Dubbed vs Subtitled

Dekafox

Fabulously Foxy Dragon
Citizen
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NovaSaber

Well-known member
Citizen
I can't seem to find a picture of it, but I've heard that someone fansubbed the entire series of Might Gaine without ever realizing they were getting the protagonist's name wrong.
 

Sabrblade

Continuity Nutcase
Citizen
If we wanna talk bad fansubs, just check out the ones that were done for Machine Robo: Revenge of Cronos. Before the official DVD releases, a Russian group of fansubbers made a complete English fansub of the series, and it is woefully bad.

Throughout the entire series, the subs refer to the male character Triple Jim as "Nami" and use female pronouns for him, many other names are so badly mistranslated, and lots of dialogue lines are subbed in ways that make it seem like the subbers had no idea which characters were speaking which lines. It was such a mess that it made the subs completely incomprehensible and utterly useless.
 

NovaSaber

Well-known member
Citizen
That show just can't catch a break; the official English subs are incomplete, and the French dub makes it a sequel to Challenge of the GoBots.

But yes, it's been established that fansubbers can be complete baka.
(Translator's note: baka means idiot.)
 

Videomaster21XX

This is how a unicorn comments
Citizen
Well a view from the other side of things. I've always got to be the one weirdo sadly.

I prefer dubs pretty much 90% of the time. There are some expectations, but usually I'd rather just watch a dub.

I'm sorry I don't get this "watching My Hero Academia in English is like nails on a chalkboard" stuff. I don't know if it's because I grew up with PS1 Capcom games and I'm just desensitized to bad dubbing or what, but I very rarely watch a dub and go: "Oh that's bad"

Maybe I'm jaded from having to deal with too many sub purists, which for some reason I've met a LOT of them. I still remember hearing people going off about Full Metal Alchemist and saying how the dub makes their ears bleed. I'm sorry I just don't get it. There is nothing wrong with those dubs, heck most dubs are just fine.

If the basic story I'm getting is mostly the same with maybe only a few small things like Japanese word puns being subbed out for something else to make it work in English, then yeah I don't see the issue.

I don't know if it's maybe that you guys can actually pick out Japanese words when you hear the characters speak. Because I certainly can't do that. I can tell if they are happy or sad, or frustrated or mad and all that jazz, but while I can tell they have a certain voice, I can tell they are feeling certain ways from the tone, it's all just... noise. Jumbled noise I don't understand.

I can watch and enjoy subs just fine, and have to if I want to watch most things that are coming out, but I much MUCH prefer to actually understand the words people are saying.
 

Daith

Bustin make feel Good!
Citizen
Yeah, the whole dub vs sub supremacy to me is as much juvenile bs as the console wars is. There’s always going to be good and bad examples on both sides. Do what you prefer and don’t yuck others yum about it.

Honestly had to laugh at myself yesterday because after what I said about Hillary Haag the other day I turned on Godanner and low and behold one of my old favorites has her in the starring role 😅
 

LBD "Nytetrayn"

Broke the Matrix
Staff member
Council of Elders
Citizen
That show just can't catch a break; the official English subs are incomplete, and the French dub makes it a sequel to Challenge of the GoBots.
Honestly, one of my favorite parts about that version, though I understand they didn't really do a lot to bridge the gap.

Take care of that, though, and I'm on board.
 

Sabrblade

Continuity Nutcase
Citizen
Honestly, one of my favorite parts about that version, though I understand they didn't really do a lot to bridge the gap.

Take care of that, though, and I'm on board.
All they did was just give some of the GoBots characters' French names to the Machine Robo characters, and they couldn't even keep those names consistent. Machine Robo characters who had no corresponding GoBots characters were given GoBots character names regardless of any sense or logic, while some of those who did were given the wrong GoBots names (e.g. - Fitor's Machine Robo counterpart was given Leader-1's name, Machine Robo-originals Baikanfu and Triple Jim were named "Courageous" and "Turbo" respectively, Machine Robo protagonists Rom Stol and Leina Stol were given Nick and A.J.'s names despite both Rom and Leina being robots instead of humans, two non-toy villains were given Fitor and Crasher's French names despite both Fitor and Crasher already having Machine Robo counterparts, and a later non-toy villain was also given Fitor's name at times).

And no attempt was made to actually make the show feel like a legit sequel series connected to Challenge of the GoBots at all, to the point that its status as either a sequel or a reboot has been debated similarly to the debates surrounding the Bumblebee movie and ROTB's relationship with the Bay movies.
 

Daith

Bustin make feel Good!
Citizen
Ok another horrendous dub I just re-watched. Decided to Watch FF VII Advent Children after finishing Rebirth, and wow that was bad for all the talent they had.
 

Sabrblade

Continuity Nutcase
Citizen
Hasbro's decision to 'localize' the subtitles for the Japanese G1 anime has to be one of the most baffling choices they've ever made tbh.

I don't mind them using Western names and terminology for the characters and concepts that existed in both the American and Japanese continuities (like subbing 'Cybertrons' and 'Destrons' as 'Autobots' and 'Decepticons' or having the subtitles call him 'Optimus Prime' and not 'Convoy', although my ) but doing stuff like calling Chokon Power 'Energon Power' or 'translating' Sixshot being the Decepticon Dinobase Ninja Commander as the 'Phase Six Decepticon Officer' was just utterly stupid and completely defeats the point of subtitles.
Returning to this because I just remembered that those heavily-westernized JG1 DVD subtitles actually went on to inspire the creation of a few certain playlists on this YouTube channel. Specifically, this channel has uploads of both Beast Wars Second and Car Robots with subtitles that are based on those by Karyuudo Fansubs, but rewritten to change numerous Japanese names and terms with ones used in Hasbro media, just like the Shout! Factory subs. Like, changing "Lio Convoy" to "Leo Prime" and "Angolmois Energy" to "Dark Energon" (the latter is even more egregious when one considers the fact that Angolmois Energy had nothing to do with Unicron during BWII; that was a retcon that came later in the latter half of Neo).

But for their Car Robots subs, it didn't start off as simply swapping the CR names for the RiD names, but instead began as an attempt to completely reimagine Car Robots as a sort of "Transformers: Generation 2" series with Fire Convoy renamed "Pyro", the Spychangers renamed "Gobots" and all given the names of their G2 GoBots moldmates (like Counter Arrow renamed "Double Clutch"). But then, by Episode 12, these subs just gave up on that G2 idea and did simply switch to using the RiD names, so it's not even consistent the whole way through.
 
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MEDdMI

Nonstop Baaka
Citizen
I always have subs on when it's an option, even when the show's audio is in English. Sometimes I can't catch what people are saying and that bugs me. I'm a fast reader with good peripheral vision, so no issues there (minus the paragraph translations). Plus, Closed Captions can sometimes be hilarious.

For anime, it depends. I almost always have the original language on with subs. I spent 4yrs as a kid watching shows like DBZ and Sailor Moon in Japan and kept practicing, so I know enough Japanese to be able to compare it to the subs and see if they hit the mark. Sometimes TMM wants to have a show on and not have to pay too much attention, so we'll put a sub on. We watched FMA in English, and it's quite good. Haven't watched it in Japanese, got used to the English cast. We've watched the Slayers series in both languages, and aside from Xellos' original VA, they are both great.

There are rare instances where I prefer the dub over the sub. Eg, I caught random eps of Rose of Versailles in Italian around 1999, and Oscar's voice in particular was just fantastic. Italian is close enough to Spanish (which I also speak conversationally) that I could get the gist of it, and I could feel those lines. Sling TV has old anime channels, and I caught some eps in the original Japanese. Decent, but not as great (granted, being a VA wasn't as big a deal back when the show was originally made).

I love all the nuances of Japanese, like having a bunch of ways to just say "I" or "you" alone does not translate. Some stuff def gets lost but some dub VAs can emote the general feeling well. There have been some instances where the Japanese felt flat/overacted, but I can't think of a specific example RN. If I took the same line in Japanese and said it with the same emotional force in English, it would def feel overacted.

On a side note, it baffles me that Crunchyroll's dubs don't include subtitles for written stuff. Eg, on Fire Force and I don't know enough kanji to catch all the words. I think they changed the UI recently, I should see if I can get the Sling app to have dubs and subs on at the same time.
 

Confuzor

Koopaling Aficionado
Citizen
.On a side note, it baffles me that Crunchyroll's dubs don't include subtitles for written stuff. Eg, on Fire Force and I don't know enough kanji to catch all the words. I think they changed the UI recently, I should see if I can get the Sling app to have dubs and subs on at the same time.
This has been been driving me nuts. I recently watched Freiren (dubbed) and found it aggravating how there were no actual english subtitles for it. The on-screen text ( *Location* it has been *number* years since Himmel's death) was only given a subtitle maybe 5% of the time is appeared. Also that last arc introduced alot of new characters and it was tough to keep track of names -> faces without being able to see it written out on screen.
 

Daith

Bustin make feel Good!
Citizen
It was horrible trying to watch the Dub of A Sign of Affection with them communicating over phone texts.
 


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