When I first began subbing Miracle Tunes, it wasn't a thing outside of Japan, and the only other countries to broadcast it were China and Thailand. I began my subs doing releases using my own DVD boxsets, before I found a way to obtain the HD raws and moved on to release from those.
And now that I'm almost done, I'd like to spend some time talking about translating as I have some free time in my dorm room right now.
When I started, I had decent Japanese knowledge, but zero access to the captions. My listening skills were terrible (they still are, not gonna lie). Honestly, the only reason I wanted to sub the show in the first place was because I wanted to improve my Japanese.
Now that my Japanese is miles better than when I first started, it feels a little cringe to go back and look at stuff I've subbed only to see that it isn't 100% accurate. There were also occasions where I felt that I could've translated some stuff better. So let me begin with writing about this. Most of what I'll take about will be related to things from when I first started.
I did document some of my thoughts on translating stuff, such as when I explained how I translated the opening lyrics to Catch Me! over here.
1) Dogu-Dogu Dan --> Doku-Doku Dan
This was a pretty major thing so I really need to clarify this - Dogu-Dogu Dan has always been "Doku-Doku Dan" and looking back, I seriously have no idea how I let this hiccup go through for so long. I guess I spotted this mistake halfway into subbing the series and thought it's probably not too big of a deal to go back and release Version 2s of 20 episodes' worth of stuff. Either way, it's far too late to change something so small, so it'll have to stick. Maybe you can take it as a sort of stylistic translation?
What I do know that spoken Japanese is a pain to decipher, and I definitely misheard "doku" as "dogu" a lot when I decided to start subbing the show (before I was able to obtain captions and before I brushed up on my Japanese, which was around halfway into this - I was certified JLPT N3 in Jan 2020, when I was 40 episodes in). This was even though it was a small mistake that could be rectified through a quick Google search ("poison", "toxic" and whatever has ALWAYS been "doku", and never ever turns into "dogu" ever so I can't even justify it LOL).
Not gonna lie, this is probably one of those things that'll haunt me in my sleep, haha. It's not a back-breaking issue, but I really wanted to clarify this for everyone who doesn't understand Japanese that it's always been どくどく and not どぐどぐ, especially since I know that people have used my subs to translate into other languages.
So if you see people talk about the "Doku-Doku Dan", that is why - I messed up something when I started and it's too late to change it...Haha.
2) The Emperor of Darkness, Maou
The final boss's full name and description is Yami no Teiou, Maou (闇の帝王・魔王), which literally translates to "The Emperor of Darkness, the Demon Lord". This one I'm not as frustrated about, because I've always argued that Maou is actually his name, even now. It's kind of like translating "The Star Festival, Tanabata" as "The Star Festival, the Seventh Evening", if you get what I mean. It's a name.
That said, I did have moments when I'm translating and I go "hmm, maybe I should've translated his name as Demon Lord after all" but it never really affects the flow of the story. The reasoning above is also why I sometimes translate instances of "Maou" as "the emperor".
You may then wonder, "if that's the case, why translate the Negative Jeweller's names?" Honestly, I didn't put in the time to be consistent when I first started subbing, and now that I'm almost done, these little things are becoming very obvious. That's when happens when you sub a project for the first time I guess!
That said, the Negative Jeweller's names have always been puns on medical or nuisance problems (back pains, sore feet, what have you) and it was always really fun trying to 'localize' these names. I always felt that if I didn't translate them, the English-speaking viewers would've missed out on these amazing puns...which brings me to......
3) I religiously watch TV-Nihon's subs but I don't follow their subbing style
I know how TV-Nihon does their subs. I've watched their content since Kamen Rider Decade and I know they tend to leave stuff like honorifics in. I personally have no issue with that translation approach, and even considered doing that when I began fansubbing. Ultimately though, I decided to be a little more localized.
Even then, it's a bit difficult to decide the ratio. Do I sub every instance of "Ichinose Kanon" as "Kanon Ichinose"? (I decided to just follow whatever was spoken.) I remember instances where I decided to sub "Kanon's daddy and mummy" as "Mr. and Mrs. Ichinose" because while it sounded fine in Japanese to refer to someone as "[Name][Father]" and "[Name][Mother], it just sounded super off in English. I face the same issue with "Sensei", especially when they never bother to introduce the teacher's name, because you tend to address teachers as "Mr/Ms/Mrs [Name]" and I rarely hear instances of people referring to their teacher as "teacher".
And of course, the extremely Japanese puns and episodes that would never make it to English 100% no matter how hard I tried. Honestly, I FELT it when Stomachpits (Mizuochi) said this in Episode 44:
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