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Survey: Do you give English dubs a chance?


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Ryo Hazuki



Joined: 01 Jan 2008
Posts: 363
Location: Finland
PostPosted: Wed Dec 17, 2008 4:43 am Reply with quote
Unit 03.5-ish wrote:
Emma IS sub-only, and that's one of the reasons I'm hesitant: it just doesn't feel right to have a show set in Europe (England in particular) without English acting.


How is it more wrong than an English language movie set in China (The Last Emperor) or Japan (Memoirs of a Geisha) or France (Marie Antoinette)? Although most European languages are related to each other they still don't sound similar.
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luisedgarf



Joined: 02 Oct 2004
Posts: 656
Location: Guadalajara, Mexico
PostPosted: Wed Dec 17, 2008 10:54 am Reply with quote
AirCooledMan_2006 wrote:

You could just as easily omit "senior", "upperclassman", or the honorific altogether. Same goes for the word for "junior"--omit it or use the closest English equivalent possible. This and other means of "expressing the unexpressable" puts the translator's skills to a severe test. (Another point to bring up: Indian, Chinese, Thai, and Korean languages have about as many honorific and special-meaning words as Japanese, but you won't see those in translations of films in those languages. German, French, Spanish, and Finnish also have separate nuances for male, female, etc., but you won't find those in translations of films in those languages, either! It's as if anime translators are the only people who do this, thinking that anime and the Japanese language somehow play by different rules. This "translation sandwich" ideology needs to stop, because no one language should play by different rules in ANY translation!)


Well, FYI, there's some fansubs of Korean dramas and manwha scanlations that keep as many Korean honorifics just like the Japanese ones and althorough is not manga, Spiderman India keeps many Indian stuff unstranslated because it was translated by their own creators.
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CCSYueh



Joined: 03 Jul 2004
Posts: 2707
Location: San Diego, CA
PostPosted: Wed Dec 17, 2008 11:42 am Reply with quote
Zin5ki wrote:
For reasons which I hope I need not expound upon, the accent used by Crispin Freeman did not sound as natural to me as it may have done to others. Thus I was not able to suspend my disbelief of its realism in context of what I consider appropriate for the character.

I apologise again. This time for dragging things off-topic.


Actually, this is very ON-topic since Mr. Freeman is an English dub VA there's a certain amount of hate for (ALL the English dub actors seem to have a certain amount of domestic fans that hate them). It does seem that the really distinctive voices get the most hate.

Off the top of my head, I don't know where he's from, but Mr Freeman has performed with the New York dub studios & the West Coast so his accent is possibly influenced by several factors. I thought he went with his own accent to make it a more natural performance. I just really love the enthusiasm he brings to Alucard. Plus I've pre-bought every single volume of Hellsing (tv-blood pack is still in the butter dish in my fridge-& Ultimate) so I've been with the title & his performance since what-'02? '04?

I didn't even know people disliked Illich Guardiola that much until I saw this site's review of Saint Seiya--I've always found his accent interesting & distinctive. I had to tell my daughter he was in the last One Piece box. I think the issue I have with Ocean is they're traipsing thru the dialogue sounding pretty normal to my SoCal ears & then a word pops up that they say differently in Canada & it just sounds strange so it's almost jolting. Not that I hate the Ocean dubs, they just sound strange. I actually count several of their titles among dubs I like.

poonk wrote:
I'm sub-only at this point. I used to be dub-only when I started watching anime but I can pinpoint exactly where I switched: Saiyuki Reload. I really liked Sanzo & Goku's VAs in Saiyuki and not paying too much attention to the industry aspect back then, I didn't realize that Reload going to Geneon instead of ADV meant different VAs. So that was a very unpleasant experience-- Sanzo had suddenly become Rurouni Kenshin's Sanosuke. We switched to subs after 1 episode and never looked back (although maybe we should have-- Reload and Gunlock really became a chore to get through).


If you're listening to the Japanese track of all 3 series, you DID notice the Japanese switch Gojyo's brother, right? I actually like Kosugi so it was no big deal.
But what's so sad about that whole ordeal is that it really shows up the fan-loyalty thing. Really, it's ADV that's always played fast & loose woth the translations & the dubbing. The 4 ADV actors really have little similarity to the Japanese VA's while the studio Geneon went with (was it Bang Zoom? I forget) matched the Japanese main voices amazingly well. I popped back & forth many times & even the inflections were similar in places. It's almost as if they realized they weren't going to drag ADV's cast out of Texas, so they decided to match the Japanese as much as possible (The Merciful Goddess was dead on in a lot of places)
And the subtitles matched the English dialogue far more often.
Not to mention, if you listened to the commentary on Requiem, you would have heard Matranga was going to New York so the ADV director stated had they managed to land Reload, they would have had to re-cast Sanzo.

I've always found the hate for the Geneon dub baffling. It is a good dub of the titles. The only reason is fan-loyalty to what they heard first. Crispin Freeman related this in his dub of Zelgadis that the original VA vanished on the studio (because Zel vanished in the story for a bit) & when he came in, he received a lot of hate mail from fans who wanted the original VA.

poonk wrote:

Also, around the same time as the above incident, we started watching GetBackers and found the dub pretty grating, so we switched to subs pretty quickly.


ADV switched VA's on it--I believe Ban? Or was it Jubei? I did like Akabane in the English dub, but they didn't seem to use many of their "usual" VA's in the title.

poonk wrote:

We still watched a dub here & there after that (especially ongoing titles we started out watching dubbed, like Kyo Kara Maou!) but we just sort of gradually got used to the Japanese dialogue and learned to prefer it for whatever reason (yes, I know, not being fluent in Japanese I can't say the acting is "better," but at least I don't noticed it when it's poor, perhaps?).


I love the KKM dub. (I do like the West Coast VA's) Yeah, we get Morikawa, Saiga & Inoue, but Sakurai's never really impressed me with his performances (good, just never outstanding). I really enjoy Lowenthal, Erholtz, & Marshall plus many of the support roles are VA's I enjoy (Thornton, McConnohie to name a couple)

Although the biggest issue I have since I track cast lists is the VA's use more than one alias on this title so while it's the same VA doing the role, if one doesn't know the 2 different names are the same VA's, one might think they switched VA's. Yuri Lowenthal has used 2 names on this one also & he's playing Yuri.


Last edited by CCSYueh on Wed Dec 17, 2008 12:15 pm; edited 1 time in total
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MorwenLaicoriel



Joined: 26 Feb 2006
Posts: 1617
Location: Colorado
PostPosted: Wed Dec 17, 2008 12:13 pm Reply with quote
About the Crispin Freeman/Alucard accent debate, I actually read an interview with him once where he said that he wanted to do a Romanian accent and even tried a few lines with it, but the director decided to have him record the role without an accent. Let me see if I can find that interview again so I can quote it directly...

EDIT: Found it!

JIVEMagazine.com wrote:
Crispin: [...] When I auditioned for him it was very fun because we talked about the character a lot. I almost had him convinced. I'm almost embarrassed to say this, but I almost had him convinced that we should try it with a Transylvanian accent, which is so funny because he was completely against it but I said, "Well, hang on and let me just try it!" I went to grad school with this Romanian director, so my Romanian accent is pretty dead on. When I did it, Taliesin said, "You know, you've almost got me convinced, but I don't think we can do it."


So yeah. I think sometimes we're a little too quick to blame the voice actors for a decision of the directors that we disagree with.

(Also, if you follow the link to the article, you can hear a recording of him actually doing Alucard's voice with the accent, if you're curious.)
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poonk



Joined: 05 Jun 2008
Posts: 1490
Location: In the Library with Philip
PostPosted: Wed Dec 17, 2008 12:41 pm Reply with quote
CCSYueh wrote:
If you're listening to the Japanese track of all 3 series, you DID notice the Japanese switch Gojyo's brother, right? I actually like Kosugi so it was no big deal.
We only listened to the Japanese track for the latter 2 series, so I actually didn't notice this at all.

CCSYueh wrote:
Not to mention, if you listened to the commentary on Requiem, you would have heard Matranga was going to New York so the ADV director stated had they managed to land Reload, they would have had to re-cast Sanzo.
That's interesting-- I never listen to commentary tracks so I didn't know this either-- but it sounds like I would've been unhappy either way, so just as well I switched to Japanese at that point I guess.

CCSYueh wrote:
I've always found the hate for the Geneon dub baffling. It is a good dub of the titles. The only reason is fan-loyalty to what they heard first.
This is exactly it, I won't deny it. We were just used to the ADV cast for the dub and found it too difficult to adjust to a different dub cast for the same language. If we'd heard the other cast first, we probably would've felt the same way about them instead.
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britannicamoore



Joined: 05 Dec 2005
Posts: 2618
Location: Out.
PostPosted: Wed Dec 17, 2008 1:05 pm Reply with quote
I try, unless i've seen the show already in Japanese. Some shows, like Naruto I just can't watch in english, it makes me hate the series to hear his voice.

Then some shows I try to watch in ENG i find myself thinking some of the actors are trying to hard, or their voice doesn't work for the character. So then I change to Japanese.

I'm not an all out dub hater though.
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JINROH



Joined: 06 Jun 2008
Posts: 56
PostPosted: Wed Dec 17, 2008 1:56 pm Reply with quote
I voted yes.I usually watch the dub,but with a few rare shows (Black Lagoon (when I am not watching with my Wife) I watch the sub.

The dub of which,is great to be sure,but I prefer Revy and Balalaika in Japanese,beleive it or not !.

Otherwise,I'd say I go dub,about 99% of the time.But then I buy a lot
of R1 dvd's.
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exfusion



Joined: 30 Nov 2008
Posts: 3
PostPosted: Wed Dec 17, 2008 4:44 pm Reply with quote
I voted for sub, mostly because
- not living in an english talking country, so I'm used to see everything subbed.
- Most of the time the englsih voice actor just don't give the same emotion as the original
- if something you need to be sure u are getting it right you can just pasue and read the text, needed to do it sometimes in GITS :S
- And also original is the best;)
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Zalis116
Moderator


Joined: 31 Mar 2005
Posts: 6864
Location: Kazune City
PostPosted: Wed Dec 17, 2008 5:45 pm Reply with quote
Quote:
ADV switched VA's on it--I believe Ban? Or was it Jubei? I did like Akabane in the English dub, but they didn't seem to use many of their "usual" VA's in the title.
Getbackers was one of the last shows dubbed at ADV's secondary "Monster Island" studio in Austin, rather than their main studio in Houston where all the "usual" actors worked.
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Zin5ki



Joined: 06 Jan 2008
Posts: 6680
Location: London, UK
PostPosted: Wed Dec 17, 2008 5:53 pm Reply with quote
MorwenLaicoriel wrote:
So yeah. I think sometimes we're a little too quick to blame the voice actors for a decision of the directors that we disagree with.

In light of your evidence, I shall admit that my gripes ought to be aimed at the director.

Thank you for providing that link. I listened to that audio clip.
Crispin's own sentiments of the alternative he tried to the rejected Romanian accent has made me utterly convinced that he was the wrong choice for the role.
I'm sorry if saying this causes offence, but I'd be lying if I were to say Mr. Freeman's own thoughts didn't leave me feeling somewhat offended.
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AirCooledMan_2006



Joined: 09 Jul 2006
Posts: 594
Location: Delaware, U.S.
PostPosted: Wed Dec 17, 2008 6:10 pm Reply with quote
luisedgarf wrote:
AirCooledMan_2006 wrote:

You could just as easily omit "senior", "upperclassman", or the honorific altogether. Same goes for the word for "junior"--omit it or use the closest English equivalent possible. This and other means of "expressing the unexpressable" puts the translator's skills to a severe test. (Another point to bring up: Indian, Chinese, Thai, and Korean languages have about as many honorific and special-meaning words as Japanese, but you won't see those in translations of films in those languages. German, French, Spanish, and Finnish also have separate nuances for male, female, etc., but you won't find those in translations of films in those languages, either! It's as if anime translators are the only people who do this, thinking that anime and the Japanese language somehow play by different rules. This "translation sandwich" ideology needs to stop, because no one language should play by different rules in ANY translation!)


Well, FYI, there's some fansubs of Korean dramas and manwha scanlations that keep as many Korean honorifics just like the Japanese ones and althorough is not manga, Spiderman India keeps many Indian stuff unstranslated because it was translated by their own creators.


Even so, it makes no sense to keep the honorifics and special-meaning words intact, and it also makes no sense to keep name orders in Japanese style, either. It shows a complete disregard for the rules of our respective languages, and isn't intelligible to the average viewer or reader.

If you want to learn more about this, go on YouTube and do a search for "Anime Fansub Documentary".

@ exfusion: English voice actors not giving the same feeling as the original? That's a very spurious arguement, considering that the actors SPEAK TWO DIFFERENT LANGUAGES.
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Unit 03.5-ish



Joined: 07 Dec 2008
Posts: 1540
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PostPosted: Wed Dec 17, 2008 6:20 pm Reply with quote
Also to exfusion: some dubs are actually more acclaimed than the original version, such as Cowboy Bebop, so I don't think it's end-all be-all to say the original version is always "best".
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infinitebeauty



Joined: 13 Feb 2007
Posts: 75
PostPosted: Wed Dec 17, 2008 6:38 pm Reply with quote
Quote:
That really bothers me. Some people won't ever learn or listen. Also not to rant too far off topic here, but I hate it when people compare or consider anime to be just a "Japanese cartoon" with no substance or meaning. To me, a cartoon would be something like Warner Bros.' Loony Toons, or Duck Tales, or Tale Spin (etc etc).


...But anime is a "Japanese cartoon". Just because they have expanded the art form more than America has to encompass stories of varying intelligence, quality and meaning, does not make them not cartoons. Yes, America largely produces animation for children, but how is that a bad thing? That's like saying that all comics are about Batman punching people in the face, and can't have any relevance or address social issues. UNTRUE.

As for me, I am partial to dubs. I am happy to watch foreign movies with subtitles, but I like to relax when I watch my cartoons.
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Dargonxtc



Joined: 13 Apr 2006
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PostPosted: Wed Dec 17, 2008 8:31 pm Reply with quote
MorwenLaicoriel wrote:
(Also, if you follow the link to the article, you can hear a recording of him actually doing Alucard's voice with the accent, if you're curious.)

Curious? Yes please.

Well the recording itself was pretty bad. But as far as I could tell it sounded very much like a typical Dracula voice. Very good, but very typical. I am glad he didn't play it that way.
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Unit 03.5-ish



Joined: 07 Dec 2008
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PostPosted: Wed Dec 17, 2008 8:46 pm Reply with quote
It's like...if they'd dubbed Noir (I know I'm one of 3 people who've seen the show, but it's an example) and told the US actors to use French accents, well, then the show would have been a headache to listen to. Sometimes accents don't work, especially since dub actors don't have the time Hollywood types do to perfect the cadence and pitch.
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