Did Android 18 become a human because of an invention from Bulma? - DB Mistranslations

As Dragon Ball was localized in western countries in the early 2000s, apart from anime and manga also other merchandise came along with it. At these times details were often invented rather than keeping the translation close to the original. One thing that came out of it was that Android 18 did become a human again - thanks to Bulma.

First off, I remembered this topic as Geekdom101 recently did a video about the fact that Shenlong couldn't fulfill the wish Krillin had after the Cell Games and that Android 18 is rather a cyborg, so a modified human, who still kept the reproductive organs which explains why she could have a daughter with Krillin.

However, in addition to that, there was a mistranslation which apparently only spread additional false information around Europe.

Information from a Panini sticker album...

It was in 2001/2002 during the first run of the DBZ TV anime in Germany when Panini released a DBZ sticker album covering the characters and events of DBZ and its movies. In the first album, you find the following quote:

German Quote: C-18 verliebt sich in Krilin, dank einer Erfindung Bulmas kann sie wieder in eine echte Frau verwandelt werden.

English translation:
Android 18 fell in love with Krillin and thanks to an invention from Bulma she could turn into a real woman again.

Means, Bulma could achieve where Shenlong failed? Anyway, what could be the origin here? The company Panini is from Italy, so it's likely that the this album was also released there and possible also in countries like France or Spain.

Therefore it's possibly not a mistranslation into German, maybe even before? But generally it seems like more made up by the creators of the album, anyway, I'm curious about the exact origin.

Another hint in the German dub

Interestingly, one line in the German dub suspiciously connects to the statement from the sticker album. In DBZ Episode 227 after losing against Mr. Satan in the 25. Tenkaichi Budokai Bulma questions why Android 18 purposely lost the final fight.

18 doesn't react to Bulma and ignorantly walks away with Marron. Following that Bulma said the following line:

German Dub:
"Eingebildete Ziege... Als ob sie sich was abbrechen würde ... Was ich für sie getan habe, hat sie also schon vergessen."

English translation:
"Cocky goat... As if it would be too much to ask for... So she already forgot what I did for her."

In this context, what could Bulma have done for her? Making her a human? To be fair, the German dialogues are often not following the original and are in some way improvised and exaggerated. Just one line before Bulma said "I cannot understand why Krillin married you" even though that was never mentioned in Japanese.

But back to the quote from above: In the Japanese the line rather seems about general worrying about the situation on why 18 lost on purpose.

Japanese Original:
な...なあに? あの態度。人がせっかく心配してあげてるっていうのに。

English translation:
W-What's with that attitude? People were worrying too much about it.

So as expected the Japanese mentions nothing about it. Anyway, the German line only makes sentence in connection with the quote from the sticker album. I thought it back then and still think the same.

On another note: The German anime adaptation was based on the French version, so possibly some dialogue changes even came from there.

Update from research via Twitter

After posting this article and asking about it on Twitter, I got some answers which will bring us closer to where it might happened. First a translation from that very anime dialogue by an Italian fan (@Kai_Loop):

ITA: Oh, non capisco. Io le ho fatto solamente una domanda. Pensavo che non si fosse sentita bene.

ENG: Oh, I don't understand. I only asked her one question. I thought she wasn't feeling well.

So that's not it, still fine I'd say. But thanks to @tomatotti86 I also got a translation of that line for French:

FR: Mais quel culot ! Elle pourrait me parler après tout ce que j’ai fait pour elle dans le passé. Elle pourrait quand même être aimable.

ENG: What nerve! She could talk to me after everything I've done for her in the past. She could still be kind.

So there we have it in the the French anime as well. As the German dub was based on the French one, it was therefore taken from there. So let's get back to the Panini sticker album, first the Italian version:

EN Translation (by @Kai_Loop): C-18 falls in love with Crili (Crilin) who decides to marry her. She will become a woman again thanks to his help.

So seemingly that was the 2002 version of the Italian sticker album was fine, but I heard something about a French version from 1994 where that error seemingly originates from.

Anyway, we got closer, but any further information is of course appreciated! Any French, Italian or Spanish speakers here? Can you check how this dialogue was translated in your language and if you have the Panini album somewhere, can you take a look if it's similar? Thanks in advance!

Super Dragon Ball Heroes Episode 13 - First Fansub Experience (JPN-GER)

Yesterday I subbed a Dragon Ball episode for the first time myself as a practice by my own direct translation from Japanese into German.

I had a day off and got the notification that the new Super Dragon Ball Heroes episode was just out. After watching it I got the spontaneous idea about subbing it. With expecting an English subbed version to be out soon I thought it would be an interesting task for me to translate the episode straight from Japanese into German.
Usually, subs for other languages (especially European) are made based out of given English translations from the original Japanese. It's convenient as the amount of people being able to translate from Japanese to other languages are rather limited. For me, with experience in the localization industry I'm aware that translations of translations often lose details from the original I thought trying it myself would be interesting.

Just for a note, I'm still far a away from being fluent in Japanese, let's say enough for daily conversations and reading mangas (even if it often takes some time, but that's a part of the game as a learner).

Anyway, as the eight minutes episode had not that many lines and was mostly about fighting I thought it would be a nice challenge as I enjoy following and translating Dragon Ball in its original.

Going through I found some lines where I really had to listen in 0.75 speed to understand exactly what was said. Despite that, with later comparisons after publishing on YouTube, I noticed that I got some translations wrong (even easy ones) and could have done better.

Mistranslations

Let's look at this line for example after Piccolo attacked Kamioren - that's what I heard:
すまんな。己技には貯めないるんだ。
Yet I'm not exactly sure whether it should be "己技", but he is clearly talking about his own attack. 
The point I wanted to go into is the verb "貯める", so "to save". But as I couldn't understand this verb form still exactly I seemingly made a contextual mistranslation like:
"Sorry. But I couldn't hold back my attack any longer." 

Like in "saving the attack for the right moment". However, since it's about the 魔貫光殺砲, the 貯める was rather about the charging process of necessary for the attack which is why Android 17 was protecting him while he charged. So it should rather be like: "Sorry. But this attack takes same time to charge."

While the dialogues between Hearts and Goku were quite good and quickly to understand, I also got a seemingly easy thing in the conversation between Zamasu and Trunks wrong:
答えると思うか?
Which simply means: "Do you think I will answer that?" What I heard was:
この耐えると思うか?
Meaning I understood: "Do you think I will endure with them?"

Just completely misheard the verb 答える here. Two little mistakes here, the rest seemed ok so far. Good listening practice.

Terminology concerns

Important for correct localization is getting the terminology of established terms right and consistent. As there wasn't much dialogue there were not too many things to look at. Maybe just one in particular: 

At the next episode screen, the 宇宙の種 is in English translated as the "Universe Seed", which would be "Universumssamen" or "Samen des Universums" as a literal translation. Sounds a bit odd in German, and I guess that's why also other translators rather used "Kern" (engl. "Core"). It's not exactly wrong, for example "apple seed" are translated as "Apfelkern" into German. Also as it's about the "Core Area" (コアエリア) which support to use "Kern" here. But this could be up for debate. Let's see how it will be officially translated in a few years when the Universe Mission manga gets a release in Germany.

Further thoughts

Anyway, it was a good practice and a nice experience working on episode 13 of Super Dragon Ball Heroes.

It was too tempting not to try by the time I had, and I showed me that I need to improve more and more to get better so I will keep going.

In case you are interested, you can watch the episode here. By the time I typed this there were around 1000 views. 

I guess I will do other episodes in the future if it fits with my schedule, so I don't feel obligated to. It's for personal fun with translations and Dragon Ball fandom.

So let's see and thanks for reading. If you find things I can do better, let me know in the comments or on Twitter.

気功砲 - Tri Beam - Kiku-Kanone - Inconsistent Dragon Ball translations in German

As the Dragon Ball franchise gets localized overseas for many years now, it's hard to keep character and attack names consistent over all media platforms like anime, manga and video games. Let's take a look at the "Kikouhou", also known as Tri Beam in English or "Kiku-Kanone" in German...

First, let's look at the actual meaning of the attack:
気 comes from "spirit", "soul", "energy" or "air".
功 means "cultivation", "control", "technique", "ability".
Combined we come to something like "Spirit Control", like the Chinese Qigong.

The last kanji 砲 means gun or cannon. So let's go with a "Spirit Control Cannon". However, the English dub and video games went with the unrelated term "Tri Beam" triggering mistranslations and inconsistency with the German attack name.

The German manga and anime went with term "Kiku-Kanone" during it's adaptation in the late 90s and early 2000s. The decision to partially keep the Japanese term is nothing new, as it keeps a part of the original taste and through keeping "Kanone" as "cannon" (砲) it's makes it a fancy and unique attack name. Why 功 (こう) was changed too く("ku") I don't know, but it's not too far off, since it's also an alternate reading for the kanji. Maybe a translator's choice as it sounds better in combination with the "Kanone" suffix.

Anyway, so the term "Kiku-Kanone" is THE term Germans fans relate to 気功砲. But the German translation in the video games failed to keep it consistent following the anime term. While the Budokai series used "Ki-Explosionskanone" seemingly another translation attempt from the Japanese original, the translation of 新気功砲 made the following translation even weirder.新気功砲 (しんきこうほう), so just the Kikoho with a "Shin" (新) meaning "new". The English dub uses "Neo" same as the German dub making it the "Neo Tri Beam" or "Neo-Kiku-Kanone".
However, the games went a different path in German: "Dreifacher Neostrahl". So literally "three times Neo beam". And seemingly the normal 気功砲 was changed to "Dreifacher Strahl" ('just' a "three times beam") is recent games like Xenoverse or Legends.

It all looks like a straight translation from the English without knowing the background of the attack. That's why I was still ok with the "Ki-Explosionskanone" in older games even though it was not consistent to the TV show.

Following that pattern 魂の気功砲 (Tamashi no Kikouhou) also received an interesting localization: "Dreifacher Geisterstrahl" ("three times ghost beam"). As this one-handed variation received its first official naming as late as in the "Raging Blast" game, there is seemingly no localized anime or manga term. A consistent localized German term would be like: "Geister-Kiku-Kanone", "Seelen-Kiku-Kanone" or keeping the Japanese with "Tamashi-Kiku-Kanone".

All these mistranslations are missing the fact the Kikouhou is the actually attack and terms like 魂 or 新 are just additions making it another variation of the attack.

Going through recent games you see a few more of this consistency problems, but the 気功砲 is a good example for what could went wrong and "get lost in translation".

Anyway, as Dragon Ball will remain for many, many years, there's still hope new games will keep their terms consistent at some point - sooner or later - with game companies and the local anime and manga translators working together...

Fanfiction story in Japanese #001: Cheelai and Jaco

 Jaco stops after another exhausting mission at his favorite space ramen place.  While enjoying his break time he wasn't aware that someone caught interest in his Galactic Patrol spaceship...

As I'm aiming to gradually to improve my Japanese I thought it could be a fun idea to write Dragon Ball short stories. This is the first one and join my ride to get better. Comments for improvement are always welcome.

「力の大会」のあとしばらく時間が流れた。地球の近くの太陽系に銀河パトロールのジャコは休憩を楽しんでいる。今は一番好きなスペースラーメンの店にいる。「最近はどうだった? ワタガシはもう監獄にいるんですか？」ジャコが聞いられた。「えー、そのことは…問題ではありませんですよ。」ジャコがおどおどで答えた。「そうですか。ではラーメンは美味しかったの？」宇宙人のクックが聞いた。「すごくおいしいけどちょっと辛いです。」「お前がこの辛味頼んだよ。」

ラーメンの宇宙船店の近くにジャコが自分の宇宙船駐車した。この寂しい星では他の人間がないはずです。でも近くの岩に女の宇宙人が待っている。彼女はスペースラーメン店を見える。「さすが、この野郎は本当にのんびりラーメン食べている。これはチャンスだ。」チライと言う女の宇宙人が自分と話した。

同時に地球の西の都にブルマとお姉さんのタイツが話している。「ブラは大きくなったね。子どもの時のブルマみたいだな。」「うん。ありがとう。でもこれは何？」ブルマが聞いた。「これがジャコからの贈り物です。自分の惑星のお菓子」「えー。そうですか。美味しいそう。でも、ジャコは今どこ？」「最後のメッセージは、えと、やっと週末だ。ラーメン時間です。」「今連絡しよう。」

スペースラーメン店でジャコの耳の中の電話が鳴いた。「今誰が？タイツ。何が今そんな重要ですか？」「ねー、ジャコ。贈り物をもらった。ありがとうね。」「ブルマだ？」ジャコがびっくりした。「いいよ。オレは銀河パトロールのエリートです。それはぜんぜん…なにが？」「外に見てください！」コックが言った。突然ジャコの宇宙船が打ち上げた。「なんだと？！誰よくも！」ジャコが怒る声で叫びた。「なにがあったの？シャコ？」ブルマが聞いた。「非常です。今切る。」「ちょっと…」

「これからなにをするつもりですか？」コックが空に見るながら聞いた。「早く、追う！スペースラーメンの宇宙船で。」「でも、今次のラーメンを作り始めたんですけど…」「しかたないです。早く、これは銀河パトロールのエリートの命令です！」「分かりました」ちょっとあとでスペースラーメンの宇宙船も打ち上げた。

「ちなみに、この宇宙船の速度はどう？」「本当に遅いです。おじいちゃんの最初の宇宙船でした。」「なに？意味は追いのチャンスはないです。とうして打ち上げたの？」「銀河パトロールのエリートの命令だったからな。」コックが答えた。シャコがちょっと考える。「たしかに、だから追う！」

同時にチライがシャコのぬ盗んだ宇宙船にいます。「やった。これはすごくカンタンだった。この銀河パトロールのバカ。じゃー、速度をチェックしましょう！」

「誰が宇宙船盗んだと思いますか？」コックが聞かれた。「しれねえ。オレが前にこのつまらない星に行ったし、悪い人捕まえたし。毎日の事だね。」「あなたの宇宙船は全然見えないから諦めようか？次の星に新しいラーメン作ってもいいのか？」「諦めないよ！でもラーメン食べたいよ。辛くないの！」ジャコが決めた。

同時にチライが他の宇宙船を見える。「これがフリーザ軍ですか？アタシに追わるの？やばい！でも、でも、アタシの宇宙船がこれより遅すぎだよ。」フリーザ軍の宇宙船が早く追った。銀河パトロールの宇宙船の中のチライが怖くなった。フリーザ軍が宇宙の最強の名声があります。「チャンスがない、終わりだ。」チライが思った。

少しあとでチライがフリーザ軍の宇宙船の中に捕まった。「あなたは銀河パトロールの戦士じゃない。どうしてこの宇宙船が一人で乗っていた？」フリーザ軍のベリブルが聞いた。チライはビビる感じで答える「休憩中に銀河パトロールの戦士から盗んだ。」「そう思った。実は最近私たちのフリーザ軍は去年の事件のせいで小さくなった。これからフリーザ様が新しいメンバーを探しています。あなたは完璧な戦士。入りませんか？」チライが渋くベリブルの顔に見て考えた「 入らなきゃ、他のチャンスはない。入らなければ、殺される。でもフリーザ軍面白いかも。」 だから決めた「はい、入ります。ありがとうございます。」「素晴らしい。では、この銀河パトロールの宇宙船はこれからフリーザ軍のです。盗むをありがとう、技師たちは調べています。銀河パトロールはくだらないけどすてきテクノロジーがあります。」チライは説明のおかげで興味があった。「面白い、銀河パトロールについて今は他の仕事がありますか？」「とりあえず大丈夫です。新しい服を着てください。この部屋に選んでください。」「ありがとうごさいます。」

同時にジャコがこの事件気づいた。「オレの宇宙船が今フリーザの宇宙船の中に。コックさん、このこと見なかった、わかったよ？本当にひみつです。」「わかりました、では前の星に帰ります。」「はい、あそこに食べよう、でも新しい宇宙船は必要です。あとでかんがえる。」

それがチライはフリーザ軍に入るの話。でももっと大きな事件が早来た。

Trivia:

• The space ramen place is the same one as in Dragon Ball Super Episode 73 & 74 (I really liked that idea （笑）)
• The story gives a connection to the beginning of Dragon Ball Super: Broly with focus on the character Cheelai (チライ) joining the Frieza army