by UncleMilo » Sun Sep 08, 2002 1:24 am
While I dislike dubs, I have to agree with Amanda as well.
When converting from one language to another, there is always going to be a loss in the translation.
My friend Neil is a professional translator and has done the subtitles on a LOT of anime releases in the US.
He knows how to take a line in the Japanese and best translate it into a line that would best express the meaning of the line in a way that we would say it. It's all about knowing the ins and outs of both the Japanese language and thw English language. We are, after all, two completely different cultures.
I also know many voice directors... and their job is to change things from the written word to the spoken word. You may not realize this, but there are ways of saying thing that work well when written, but not as well when spoken. Some voice directors are very attuned to this and will change lines to sound more "spoken" than "written"
One voice director I respect says "if the dub has the same lines as the sub, then you've probably got a bad dub."
However...some voice directors take HUGE liberties with the script and that is also bad...
Of course, there are so many other things that happen that can ruin a translation on both the sub and dub levels (moreso on the dub side)
You can get execs from US or Japan coming in and messing with things.
You can get translators who don't understand important things they need to know about the title.
Here's an example...
My friend Neil did the subtitles for "Ghost in the Shell". At one point in the movie, a character quotes the Bible... and Neil recognized the quote and took the exact line from the Bible itself for the translation (because the Japanese translation of the line was a little odd compared to the actual quote).
Neil's subtitle script was the basis for the dub script... but the voice director apparently didn't recognize the line as being a quote and changed the wording to something else...
This is bad, because the significance of the character quoting the Bible is lost if you don't even have the damn quote write and just act like it's any ol' piece of dialougue.
There are so many stupid things that go on...
Oh yes... sometimes lines get mangled so that the synch will be better... and that leads into my whole anger against people who actually think synch is such a big deal. I couldn't care less how well the lines and the lips synch up and I think too many people are a bit too uptight on that issue.
Anyway... just thought I'd rant a little.
-Uncle Milo
There are two kinds of people in this world:
Those who divide people into two kinds of groups
and those who don't.