Forum - View topic

Dub or sub?

To add to what I don't like about the voice acting in the Funi dub is how the actors do when they perform a character screaming. They aren't good at it. Certain times it would be unpleasant to listen to or foul. People take shots at the show for the grunting and I bet anything that it's the exposure to the dub.

Haha, nah, I assure you that my shots at the show for this take both the sub and the dub in to account.

I'm still trying to figure out how anyone can stand to look at DBZ for more than a minute or two straight, no matter what language it's in. Different strokes, I guess.

hmm, well I felt like if I had stayed in Japan for another semester, I could've become very, very good. I left just as everything was starting to really click.

Also, tell me if you have had this experience: You drink a bit, and your Japanese gets much better. This happens to me everytime. For some reason, when I get a little tipsy my Japanese becomes much less halting, I speak it without hesitation. Don't say "maybe you just *think" you are speaking it better because my friends all told me, "wow, you need to drink before your japanese exams" lol. Now if I drink too much, I lose it completely and can't speak japanese OR english

Hyuga makes a great point, and like I've always said it's different for everyone. I've only been to Japan twice, the first time was a 6 week homestay in Kanagawa-ken, Hiratsuka-shi. The second was this past fall I was there for school studying three months in Tokyo. Each time I made every effort to not use English and I often put myself out there to have conversations with people. My host mom was great support for that seeing as she knew so many people.

The only way to TRULY test your level of Japanese is to take the Nouryokushiken (The Japanese Proficiency Exam) which is a test you pay for to take in several areas in the US at certain times and they rank your Japanese, level 1 being the highest and most fluent. I know I need to get around to taking that before anybody hires me :/

I've heard about it, and I've got some practice questions from past years (even spoken to my Japanese sensei about it).

Apparently, Levels 2 and 1 focus on the kanji more than anything else. In other words, if you can pass the Level 3 proficiency test, you don't have much more to learn in terms of idioms, vocab or grammatical functions. They probably won't test extremely technical terms.

if you're gonna watch anime in any language but the original one, you might as well mute the sound altogether in my opinion. dubs are horrible. they could replace the voice actors with microsoft sam and no one would notice the difference. there's absolutely no feeling.

not only that, but most puns, jokes and references are completely destroyed when translated.

TheVok wrote:

fokkusuhaundo wrote: would the Japanese voice-acting still be considered the show's original language? Yes. Just as with the live-action movie 'Memoirs of a Geisha,' the production's original language was English. The fact its characters were Japanese (and in some cases played by Japanese actors) had little bearing given it was an American movie produced in English.

That makes sense, 'Memoirs is a Geisha' was intended for an English speaking audience which is why they took liberties in hiring actors that weren't Japanese, but I don't think it's a stretch to say that Black Lagoon was made with the American audience somewhere in the back of the minds of the creators, especially with Geneon helping to produce the show and license it for R1. Original language or not it doesn't help hearing Japanese voice actors attempt to speak English.

I've looked into a few sites and one offers a vocab list for each level which the amount of verbs you should know between Level 3 and Level 2 is pretty amazing. But I'm hoping to take the test this year and pass Level 2. I've never actually inventoried all the kanji I know but I think kanji is fun so I'm not too concerned. I just plan to study my butt off between here and the test. I'm confident in my skills but I always choke on tests regardless.

As far as I know the only official reason you need to have Level 1 status is to become an actual Japanese citizen.

That's evil. Making people learn kanji just to be a citizen. It's not like native speakers remember all 2000.

Interesting. How many words are you expected to know for level 2?

Kanji is fun? We've got a masochist in our midst!

That's evil. Making people learn kanji just to be a citizen. It's not like native speakers remember all 2000.

No more evil than having to at least learn to read and write level 1 English in order to become a British citizen. What's the point of becoming a citizen of a country if you aren't willing to learn the language needed to live and work successfully there?

The U.S. has no language requirement for becoming a citizen