Today is International Translation Day, and we wanted to take this time to thank some very hard working individuals, without whom we wouldn’t be able to understand the anime series we all know and love. So, let’s get to know the awesome people who make up our FUNimation Translation Team!
Name: Nita Lieu
Best thing about translating TV/film: Having pictures and sound for what I’m translating.
Hardest thing about translating TV/film: Accents.
A favorite project I’ve translated for FUNimation: Wolf Children
Name: Angela Liu
Best thing about translating TV/Film: Having a direct hand in its growth in the US! Also, to see the scripts sometimes. *_* So cool!
Hardest thing about translating TV/Film: Background noise. I want to translate everything I can, but sometimes the background noise is too mumbling (especially in some dialects)!
A favorite project I’ve translated for FUNimation: Deadman Wonderland
Name: Sarah Alys Lindholm
Best thing about translating TV/film: I love Japanese slang, and this is the area of translation where I can work with it!
Hardest thing about translating TV/film: Kanji-based puns.
A favorite project I’ve translated for FUNimation: Princess Jellyfish
Name: Clyde Mandelin
Best thing about translating TV/film: Getting to translate and learn about all sorts of new things all the time.
Hardest thing about translating TV/film: Keeping terminology consistent across hundreds of episodes.
A favorite project I’ve translated for FUNimation: Summer Wars
Name: Jackie McClure
Best thing about translating TV/film: Trying to understand each character’s unique voice and conveying that in English.
Hardest thing about translating TV/film: Weird sentence enders, ya know?
A favorite project I’ve translated for FUNimation: Level E
Name: Masako Ollivier
Best thing about translating TV/film: I like seeing people enjoy Japanese shows.
Hardest thing about translating TV/film: Translating cultural references in a way that English speakers would understand.
A favorite project I’ve translated for FUNimation: One Piece
Name: Shoko Oono
Best thing about translating TV/film: Eva!
Hardest thing about translating TV/film: Eva -_-;;
A favorite project I’ve translated for FUNimation: Eva ^_-
Name: Steven J. Simmons
Best thing about translating TV/film: Working with conversational and narrative speech, and the colorful expressions that pop up from time to time.
Hardest thing about translating TV/film: Deciding at times whether to leave those colorful expressions intact, or to translate them into something more accessible. For example, there is the expression “my light was taken from me.” Depending on the show and its setting, I might leave that as-is, or water it down to “I’ve been blinded,” in keeping with either the show or the character delivering the line (which is too bad, because it is such a great expression).
A favorite project I’ve translated for FUNimation: The underrated and overlooked Kodocha.
Name: Jack Wiedrick
Best thing about translating TV/film: Lots of the kind of crazy dramatic language that you don’t often see in print.
Hardest thing about translating TV/film: Maintaining good comic timing (not easy with subtitles!).
A favorite project I’ve translated for FUNimation: Oh! Edo Rocket (still crazy after all these years…)
A big “THANK YOU” to our amazing translators. We appreciate the wonderful work you do. If you’d like to leave your own “thank you” message for the translators, we invite you to do so in the comments!
