Well, but that's the work of localization, which is a whole art itself.

It is quite tricky and this Shakespeare reference might be a little bit out of context...

Watching anime dubs with subtitles enabled can be interesting. I've literally seen the dub say "yes" with the sub saying "no."

The answers to negative questions are the other way around in Japanese compared to English.

"Are you not a student?"

In English, the non-student speaker would respond with "No", short for "No, I am not."

In Japanese, the non-student speaker would respond with "Yes", short for "Yes that's correct."

A literal translation would make this mistake.

In English it's ambiguous.

Source: I once said "So I guess you don't want to do the long-distance thing" to a native English speaker and she said "no" meaning she did, while I interpreted it the way you suggest and we (briefly) were not on the same page as to whether or not we were in a relationship.

My native Germanic language has a specific variant of 'yes' which is perfect for when both 'no' and 'yes' alone would be ambiguous. Not sure why not more languages have that. Japanese 'hai' isn't really 'yes' though.. so it's used way differently than you would use just 'yes'. In colloquial speech it's more common uttering various sounds instead.

> My native Germanic language has a specific variant of 'yes' which is perfect for when both 'no' and 'yes' alone would be ambiguous. Not sure why not more languages have that.

French draws this distinction; ordinary 'yes' is oui; 'yes' contradicting a negative is si instead.

Mandarin gives you a variety of options for how to respond. You can use equivalents of 'yes' and 'no', but it's more common to echo the verb in the question.

你喜欢吃辣的吗？("Do you like eating spicy food?")

不喜欢 ("[I] don't like [it].")

Here we have no need to worry about whether the question was positive or negative; if I like the food I'll say 喜欢 and if I don't I'll say 不喜欢.

It's also possible to say 对 "correct", in which case it does matter how the question was phrased.

The specific question here, 你不是学生吗 "Are you not a student?", might be a little odder than usual because the verb 是 is also what's used for a simple "yes". But for "No, I'm not" 不是 is unambiguous, and I have a vague gut feeling that 是啊 would probably be taken as "Yes, I am". And of course you have the option of continuing your response ("yes, I'm a student, I've been enrolled here for two years") if you feel the short answer was too cryptic.

Not really familiar with Japanese; but I would interpret the English in exactly the opposite way, like the Japanese version.

(Native American English speaker.)

I'd consider it ambiguous and probably clarify it like "yes you are a student, or no you are not?"

Sometimes, the same meaning has the opposite response in English and Japanese. It’s called echo polarity (apparently). For example, in English:

“You didn’t go?” → “No, I didn’t go” (agreeing) or “Yes, I went” (disagreeing).

In Japanese, you should say “yes, I didn’t go” or “yes, I didn’t go”:

行かなかったんですか。→ はい、行きませんでした。(agreeing with the negative) or いいえ、行きました。(disagreeing with the negative)

(This difference possibly shows the more fundamental difference in the cultures, where one values truth more, and one values agreement/harmony more.)

I’m not saying that’s what happened to you, just that it wouldn’t necessarily be wrong to see it.

> (This difference possibly shows the more fundamental difference in the cultures, where one values truth more, and one values agreement/harmony more.)

I'd be extremely wary of ascribing any cultural significance to the language modes here. Negation and especially affirmative/negative responses to negative questions is just extremely variable among languages. Even languages in the same language family just end up doing it differently.

Even more confusingly, in casual speech I'd probably respond to that question in English like, "yeah, no I didn't go" or conversely "no, yeah I did end up going"

Curse my fat fingers, it should read:

In Japanese, you should say “yes, I didn’t go” or “no, I did go”:

Was either "yes" or "no" clearly the right translation in context? I'm very curious to know which one was correct, the dub or the sub. Or was it one of those ambiguous situations where either one would be a correct translation of the text, but with different subtext?

P.S. For an example of when "yes" might really mean "no", I heard an anecdote. An American guy had been hired by a Japanese company to work in their offices in Japan and be a liaison to foreign businessmen. He was attending a meeting once where everyone but him was Japanese. The boss presented an idea. There was silence for about 10-15 seconds, then people said things like "Yes, that's a good idea, let's do that." The American left the meeting thinking that the idea had been approved, only to have his Japanese colleague explain to him that the key part was the silence. The boss clearly heard and understood the message that his employees didn't think it was a good idea, and the idea was dropped and never mentioned again.

So I could see a case where the character says "Yes" but the subtext is "No", and that would be clearly understood by a Japanese viewer. Different translators would choose different approaches there; some might translate the text, and some might translate the subtext. I'm curious to know if this was a case like that, or if it was a clear-cut case of one translation being right and the other one being flat-out wrong.

It was unimportant; in the subs the waiter asked if she wanted tea, in the dubs it was if she wanted coffee after her meal.

IIRC it was the DVD release of Tenchi Forever.

This sort of difference is one of the reasons I will always prefer subs.

I guess I could be the odd one out but I'm not keen on the 'localisation' efforts that replace the cultural elements of the underlying media, e.g. how in Ace Attorney ramen is replaced with t-bone steaks (iirc?), prompting the meme 'Eat your hamburgers, Apollo'

Learning Japanese and being able to pick up bits of content, its interesting to see how very different from the subtitles it sometimes is.