Forum - View topicAnswerman - Why Are Some Dubs Adapted So Much?
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NJ_
 Posts: 3009 Location: Wallington, NJ |
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A bit of an update to this but apparently they fixed this line on the DVD/Blu-ray release. Comparison: Online DVD/BD |
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EricJ2
 Posts: 4016 |
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This, basically--Let's disabuse ourselves, Adult Swim HATES anime. They've said so, with charmingly stoned passive-hostility, on many, many occasions. The old Toonami got a deal to show the old Harmony Gold Robotech and the new one got stuck with a deal to show Cowboy Bebop, thought it had a cool-looking bit of action-noir on the latter, and had enough serial-fight to string out a couple seasons, but that doesn't make them anime's friend. The only thing that attracted Adult Swim to Shin-chan was the fan community's legend for years that "Oh, man, they'd NEVER bring that over here, they wouldn't be allowed to show it on US TV!", which was a siren-lure song to the Williams Street Potheads. So, Shin-chan became Funi's biggest license to print Adult-Swim-licensing money, and that meant that any comedy Funi had to sell to AS had to be the angry "so wrong" Family-Guy humor of Shin-chan. Even if it was Sgt. Frog, and had those, quote, "boring" whimsical-fantasy Junichi Sato episodes for their 10-yo. audience. Funi was told Sgt. Frog was a "non-stop gag-ref fest", only it wasn't the one they thought they had to sell to AS, and the show tragically paid the price.
Shinesman's dub was a major, major victory in the Sub vs. Dub wars, since calling it a "gag dub" was inaccurate-- It had new translator gags in it, but they were a reflection of the original subbed gags, just with the obscure or halfhearted Japanese joke boosted or timing-improved for Western humor. (Eg. "I must live, if only to love again" = "I can't die, I've got a date with Turkish twins!") At that point in the 90's, "dubbed anime" meant the DiC Sailor Moon, which meant strange or watered down clueless localizations for mainstream broadcast-- Coastal Carolina was a major influence in teaching sub studios how to do "real" dubs of anime comedy, by getting the jokes, not dropping them for something "funnier" Last edited by EricJ2 on Tue Nov 22, 2016 7:02 pm; edited 2 times in total |
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Teraman
 Posts: 60 |
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This is where the contradiction lies. The original audience didn't need translators notes to appreciate the material, so by sticking so close to the letter of the original text you are, ironically, deviating from the intended experience. |
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Stuart Smith
 Posts: 1298 |
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Ethnocentralism is defined as the evaluation of other cultures according to the standards and norms of one's own culture. In other words, "this joke isn't acceptable for a show/game, because I dont find it acceptable based on my culture's beliefs, so it needs to be changed" The biggest flaw with that reasoning is that different people have different views. Some companies resort to marketing children's anime to adults due to content differences, like most of what airs on Toonami, and while that may not be the most profitable or widespread approach it's the one fans of the franchise will appreciate the most. Companies like Nintendo may edit their games, but other companies do not. It really just boils down to if you care about attracting non/new fans or the existing fan base. A major reason people advocating for fan translations is because they have no financial obligation to make a show, manga, or game a success like an official company would, which may influence their decision on how they handle a localization. Although I'm not sure what the original creator has to do with this argument since a lot of the time they are completely apathetic towards western adaptions. They are only going to care about their home market. Often times when the original company gets involved with localization it turns out terrible and unwanted: see Detective Conan. Fansubbers have been subbing it since the 90s for 800 episodes, over a dozen movies and specials/OVAs, until Crunchyroll picked it up. None of us really appreciated the dub localization or felt it was neccessary. And once FUNimation cancelled the dub, the only people still around were the people in to the show to begin with. The only way anyone could watch the Crunchyroll stream is if they've been watching the fansubs all this time, which is why the Crunchyroll subs follow the path that the fansubs use. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the people who have been fansubbing the show got hired by Crunchyroll to do the subs given how similar they are. -Stuart Smith |
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Mr. Oshawott
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whiskeyii
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I find it a little hard to wrap my head around how you evaluate "Joke A is totally acceptable for Culture A, but not Culture B" as ethnocentralism as opposed to the much more common "I hate Joke A because I'm from Culture B, and it's weird/disgusting/etc." If I said "The pervy joke in AA is gross and Japan has a culture of pedos", *that* would be ethnocentrism, as I'm holding up my own culture as a warped bastion of enlightenment while basically taking a dump on Japan. But to say "Hey, I know Joke A works in Culture A, but its a pretty big taboo in Culture B, maybe we should address that" isn't holding Japan up to my culture's standards, it's just me acknowledging the sometimes wide gaps in cultural differences. Because, like you said, different people have different views. But from your previous posts on this subject, I get the impression that you're more of a "censhorship is a slippery slope" kind of person, and that normalizing localization for different cultures in your mind is akin to opening the floodgates of censorship, because if you change X, what's to stop you from changing Y later on down the road, where do you draw the line, etc. Which isn't a bad concern to have, I guess, if I were more concerned about core ideas of the media I consume being tampered with. Most of the controversies I hear about are instances where Japan and the West (read: the US) just don't match up culturally, like in the instances of Poison from Tekken and Soleil from the most recent FE, so I'm not inclined to cry foul just yet. |
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strawberry-kun
Posts: 301 |
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Your not going to get the original experience regardless. To me, sticking close to the source material is far closer to the true experience than cutting and replacing lines with made up lines that some random translator thinks is clever. As for the localization/censorship discussion, it pains me that people defend censorship under the guise of localization. If you can't bring over a game, show, or whatever because of Western sensibilities, then don't bring it over at all or let someone else bring it over, preferably someone with the guts to actually release the content in a proper state. I hate it when companies essentially tell me what I should be offended by. Let me make that decision. |
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thelastgogeta
 Posts: 301 Location: London, UK |
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They only met us halfway still, Arthur Fonzarelli (a character from an American 70s-80s sitcom - arguably worse) is still in. I'm a Brit so I'm especially annoyed when they don't make clever and simple replacements like Goku thinking that Marriage is food but just throw in something that they expect every English speaking anime fan to be aware of and which isn't supported by any other part of their dub or other adaptation before we mention the source material. Looking at the second clip, since there are no flaps to match up with there is basically no excuse too and I wonder how many other cases of additional stuff were just select members of the dub team seeing a chance and grabbing it. A similar thing sort of happened with DBZ Kai's Bluray which still has the censored version of #18 blowing up "My Truck" IIRC, the key difference is that at least they had limitations for TV (even if they should have sorted everything out) but there was no reason for any scene to be way off for a broadcast dub. Anyway, I think I'd be fine with some of these alternative dub takes if they decided to market themselves more as abridged series or outtakes where they will have more freedom to go nuts too. A broadcast dub only has more room in the sense that no one is paying a ton of cash upfront for any of them (as we do for Blurays, DVDs, VHS etc), it is still lined up right next to the Japanese voice over with the assumption that it is an accurate take on the characters and story. |
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ExplorerOfDubs
 Posts: 5 |
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If anyone is curious, TV Tropes has a great list of Hidden gems in dubs:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Woolseyism/Anime 
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BadNewsBlues
Posts: 5920 |
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Sums up the rationale of whoever thought the Lupin 78 dub needed modernized dialog tempered with cheesy memes and corny pop culture references.
Neither of which is a practical idea in the grand scheme of things.
I don't think they're telling you that especially since you're not the only potential customer patronizing them. What may be passable to you isn't necessarily passable to others, it pretty much cuts both ways. |
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strawberry-kun
Posts: 301 |
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I understand that, but, ideally, that's how it should be in my opinion.
That's certainly what it feels like. Oh, isn't this content icky? You don't want this. Just close your eyes. We'll fix this for you.
That's my entire point. Let people decide. If you are offended by something in an anime, game, or whatever, then just don't buy it. I understand why they do it. Money, but it's still disgusting behavior to me. It's kinda along the same lines as 4kids for example. They were trying to make money by appealing to the mainstream little kids market, but that doesn't (didn't?) give them an automatic pass to escape criticism. |
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Kadmos1
 Posts: 13555 Location: In Phoenix but has an 85308 ZIP |
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With "Ghost Stories", the Japanese actually told ADV something to the effect of "this series isn't selling well in Japan, make the script so it will sell" (tThe 8/6/07 YT video called "Vic Mignogna and Greg Ayres Q&A Part 3" has Greg describing the script-writing process). While there was a little bit of a fan base for it in Japan, it wasn't big enough to break even.
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SquadmemberRitsu
 Posts: 1391 |
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The Prison School Gamergate joke was a bad joke for sure. But I can't help but laugh at the people who got legitimately upset over it and cried about Funi 'forcing their agenda down our throats'. But it's an irrelevant example now though because they did get rid of the joke on the Blu-ray. Though I get the feeling it's more because of the joke being totally irrelevant and dated rather than Funimation actually caring about what those 'creepshows' had to say. I mean... does literally anyone care about Gamergate anymore? Those types are more into Trump memes these days.
Though Funi isn't all bad. Sometimes the changes they make are for the better. I'm watching Maken-ki! Two at the moment and the dub is an absolute riot. The first season was as loose as you'd expect from Funi, but in Season 2 they've gone absolutely nuts and they've made a generic show a lot more entertaining in the process. Jokes about the voice actors (Ian Sinclair's character singing 'Viva All' from Space Dandy, Alexis Tipton's character referencing a 'Honey x Moka Akashiya' yuri doujin), a few less than subtle jabs at the how stupid the show is and a few clever pop culture references. There was even a Yuri Kuma reference in the OVA. I know that these shows and Ikuhara don't have a lot of crossover fanbase wise but I certainly appreciated that one No-Rin is another great one. All the references from the Japanese version were brought over mostly intact and they did a really good job of understanding the intent of the Japanese when translating the jokes. As you'd expect from Funi there's a few added jokes and pop culture references too but they were mostly pretty funny. Like in this one scene the MC is running somewhere he screams 'GO GO GO GO GO GOTTA GO GOTTA GO FAST'. I got a good laugh out of that one. High School DxD is another one but I digress. Point is, script changes aren't always bad. Sometimes they're even necessary. Just don't go full Glitter Force. Never go full Glitter Force |
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ninjaclown
Posts: 199 |
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It made the show outdated the moment the joke was made, not the other way around. No one is going to know what the hell it's about years from now. Of course it had to be removed. It was a bad decision from the start and the fact the VA had to be called back in for a new line means that writer ain't going to be working on future scripts anytime soon. 
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BringBackUzume
 Posts: 161 |
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That's funny you say that because Prison School's script-adapter actually got a promotion and a pay raise a year ago. |
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