#if the subber had used different words for different situations i could have forgiven it tbh even though i prefer nakama

[manchasama]

I am...baffled and disappointed.

I was watching a fansub of the first few Onepiece episodes, and was completely thrown off by them translating nakama as "friend". Like, no? That is not right. Just leave it as nakama please it's so much less offputting than Arlong going "Nami is my friend". That absolutely does not work.

Then on a whim I decided to google what fansubbers would still be using nakama, only to find at some point the fandom became absolutely poisonous about not only the term nakama, but leaving japanese in at all.

"It's a deliberate troll of old fansubbers!" "They just didnt' know how to translate it so they left it in." "It means friend/comrade/crew and they should just have used the REAL word!" "They thought leaving Japanese in made them edgy and cool"

Like...y'all realize YOU sound like the assholes here? Then of course there's the people who are like "You should never leave the japanese in the translation!" purists who I just don't understand. Misconception of words aside, because that is their OTHER argument, if you want it purely english, watch the dub maybe.

There ARE untranslatable concepts, and what I remember is fansubbers used to put their heart and soul into trying to convey the concept instead of literal translations. And sometimes, leaving the original term with a translation of subtleties works better. If you are mad at the fandom for assigning it further meaning beyond that (which I never really...picked up on? Nakama has different meaning for everyone, it's not a one-stop "closer than family" term?? Literally never heard anyone say that except for the people complaining that people say that), then I don't think you like fandom at all.