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 Words of Truth and Wisdom: Thoughts on Dubs
Written by Alethea and Athena Nibley
We got an e-mail from Manga University just recently, so I wanted to officially say hello to Glenn Kardy, the guy we talked to at the booth (and also created the Kanji de Manga series), and Naomi Rubin, the representative who sent the e-mail! Hello! We'll make sure to remember your names now!
Speaking of Random Industry Encounters at Anime Expo, there was another thing I kind of wanted to talk about. We went to FUNimation's Ouran High School Host Club panel, and as we were leaving, we ran into their Pod(cast) People, who asked us if we would be willing to appear in their podcast, and give our thoughts as to the newly announced Host Club dub cast. We were in a “we hate dubs” mood at the time, so we suggested that they might not want to hear our opinions, but they decided it could be an interesting perspective, so they interviewed us anyway. We told them we wouldn't be offended if they decided not to use the footage, but we've been super super super super super super busy since we got back from AX, so we haven't really had time to check whether they did or not. But if anybody saw a FUNimation podcast where they interviewed a pair of twins dressed as Lacus and Meer from Gundam Seed, that was us!
Aaaanyway, I think that whole anecdote brings up two questions. First, why were we in a dub-hating mood, and second, and more importantly, if we don't like dubs, what on earth were we doing at a Host Club dub cast announcing panel? I mean seriously, that's just silly. The honest answer is this: we're suckers for surprises. In fact, we used to be in the habit of buying grab bags in the dealers' room every year, but then there was the year when we had no money, and the habit was broken. But back to the topic at hand, the AX program guide said there would be surprises at the panel, and, since we know that sometimes guests come from Japan unannounced (Tomoko Kawakami, the voice of Utena, was at Anime Expo 2001, but she wasn't a Guest of Honor), we were holding on to the slightest sliver of hope that maybe, just maybe, they'd brought one of the Japanese Host Club cast members. We were disappointed in that hope, so we left early, which I think is part of why the Pod(cast) People got us.
(I must also confess that part of the reason we left early is that we tend to get very possessive of things that we like a lot, and we didn't want to hear about other people touching it. We're already sad enough that we're not translating the manga. But on the bright side, translating Host Club would be really really time-consuming, and thus would probably drive us crazy.)
And that brings me to back to the first question: why were we in a dub-hating mood. A while ago, Barb posted a column here at MangaLife defending dubs. It was a great column, and we totally agreed with everything she said. Anime dubs are an important tool in spreading the joy of anime to people who aren't interested (yet) in learning another language. We ourselves wouldn't have discovered anime or manga at all if it weren't for dubs, so we really owe them a lot. And even after we started watching everything in Japanese, we've been of the opinion that any dub is at least tolerable if you haven't seen the Japanese version first. (If you have seen the Japanese version first and liked it, chances are you're too attached to the Japanese voices to give the English ones as much of a chance. At least, that's how we tend to be.) There is a certain video game, though, that's starting to change our opinion, and we're realizing that sometimes, a dub just sounds bad regardless of whether or not we heard the Japanese first, and that's part of why we were in a dub-hating mood.
A while back, I did a column on English adaptations and how easy it is to put completely different words into a character's mouth. All the stuff leading to that column is another reason we were in a dub-hating mood. I'm not going to repeat the column, but I do want to re-emphasize that point that if the English version of a character has a completely different personality than the Japanese version of that character, that character ceases to exist as far as the English-speaking world is concerned. And when that character was one of my favorite characters ever and I wanted to share him or her with my friends who don't like subtitles, it makes me very sad.
So those are the reasons we were hating dubs. Most of the time we just disagree with them and so choose not to watch them. The DVD has the Japanese version on it too, so it's as simple as hitting the language button (by which I'm trying to say to the people we know who refuse to buy anime DVDs only because they “don't want to support dubs,” “Buy the DVDs dang it!!!!!”). But I do want to pull out my movie critic hat here and talk a little about Death Note. We didn't watch the dub of Death Note (in fact, we've still only seen the first two discs), so this critique could be completely off, and I apologize if it is. But we did watch the behind-the-scenes extra where they interviewed the director and the English voice of L. This is a classic example of why we disagree with dubs, so I wanted to bring it up. They showed clips of English-voice L reading the lines for the part, and what we heard was a guy who was smarter than everybody else and knew it. I think that's a pretty common way for actors to portray guys who are really smart--as the smartest person there, they feel the need to guide the poor little lost sheep around them, and so take on the kind of arrogant “I can see you need my help” attitude. The English voice of L seemed to realize that he was on a pedestal... kind of a lot like Light, actually. And I guess it's true that L and Light have a lot of things in common. But the difference we see in L is that he's more humble and acknowledges his flaws. He acts less like the teacher and more like a fellow student who understands the problems a little better than his classmates. He even says to the police, “I think you all know this,” on more than one occasion, if I remember correctly.
From reading various interviews with Japanese voice actors, we know that some of them make sure to read the manga of a series they're voicing (if it's one that was a manga first), and some of them make it a point not to. And as we're trying to reason out why we disagree with the English portrayal of L, we're deciding that different characters require different strategies. In our opinion, for a character like Light, you might not want to read the manga first, because his personality would develop with the story, and you wouldn't want what happens later on to affect your portrayal, because you're not supposed to know about that yet. But for a character like L, this guy is surrounded in mystery, and he knows a lot of things that the readers/audience members don't. So you'd want to get more context on this guy before settling on a personality. It's a lot like with translating, actually. There are lots of times when we highlight something so we can come back to it later with more context and a better understanding of what it's really supposed to say.
So from our very limited experience with the English dub of L, it seems like the actor and voice director didn't read ahead, and just went with what you might imagine from the first impression of L. And since our interpretation of characters often differs from those of the English voice actors and directors, that's why we don't like dubs.
But like I said, all we have to do is hit the language button and watch the Japanese version instead. Everybody can watch what they like, and we're all happy. The end.
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19 November 2008
Words of Truth and Wisdom: Translating Is Like... 4 November 2008
Words of Truth and Wisdom: Lost In Translation 25 October 2008
Words of Truth and Wisdom: So's Your Face!
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