You wouldn't really see a lot of bad subs nowadays because there's been a marked increase in quality ever since the Internet, torrenting, and anime became a really huge thing (on the Internet, at least). You don't see s*** like
even electronic brain crystal pancake elderly or mass naked child events (both of those phrases come from terrible, horrible GITS subs, in case you were wondering).
gg, Commie, UTW (Unlimited Translation Works), and Underwater are all examples of speed subbers - often they'll have a sub up within < 24 hours of the episode airing, depending on whether they're waiting for a raw to release, or if they have their own person in Japan/who gets Japanese broadcast TV to do a recording.
gg is well-known for doing really good translations when they're not just trolling the hell out of everyone (e.g., their release of episode 4 of
Hidan no Aria). (gg is also responsible for the Morning Rescue meme, and its association with
Puella Magi Madoka Magica - they included the Morning Rescue commercial in their PMMM releases. In fact, gg effing loves to include commercials with their releases. It's actually pretty funny - my college anime club and I are watching
Bakemonogatari and
Canaan right now, and we're using gg's subs for
Canaan - which has commercials for
Bakemonogatari.)
UTW is the only group I'd trust to translate any
Fate/stay night- or TYPE-MOON-related stuff (the UBW film,
Fate/Zero,
Carnival Phantasm) (even though I have gg's subs of
Kara no Kyoukai).
Then you have "quality" subber groups (at least, that's what I've always called 'em - I've also heard "late subber", dunno if there are any other terms) - they'll often take another group's scripts (CoalGirls uses a lot of gg's subs), do some editing, and then typeset to a higher-quality rip. Obviously they don't often get subs of a currently-airing show up fast - CoalGirls, for example, will sub 1080p Blu-Ray rips, which means you have to actually wait for said BRs to
release in the first place.
ETA: Still, there exist some pretty bad subs - HorribleSubs, for example, just straight rips CrunchyRoll's subs (they have like, a blood-grudge against the site), and CrunchyRoll's subs are pretty bad. Ofc., if you don't understand even a smidgen of Japanese, it's not like it much matters. Still, some sub groups simply do things that some viewers don't like - leave out translating honorifics, or translating honorifics in every single use, or getting contexts incorrect, or translating a joke in a way that makes it make more sense to an English-speaker, or translating a joke in a way that it would only make sense to someone who already understands the joke in Japanese... (this is actually why I like gg - they'll often translate a pun in such a way that it works, even though oftentimes Japanese puns make no freakin' sense unless you get a paragraph of explanation to go along with it.
There's actually a good example of a Japanese joke being translated in a way to make sense to an English-speaking viewer - at the end of one episode of
Nichibros Daily Lives of High School Boys, they end up playing shiritori, a Japanese word game that relies heavily on the fact that Japanese is a syllabic language - and yet Sage translates it pretty well. Now, if you don't understand/know the game at all, the translation helps you figure it out [basically, one person says a word, the next person has to say a word that starts with the same syllable that the first person ended with - Sage translated it so that instead of syllables, it was letters]; if you do know the game/understand the Japanese being used, the translations are done in such a way that it doesn't actively detract from the actual event at hand.)
ETA2: Sometimes, a bad sub can make for a hilarious joke, just according keikaku.
(Translator's note: keikaku means plan.)
ETA3: So****e tokiniha, hon'yaku wa sore mo ki ni shimasende****a hon'yaku-sha no yōna monodesunode, waruidesu.
ETA4: Once again, wordfilters take out して.
ETA5: I doubt any of you kids will remember it, but I like corm.
-- Griffinhart
