Sub vs Dub

[Pojodin]

VS

 

Going off of Alex Heat's update, which do you prefer? Is one definitively better than the other? Can they reach a point where both are of equal quality? Can they live in unison!? D:

[Saturnine Tenshi]

THEY CAN NEVER LIVE IN UNISON! THERE WILL BE NO PEACE!

 

There's this thing: voice acting for English games or anime. And you know what? It has a fair chance at being luvverly jubberly. A fair chance.

 

Localized—or translated if they're bad at what they do—media tends to skip this. I'm not sure whether it's because they're pulling from a less costly VA pool or what, but unfortunately, it's the rule not the exception that English VA in localized games isn't something to write home about. Often, it's something you'll never want to write anyone about. Ever.

 

I'm not some purist either. If English voices weren't so often higgledy piggledy, I'd be keen on listening. Presently, the majority either sound like they're trying too hard or not hard enough. Nothing sounds natural. Well, very few games sound natural. Heavenly Sword? Fucking baller VA. Fucking baller. Nariko, Kai and King Bohan, namely; but even the supporting cast fit. Does it take a big publisher like Sony to occasionally get things right?

 

Edit: I don't think I stressed enough how fucking baller Heavenly Sword's VA is.

Edited September 18, 2012 by Saturnine Tenshi

[Faiblesse Des Sens]

Braille.

[Mr. GOH!]

Subs for all films and shows. Subs for some games were the acting/original language is very important, dubs for most games, though.

[MasterDex]

Personally, I'll choose the subs of an anime, Japanese games and for any foreign movie before I'll watch the dub. I'm not going to go play The Witcher 2 in Polish any time soon however. I don't mind dubs, some are great (Fullmetal Alchemist and Cowboy Bebop for example) but some are horrible. I think that, especially in Asian titles, things get lost in the translation. It could be a badly translated script or actors that can't capture the essence of the characters but things get lost in the process. That's why I love the fansub scene. Some groups are awful but there are others who strive for good quality translations and do really well on the script side - leaving the original VA's to do the rest of the work through intonation, etc.

 

I don't think it's an either/or situation for me. I'll favour the subs but I may end up preferring the dub, as is the case with Cowboy Bebop, which I'll show below to help explain why.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TbpaIOEZH4

Edited September 18, 2012 by MasterDex

[Thorgi Duke of Frisbee]

All depends on the quality for me. If there's a good American dub, like Persona 4 or Metal Gear Solid, that's what I go with. However, if the dub makes me want to claw my ears out like the English track on The Raid: Redemption's Blu-Ray (that one also had a double whammy of a default "improved" score by one of the Linkin Park members), I IMMEDIATELY close out as fast as possible, dig through the settings and switch it to the native language and turn on subtitles.

[TheRevanchist]

Subs for all films and shows. Subs for some games were the acting/original language is very important, dubs for most games, though.

 

I agree with this for the most part.

 

Watch 'The Seven Samurai' with it's subtitles. As a film, dubbing would take too much away from the seriousness of the situation they are in. It's not a comedy, which is where my opinion differs. Bad jokes dubbed just have a certain likability factor I can't get from subtitles.

[Alex Heat]

Like I said in my status update, I can watch either, but will generally differ to the dub. If my only option is watch subs, I am not at all bothered by this.

 

A lot of anime watching nowadays is done while I'm eating or lying in bed (sometimes in the process of falling asleep) and it takes a helluva lot less of my focus to listen than read some subs.

 

That, and I am too laidback to be bothered by voice acting unless it is really really bad (which I admit is subjective, but feel that a lot of folks are WAY too hard on dubs). Alternatively, most seiyuu make me want to smack a bitch, especially female characters or children. The latter boils down to the people in charge though ('I want you to add 'nyan' to the end of all of your sentences in order to appeal to some sweaty neckbeards that will buy the figurines and masturbate on them!').

 

On the other hand, sub purists make me a sad panda with my sadness progressing based on what kind of logic they're using (it just sounds better because I can't understand it!, but the director's vision is lost in the translation!, the jokes don't translate!* or it is the pure experience!).

 

To each their own, but come on...

 

*This is like the best thing ever to me because Japan is fond of wordplay jokes and puns, which I absolutely hate.

[fuchikoma]

I usually prefer subs. I got annoyed with loose translations and unlabelled rewrites and edits (Viz, Dark Horse, Viz, Viz) and actually learned Japanese. Now, I prefer subs even more because hearing the original gives me more acute insight into the meaning of what is being said, and better understanding of the cultural connotations of the words. I like etymology in any language so I find it interesting to know where a word came from and what it really means. It's hard to pull examples off the top of my head, but something like it would be the villains from Shakugan no Shana. They're called "Mystes," and their MO is to steal a person's "existence," leaving a placeholder version of them that gradually fades out of people's attention until they forget the person existed and it burns out and disappears. I don't know of any translation that explains it, but "Mystes" (misutesu) sounds like "misute(ru)" which is an expression that means to abandon, desert or forsake. It doesn't quite translate literally because means "to look-discard" - sort of alluding to how the victims fade from view. (This example of course doesn't quite matter if it's subbed or dubbed, but there are other lines you'd only hear in a subbed or original version that carry connotations that don't translate and would be erased in a dub: many kanji compounds for instance.)

 

(new section:) Another thing that is missed in a dub is the use of regional dialects, most often Kansai-ben or Osaka-ben. Sometimes this is substituted with a southern USA accent, but the connotations are quite different. Osaka has a reputation for, among other things, business and commerce, outspoken people, and odd colloquialisms, but can sound sort of lazy too, which probably where the parallel is drawn to a drawl. Then there's other rural village dialects that people will often switch out of with outsiders so they're not seen as country bumpkins. Some are actually very hard to understand even for native speakers not from these areas. Then there's regular dialect variations like keigo (polite speech) which can seem polite, formal, haughty, or even derisively sarcastic depending on context. I think an English dub would often use vocal inflection and often "British accent" such as RP, spoken carefully (if you're lucky enough to find an actor who knows the difference.)

 

Something that gets on my nerves is how dubs are typically written to fit the timing and cadence of the original piece, which usually results in really stilted unnatural sounding speech. On top of that, I've seen a lot of anime where even though someone is just portraying a normal human, they feel the need to put on a "cartoon voice" that makes it sound even more hokey. Often main characters can avoid this, but incidental ones are just hamming it up. (It's not like this never happens in the originals, but it tends to be more appropriate, ie. silly characters and obvious caricatures.) Also, while some people don't like how female seiyuu sound, they're usually not that different from the way Japanese women sound on media like TV or radio so it's not that conspicuous - however... that is not how they sound in English. I've heard too many dubs where the female English VAs try to go for a kind of "squeaky cute Japanese" voice and end up sounding like bad caricatures or bubbleheads.

 

Dubs can be done well potentially, but they also face an unfair disadvantage that even the best one will be a replica. Like I said in Alex's status thread, it's like listening to a cover band. You may prefer the cover to the original, but it is still constrained by the need to be a substitute for what is already done, rather than being its own thing (usually. There are adaptations that veer off from the originals but that's less of a translation and more of an adaptation.)

 

If other people want to go with dubs, I won't take offense to it or anything. It beats not understanding it at all, and some people can't read and watch at the same time. But at the same time, there are few times I'd go with a dub over a sub. That said, there are actually a few - Samurai Pizza Cats was a pretty good "dub" of Kyatto Ninden Teyande-, even though I'm sure something like half of it was rewritten or ad-libbed. It doesn't seem like a show where the lines are of great importance, but the adaptation was pretty funny. Tenchu: Stealth Assassins had a really corny dub, but it sort of fit since you're running around doing all sorts of archetypal ninja stuff. It's like you're in an old, badly dubbed movie or something. Usually I don't mind game dubs quite as much, but still really prefer subs. Castle Shikigami II was a textbook example of the worst dub possible, to the extent it was almost a selling point...

 

(edit: Board inserted an unprocessed HTML tag in the middle of a word. I removed it. It put it back in.)

Edited September 25, 2012 by fuchikoma

[TheMightyEthan]

One advantage to subs is that it's harder to tell if the acting is bad if you don't understand the language. I often do find the uber-high-pitched "cutesy" Japanese girl voices irritating though.

[CorgiShinobi]

Ditto to Ethan's comment.

 

I generally do go with subs, but when there's a good dub I will flock to it (Fullmetal, Cowboy Bebop, FLCL). I simply facepalm whenever someone thinks that a Japanese voice actor can't do any wrong. I don't think I shared this, but there was this time when during The Legend of Korra there was this kid who wouldn't watch the show because "he wanted to watch the sub." Yeah, the terrible, terrible English voice actors not grasping the true essence of the original... Oh yeah, English is it's original language and the Korean dubbed airing didn't happen until a month ago!

[deanb]

Yeah I'm with Ethan. I'd much rather watch an iffy dub in a language I was raised on than a potentially iffy dub in a language I don't understand. Combined with reading the film/show. If I wanted to read an anime most of them have a manga counterpart.

 

(Though I'm fine with snippets of films having like a russian/alien dude that's translated or what not. I have fond memories of my mum reading me Stargate)

[Saturnine Tenshi]

Atomsk88 reminded me of Zuko's descendant in Korra. So awful. It's the same actor; I get it. It's still awful.

[Thursday Next]

For games I have dubs and subs in English otherwise I tend to miss stuff. For foreign language films, if I'm watching one on my own, I'll definitely go with subs. My friends hate subs though so if I'm watching with them, or if I've got the film on in the background while I'm doing other stuff, like playing on my vita or whatever, then I'll go with the dub. Studio Ghibli dubs are usually pretty good imho.

[TheMightyEthan]

Yeah, with games I want subs even if the dialog is already in English.

[Saturnine Tenshi]

Yeah, with games I want subs even if the dialog is already in English.

 

I always appreciate that. Otherwise I'll find myself saying 'huh' and raising the volume too late.

[deanb]

Yeah the issue with games is they tend to have terrible balancing between music/SFX and voices and so I will tend to put Subs on where possible/required.

[Alex Heat]

This seems to be an issue with movies/cutscenes in general. I know a couple years ago when I watched Interview With a Vampire, I had to crank my TV to damn near max when someone was speaking then promptly go deaf when anything else happened.

[TheMightyEthan]

Auto-volume-leveling FTW!

 

Doesn't help though when there are other sounds at the same time covering up the voices.

[fuchikoma]

Yes... subs even on dubbed games, because there is usually no rewind, save for quitting, loading, and rewatching the whole scene. "Get into the building, disable the security system, and fuzzmubblebuh - and don't screw it up! You only have one chance!"

 

If a movie does stupid things with min/max volume, some (many?) AV receivers support "dynamic range compression," which limits the difference between loud and quiet scenes. Sometimes it has names like "night mode" because it'd let you watch movies without waking people up.

[Pojodin]

This seems to be an issue with movies/cutscenes in general. I know a couple years ago when I watched Interview With a Vampire, I had to crank my TV to damn near max when someone was speaking then promptly go deaf when anything else happened.

A friend and I joke around about the X-Men Origins: Wolverine game. We could never hear a single word that was said because they spoke so quietly, but would end up going deaf the instant some action would occur. It was all like, "Hey Wolverine, how's it going? Look out behind y...Boom!" With the boom being the sound of a person carefully stepping into the room.

Edited September 26, 2012 by Pojodin

[fuchikoma]

^ That's what always seems to happen if you watch a movie encoded in 5.1 without a center speaker, without downmixing it. Maybe the game has the same issue?

[Pojodin]

^ That could be. There was such a ridiculous contrast in sound levels. It ended up being quite humorous.