Anomynous 167 said:
Jonluw said:
I always prefer to consume my media as close to the source material as I can get, so subs.
It's the same reason I try to read books in their original language.
That, and the Japanese voice actors are just better for the most part.
Urghghghablabaleh
Firstly, I don't care if it is close to the source material. All I care about is whether they do it well.
Then I guess we're just different.
Secondly, I have scene a lot of lazy sub titles that simply leave in the honouriffics of forein languages when we have an accurate or suitable translation available. Like seriously "Ni-san", why can't the stupid fan subbers just say "Bro"?.
Honorifics can be a very important part of a scene. Certain scenes won't even make sense without them. I've seen many people translate 'aniki' to 'bro', and that's good, but expressions like 'onii-chan' carry far more implications than 'brother'.
And then you have the typical love story scene where one character wants the other to call them by their first name without any honorifics attached, because this is a sign of intimacy. The jokes that play on this are plentiful, and completely lost if you leave the honorifics out in the translation. You might be able in some cases to substitute the concept for the sake of certain individual jokes (see Kagami sama vs. Kagami the great), but honorifics, in my opinion, should always be kept intact.
To understand many anime, particularly comedy anime, you need a certain familiarity with Japanese culture, and honorifics and the ways people talk to one another is a large part of this.
Finnally, saying that "Japanese voice actors are just better", and then showing us a clip of an English dub with no comparrison...
Firstly, I assumed most posters here would be familiar with K-ON. Secondly, I only posted it as a joke - an example of some of the worst the medium has to offer - I wasn't really trying to make a point with it.
If you want a more proper example where I compare an English dub to a Japanese one:
Not to mention subs have the ability to leave notes explaining untranslatable jokes ("cat tounge"). You even get to learn a little bit about a foreign culture.
Edit: I think a lot of this reluctance towards watching subs in English speaking people comes from having grown up in a culture where everyone speaks your language.
Where I live, you are expected to learn at least 3 (sort of 4) languages, and almost all tv entertainment comes with subtitles. The only things that are dubbed here are children's movies, because dubs are considered a children's thing. When you're an adult you are expected to at least partly understand the original language (English) in movies and the likes, and at the very least be able to read the subtitles while watching the action on screen.
I.e. where I come from, dubs are for children, and people who prefer them therefore strike we as very childish.
English speaking people just seem to have this problem with other languages. It almost seem like they have this misconception that their language is the greatest, and if a piece of entertainment hasn't been molded to give them as little resistance as possible and cater to their reluctance to hear the sound of another language they will plainly refuse to watch it, no matter how good it is, because it hasn't been changed specifically for them to meet their arbitrary needs. It feels like they are small children crying to get the creators of the piece to notice them. They will always prefer a bad dub over a good sub because they have been breastfed with only one language and have never read subtitles before.