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How would you improve english dubs?

fokkusuhaundo wrote:

ArsenicSteel wrote: Like I said this should be no concern for the voice talent. Their focus should be on line delivery and leave worrying about sync to the staff. The English VA is not saying what the Japanese VA said. The lines have been translated and adapted before the English VA gets the script. Nope, they have to work with what they're given and record their performance within the time constraints of the mouth flap movements. They can't redo the animation to sync with the recorded English dub nor can they somehow edit the audio to sync with the timing of the mouth flaps. Now compare that to voice acting in other media where the performances are recorded before any animation is done. No need to match your words to footage of your character on a screen, just read your lines out.

Okay then who is it that worries about the sync and match? The person spouting the lines or the person sitting down doing the recording.
The script writer focuses on creating the English script.
The ADR director records and focuses on the dialogue matching the animation. Gives director to the VAs on when to re-do lines, slower/faster/wording.
The VA acts. Will the VA have much liberty to ad-lib, nope.

There will be exceptions and there will be overlap. I am just staying what basically is done while some of you people are over emphasizing on the exceptions and overlap.

To repeat one answer to the topic question.
VAs should just be concerned with acting and not staff/production issues when they record.

TZN: Do you think that there's much difference between the regular voice-over acting we think of, like being Porky Pig, versus, doing overdubbing or ADR (automated dialogue replacement or additional dialogue recording) for anime or for airline or broadcast movie retakes?

BERGEN: Well, acting is acting. It still has to be believable. The technique is different. With anime, with dubbing, you have to do several things at once. You have to read the line, match the sync, and act all at the same time. And quite often, the restrictions in anime that you have to fit the sync basically takes the acting freedom away from you. You have to act under their parameters.

TZN: How do those demands affect your performance?

BERGEN: The restrictions of staying in sync from somebody else's performance do hinder your creativity. You're not able to give the performance of what YOU would do, because you're limited to the parameters of matching sync. That said, you have to be a superb actor to be able to do that because you're not able to be as creatively free as you would in, say, an American animation. And I think anime actors are some of the best voice over actors out there because of this. The sad thing is that they're not paid for their expertise. They should be paid, I think, double what American animation pays because of all the restrictions and all the technical nuances that you have to perfect."

***Blah blah blah***

The Overlord wrote:

***Blah blah blah***

This was concluded hours ago.
Hindering creativity is not the same as giving a poor performance. It just means he can't ham it up as much as he likes. He worded his quote very carefully as to not give the horrible conclusion you are offering. Dubbing anime is different and has some restrictions not found in regular VO work.

ArsenicSteel wrote:

The Overlord wrote: ***Blah blah blah*** This was concluded hours ago. Hindering creativity is not the same as giving a poor performance. It just means he can't ham it up as much as he likes. He worded his quote very carefully as to not give the horrible conclusion you are offering. Dubbing anime is different and has some restrictions not found in regular VO work.

No but hindering creativity can affect the level of a performance, hence pre-lay work being easier to do and it is something that can, its like been given a free hand vs. having to act with a ton restrictions on yourself.


He said dubbing was naturally more difficult noting that a VA dubbing does have to match the sync, as well as read the line and act it out, thus making it harder. How can you focus just on your performance when sync has to be a consideration?


I'm not saying you can't get a good performance out of a dub, I'm just saying its way harder to do this compared to other forms of voice acting and thus something that has to be taken into consideration.

It just seems like some don't seem to understand this as a factor that can affect a VA's performance.

Keep in mind what you feel is inane can come across as boring to others, me in this case.

Heck it seems like Steve Blum hardly dubs anime nowadays.

Or your unwillingness to reason with the other user has basically resulted in the stagnation of this discussion. Many users counter your point, the professionals who actually do the work have countered your point, and yet you insist and demand that you be right and are responding with little more than "nuh uh, I'm right and you're wrong". If this type of cyclical discussion that goes nowhere is where we're at, then it's time to move on.

What is the actual recording process like? How long does it take?

Rather than having everyone in the same room, the actors are recorded one at the time, so that you and the director can concentrate on your part. The dialogue is recorded directly onto a hard drive. After mixing, it's digitally transferred to the original Japanese D-2 tape. On the computer, the lines can be: adjusted to fit the mouth movements, reverbed, have the levels raised or lowered, and cut and pasted the best pieces of a speech. I believe I heard that recording ideally takes a day per running minute on average. This time includes auditioning/casting, formatting of scripts, checking time codes, tape and script duplications for the actors, studio scheduling and "character development." Which is what made me so surprised to hear that the entire 90 or so episodes of Robotech were done in just 3 months!!!

How do the difference in the languages affect the way lines are written and acted (in your case, and in general)? Do you have any particular insights or thoughts on the process of translating spoken Japanese into spoken English?

I hope that you get a chance to meet Shin, our script translator, because he could explain this so much better than I could. With the Japanese language being so much different than the English language, of course words have to be moved around to form a normal English sentence... some words have to be added. "Tree" in Japanese isn't necessarily "Tree" in English. Then there are the changes to make the lines fit the character's mouth movements, and then the jokes and puns and references that sometimes have to be almost totally rewritten to make sense to the American audience. The director makes a big deal out of paying close attention to the looks on the faces of the character in order to try and come as close as possible to the emotions in the lines to match these expressions.

Either your word choice leaves something to be desired here or your focus is off. I was referring to the "VAs sound bored on the commentary track" comment, not whether or not the commentary tracks themselves were boring. (I suppose some might equate the two, but they aren't the same thing.)

That said, it's not like I think all dubs are done well. Honestly there are plenty of dubs out there that could use some work. I really didn't like the Lucky Star dub, I thought the voice actors used weren't very good fits for the rolls. Then again the Japanese voices actors in Lucky Star had un-godly high pitched voices so maybe it's impossible to get the right voices for a show like that.

You know this might be a bit of a sidetrack. But do you think that alot of the coolness we see in subs is because someone always sounds a bit more mysterious and dramatic. When you can't actually tell what they are saying? Not that Japanese isn't a beautiful language .. because it is. But it makes you wonder if perhaps the Japanese see more inherent coolness and/or mystique in the english language than we do. Having trodden it into our brains groove every damn day for all of our lives.

I have lately started really examining the english language that I use and it's actually startling how much it sounds like german when you dissasociate yourself from it. Which I have always thaught of as a very dramatic language.

Well anyway enough Sidetrack just thaught I would mention that.