shihanne:

adventure-hearts:

Dubbing is the worst method of audiovisual translation, since it involves a great deal of adapting/condensation in order for dialogue in a new language to fit the constraints of the Japanese audio. So even so-called “faithful” dubs are necessarily more removed from the original screenplay than subtitles. Moreso if we are speaking about 20 year-old dubs for a kids TV show, where cultural accuracy and budget wouldn’t necessarily be as important as, say, for a big Disney release.  In the case of Digimon, the sheer diversity and size of the cast is unlikely to be replicated in a foreign version, even in markets with a strong dubbing tradition.

Moreover, sound and voice acting are essential elements of any animated film. The choices the actors make, the intonation, the emotion, the casting, etc. are a fundamental part of storytelling and (if you want to go there) “authorial intent”. To change that is to change the series in a very significant way. In a show as crappily animated as Digimon Adventure, voice acting is even more important for the quality of the final product because it elevates the material so much.

So yeah. Even not knowing the specifics of your national dub, I can pretty much guarantee that it is significantly different from the Japanese version. I’m not saying it’s better or worse, but it is not the same at all.

I truly believe every fan owes it to his/herself to watch the original version at least once.

Hmmm, I have to respectfully disagree in some respects with this. (Keep in mind I’m saying this as a original-version diehard! I also believe that it’s a good idea to poke into the Japanese version at least once, even if not the full version, for the sake of curiosity.)

I think you are correct in that a dub will most certainly have more disadvantages in approximating the original. It has to worry about lip flaps, it’s constantly fighting with very blatantly cultural depictions on the screen, some of which are easily editable, some of which are very much not. (Recall how Digimon’s English dub sidestepping the fact that it takes place in Japan quickly went out the window as soon as Odaiba depicted in all of its true-to-life detail popped up on the screen.) And I think you are correct in that no matter how much you strive to be accurate – if that is even your goal – you will inevitably stray further from the original than a strict subtitled version, no matter what you do. That is the inevitability of how these things work.

However, the goal of both a translated and localized product is not to present the material as-is, but to present the material in a way that it would be understood by its home viewers, in a way that the target viewers would understand. It’s a common translator’s adage that “you’re not translating words, but feelings.” It’s important to remember that the target audience of a kids’ anime dub is a kid. A kid who has likely not had the opportunity to look into foods and geography of other countries – something an adult would have to do active research into. But even if you could argue “then the kid could just grow into an adult and watch the subbed version to understand everything!”, that is somewhat of an oversimplification.

Let’s take this example by a localizer of a famous video game series: Grilled chicken skin on sticks. Hmm. For many of the people reading that article, and those of you reading this now, that actually sounds pretty gross. Of course, you are a tasteful person and you understand that in Japan that kind of thing is quite common! But you understand this because you were informed. To you, grilled chicken skin might even sound outright disgusting. And nobody would blame you! That’s the culture you were brought up in. And when you want to enjoy fiction, you want to enjoy fiction in the same way the original person enjoyed it.

So a Japanese person in Japan sees “grilled chicken on sticks” and they’re thinking “oh, it’s the kind of thing you buy quickly at a stall and head home late at night!” And a Westerner thinks, “it’s a thing that sounds kinda gross to me but is probably more common in Japan.” The technical accuracy is gained and you became a little more culturally aware…but the feeling the fiction was trying to get across was lost. But let’s say, someone intervened before it reached you and edited it to read some other kind of food you normally buy quickly at a stall and head home late at night. Bingo. Cultural context lost, and technical accuracy lost. But mentally, it stimulates your sympathy of the poor character who has to buy this thing so late at night, instead of having to be informed about it.

That’s what localization is about. We make fun of 4Kids turning rice balls into jelly donuts, but for much of the target audience of that scene, even if they understood that it was a “ball of rice”, they might be thinking of just a random ball of glutinous rice with no flavor, and certainly they wouldn’t get the proper association of “cheap thing you bring at a picnic”. If you cast a famous actor with a famous voice in a role, people have associations with that voice – which will be entirely lost in the new country, even if you inform the person who the person is. You would get much closer casting another famous actor instead. Another example is how high-pitched voices are considered fairly standard for female characters in Japanese anime, but are considered signs of an immature or bratty character in the West. How much anime does it take for a Westerner to watch before they can shake that association and stop assuming that the character they’re listening to is that way? Maeda Ai’s voice for Mimi is vital to her character – but anyone with different expectations may take her voice in a way that is very different to what the intent actually was.

Subtitles have an expectation of technical accuracy, mainly because the original audio is still present. Of course, people tend to forgive some changes if it becomes too burdensome or TL note-heavy (often in the cases of puns), but a subtitled version saying something almost completely different in technical terms from the audio will be frowned on. But the advantage of things like dubs and video games where traces of the original content is scrubbed out is that you have a lot more leeway to really play with the content in ways that the audience resonates with. And it applies to audio, too; it’s why video games with Japanese audio and translated text come under fire, because the translated text has no choice but to be extremely adaptive, but even those who don’t understand the original language tend to notice that something’s off. It kills the immersion, they say.

Of course, realistically, dubs tend to lose more than they gain this way. They are limited by time and budget, often do sloppy jobs (such as the “jelly donuts” certainly not resembling jelly donuts) on screen, and tend to favor aggressive changes to the point where it feels less like connecting to the audience and more like cultural insensitivity (American dubs being very commonly brought under fire for this). Like you and I both said, I think it is probably a good learning experience to check out the Japanese version at least once – academically speaking, at the very least.

But I don’t necessarily believe that “not being the same” in the same sense that a subtitled version of the Japanese version would be, is “not being the same” overall – there are associations and mental connections and feelings that can be re-established in a dub that would be completely lost in the mandated adherence of a subtitled version. In voice acting, in dialogue, in images, in vocabulary. Again, in the long run, I’m sure that most dubs of Digimon lost more than they gained, especially since they couldn’t do much to edit out the huge chunk of Odaiba in it! But while you can keep Digimon in Japanese, if you are not Japanese, you will be inherently missing out on something, which a dub’s job is to try and fill in. And I think it is understandable that there are many people who will latch onto the parts that were filled in, and be able to connect to the story that is Digimon far more deeply than the technical translation will, for reasons more than just simple nostalgia. It’s why Miyazaki himself also personally wished that people would watch his movies dubbed, as he felt like what he wanted to say would resonate with people more intimately in their native language when heard and felt and not just read.

Case in point: a complaint I read a long time ago about why a person was struggling watching the original version of Adventure was “why are they all taking so long to introduce themselves, and why are they giving their grade levels?” And those lines were written because in Japan, those grade levels are really important (honorific culture and all). But in the West, those just feel pedantic. It would be unacceptable for a subtitled version to edit that out, of course. But as you can see, it was damaging that person’s enjoyment of the source material – because the way everyone presented themselves gave very, very different associations from what a dub could have delivered. And yeah, you can tell people this after the fact. But can you expect someone to know all the possible nuances of Japanese culture and the way its speech implications work before diving in?