Animatsiya Wiki
Some of you already know about this, but I think it's about time I made an official announcement. Here's something that has been in the works for the past while:
http://editthis.info/animatsiya/Main_Page
If you would like to edit it, you can either make an account there, or (the lazy option) simply reply to this entry and wait for me or someone else to see your suggestion.
It was started for a number of reasons. One being, I noticed more and more that there are now a number of people doing translations of Russian animated films, and sometimes the same films are accidentally translated twice or even three times by different people, none of whom were aware of the other translations. So I thought it would be good to make a list of all translations of Russian animation, both to avoid duplication of effort and to give non-Russian-speakers an easy way to search for films that they haven't seen. Here it is:
List of Russian animation subtitled in English
There are currently 201 films on the list. It is possible to sort the table by English film title (default), by translator, by year, by studio, by director, by animation technique, by length, by the Russian name and by the Russian transliterated name.
Of course, much Russian animation has no words at all, and so presents no language barrier. There's a list for this, too, though I think it's not as complete yet (currently at 101 films):
List of wordless Russian animation
Finally, here's a list that will mainly be of interest to translators and researchers:
Translation of Russian film crew titles
---
Out of curiosity, I tallied up how many times the names of translators appear on the first list (mostly for solo translations, but sometimes for collaborations):
39 - Niffiwan
35 - julia2night
25 - houzdog03
10 - monsieuricon
8 - nadejg
6 - netravidushu
5 - MiaRossa
4 - noiseemitter, ValerieChatoner
3 - 0xDD, Ilya Belkin, axmxz
2 - Pseudologic, Excelenz, Peter Klassen
1 - Seth Graham, Humanophage, trueboltsfan, Artem, Lesha & Co., hykao, Lidia Kocherezhko, yeliza0veta
The company Films by Jove (which controlled the rights to Soyuzmultfilm's catalogue outside of Russia until September 2007) also appears 38 times. But the great majority of the Russian animation (that is readily available for viewing) was actually translated by hobbyists within the last two years. From what I've been able to make out, Houzdog03 and myself were the first. Though we started at almost the same time, we were unaware of each other for many months. Houzdog03 released his first translation (Here There be Tygers) on January 15, 2007, and I followed a few days later.
It looks like a little fansubbing community for Russian animation has now sprung up, about 20 years after it happened for Japanese anime. Like the situation with anime back then, there is nobody in Russia right now who is really interested in exporting Russian animation. Since Films by Jove sold their rights to the Russian billionaire Alisher Usmanov two years ago (he bought them as an act of charity, likely to repair his social image with the public, then gave them as a gift to Bibigon state TV channel), no use has been made of them. Of course, there are still people in Russia making translations for international film festivals, as there always were; once those films make their festival tour and are seen by a few people, they and the translations get put into a box and are never seen again. Any commercial international releases are not seen as profitable. And so the task of cultural communication is left to a few hobbyists.
P.S. julia2night has created a nice website called Digital Cake recently. Digital Cake and the Animatsiya Wiki both have similar goals, but there are some pros and cons.
Pros:
-more colorful, and you see an image from the cartoon, not just the name
-searchable by genre
-has live-action translations as well
Cons:
-not as comprehensive (currently only 135 animation entries, compared to 201 in the wiki) EDIT: As Julia says in a comment below, series of films only count as 1 entry on her site
-not searchable by any of the categories that are in the wiki lists, only by title and genre
-not editable by anyone except the admin, so it could get outdated if Julia stops working on it
-no list of "wordless" films
-no choice of versions if a film is translated more than once
http://editthis.info/animatsiya/Main_Page
If you would like to edit it, you can either make an account there, or (the lazy option) simply reply to this entry and wait for me or someone else to see your suggestion.
It was started for a number of reasons. One being, I noticed more and more that there are now a number of people doing translations of Russian animated films, and sometimes the same films are accidentally translated twice or even three times by different people, none of whom were aware of the other translations. So I thought it would be good to make a list of all translations of Russian animation, both to avoid duplication of effort and to give non-Russian-speakers an easy way to search for films that they haven't seen. Here it is:
List of Russian animation subtitled in English
There are currently 201 films on the list. It is possible to sort the table by English film title (default), by translator, by year, by studio, by director, by animation technique, by length, by the Russian name and by the Russian transliterated name.
Of course, much Russian animation has no words at all, and so presents no language barrier. There's a list for this, too, though I think it's not as complete yet (currently at 101 films):
List of wordless Russian animation
Finally, here's a list that will mainly be of interest to translators and researchers:
Translation of Russian film crew titles
---
Out of curiosity, I tallied up how many times the names of translators appear on the first list (mostly for solo translations, but sometimes for collaborations):
39 - Niffiwan
35 - julia2night
25 - houzdog03
10 - monsieuricon
8 - nadejg
6 - netravidushu
5 - MiaRossa
4 - noiseemitter, ValerieChatoner
3 - 0xDD, Ilya Belkin, axmxz
2 - Pseudologic, Excelenz, Peter Klassen
1 - Seth Graham, Humanophage, trueboltsfan, Artem, Lesha & Co., hykao, Lidia Kocherezhko, yeliza0veta
The company Films by Jove (which controlled the rights to Soyuzmultfilm's catalogue outside of Russia until September 2007) also appears 38 times. But the great majority of the Russian animation (that is readily available for viewing) was actually translated by hobbyists within the last two years. From what I've been able to make out, Houzdog03 and myself were the first. Though we started at almost the same time, we were unaware of each other for many months. Houzdog03 released his first translation (Here There be Tygers) on January 15, 2007, and I followed a few days later.
It looks like a little fansubbing community for Russian animation has now sprung up, about 20 years after it happened for Japanese anime. Like the situation with anime back then, there is nobody in Russia right now who is really interested in exporting Russian animation. Since Films by Jove sold their rights to the Russian billionaire Alisher Usmanov two years ago (he bought them as an act of charity, likely to repair his social image with the public, then gave them as a gift to Bibigon state TV channel), no use has been made of them. Of course, there are still people in Russia making translations for international film festivals, as there always were; once those films make their festival tour and are seen by a few people, they and the translations get put into a box and are never seen again. Any commercial international releases are not seen as profitable. And so the task of cultural communication is left to a few hobbyists.
P.S. julia2night has created a nice website called Digital Cake recently. Digital Cake and the Animatsiya Wiki both have similar goals, but there are some pros and cons.
Pros:
-more colorful, and you see an image from the cartoon, not just the name
-searchable by genre
-has live-action translations as well
Cons:
-not as comprehensive (currently only 135 animation entries, compared to 201 in the wiki) EDIT: As Julia says in a comment below, series of films only count as 1 entry on her site
-not searchable by any of the categories that are in the wiki lists, only by title and genre
-not editable by anyone except the admin, so it could get outdated if Julia stops working on it
-no list of "wordless" films
-no choice of versions if a film is translated more than once