems like they're able to gain access to clean assets to work from - and they reassemble from there.
That said, that case you linked to reminds me of some of the old Manga Collection DVDs that were basically just straight ports of the VHS releases where they didn't have access to clean assets so just pasted a horrid block of microsoft paint colour over the Japanese and then put English text over that block of colour. Guess things were different in the 90s...
That said, that case you linked to reminds me of some of the old Manga Collection DVDs that were basically just straight ports of the VHS releases where they didn't have access to clean assets so just pasted a horrid block of microsoft paint colour over the Japanese and then put English text over that block of colour. Guess things were different in the 90s...
Smeelia
Thousand Master
I tend to prefer having the Japanese credits (with possible English credits added afterwards/separately). Aside from the points made above, names can be important to people and that can include having them written in a specific way (or a particular pronunciation or whatever). I think that it's nice to see what are probably the actual names of the people involved written in the "correct" way (or at least a way that's acceptable to them).
Realistically, the people involved might not be consulted on exactly how they want their name handled, so I suppose that point might not always be relevant. Still, it's something that I try to think about and take into account (I blame Star Trek: The Next Generation for that one).
I don't mind seeing credits in English but, in that case, I'd prefer to have both.
I don't think I have a strong preference on subtitle colour. I do like when some effort has been put in for sign subtitles and similar, but I suppose that's a different issue.
I don't think the handling of subtitles or credits would really affect a purchasing decision for me, unless there was an actual problem (which I'd say is a different issue).
Realistically, the people involved might not be consulted on exactly how they want their name handled, so I suppose that point might not always be relevant. Still, it's something that I try to think about and take into account (I blame Star Trek: The Next Generation for that one).
I don't mind seeing credits in English but, in that case, I'd prefer to have both.
I don't think I have a strong preference on subtitle colour. I do like when some effort has been put in for sign subtitles and similar, but I suppose that's a different issue.
I don't think the handling of subtitles or credits would really affect a purchasing decision for me, unless there was an actual problem (which I'd say is a different issue).
TiggsPanther
Completely Average High School Student
Eyesight can vary from person to person.
Mine isn't great. (See the userpic. Note the glasses)
In fact, some 20+ years ago, it was the fact that I was struggling to read certain colours on certain backgrounds owing to insufficient contrast that had me get my eyes tested in the first place. Even with glasses, it seems I need that little bit of extra help to make the edges of text really stand out for me. I need decent contrast.
I looked at that screenshot you linked to and cringed. White text, a moderate border and an off-white background just isn't enough for me.
When the background is a lot darker, I have much less of an issue.
For white text, I'd need both the font and the border to be at least a little bit thicker. Or have a bit of a drop-shadow. But with a white-ish background? Ideally I'd want the text to be not-white and a bold, bright colour. Basically, yellow. Because then it really pops, and then I can easily read it.
Crunchyroll's streaming, at least, uses a pretty readable font and a decent border. Actually, their hardsubs (devices) have a bit of an opaque drop-shadow and their softsubs (web) have an actual faded blur-shadow around them. Both really helping the white test stand out, even on a paler background.
I'll give you that they're ugly and not as aesthetically pleasing. But they're readable.
I guess i'm sort of used to thinking that way, though. many years ago, I went through a period of really hating the Arial font. I just didn't like how it looked. But I'd use it because all the ones that looked nicer were harder to read, either on screen or on paper. Arial was ugly but readable on both.
White subs with a thin-to-medium border can be a lot nicer to look at. But I find them harder to read, which for me makes them unfit for purpose.