Dub or Sub?

min-gau said:
Dub is cartoon, Sub is anime (ಡ艸ಡ)

japonese voices are good> it make you fell away from western real world, of sure I do watch anime to get away from it so different language helps in the immersion into a fantasy world

Exelero64 said:
Normally I watch sub, but the one dub that I have watched, Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood, has some amazing English voice acting and is very enjoyable.

But most of the time I find dubs sound a bit weird or inauthentic. I feel like dubs for anime set in Japan are highly inauthentic, since it doesn't fit the Japanese characters to be speaking fluent English in Japan

andersonBLUE said:
But there is so much anime; only the more popular shows get dubbed. So sub or dub is kinda pointless because chances are if you like anime you have no choice but to watch subs anyway.

FrankyP said:


The only response in this thread that I respect.

Kimmy83 said:
Subbed all the way for me, the ONLY way, never ever EVER dubbed ^_^

Lelouchwakami said:
I don't get it at all, I'm from spain and when i tried to discuss this with people i know, It was the same result and conclusion that i got, It's a bunch of rubbish and nonsense.

It could be that it's a ''WEST THING'' that doesn't transcend well to other cultures. But to explain and present my views at why is that, it's pretty simple.

ANIMATION are NOT like Actual life motion pictures where the ''voice'' is recorded alongside the footage, thus, It's its original voice act. unlike animations where it's just paper with draws in it that are moving so fast to create the illusion of a movement. with a Voice act tabbed into it later on. in conclusion, None of any Animation voice act is original and just a ''dub''. Using the def of dub for actual life motion pictures is absurd and stupid. as it treats animation in the same foot as actual life motion pictures.


If you get where i'm getting at, Then yeah, The japanese Ver. of the audio track is in fact, a dub. same as no Japanese Versions. What differeniate between them, however, is whether the work it's about aka the setting is japanese or not, that what truly favors the japanese dub over others, If it's not japanese, Then it only proves to work against it.

that in a nutshell.

note: Some creators might have an intended ''voice'' in mind for their characters, but that is just an authorial preference that was not ''intended'' to be a part of the work because of the nature of how animations works.

So yeah, I watch it in japanese if the setting is japanese and not japanese if the setting is not japanese. that is the most consistent way of viewing for at least.

note: granted they are Good.

Lelouchwakami said:
note: Some creators might have an intended ''voice'' in mind for their characters, but that is just an authorial preference that was not ''intended'' to be a part of the work because of the nature of how animations works.

Lelouchwakami said:

ANIMATION are NOT like Actual life motion pictures where the ''voice'' is recorded alongside the footage, thus, It's its original voice act.

illuminatibg said:
After I started watching "El Cazador de la Bruja" dubbed, I was surprisingly boring. Then I tried the subbed version and... it was interesting?! Although the story has its weak moments, the Japanese version was better.



While this is true, the voice recordings (of anime with greater art quality) of Japanese voice actors are taped and frames are adjusted accordingly to syllables. If this is done with collaboration with translation, a slightly different mouth animation could be created for English version. However, if the translation is done after the fact, the translator must edit the mouth animation.

On the top of that, Japanese is super compact. For example, the よ and ね particles ending the sentence could require 3-5 more words in the English variant. As a result, some anime (like "El Cazador de la Bruja") tend to change the sentence structure of fill in with silence, which kills the mood. In contrast, the subtitles can freely redefine the sentence length and add remarks freely. In fact, Japanese create timing issues, which could make potentially long English sentence to stay for too little time on screen. While I had this problem for a while now, with subbed anime, it could be easily overcome with pausing (which is one keypress work). It appears that most of the time Japanese intonation fits pretty well with the background music.

Aside from that, I noticed that companies like Funimation are a little bit different from the other dubbed anime. Funimation dubbing preserves the rhythm and mood of the anime at the cost of significantly change the text completely. In "Detective Conan" they even change names. I have no idea what effect -san, -kun, -chan, first name and last name differences make, but changing it to more relatable names with proper addressing (Mr., Ms. or Mrs. for last name, no titles for first name) already have a great effect on perceiving the proper context.

So in short, when the quality of the dubbing is at professional level it is worth it (although it is a major change of the content). When the dubbing is more literal, it has negative impact on the anime quality.

JerryKen10 said:
I prefer to watch anime with subtitles. Maybe, I'm used to it and very fond of Japanese voices. Although dubbed version could be good too. If you think it's weird to watch subbed anime when your two eyes get to watch between the screen and the subtitles, it's not hard because you comprehend to it like reading a book. The only difference is, the book sometimes has stationary illustrations and meanwhile, the subbed anime has moving animations. Dubbed anime may improve your understanding and comprehension with English or any other languages. Meanwhile, subbed anime will help you to add more vocabulary to your own dictionary. The two are very crucial, but it depends on the watcher what kind of thing he or she would prefer.

User-Name said:

What are you claiming to is half-true.
The truth is, yes even in the japanes dub the voice recording is "after the animation" but the animation is considering the voice coming later, for example, if the character saying "ohaio guzaimasu" (good morning) that's how the lips of the character will say and that's a different, either than that, I know for a fact that sometimes they dubbing while the lips aren't moving and only after that they build the moving lips. however in the foreign language they take the original animation after the lips for japanese are set and build their script to make it work so the foreign language will work out for the moving lips and not making any changes in the animation, that's why the japanese dub is called "original voices" because the anime studio is considering their animation upon the sayu they choose, and not upon the foreign dub studios.

original voices

the animation is considering the voice coming later

dubbing while the lips aren't moving

illuminatibg said:
After I started watching "El Cazador de la Bruja" dubbed, I was surprisingly boring. Then I tried the subbed version and... it was interesting?! Although the story has its weak moments, the Japanese version was better.



While this is true, the voice recordings (of anime with greater art quality) of Japanese voice actors are taped and frames are adjusted accordingly to syllables. If this is done with collaboration with translation, a slightly different mouth animation could be created for English version. However, if the translation is done after the fact, the translator must edit the mouth animation.

On the top of that, Japanese is super compact. For example, the よ and ね particles ending the sentence could require 3-5 more words in the English variant. As a result, some anime (like "El Cazador de la Bruja") tend to change the sentence structure of fill in with silence, which kills the mood. In contrast, the subtitles can freely redefine the sentence length and add remarks freely. In fact, Japanese create timing issues, which could make potentially long English sentence to stay for too little time on screen. While I had this problem for a while now, with subbed anime, it could be easily overcome with pausing (which is one keypress work). It appears that most of the time Japanese intonation fits pretty well with the background music.

Aside from that, I noticed that companies like Funimation are a little bit different from the other dubbed anime. Funimation dubbing preserves the rhythm and mood of the anime at the cost of significantly change the text completely. In "Detective Conan" they even change names. I have no idea what effect -san, -kun, -chan, first name and last name differences make, but changing it to more relatable names with proper addressing (Mr., Ms. or Mrs. for last name, no titles for first name) already have a great effect on perceiving the proper context.

So in short, when the quality of the dubbing is at professional level it is worth it (although it is a major change of the content). When the dubbing is more literal, it has negative impact on the anime quality.

Lelouchwakami said:


Well, how does translating the japanese script to fit the flip flaps justify the reasoning that the japanese dub is . and well, that's obiously how storyboarding and animating it works, Unless it's a silent work, The SB would have script in it and when animated, they would animate the flip flaps to match the script.

by , I take it as referencing ''line photography''?.

in a nutshell. This is what happens if the studio is having a bad schedule or animators' shortage, sometimes, this may reach the point of meeting the deadline, causing unfinished animation to air, making it look like a ''drama-picture'' in vocal scenes.

and obviously again, (Unless other languages were intended as well) The foreign dub would have to translate the script to be as faithful as posssible while fitting the lip flaps; The amount of translation Altered to fit the lip flaps will varies from one language to another.

The ''animation'' aka ''lip flaps'' entirely relies in the ''storyboard'', Not who's voice acting them. The voice actors don't interfere with the script *AT ALL* when it comes to adaptations.

If this were true, then this atrocious scene wouldn't have had happened.
welp. I wonder what was the director thinking, either a ''ine photography effect'' or bad directing. either way, as you can see, the sayu has no say in it.

The foreign dub would have to translate the script to be as faithful as posssible while fitting the lip flaps

User-Name said:

You atre misreading me, I didn't say the sayu have effect of the sudio work but quite the opposite - the studio is considering their work based the sayu.
On the othe hand you almosy admitted it but still call the japanese cast voice "dub", let me correct you in explained description, you said
which is true, if for my example the character needs to say "ohaiu gozaimasu" which is good morning, japanese language build on syllable, while in english it's four syllables in japanese it's a couple of syllables, while the studio produce a flip-flap to the japanese in the english dub they will change it from good morning to "hey how are you", and it's common to change that way much, it's maybe a small example but when you turning full episode like this even though it is truthful to the translation, sub is way more reliable translating only "good morning" , because on the surface the studio didn't made the anime for the english dub but for the japanese cast voice, and that's why I'm calling it original voices, because it's the voices that's originally the studio wanted to.
Hope it' all clear now.

The foreign dub would have to translate the script to be as faithful as posssible while fitting the lip flaps

Lelouchwakami said:

While that's true for English, it's not for other Languages, What might take 3 to 5 words In english would take the same if not less than japanese in the others.

Lelouchwakami said:


So ''the studio considers their voice cast when animating the flip flaps'', right? if so, then it makes sense. but it's an odd info since the storyboard already does that as well.

however, you did ignore one important detail


This will varies from one language to another, in Arabic. they would say: ''صباح الخير'' (good morning) which fits the flip flaps of ''ohaiu gozaimasu''. and so would many other languages, and vice versa for english and french.

This is why i said, the current mainstream use of the word ''dub'' when it comes to cartoons is universally unpractical. and the natives or not so but so-alikes don't take other languages in mind.