Dubbed anime. Why is it so hated?

[Drakmeire]

go watch the dub of gantz. THAT is why people hate dubs. another reason may be that Japanese translates pretty badly into english so hearing actors spout directly translated lines can be a little cringe-worthy a good example would be funimation's dub of fullmetal alchemist, which is amazing but the words are often simplified to be more accurate to the original japanese. leading to everything sounding a little dumbed down or just awkward one case being the word "baka" is a fairly string insult in japan but it directly translates to "idiot" making it sound a little strange when Light screams "Matsuda! you idiot!" after being shot in the hand (where as in the sub he said some MUCH harsher words) this isn't always the case but often studios will only change a few words around to make the speech sound more natural but leave some fairly awkward lines intact. cue al yelling at edward during a fight in full metal alchemist "run, run you idiot! he's going to kill you" then after the fight "You idiot, why didn't you run? *arm breaks off* OHHH great, now my arms broken off because my brother is a BIG FAT IDIOT!", this just comes out sounding very odd and out of place in a scene like that, the biggest problem I have found though is puns, azumanga daioh was pretty bad at this because many gags in the show come from the mixing up of word pronunciations a perfect example of this was Tomo following Yomi around with a box of "Comphski" (I don't know how to spell it but bear with me) and purposely mispronounceing it's name to sound like the word "penis" in Japanese. the dub could not do this and just had tomo saying "look, comphski, look it comphski".
in the end some dubs are great but it really depends on what series. dispute my complaints fullmetal alchemist is my favorite dub because of how appropriate the characters voices are, the japanese version's voices are a little too high and sound too young at times. and the less said about the original dragonball voices, the better.
I tend to watch both and see which I like. if you need to be versed in the culture beforehand and think all the voices sound cooler in japanese, go sub, if you don't feel like reading and think the english voices are well done then go dub.

 

[Naheal]

Some dubs are shit. I'm looking at you, Sailor Moon. Not all are, however.

 

[y1fella]

to my face

Their could be difficulty with that. You see I live in Australia (not Austria) and chances are you live America. Or possibly europe. Whatever most likely overseas.

Come over to Israel we promise not to kidnap you.

2 things.
One: "we promise not to kidnap you" is not at all reassuring.
Two: are you willing to pay for the return air tickets?
Also your avatar is creepy.

 

[Sacman]

Most of them are crap but I still prefer to watch it in my own language anyway...<.<

 

[Dark Knifer]

Because dubbed often leads to censorship and the voice actors are a long way off the japanese equivilent. The few that do it well are worth watching though, like death note.

 

[Swifteye]

I always prefer dubbing because I don't know the japanese language and I don't like reading the dubs seeing as I do four other things while watching something. But I don't watch a lot of anime so maybe I'm missing the annoyance or maybe I don't like japanese stuff enough or maybe I find japanese voices just as annoying as american ones.

 

[NeutralDrow]

The questions in the title. Is it because of frequently poor vice acting and scripting.

Yes. There are sometimes preferences due to authenticity, admittedly, but...

... on a bit more rare of an occasion the translation itself will simplify the story and characters to a point of the story's complete ruination. Sometimes this is not the case. Usually it is.

I'm actually quite enjoying one of those non-cases, at the moment. Negima!? actually has a great dub once you get past the mispronounced names, mainly because they took the script and made it fantastic. I'd say it's a lot less literal than the subtitles, but...it's not so much that the subtitles are literal, it's that they're accurate and comprehensible, but the Japanese script itself is surprisingly boring.

Strangely, I have the same feeling about the manga. The Del Rey localization is fantastic (and their habit of including translator's notes is wonderful). There's more than one reason why I prefer the official English release to online scanlations...

And while I'm at it anyone care to explain why there are so many fans subbed animes on the internet?

Because most stuff isn't going to be released outside Japan. Or is going to be released much later than people want to wait.

Some dubs are shit. I'm looking at you, Sailor Moon. Not all are, however.

Aww...Sailor Moon's wasn't shit, really. At least, there's far worse out there, only one or two characters' voices made me want to claw at my ears, and the utter cheesiness of a lot of it was kinda charming.

...changing the attack names was a little more unforgivable, yes, but they eventually came around on that (and bless them for it; "Sparkling Wide Pressure" and "Shining Aqua Illusion" were far better than the alternatives).

...and his name is Endymion, goddammit.

 

[Zyxx]

Because they're mostly terrible, probability of censorship, etc. etc. Due to the sudden explosion in anime popularity over the past decade or so, we get a significantly higher volume of it: unfortunately, the ratio of good to bad dubs has remained fairly constant (1 : X, where X > 9000)

As for the frequency of fansubs, it's because people love their anime and love to share it, and fans can enjoy shows they might never otherwise get the chance to see.
(Of course, TRUE fans always support the creators when they can...)

Fansubbing is also a really good way to practice your Japanese.

 

[mr_rubino]

The questions in the title. Is it because of frequently poor vice acting and scripting.

Yes. There are sometimes preferences due to authenticity, admittedly, but...

... on a bit more rare of an occasion the translation itself will simplify the story and characters to a point of the story's complete ruination. Sometimes this is not the case. Usually it is.

I'm actually quite enjoying one of those non-cases, at the moment. Negima!? actually has a great dub once you get past the mispronounced names, mainly because they took the script and made it fantastic. I'd say it's a lot less literal than the subtitles, but...it's not so much that the subtitles are literal, it's that they're accurate and comprehensible, but the Japanese script itself is surprisingly boring.

Strangely, I have the same feeling about the manga. The Del Rey localization is fantastic (and their habit of including translator's notes is wonderful). There's more than one reason why I prefer the official English release to online scanlations...

And while I'm at it anyone care to explain why there are so many fans subbed animes on the internet?

Because most stuff isn't going to be released outside Japan. Or is going to be released much later than people want to wait.

Some dubs are shit. I'm looking at you, Sailor Moon. Not all are, however.

Aww...Sailor Moon's wasn't shit, really. At least, there's far worse out there, only one or two characters' voices made me want to claw at my ears, and the utter cheesiness of a lot of it was kinda charming.

...changing the attack names was a little more unforgivable, yes, but they eventually came around on that (and bless them for it; "Sparkling Wide Pressure" and "Shining Aqua Illusion" were far better than the alternatives).

...and his name is Endymion, goddammit.

No, he's... King of the Earth.
(Also: 1992. Also: Canada. Also: Serena and Queen Serenity were in Prom Night 3. Serenity told Serena to shut her ****ing mouth, *****. That last one has no bearing, but still, it was awesome.)

Fansubbing is also a really good way to practice your Japanese.

At the expense of your English. =P

 

[kouriichi]

It is mostly from the bad acting. But every now and then, things get lost in translation.

Insted of "We must reconstruct is lower region.", it becomes, "He needs an artificial anus!"

 

[Direwolf750]

poor voice acting, loss of original context, attempted joke translations, things that people decide to change for culture, political, or religious reasons. there are reasons innumerable.

 

[Amethyst Wind]

Bad voice acting is not the main reason for this, there are plenty of western-made films with western actors which have bad voice acting forgiven.

The main problem is the bad cultural translation.

Everyday concepts in one culture which are used (unthinkingly) as framing devices for their dialogue/scenes might be completely foreign and utterly indecipherable to the second culture, which means that the second culture's audience will not enjoy the dialogue/scenes simply because they are bewildered as to what is happening. Bad dubbing is a hasty and unsubtle attempt to hash the original work into a context that can be understood, usually be straight-up perversion of one culture until it resembles something relate-able for the dub audience.

The One piece pictures that somebody posted earlier are good examples of this: The japanese pic where the badguy is pointing a gun at a child is wildly foreign to an American audience outside of Groucho Marx-esque slapstick, so they altered the gun into something stupidly comical to give it more of that feel.

The second pic where the character gets his skin bleached is another way to try and avoid a translation faux pas, simply because most characters in One Piece are caricatured in design, and not much is thought about it, whereas it's a much bigger deal in America due to the segregation issues of the 60s/70s.


Dubbing is going to continue to be bad until studios decide to make a stand and say "Hey, these guys do something differently, it might seem strange to you but give it a chance...oh, and calm the fuck down, they aren't intentionally aggravating you."

 

[Kamehapa]

The biggest things most people have against dubs is that they have to lip sync with the original Japanese dialog leading to somewhat unusual translations at times. Other times it is because of the censorship that is done during the translation (Anyone remember Rock Lee's Loopy fist?). There could also be some arguement for the level of quality in the actual voice actors and the way they translate emotion.

Honestly, I have seen Amazing dubs, and I have seen TERRIBLE dubs. Unfortunetly the terrible one's are the one's you are more likely to remember.

 

[Atticus89]

Personally, I enjoy dubs. Some are a tad cringe-worthy, but then those are just fun to riff on it.

Most of the cringe-worthy stuff are the shows aimed directly at kids. Yeah, it's gonna be full of puns are stupid jokes but remember what the target audience is: 8-12 year olds, boys primarily. Some of us anime fans got into it thanks to those crappy puns, so we shouldn't be that harsh. Well, I think that way at least.

 

[zehydra]

Bad voice acting. I've yet to hear an anime dub that wasn't grating on my ears. (Note: this is why I don't watch anime)

 

[Sark]

People feel embarassed to be watching it in English, as their friends and family will understand what it is about and judge them for it.

Dubbing is usually superior, the voice actors and localisation teams are very talented these days, so bad dubs are very very rare. Seriously, name an anime from within the last three years with bad voice dubbing. Now, I know that someone is going to say Naruto, but seriously the localisation on that is pretty well done, and the voices are comparable to the Japanese cast.

 

[Kamehapa]

People feel embarassed to be watching it in English, as their friends and family will understand what it is about and judge them for it.

Dubbing is usually superior, the voice actors and localisation teams are very talented these days, so bad dubs are very very rare. Seriously, name an anime from within the last three years with bad voice dubbing. Now, I know that someone is going to say Naruto, but seriously the localisation on that is pretty well done, and the voices are comparable to the Japanese cast.

Naruto. IS. BAD.

Hell, if you want another one, The quality of the Funimation dub of One Piece is a running joke...

 

[Tibike77]

The questions in the title. Is it because of frequently poor vice acting and scripting. Or is their something about it that I'm not getting.
And while I'm at it anyone care to explain why there are so many fans subbed animes on the internet?

For starters, most of the dubs are of inferior quality to the original work (and the details as to exactly why come below in droves).
Even if they are only of ever so slightly inferior quality, why compromise at all ?
Exceptions do exist, and awesome dubs can be found... but they are few and far between.

Second, some things are just too hard to translate from Japanese to English in such a way as to have the timing go right and still retain the full meaning of everything that's said.
Dubs are therefore far more likely to suffer from extensive adaptation, even if they are of the highest possible quality, so you're not exactly getting what the original creators intended you to see. Reading speed is much faster than talking speed, so you usually have little trouble fitting a longer, wordier translation in a sub than in just about any dub.

Third, in order to create a halfway decent dub, you need quite a lot of time, so this means the dub arrives a long while after a sub could have been already available (and in most cases, HAS been available).
Sure, some people are patient... but most are not.

And there's a few other little things.
Like, say, maybe wanting to learn a smidge of Japanese (and watching people talk in a language you're trying to learn helps).
Or maybe you're not a native English speaker (a lot of anime watchers aren't) and nobody bothered to dub it in your language, so if you have to pick between original Japanese with subs and the English dub, you have even less of an incentive to go with the dub instead of the sub.

Finally, because, you know, WHY NOT watch it in the original version anyway ?
It's not like reading is hard or anything... is it ?


P.S. Worst offense : when it's not just a dub with minor literary adaptation to maintain pacing (as far as rough lip-movement time goes), but downright censorship... there's plenty of those going around too.
4kids is infamous for that kind of stunt, but they're not the only ones doing it (just the ones with the most egregious examples of it) : removing blood or other battle damage, changing skin colours, replacing cigarettes and guns with other kinds of props (lollipops and squirt bottles, REALLY?), enlarging clothes to cover more skin or downsizing anatomy and so on and so forth.
Bleh. You bet I want to see a sub of the original in that case, it's not even a contest.

 

[drisky]

Its a combination of stigma from the 90s and 4kids actions and people not being able to appreciate cheesy dialogue in a language they understand. Oh and there are also a lot of people with their heads up their asses, sure some dubs are bad, most aren't.

Sounds right to me, I usually prefer dubs only going to subs on rare occasions and really I don't hear this "horrible acting" that the sub people hear. It does happen, but certainly not as often as they let on. Besides, I like corny, the majority of the female acting in Code Geass was really dumb but in a way I kind of enjoyed that part.

 

[superbatranger]

Now, I know there are good dubs out there. Unfortunately, oftentimes it seems like the voices and characters just do not go with each other.