SFX is subbing...

Currently subbing: Happy Heroes: S17 Episodes (14/26 done)

Updates on hiatus: Happy Heroes: City of Mystery (10/26 done)

Updates on hiatus: Happy Heroes S1 Episodes (16/52 done)

Subbed episodes will be posted on my Captionfy.

Going underground to study for exams. Great timing that the official channel has taken a break from uploading for a few weeks too, so I'll be doing that too. Expect to see me about a month later (wish me luck!).

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*The official channel currently uploads a new episode every week, after which I begin work on subtitling it. I aim to have the subtitled episode up within the week the original was uploaded.

**After, I use my spare time until the next official upload to subtitle existing episodes. This is a secondary project, so if a season is being currently uploaded it is prioritised over this one.

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Finished Subtitles:

Happy Heroes Magic Laboratory Episodes

Source: Happy Heroes S17 EP14

Source: Happy Heroes S17 EP8

And with that, the duology of Ke Jia and Leng Yue has been completely English subbed. Have fun :D

Source: Happy Heroes S17 EP5

Okay this isn't a full sequel to my first translation notes post. It's still here to clarify an important thing though.

The five protagonist robot supermen are formed from a set of five mechanical stones. These five mechanical stones came originally from the five Power Stones (能量石) found on Planet Qiyuan (启原星), which is lore revealed in the second Happy Heroes movie.

Btw, that movie is available to watch for free in full on the official Happy Heroes channel, just to link my source of info.

能量石 = Neng Liang Shi = Power Stones.

Self explanatory, the characters 能量 means "power", 石 means "stone(s)".

启原星 = Qi Yuan Xing = Planet Origin.

Let me explain. The character 启 means "start, open", while the character can mean "original" as an adjective, and "cause" as a noun. Putting the two characters together, you get something that can be roughly translated to "original start", which can be simplified to "origin".

Hence, Planet Qiyuan, can be translated as Planet Origin.

In my subtitles, I'm going to go with...Planet Qiyuan. My rules for translation are normally to fully translate planet names into English when possible. But my other rule is that official translations should take precedence over fan re-translation, since it'd be like overriding the canon word of the original creators. In the second movie, they refer to the planet as Planet Qiyuan in the official English subtitles, so I'll be going with that name instead of Planet Origin, the translated name I came up with.

Source: Happy Heroes S17 EP1

Put together a little something for you all to enjoy for the holidays. Made a ENG subbed version of the Season 17 OP, because that song's pretty good.

See you later for the ENG subtitle uploads in January once I get back!

And by episode I mean the ENG SUB version of Happy Heroes Season 1 Episode 2 I put up to replace the original/official one that was blocked on copyright

I was expecting restrictions (or straight up blocked) but I didn't think they'd still "technically" let it through, the audio is fine (just can't monetize but I don't care about that), but the video footage was what resulted in the ultimate blocking lmao

Source: Happy Heroes Mystery City EP1

Hey what do you guys think of these subtitles? How's the readability?

White Verdana font, pt. 24, some transparent black box behind them so you can read them better.

Would solid black box work better? Looks like this:

Source: Happy Heroes Mystery City EP1

Notes: I'd release burned-in versions of episodes with subs, if it didn't exist in such a legal gray area. Subs of this kind don't count as transformative works (and besides, it's a Chinese cartoon. Chinese law doesn't really have that, at least not in the same way), unfortunately.

Guess I can just keep trying to send in subs through their Weibo, not like I have any better options (that gmail account has the year they signed up in it. They probably just made it to verify the channel).

Source: No Way! I've Become a Superman!? EP 2 (aka the Happy Heroes live-action TV show)

I love stupid wordplay jokes.

Source: Happy Heroes: Mystery City EP6

Dammit, I'm having another translation crisis with transliteration.

Yeah, 欧文 (Ou Wen) = Owen. The same way 丽莎 (Li Sha) = Lisa.

Theoretically, there shouldn't be a problem with this, because this is how the characters' pinyin are literally spelled out.

But from an English-speaker's standpoint I just look picky, don't I? Because it's clearly 'Owen', they'll say, and then I'll get compared to those overly picky fansubbers who kept the foreign words untranslated just cause they could! /hj

Principle requires I subtitle it as Ou Wen. Because why should there be an exception to all the other names I've already subtitled as transliterations? (Most notably the whole Jia Luo/Kalo thing)...

Check out the complete subtitled playlist here!

As of this posting, all episodes of 开心超人联盟 Happy Heroes Magic Laboratory are available with English subtitles!

Take this as a chance to (re)watch the series with more details, if you needed the support!

Looking for more subtitled works? Take a look at what else is subtitled on my Captionfy!

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Translator's Note:

Thank you to everyone who's using these subtitles. My work isn't based on viewership, but it's nice to know if I've helped anyone!

I apologize for the heavy schedule slip (I'm aware I'm even a few episodes behind on subbing the series being uploaded now, City of Mystery), sickness and exams hit me hard. It took me a while to clear out all the real-life priorities first.

This is basically how I've felt the entire time I've been subbing this. I'm even learning more than what's just in the show, because in order to accurately subtitle the science jargon Doctor Zhai uses in his explanations, I have to do research on the terms and make sure they match up with the English versions.

Like noted above, I'm very aware of the hypocrisy of my complaint.

Also, repetitive episode format gets tiring to subtitle. I'm looking forward to never subbing another edutainment series ever again.

Source: Happy Heroes: Mystery City (this text appears at the title card of every episode)

Hey, it'd be super helpful if anyone here could decipher this text /j

I still can't read Chinese handwriting...or handwriting style font...

Like the top character is obviously 神。So it must be simplified Chinese. But then it just gets increasingly squiggly as we go downwards?? That last three part character combination doesn't exist I think-

also have this incredibly blurry Careful Superman pic for no reason (he appeared for one frame here)

Source: Happy Heroes: Magic Laboratory EP23

Source: Happy Heroes: Magic Laboratory EP11

Click below for joke explanation.

Source: Happy Superman Alliance: Magic Laboratory EP8

My style of translating is to preserve as much authenticity from the original culture as possible, but honestly, even if it wasn't for that...I have no idea how I'd explain zongzi (粽子) to someone who hasn't encountered this thing.

For those of you who might recognize what food I'm referring to:

Zongzi (粽子) are a traditional Chinese rice dish, it's basically sweet rice with fillings, wrapped up in bamboo leaves and then steamed. You eat this stuff during Dragon Boat Festival (Duan Wu Jie) (端午节). Rice is pretty tasty, I personally have never been one for the fillings, ahaha.... (Sorry mom)

Translation: Discerning Eyes (lit. fiery eyes and golden pupils) (火眼金睛) of the Security Equipment

Source: Happy Heroes: Magic Laboratory EP5

Fun fact!

火眼金睛 (Huǒ yǎn jīn jīng) is a idiom which translates, literally to "fiery eyes and golden pupils". However, a few of you may recognize this phrase from something else - this phrase is used to describe the magical eyes of Monkey King Sun Wukong!

Wukong's eyes are described as having the ability to "discern supernatural beings", which we see utilized to a great extent in Journey to the West.

Nowadays, the phrase can be used to refer to a person's sharp vision, sharp enough to recognize truths and falsehoods/deceptions, like the eyes of the Monkey King. Here, Happy Heroes is using it to refer to the vision of the security equipment featured in the episode, the X-ray machine! (And if you watch the episode, you'll see another funny way this idiom can be applied too)