Lost in Translation: Controversial Subtitling Takes Anime World by Storm
Crunchyroll receives backlash over subpar subtitle quality in controversial new anime, The Yuzuki Family's Four Sons
While the arrival of a new batch of seasonal anime is usually exciting for the community, some fans have expressed concerns about the subtitles and translations of one of the new series currently streaming on Crunchyroll, The Yuzuki Family's Four Sons. The anime adaptation of Shizuki Fujisawa's popular shojo manga began airing on October 5, and many anime fans who started watching the series noticed something strange about the subtitle quality. They turned to X (formerly Twitter) to voice their concerns.
Yami ReiRei (@LossThief on X) posted about the poor quality subtitles, sharing screenshots that revealed a lack of punctuation and an overly literal translation. The post gained enough attention to spark a discussion suggesting that the episode may have been translated by a machine. Although there is no official confirmation regarding this claim, the evident lack of quality is certainly alarming.
The Yuzuki Family's Four Sons' Poor Sub Quality Raises Bigger Questions
After receiving complaints about the episode's subtitles, Crunchyroll swiftly removed it from their streaming service and later re-uploaded it. On Thursday, Crunchyroll also eliminated the series from their "Fall 2023 Anime Season Lineup" and "Newly Added Anime" pages. Regrettably, the new upload had the same translation and subtitles, which the community noticed quickly. This incident remains unresolved and has raised questions and concerns about the quality of the series' translation, and whether it was an isolated occurrence or a more significant issue.
Furthermore, although Crunchyroll has not officially confirmed whether they used machine translations for the first episode of The Yuzuki Family's Four Sons, the allegation has fueled the ongoing debate about the ethics of using AI in creative industries. As of Thursday, October 5, Crunchyroll has yet to address the issue. However, Ani-One Asia, an anime streaming company in Southeast Asia, has also licensed the series and released episode 1 with their own English subtitles, which have fewer errors.
Source:: @LossThief on X.
