Subbed or Dubbed?

talk about your favorite anime here

Moderator: AniDB

Do you prefer subbed or dubbed?

Subbed (Japanese)
57
93%
Dubbed (English)
3
5%
Don't care
1
2%
 
Total votes: 61

Trilandian
Posts: 144
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Location: Israel

Subbed or Dubbed?

Post by Trilandian »

As far as I'm concerned, watching animes in English is far better than having to watch them in Japanese and reading the subtitles. But I know that many people like the original for some reason, so I wanna know what you think.
Trilandian
Posts: 144
Joined: Fri Mar 24, 2006 6:29 am
Location: Israel

Interesting

Post by Trilandian »

Hmm, it would seem that many people really do prefer subbed anime. I don't understand why, since in the subbed version you don't understand a thing people are saying and have to follow the subtitles, which distracts you from the actual show.
epoximator
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Post by epoximator »

Trilandian
Posts: 144
Joined: Fri Mar 24, 2006 6:29 am
Location: Israel

Uhuh

Post by Trilandian »

Ok then, I'm out...
Say, how do you erase a tree anyway?
Rar
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Post by Rar »

Generally a demand for burgers does pretty well.

On the dub front, it amuses me how much difficulty the US fans have reading subtitles, compared to the EU peeps who often have English as a second or third language. Dubbing should be made illegal, in my mind, reading is a skill people need to learn.

Rar
Trilandian
Posts: 144
Joined: Fri Mar 24, 2006 6:29 am
Location: Israel

You're confused!

Post by Trilandian »

Hahaha! You automatically asumed I'm an American for some reason, eh? Well, for you're information, I'm an Israeli 8) !

And anyways, if I wanted to read, I would've gotten myself a book or something...
Rar
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Post by Rar »

Nope, I didn't assume you're american, I just like mocking the US dub industry (you don't want anime dubbed in hebrew, right?).

Rar
Trilandian
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Location: Israel

Post by Trilandian »

Heheh, no. And it's not that Hebrew dubbing is bad (it's actually pretty good), it's just that when I know it was originally in English, I find the idea of it being shown in Hebrew somewhat disturbing.
You know, I can appreciate people wanting to listen to the "original" version, it's just that I think that Japanese is a very ugly language. In fact, I dislike any language that is not European in origin.
ricce
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Post by ricce »

There is so much more then just text lines in the Japanese audio track. Like different voices and voice-tones all of those things get removed and recreated when dubbing and is not as it originally where meant to be.

Sometimes the dub even change the meaning of the original sentence to make it time to the lip-moves and the available time. This is absolutely required to make a good dub but will most likely change the original message.

In some cases the dubbers even changes and clips in the episodes, why do you for example think there is two AniDB entries of Dragon Ball Z (aid:1530 and aid:232)? Well, of course it's because the dubbers changed so much that it's even not same episodes any more.

Because the society is very different between Japan and "the West World" some other changes is applaid by the dubbers to make it fit in western society. In Japan you will for example avoid to give a negative answare of a direct question, in stead you remain silent. This will seem odd for people in the west and with western society, therefor will the dubbers add a negative answare in this case.

And now to a personal opinion: I don't think Japanese is ugly, to find a ugly language you should look in Europe. The language I am talking about is German... (Do I need to say anything more)
Trilandian
Posts: 144
Joined: Fri Mar 24, 2006 6:29 am
Location: Israel

Hold it right there!

Post by Trilandian »

Hey now! You can make as many comments as you wish about the faults of dubbing but leave the German language out of it! In my opinion, German is one of the most attractive of all European languages, second only to English (In fact, maybe I'd like it more then english if I understood it!).

You say that in the Japanese version the characters sometimes stay silent, whereas in the dub, the characters say something - How is it possible to place speech in unmoving lips?
Also, you'll mostly find that Japanese speach is somewhat longer than English speech, therefore, I'm pretty sure that the occasions in which the dubbers can't squeeze all the words in on time are quire rare.

About the voices... I know the dubbers don't make much of an effort to find people with similar voices to dub the characters, but you know... sometimes, it's for the best. From my experience, the original Japanese voices are often quite annoying. It is also from my experience that the dubbers are usually capable of projecting the characters' emotions despite the vocal inconsistancy. And anyway, since when you watch the Jap version, you have to match the subtitls to the speech, which, I think, harms the capture of the charactrers' emotions far more then the dubbers ever could.

And on a personal note - being that I am accustomed to western languages, whenever I hear Japanese speach it sounds like total gibrish, and it's therefore usually annoying.
AnimeOtaku
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Post by AnimeOtaku »

The german dubs of animes are really bad. I know it as a german. And the language is hard to learn (even for a German).

Our govermnent made now after some years a reform of the reform of the german spelling. Dunno why. :roll:

But the language I hate most is from our Neighbours France. And I live next to the Rhine.^^

Japanese in my opinion is a beautiful language. That's why I hear mostly Japanese music.
WTX
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Post by WTX »

For us europeans who have grown up with subbs everywhere on tv since the day we where born it is almost as breathing. However I do agree that they may be a little distracting. But, on the other hand, dubbing makes it all worse!!! I discovered the horror of dubbing after i began to watch german television. And I am now almost completely against it.

Don't understand WHY some of you wants anime dubbed. And I belive many german and french would think of the idea in horror. Most of them i have met really hate dubbing. To make it clear, imagine Terminator dubbed in german (watched it myself, lol). What does terminator say? "i'll be back"? No...he says "ich will zurück kommen!!" (or something like that). And still, german dubbers is imao one of the best dubbers.

Even though english...hehehe, is a much more beautiful language (second after korean) than german, it doesn't really change anything. I have tried to watch anime dubbed in english. But it sounds horrible. The english voices seems totally out of context.

Dubbing is usuefull for only one thing. And that is making anime or etc avilable for children.
Trilandian
Posts: 144
Joined: Fri Mar 24, 2006 6:29 am
Location: Israel

Post by Trilandian »

Well, I don't know what the quality of German dubbing is since I never heard it (being that I do not understand it would make the whole thing pointless). I just always liked how the German language sounds.
As for French, I kinda like it, I especially like how the French accent sounds in spoken English.
nhat2991
Posts: 1
Joined: Sat Dec 09, 2006 3:57 pm

Post by nhat2991 »

I think Jap audio with Eng sub is the best cuz the voice of female chars is very cute that Eng audio can't compare with it. I live in Viet Nam so i usually watch anime on animax-asia. Those dubbers on animax completely ruined the animes cuz they make the female chars' voices sound very annoying (likes something stab my ears) and both female & male char' voice are lil bit too old for some kid chars
HiEv
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Re: Hold it right there!

Post by HiEv »

Trilandian wrote:You say that in the Japanese version the characters sometimes stay silent, whereas in the dub, the characters say something - How is it possible to place speech in unmoving lips?
Well, often they do it when the characters are facing away or are offscreen. Sometimes they even do it as thought narration.
Trilandian wrote:Also, you'll mostly find that Japanese speach is somewhat longer than English speech, therefore, I'm pretty sure that the occasions in which the dubbers can't squeeze all the words in on time are quire rare.
The problem with that statement is that it assumes that there are direct translations for most words in Japanese to English, which simply isn't the case. For example, if you listen to Japanese you can catch polite/formal tones, such as the use of "desu" vs. "da," that is nearly impossible to translate accurately without making it sound odd and stilted in English. Even subtitlers usually leave that out, but you can hear it if you are listening to the original Japanese dub. "Ashita doubutsuen ni iku n desu" and "ashita doubutsuen ni iku n da" both translate as "I am going to the zoo tomorrow," but the one with the "desu" ending is spoken in the formal tone, while the "da" one is in informal tone. On rare occasion "desu" is translated by tacking "sir" or "ma'am" on the end of the English translation, but usually it is simply ignored. However, it can make an important difference in tone. I know hardly any Japanese, but I picked up that difference after watching a lot of subtitled anime. (See some comments on "desu" here.)

[Edited to add] Plus, there's all of the fun with various forms of the pronoun "I" (boku/(w)atashi/ore) denoting gender and such that commonly leads to humor when someone is pretending to be or becomes the other gender. Honorifics (-san, -kun, -chan, etc...) also don't translate well and are often ignored outside of subtitles (and sometimes even in subtitles.) Girls doing the "cute" thing by referring to themselves in the third person is also often ignored. Even unrelated people referring referring to each other as sister or brother in Japanese is often left out. There's a lot you miss by not going the Japanese dub + subtitles route.

Honestly, it sounds like your primary complaint is that you don't like the way Japanese sounds. Personally, I kind of like the way Japanese sounds, and I also often find that IMHO the English voice actors didn't do as good a job as the original Japanese voice actors did. It all boils down to the fact that different people have different preferences. :)
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