Forum - View topicAnswerman - Is Anime Translated Faithfully In Other Languages?
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Animechic420
 Posts: 1727 Location: A Cave Filled With Riches |
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A lot of times when I listen to the JS, it will come off as sounding kinda boring from when I hear the ED. That's just me, though.
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mgosdin
 Posts: 1302 Location: Kissimmee, Florida, USA |
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Having some fluency in Spanish & German, as well as having learned English in Southeastern Oklahoma ( Very nearly another language in itself. ) and now a student of Japanese, I can see where the translators for other western languages could easily throw their hands in the air crying, "No Mas!".
Mark Gosdin |
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Valhern
 Posts: 916 |
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In (old) Latin American dubs, it was common that they would use more than one type of script. I think that for Saint Seiya they used a French one (sometimes with VERY bad translations of it), instead of the English one, which cut away most of the original dialogue.
Other anime show a clear mix of Japanese and English or other. For example, Shaman King retains all Japanese names for characters, Hao Asakura doesn't become "Zeke" like in English, it also mantains the Brave Heart insert song. Others, like Yu Yu Hakusho, also mantain techniques as far as it's convenient, for example, Rei-ken is literally Spirit Sword in Spanish, but Reigan (Spirit Gun) remains Reigan, but Rose Whip is translated to Spanish. The Jao Ensatsu Kokuryu ha is a funny example, since in all the script they avoid saying Kokuryu ha when they refer to the technique and they call it "Black Dragon Impact", however Hiei formally calls it in Japanese form. Pokémon is another curious case. If I'm not wrong, they also use both Japanese and English, since the English dub clearly has different lines than the one in Spanish. It's main difference with the European Spanish is that it retains all English names for cities, characters, etc. except when there can be a good translation of it; also, and more importantly, they change the name of the moves. Examples: Shadow Ball (English games) > Bola Sombra (Spanish games) > Bola de Sombras (Latin America). But this is my favourite: Thunderbolt, in Spanish games, is Rayo, in the anime it's called Impactrueno in LA. However, Thundershock is Impactrueno in Spanish games, and in Latin America they just used to alternate between Impactrueno and Atactrueno, nobody cares since they look the same x) Most of times (and I agree) the Spanish names are so straightforward and almost look like broken translations, so I prefer some changes...We don't talk about how they translated Close Combat in the games. Just...don't. |
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Just Passing Through
Posts: 276 |
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It's cheaper and more convenient to translate between similar languages than dissimilar, so I can see why translating into other languages with a Latin root from English would be preferable for publishers than from Japanese to each one. It doesn't always work
For the UK release of Bakuman Season 1, Kaze Entertainment used the French dub/sub script, and cheaply translated that into English. The result was binworthy... http://www.uk-anime.net/forum/showpost.php?p=286472&postcount=7 |
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FackuIkari
 Posts: 411 Location: Argentina |
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I remember that in the Latin American dub for Rurouni Kenshin they always said that Himura's sword had no edge and I, as a kid, believe that to earth, fastfoward to the release of the live action movies and I find out that was big lie, it had an edge it was just backwards so yeah, sometimes the Latin American dub can be pretty wrong and make no sense
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HeeroTX
Posts: 2046 Location: Austin, TX |
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How many companies are there that only distribute in (for example) South America (the continent specifically)? It seems like if a company has "worldwide" distribution rights or is distributing (for example) in the USA & Mexico, they would use one script for both. Or, in a "related" way, it seems like if one company had the "English" distribution rights and another had the "Spanish" rights, it seems like the latter would coordinate with the former in order to have a consistent version to sell to Spanish speaking people in North America. With FUNi and Sentai both in Texas and a large Latin population in CA, it seems like you'd give some thought to crossover appeal between the US and Mexico if nothing else.
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Actar
 Posts: 1074 Location: Singapore |
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The Chinese anime dubs for CCS, Digimon and more that aired in my country were really accurate. Uncensored with the original music and everything.
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Merengues.Pop
Posts: 22 |
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Yes, in retrospective, they were different but I do believe some were directly translated; the case in note being Sailor Moon, back in the 90's it aired in the anime block for children, but unlike the english and french versions, Sailor Uranus was not a dude or the cousin of Sailor Neptune which were the cases in other localizations, and it was not censored that they were an item... Sailor Uranus was also called Haruka instead of Amara or the weird French name and the version. Same goes for Pokemon, although it was also localized by 4kids, it was not the same since again, I am absolutely certain that the episode of the Safari Zone aired at least once over here. I do remember how the bunch of Tauros were captured and didn't just popped out of nowhere. As for Netflix dubs, the same case applies, although the subs and sub is clearly made out of the English version, it is not a carbon copy, many names are kept in their japanese form or given a translation that don't throw you off completely. Which is more evident in Knights of Sidonia and Seven Deadly Sins, but can also be seen in Madoka Magika and Darker than Black's dubs. |
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GEO9875
Posts: 202 |
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I believe that the latin american sailor Moon dub actually surpassed the episodes from the english DiC dub, i wonder what translation source they used for those episodes...
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Lactobacillus yogurti
 Posts: 844 Location: Latin America |
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As far as I remember, Latin American dubs in the 90's were based on Spanish/French/Italian translations first, since series like Dragon Ball, Saint Seiya, Captain Tsubasa (which didn't make it to the USA) and Sailor Moon were aired first here. That's why soundtrack-wise, and translation-wise they had little or nothing to do with the USA versions. I'd say that by 1996-1997, we started using USA versions.
I remember watching Sailor Moon in Spanish way before I saw it in English. But Digimon gave us quite a contradiction: English names, but with the Japanese soundtrack, and a more serious tone to the script. Mind you, most of the dubs in Latin America come from Mexico, so some series will have some slang. Case in point being Pokémon, which has taken it to some extremes (particularly with James). Venezuela comes/came at a close second regarding dubs, with them working on most of the Animax dubs: FMA, FMP, Samurai 7, Gantz, Hellsing, etc. Chile, Argentina and Colombia do a little dubbing too (Colombia worked on Rurouni Kenshin, Kaleido Star and Hunter x Hunter), but Mexico is the frontrunner in dubbing. That's about it. |
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Knoepfchen
 Posts: 698 |
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As an English>German translator who works for several subtitling companies, I can confirm that Japanese media (not just anime) does not always get localized by people who speak Japanese, ultimately causing lots of important nuances to get lost in translation. Companies specializing in anime localization for physical releases, however, tend to go directly from Japanese to German.
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maximilianjenus
Posts: 2862 |
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oneof the reasons is that mexico has the most neutral spanish, even more neutral than spain's ; partly because teh country is also divided in zones, so mexican dubs can't use mexican slang as it would be annoying to even mexicans; second place in neutral ness is chilean spanish, but that one comes out as too gentle and educated and that's not always what you want in your cartoons. Also, the people udbing anime are the same people who dub live action shows. |
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BadNewsBlues
Posts: 5914 |
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This isn't fight club spill the beans....for us less factually educated but curious souls 
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ninjamitsuki
 Posts: 590 Location: Anywhere (Thanks, technology) |
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I know in the 90's some of the dubs were completely different. The English dub of Magic Knight Rayearth was one of the only dubs that actually kept the Japanese names, all of the other dubs (which came before) used the same "international" names... And in the original Italian dub of Slayers they changed Gourry's name to Guido for some reason. Another funny trivia is that in the French dub of Trigun, in the scenes where Vash speaks French he speaks Italian instead.
And people keep telling me there was a censored Portuguese dub of Fullmetal Alchemist in Brazil, but I can't seem to find any footage of it... But people keep telling me about it. |
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Valhern
Posts: 916 |
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Well, fine. Close Combat, in the Spanish games, it's called "A bocajarro". Now, what the hell does that mean? If we retranslated that to English, it's something like "Point-blank". On one side, it does mean that the move is related to "get closer"; but it's not specific about what it does, and truth be told, to us it sounds TREMENDOUSLY stupid. It's as if the move was named "Zam! In your face!", something like that. In the anime, in Latin America, it's called "Combate Cecano", a sort of transliteration of Close Combat. In my opinion it should be "Mano a Mano/Cuerpo a Cuerpo" (Hand to hand/One on one) |
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