You Know What Grinds My Gears?

Honey and Clover is on Hulu, so I have finally gotten around to watching it. Now I know why everyone was talking about the OP so much.

I love the show so far, I really like the characters, I want my own little Hagu to keep in a cage and torment for my amusement, etc, but there is one little thing that irritates me. The characters generally refer to each other by their family names, but the subtitles use their given names. Now, I don't speak Japanese, at all. Other than the handful of words I know, and the other handful I recognize but only have a dim idea of what they mean, it's all jibberish, but I can pick out names quite easily. What I hear is "Moon-speak moon-speak Morita-senpai," but what I read is "Yadda yadda Shinobu-senpai yadda." It's damned annoying.

You want to write the dub in a way that sounds more natural to English speakers? Ok, I'm cool with that. But the sub should reflect what I'm actually hearing. If the character says one thing but the subtitle says another that's going to cause at least a bit of a disconnect.

The really nutty thing is that, while they switched the names, they went to the trouble of including "senpai" in the translation. WTF, man? WTF?

Various companies in the US do this all the time and have been for many years. I know Bandai does for sure. There's nothing wrong with the practice, as wonky as it comes off, since I'd rather have zero honorifics or other Japanese in my English subtitles. Any other groundbreaking insights for us?

This post has been edited by Link on Aug 4 2009, 10:06 PM

This sort of thing is debated all over the internet. It's almost as bad as the sub vs dub brawl. Everyone has their own preferences, and they are not likely to change.

I suppose I prefer less localization, but I'm not really bothered when there is more. In fact most of the time when I hear a phrase that I know, I subconsciously skip reading the corresponding subtitle.

Dubs suck /thread

Never thought I'd agree with this.

Not because dubs per se are bad, just that so many dubs do such a shit job of the story nowadays. That's more a fault of dubbers either trying too hard to localize the dialogue, or trying too hard to make it close to the original Japanese that the dubbed dialogue is too long for the scene.

This post has been edited by Wavehawk on Aug 4 2009, 11:34 PM

Best English dub to date is still MD Geist. Most Dangerous Geist.

Same.

Agreed.

Fixed.

It's the whole package. They screw up the translations because it's being brought over to Western audiences who may not understand Japanese culture, which is understandable. But most English voice actors suck (if you don't agree, add in "compared to their Japanese counterparts" at the end.)

I agree with the most part. I just say the most being the main/central characters of a series tend to suck, some characters are actually fine with their English VAs.

Agreed, worst one I ever heard was many years ago when they actually dubbed Bubblegum Crisis. I couldn't even watch the whole thing it was that bad. From then on, dubs just haven't been up to the lvl that the originals have been. Oh well.

For me, the most annoying part of a dub comes during the inevitable moment when someone pronounces the name of a character whose name contains a (romanized) R. I don't know if it's a specific company that does it or what, but there's been this trend of voice actors pronouncing these names in such a way that it mimics the original R/L ambiguity, but not being Japanese, they fail horribly and it just ends up sounding really jarring. It's like if I spoke the sentence "I went to the mall with my good friend Romanov." in everyday American English, but spoke the final word with a thick Russian accent.

If it's an English dub, then Haruhi should be Haruhi, not HaLU~hi.

Beyond that, my main other beef was the way they tended to overcomplicate sentences to match the mouth flaps... which they seem to have gotten a bit better at in general...

You can tell they take their jobs seriously too.

Dubs are like having drunken Japanese beers for years and years and one day you're offered american Budweiser.

Some dubs are alright, some dubs are bad but the Ouran one is terrible, "Haru-chan" and "Honey-senpai" sound really terrible when spoken with English dialog :/ Compared to that, have the honorifics is only mildly annoying. It does baffle me why Crunchyroll(which is official) uses Ojou-sama as the translation instead of 'milady' in Hayate-no-Gotoku.


Also I'm confused at the original poster, it sounds like he's watching it dubbed with subtitles on? :S

This post has been edited by Moridin84 on Aug 5 2009, 05:12 AM

No, he's complaining that the subs are using given names where the moon-speak uses family names.

Meh. I'm not so picky. I enjoy dubs in general.
Some do have problems (especially older ones), but not all do.
As for the sub titles, I, myself, like seeing honorifics & such since it shows the relationship between characters a bit more.

The only time I can really stand dubs is if it was a show that I first watched in English, like DBZ or Bebop. But, with those two, even though I'm used to the dub, I can go and watch the subs of those shows (I am as a matter of fact with DBKai) and not only does it work, it's better!

But it doesn't go both ways. When I try to watch the dub of a show I watched in Japanese, my ears bleed. TTGL, Geass, Bleach, Death Note and Hellsing to name a few.

I was talking with my brother a few years back about why I don't watch dubs (he said he'd consider watching a few anime but didn't want to have to read). To explain, I compared it to Hollywood and Bollywood. Hollywood being the seiyu: good talent, high production quality, and a shit load of investment and profit. Bollywood being English VAs: yeah, it works, kinda - but in the end you come out completely lost in translation with a sticky feeling and a general malaise...

Now, Kevin Conroy, he's the shit. As well as The Batman.

Edit: Another comparison between Hollywood and seiyu, LOTS of pretty ladies.

This post has been edited by Remolg on Aug 5 2009, 05:49 AM

Yeah I pretty much agree with you 100%. This topic can easily get as flame heavy as the dub vs sub issue itself. Personally I prefer honorifics in my subtitles as its a nuance of the Japanese language that actually is quite important to the context of what is being said. Now leaving otaku-Japanese, like baka or some such, in fansubs is completely unacceptable.

But yeah it hurts my ears a little watching cruncryroll subs, as you are literally reading the script for the dub as opposed to what is actually being said. But the flip side is most people who understand enough Japanese to care, like many of us here, can make out the proper honorifics even if they are on screen. So really its not THAT big of a deal if they aren't there.

Aw c'mon dubs aren't that bad. I've heard dubs that I prefer over the original Japanese.

Take Read or Die for example. British accents for the fucking win!

This business with using given names instead of family names in subs has been going on forever. I remember being pissed because the KOR subs did that. There's a reason Kyosuke used "Ayukawa" instead of "Madoka", after all - he was scared to be too familiar. He didn't do that with Hikaru.

Unless you're ADV. Then you get to release a Kanon 2006 preview and pronounce it HURAhi! Dude, you fail at voiceover. Go back to the Marines.

lol at the consensus opinion, especially when comparing to say, ANN's consensus opinion. :v

As long as dubs don't grate on the ears (which isn't a lot of them), I'll watch them, and there are some great dubs jobs. But I'd listen to subs over dubs if I have the choice.

I was just watching the (generally reasonable) USA release of Strawberry Panic.

I was struck that they managed to be fairly inconsistent with what they did with honorifics. In the course of 5 mins they omitted -san, included -chan, and translated -oneesama as "sister".

I'm sure someone in the translation pipeline noticed this stuff, I'm just unclear how they decided what to include/ignore.

The original material is fairly shameless about exploiting hierarchy / familiarity for emotional effect (to the extent of being over-the-top), so it can be relevant to my interests.

However, since there wasn't a USA dub, anyone who cares can still listen to the original.

On the other hand, I prefer the English dub of Samurai Champloo - it just sounds more correct to me to hear Mugen speaking hooligan English. Gungrave seemed to work better in English as well - it doesn't quite have that same sense of gangsta in Japanese. Overall, when the setting for a show is a bit more Western, the dubs tend to work better, possibly because the actors can feel the situation a bit better without having to try to adapt to another cultural norm.

And the other thing that we usually hear from cynical people *coughcoughcrackcough* is that the Japanese actors are generally low-paid B-actors and suck just as well, but you can't really tell unless you're more fluent in Japanese.

I, for one, enjoy watching The Big O in English, because the noir aesthetics totally fit in. The Japanese dub is just as good, but the English one gives off a better Batman (with giant robots!) feel.