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 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 from Japanese to Italian. 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.

As I wrote before, I'm curious about the origin of this mistranslation. Hope you found this interesting and comment your opinion about this topic if you like. Anyway, thanks for reading!

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.