This week's poll is by MewMan. I'm really surprised that we never did an honorifics poll in the 3-ish years we've been doing weekly site polls. No discussion forum for this one.

You can submit poll ideas here (and try to keep them manga/anime-related):
http://www.mangaupdates.com/showtopic.php?tid=3903

Previous Poll Results
Question: Do you compare scanlations to the official published releases?
Choices:
All the time, when I can! - votes: 1160 (10.2%)
Sometimes, when I feel like it - votes: 3008 (26.5%)
No, I don't care about comparing - votes: 3478 (30.6%)
No, I'd only read the chapter / volume once - votes: 634 (5.6%)
No, I don't have any official volumes to compare them to - votes: 3090 (27.2%)
There were 11370 total votes.
The poll ended: July 2nd 2011

Opinions are all over the place on this one...

A just ruler amongst tyrants

I don't care... I'm indifferent..... but there is no such option. =_______=;;

[img]https://i.imgur.com/cWeUK2w.png[/img]

Quote from LawX

You are like the dense main character in a shoujo manga.

Quote from Crenshinibon

And you will murder someone one day, pika. If you're my daughter.

They should never be used in subbed anime - viewers aren't deaf and less text to read and hide the art is a good thing - but they can add flavor to manga scanlations.

they give you an insight to how the relationship is between the 2 characters... so ALWAYS!

Useless adaptation that is used by unskilled translators. I still hope that one day those fanboys and fangirls realize how ridiculous their translation sound with honorifics.

Don't believe we need them. Pretty much all of them are easily translated into English through manners alone, and it definitely would translate better if they used English terms as replacements (such as Lord/Lady, Mr./Mrs., etc.). For ones like -chan and -kun, they wouldn't have to be used. I feel like many (not all) translators that stick to honourifics depend on them too much, and forget to translate the mannerisms of the character speaking. That's just my opinion, though.

they shouldn't be necessary, but alot of translators, pros and amatuers alike that if they translate said honorific makes the dialogue wierd and not flow right. In cases like that it would have been better to just leave them out completely. Iunderstand they were aiming for better localization, but noone in the west would speak that way. Ever. Similar to what DiC did with Cardcaptors. They are very clearly in Tokyo, but they never once say they are in tokyo and begin referring to it as some nonexistant city in who knows where

Sarcasm just doesn't work over the internet.

different cultures have different ways of doing things and in their culture they use honorifics... who are you to say that it's useless?

it has NOTHING to do with being a fanboy/girl... it has EVERYTHING to do with interactions and subtleties between characters... but you find that meaningless?

you read their "entertainment", for lack of a better word, and criticize it? why even bother reading it then?

to me that was a useless and arrogant comment you made...

In manga only, though. If it's about English-dubbed anime then definitely leave out the honorifics.

Yep. I find it weird when I read a series without them. There are valid arguments for and against though.

[img]http://i370.photobucket.com/albums/oo143/TurboPhoenix/FireflySig.jpg[/img]

The Japanese culture makes use of honorifics, not the Western one. Japanese doesn't tend to have as many phrases that are as specific to different things like English does.
It does have something to do with someone wanting things to be more literal in their translations (erroneously called fanboy/fangirl). If the translator is entirely unable to properly translate (which many would call localizing, which it is) every nuance into the target language without having to use transliterated Japanese (excluding the obvious made up stuff or culturally divided things), they are a bad translator. With all the synonyms and different combinations of words we can make with English, we should be able to get close to, if not exactly, the same feeling the mangaka was intending. If you need a -san, -chan, etc. to signify many of these feelings, then I really think you should brush up on your ability to communicate with the English language.

"you read their 'entertainment', for lack of a better word, and criticize it? why even bother reading it then?"
We're not allowed to criticize entertainment now? Guess all reviewers for books, movies, video games, etc. are all assholes then.
Seriously, one gives (proper) criticism so that, in their opinion, the subject media can potentially be improved for better entertainment next time, to encourage/discourage others into getting subject media, or whatever else that slips my mind right now.

I will agree that the namecalling was unnecessary (well, it's NEVER necessary) and hurt the message he was trying to get out.

THIS.

i'll agree constructive criticism is one thing... but his clearly wasn't constructive... which is why i said what i did.

so if the tl'er can't tl it to english without using "transliterated japanese" they are bad? you do realize A LOT of things can't be properly tl'ed into english right? not just japanese but korean/chinese as well. that would mean most, if not all, tl'ers are bad by your reasoning...

i see it this way... if you are a manga reader there are certain things you HAVE to know... with honorifics being one of them... if you refuse to learn it that's your problem not the tl'ers...

i'll say this one more time... honorifics show the relationships between characters and subtleties that DO NOT come across if tl'ed into english.

Mainly out of habit. I'm so used to seeing it, so it's too weird without it. But it does also feel weird if the series takes place in some not-Japanese place. Like if it's clearly supposed to be based in another country, then obviously they should not use honorifics... and it just looks silly.

I work with a translator in my group who is a strong supporter of removing honorifics from translations. He's translated manga, games, and our occasional random requests. I, being an editor and not a translator, would never call a translation bad without help from an actual translator.
So why would I call those who stick with honorifics through and through saying that they utterly necessary bad when I'm not a translator?
Because I know it's possible to not need to use honorifics, thanks to him. I've played the games with the translation he produced, it was wonderful, easy to understand, and it wasn't full of -sans, -kuns, -chans, -donos. I didn't notice when things were possible "localized". The main character acted like a derp to this guy he couldn't handle, like a ditz to the girl he liked, and other forms of awkward to the others and it was well understood.
He helped me develop and stand by this viewpoint, without us really talking about it 1-to-1. All I had to do was read his translations and compare it with the manga standard translations of today.

I will admit that we kinda force him to use honorifics in our translations because it's the "standard" and we'd probably have this weird backlash that we don't want if we decide to "localize everything." I do hope that we can do this in the future, however, in one way or another.
And I did admit that some things can't possibly be translated into English (as I noted, things stemming from our cultural divides). But those are the exceptions, not the rule.

If I was unable to change your mind in even the slightest, we're going to have to agree to disagree. I have not seen one bit of evidence that definitely makes me question my viewpoint as it has developed to today.