In 2021, let's drop the extremely bizarre idea that fan translations are inherently more trustworthy than professional translations.

A short thread: I almost understand why people wind up with this perception. Here are some potential reasons:

I) If your fandom of Japanese media is blessed with knowledgeable fan translators, they may be able to apply said fan lens to leisurely comb over material for fan-oriented clarifications.

Since you mostly only see them interact with official translations in this corrective or clarifying capacity, it's easy to get the wrong impression, but I think most would admit that...

1) For every line that feels like it's worth additional by-fan, for-fan clarification, or genuine error they may be able to catch with their leisurely, elective poring over, there are fifty other lines they think are totally rad.

2) Were they themselves part of a translation with the same working conditions and schedule, they'd simply wind up writing their own lines open to fan scrutiny (fair or otherwise) in other spots.

Maybe that perspective isn't vocalized enough.

II) Holdover reservations from days in which translations of pop-culture Japanese media really weren't handled with much care. It isn't such a bygone era. (Some prominent manga, including DB, to some extent, suffer from questionable first passes.)

I feel like that's pretty firmly a thing of the past, but some of the distrust of official products tied to it has (unfortunately) stuck around. Hey, for series that really did get poor treatment a decade or two back, push for those official retranslations! I'm all for it!

III) Sometimes fans are interested in very to-the-letter, specific readings of material for factoid-collecting purposes. And fair enough, in that there are fans who can and will reword lines in that capacity, but ...

... those are almost always at odds with what a good--and certainly completely fair--translation for an actual script might be, and I feel like sometimes that perspective can be lost.

Anyway, I think it's great that there are fans who can *credibly* weigh in for additional perspective on translated material. (I'm happy to be one sometimes.) But I want to be careful about conflating that with an idea that official versions somehow aren't worth their measures.

That idea is ridiculous to me. The pros were all fans of something too, and have gone to extreme lengths to wind up putting their skills to use in an official capacity. No one's translating media for the paycheck.