Dub VS sub a real discussion!

[Orga777]

I've said it before, I'll say it again. Subs take away from the experience, distract you from what's happening on screen(especially in a rapid pace conversation) and are often so poorly written that you're losing valuable plot points. If you want to walk away from an anime episode having understood roughly 70% of what went on and miss dozens of lines, go for subs.

Say what you will about dubs being awfully preformed, at least some proof-reads the transcript first! It still may be goofy, but that's because the anime you're watching is inherently goofy, not because someone translated Japanese.

Really? I don't miss much of anything and I do Subs all the time. Heck, I got so proficient reading Subs that I just have to glance at them for a moment and know exactly what was said usually, AND still notice what is going on during the scene. Not really that hard to me.

Also, the dialogue can be so heavily edited to make it work for Western Audiences that the original meaning is completely lost. That is worse than listening to a bunch of under-paid and over-worked voice actors try really hard to emulate the sound of the Japanese actors to the point where it comes off as ear splitting.

 

[aceman67]

Depends on two things really

1) How tired I am. This determines how much energy I spend paying full attention to the anime in question. If I'm tired, I'm going to turn the English VO on and veg out.

2) How annoying is the VO cast. There are some really good VO out there, and then there are ones that just get on your nerves. For example, I love Ai Yori Aoshi, and the Japanese cast was phenomenal, but Michelle Ruff's portrayal of the main character Aoi Sakuraba just grates on my nerves. Her tone of voice just didn't fit the character.

The opposite is also true. I prefer Tiffany Grant's portrayal of Asuka in Evangelion over Yūko Miyamura, and this is coming from someone who was watching Evangelion long before ADV picked the series up for an English dub.

 

[Olas]

Normally I would say subtitles, but if we're talking about anime, I can't think of any reason not to dub since modifying their mouths a little would be super easy. Only exception is if the anime is actually set in a foreign land with a different language and you want it to seem authentic.

When playing Metro Last Light I played it in Russian with English subtitles because it just felt more real.

 

[Roboshi]

Well I'm dyslexic to the point that a sub would really hamper my ability to know what is going on, as in, the text would be gone before I was done reading let alone allow be to see the visuals. So I'm stuck with Dubs.

But here's another question that's on the same page so to speak;

How do people feel about subs AND dubs when it comes to the decision to either leave or substitute a japanese saying or slang? After all a joke about Kappa could be lost on 95% of western audiences.

 

[Fdzzaigl]

Every time we have one of these subs always win in the end. You say "of course" the Cowboy Bebop dub is good, I think "of course" it's shit when compared to the original voices. It's all about opinion really. I think most of us prefer subs because it's a way of sticking closer to the original thing.

Pretty much this.

I hate all (serious) dubs indiscriminately. Even though a select few are "not shit", they still don't ever come close to the original for me.

I'm fairly sure you will find no one (except small children) from a country like Belgium (Dutch speaking part) or the Netherlands who would prefer dubs either.

So ultimately it comes down not just to individual preference, but also on how much your language group experiences different / foreign languages being used.

 

[Ishigami]

Anime? Sub all the time, no exceptions.

The main reason I prefer subs in Anime is that the Japanese voice actors transfer the actual situation and character way better than any dub I have seen to this day.
Dubs sound and look mostly too disconnected from the video side of things.
For example if a character lets go of his battle cry or is crying the foreign voice actors never sound convincing like they are holding back or are not really invested in the scene while the Japanese voice actors sound indeed absolutely grounded in the scene.
Then there are voices itself. You attach a certain sound of a voice to a character image (even if reality may disagree for example Leonardo DiCaprio German voice actor looks absolutely nothing like Leonardo DiCaprio, yet I think his voice fits spot on) and I find myself disagreeing with a lot of the voices picked for characters in Anime. You know for an extreme example an overly deep voice that would fit a mid 40 bulky guy for what is basically still a teen in the Anime.
Then I think there is a difference in sound equipment or recording technique. I mean I have no insight on the recording in Japan or any western nation but the sound from Japan, if I have to put into words, sounds softer and way more embedded in the video than a western dubs which sounds usually really fake like not belonging to the video.
To put differently: You know the visual Soap-Opera-effect? Well the Japanese dub is like the image quality of a cinematic movie while the western dub is like the visual quality of a Soap Opera.
This kind of fake.

Mind you this is usually only true for Japanese Anime. I don?t know if it is the budget difference but for example the Disney movies I have seen in English (English is not my mother tongue either after all) are fine and so are for example the live action movies in German (my actual native language).

 

[cathou]

i've always wonder how i can appreciate more the talent and the emotion of a voice actor that i dont even understand the language.

But like some have said, it all come down to the talent of the voice actor. My first language is not english. i understand fairly well english, but there's a delay of a second or two in my head to translate what i read or heard in english. so i enjoy more movies and tv show if they are dubbed in my language. and honestly, we have very good voice actor here. most of them are actors and do local movies, and dub. they know what they are doing, the translators know they are doing, and i think we have very good dub of almost every movies available.

the only things that may thick a little if you watch a lot of movies, is that most actors are doing more than one actor voice. so the guy who's doing johnny depp is also the guy who's doing tom cruise, and also the guy who's doing ezio voice in Assassins's creed 2. so you recognize the voice. but after 700 movies dubbed, i guess he know what he's doing !

also sometimes we get dub from france and they are always very different from the one we do here. i can almost always notices when they are from France, and they are mostly crappy honestly

 

[DarkhoIlow]

There is absolutely no contest..when it comes to anime I watch everything subbed without question. I like to watch them how they were intended to be heard, from the studios that created the originally with their respective VA's, director, composer & other staff. I have learned enough japanese words from watching anime that even if I alt tab out of the anime for a few seconds I will still understand what they are talking about.

Now that I think about it, it has been the same for pretty much all media (except my own language which is exception and I would rather have an english version over a romanian "dub" when it comes to technology).

Movies I always watch them in their respective languages. I rarely watch foreign movies, but when I do..I always choose the original dub with subtitles.

Regarding games..always english (the only exception being that I switch to japanese audio when the games are JRPG's or made by Japanese studios). If I had to choose to play a game in my own language vs not play the game at all...I would choose the latter (yes my language is that cringy to me when it comes to video games/media/technology).

 

[Yves]

I think my love of terrible kung-fu movies has terribly skewed how I view dubs in general, but I lean towards subtitles for anything that isn't in English, cartoons and Japanese media or not. It's so jarring in live action films where the lip movements are completely unrelated to the dialogue, and often the lines are worded strangely or information is selectively cut or added due to time constraints. Plus, growing up on VHS you had to choose between sub or dub before you bought it. It's not like I could sample the dub voice to see if it was good so subtitles became the safer choice. Plus a lot of cartoons that got localised were aimed at children, and the subtitled versions were uncut while the dubs were heavily edited in more than just the soundtrack. Finally, a lot of the stuff that was localised was extremely low budget and didn't have a decent team working on it. Nothing was as disappointing as a child as saving up for something that looked cool in the catalogue and receiving something that sounded like this (not that this was a masterpiece in Japanese either):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MURDGxx7FJo

To me, dubs were risky and subtitles taught me to read faster and retain more of the information. I think kids growing up now are lucky to have a much better selection of English voice talent as a result of the growing popularity of cartoons amongst young adults. Older fans are more apt to notice terrible acting and as a result, a lot of companies have really stepped up their game. I think it's swiftly becoming a moot point over which you'd rather watch, which is for the best.

 

[stringtheory]

How do people feel about subs AND dubs when it comes to the decision to either leave or substitute a japanese saying or slang? After all a joke about Kappa could be lost on 95% of western audiences.

In that case, in subs I'd prefer they keep as close to the original saying, joke, pun, or slang as possible and put in a translator's note quickly explaining it. For dubs, find the closest thing possible in the language it's being translated into, giving as much leeway to the translator so that the original intention is still there. (jokes are still funny) Phoenix Wright games are probably one of the better examples of a imperfect translation that still works really well.

 

[Virtual Boy]

Subs unless it's Ghost Stories.


In which case dub.

This guy knows what's up.

 

[Virtual Boy]

I used to only watch dubs because my exposure to anime was pretty much only from shows aired on Cartoon Network and Adult Swim back in the day. Also, I just hated having to read everything.

However, recently I started watching One Piece on Hulu which only had the first 20 or so episodes dubbed, and by the time I finished those episodes I was far to into the the show to just stop so I continued on with the subs. At some point the dubs returned and I started up the episode with the English voices and realized how horrible they were and when back to the subtitles.

 

[Grumpy Ginger]

I generally go for subs but a useful rule of thumb for me at least is that if the show is a shonen or aimed at younger audiences the dub has a much higher chance of sounding bad while seinen i.e cowboy bebop, ghost in the shell and the like have a higher chance of sounding good. I wonder though if this is more due to the original dialogue in shonen stuff being highly grating in the first place and we just don't pick it up as English speakers.

 

[infohippie]

I don't even bother checking if a dub is available, I watch subbed only. There are a few reasons for this, one of which is that subs are almost always much closer to the original dialogue with less Westernisation. Another is that as a non-American English speaker I find most American accents kinda grating and annoying, and they DEFINITELY sound very out of place in a non-American show. Another reason is that I am learning more things about the Japanese language itself as I hear it spoken, and quite often I hear something in a subbed anime and think to myself "Oh! So you can use (phrase) in that way to mean (this)?"

 

[infohippie]

Well I'm dyslexic to the point that a sub would really hamper my ability to know what is going on, as in, the text would be gone before I was done reading let alone allow be to see the visuals. So I'm stuck with Dubs.

But here's another question that's on the same page so to speak;

How do people feel about subs AND dubs when it comes to the decision to either leave or substitute a japanese saying or slang? After all a joke about Kappa could be lost on 95% of western audiences.

For subs, I think slang/puns/etc should be left in exactly as-is. If it's something really obscure then a translator's note can be added, but something as common as knowing about the general use of honorifics, commonly known legends such as kappa or oni, or something else similarly well known, then I don't think it's unreasonable to expect the audience to already know it or at least be willing to put in a little research themselves.

For dubs, well, TBH I don't really care either way.