[Lynk Former]

AMERICANS ? especially young Americans ? love Japanese animation, and as anime becomes increasingly popular on television, nothing is more vital to the viewer's enjoyment than the quality of the English-language dub. A good one will enrich the story and bring the characters to life, but a badly dubbed show can be as grating as a concert performed off-key.

Preparing American versions of anime series poses vexing problems for the small, highly specialized industry of writers, producers and actors in the United States who seek to bridge the language and culture gaps. For one thing, Westerners might have trouble understanding a too-literal adaptation, but if the English version strays too far from the original, otaku (die-hard anime fans) will object. When a heavily edited version of "Cardcaptor Sakura" appeared on the Kids' WB as "Cardcaptors," for instance, fans mounted online protests about the changes in the characters and story line.

Anime offers a much wider array of situations and characters than American programs do, and often requires more complex voice characterizations. No Hanna-Barbera show ever demanded the kind of intensity required to play the beleaguered brothers Edward and Alphonse Elric in "Fullmetal Alchemist," or the cynicism that shields the wounded heart of the space cowboy Spike Spiegel in "Cowboy Bebop," or the constant shifts between samurai bravado and slapstick farce of the wandering warrior Kenshin Himura in "Rurouni Kenshin."

"When we start a new series, people come in with a translation, then one of the writers will prepare the English script," said Don Rush, a director at ADV Films in Houston. "I'll go over that script as I watch the show, getting a feel for the characters and thinking about casting. Then we hold auditions. I think it's real easy to do bad dramatic stuff. Look at any TV soap opera. They're horribly overdone. So I work really hard to make it come off as convincing and not sappy."

A major decision in casting is how close the English voices should be to the original Japanese ones. Fans want them as close as possible, but the higher-pitched, more childish voices of some anime heroines grate on Western ears. And there's no American equivalent of the voices of some other characters, like the long-haired androgynous bishonen ("beautiful boys").

"I tend to go more for the acting than a voice that sounds like the original," said Ken Duer, president of Phuuz Entertainment in Los Angeles. "But it's up to the client. When I worked on 'Lupin III,' they wanted comparable voices, so we held a lot of auditions to find actors who were good, and who sounded like the Japanese cast."

When the English voices are recorded, the actors have to match the words to the characters' mouth movements, which were originally timed to the Japanese dialogue. "That's the hardest part of the job," said Chris Patton, the voice of Sousuke, the highly trained, terminally dense hero of "Full Metal Panic: Fumoffu!" "If you're passionate about acting and telling the story, you go in and chain yourself to the fact that you're going to have to match those flaps."

Because each actor records alone, to allow for greater concentration on synchronizing the mouth movements, it is difficult to generate the chemistry needed to make, say, the fractious romance between Sousuke and the hot-tempered Kaname (Luci Christian) in the farcical "Fumoffu!" believable. Mr. Patton and Ms. Christian never saw each other during the recording sessions, so there was no chance for the kind of give and take actors in live-action series use to explore character relationships.

"If I have Luci read first, Chris has something to work off," Mr. Rush said. "Then I can tell him, 'It didn't sound like you were really talking to her,' or 'You're a little angrier with her.' If I don't like the chemistry in certain scenes, we can redo it parts of it, but that's pretty rare."

Although they too worked in isolation, Vic Mignogna and the child actor Aaron Dismuke created a deep, believable bond as Edward and Alphonse Elric in the popular fantasy-adventure "Fullmetal Alchemist" (shown on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim). The brothers try to use alchemy to revive their dead mother, but when the spell fails catastrophically, Edward loses his left leg and sacrifices his right arm to preserve Alphonse's soul in a suit of armor. Edward receives prosthetic steel limbs, while Alphonse remains a spirit housed in an empty metal shell.

Aaron Dismuke faced a special problem when he was cast as Alphonse: he was only 11 and needed to complete the recordings before his voice changed. He imbues Alphonse with a gentle honesty typified in the wrenching moment when Edward says to his brother: "I wouldn't blame you if you did, Al, but I've got to know: Do you hate me for all that's happened?" Stunned, Alphonse replies, "Brother, I could never hate you."

Mr. Mignogna said: "Aaron is brilliant as Al, but we were probably halfway through the series before I met him at an anime convention in Dallas. It was like I'd known him my whole life: I ran up to him and yelled, 'Al, it's me!' "

The challenges for the writers can also be daunting. Japanese humor runs to difficult-to-translate puns and wordplays, and jokes or clues may be hidden in the characters' names. In the original Japanese, the hero's name in "Tenchi Muyo!" can be read as "Earth and Heaven" or as "This Side Up."

"A joke may not make sense in English, so I have to explain why it's funny in Japanese," said the producer and translator Yurika Araki-Dennis. "If there's no lip sync, we may add a line or a subtitle to explain something.

"If the series is going straight to DVD, the audience will mainly be serious anime fans, which means we have to stick very close to the original. If there are too many discrepancies, they complain. If the show is intended for a broader TV audience, we have a little room to play with the interpretation."

Even if American viewers can be harsh judges of the English versions of their favorite series, they are often unclear about what makes a dub work, Mr. Rush said. "When I meet people and tell them what I do for a living, a lot of times I get, 'You need to talk to my son, he can do all kinds of voices.' But it's not just a matter of doing voices. The acting has to come across so you believe what you're hearing and you buy into the story."

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/09/arts/t...ref=slogin

[Chimasterwang]

That brings to light how hard it can be to dub. I had no idea it was that technical and hard. Well hats off to the Anime Voice Artists out there =P
PS: Dont flame me for not knowing about the inner workings of anime XD

[Lynk Former]

Don't worry, a lot of people don't know what goes on behind the scenes at all.

[darktruth]

Well a lot of otaku's don't really see how difficult it is just to translate the script of an anime, especially ones with a lot of cultural references. Those western otaku's who hate dubs don't realise that they rely heavily on english subtitles to help them understand the story, if there weren't any they probably wouldn't even know what is being said half of the time.

Of course there are some horrible dubs (Excel Saga comes to mind) but I think most of them come from full on comedy animes that require high pitched and energetic voices. It's here that I see a lot of the English voice actors, especially females, try too hard making their voice come out sounding like crap. The one reference that I can think of relating to that is the female dub for Midori in Midori Days. They try way too hard to sound exactly like the Japanese females with that high squeaky pitch which 90% of the time is impossible which results in an annoying voice.

The animes with serious storylines are usually the ones that comes out with the best dubs, they're usually more easier for the voice actors to do but are sometimes a bit hard because of the dramatic scenes involving intense voice acting, like all the yelling Chris Patton had to do playing Ayato in RahXephon. However, sometimes even the driest and emotionless voice can make the dub sound great for serious animes. The Samurai X OVA's are a perfect example. J. Shannon Weaver was perfect for the role of Kenshin in the OVA's because his voice was rather dry yet it had a sense of mystery on his character and it it fitted with the overall mood of the OVA. Of course it does help if the voice actors have a dynamic range, they'd probably be given more credit from the anime fans since they usually wouldn't end up being tired hearing the same old voice over and over again.

I was going to say a lot more but I'm gonna save it for later, done enough typing on this lol.

[Lynk Former]

About the Excel Saga voice, you're right that it's completely impossible to try to recreate the Japanese casts work but I still think they did well for the translation. It didn't sound the same, but it still fit the character. I think in that case it's more of a "which version did you watch first?" kinda thing.

About Midori's english voice. I take it you didn't notice that when she was in her small form they raised the pitch of her voice to sound smaller. But when she's in her regular form her voice sounds normal with no pitch change. It wasn't the actress who was doing changing her voice.

Dynamic voice actors are very hard to find on both sides of the ocean. I can only come up with one name who is very dynamic and that's Crispin Freeman. I've watched a tonne of animes with him and not only does he play very different character types, but he takes it the few extra steps further and sound completely different with a lot of those characters. It's a case of having to look at the credits to realise that that's his voice.

[Rebel]

this is why dub bashing always annoyed me, sure, not all dubs are great and so-in-so's voice may not be perfect, but they're really trying their damndest(most of the time) to make something good.

besides, I think half the reasonuber-fans complain is because they dont understand the Japanese, but they do the english so it's easier to be more ciritcal of it.

ALSO: I had no idea that Al's VA was actually a kid.

[Analog]

For fear of my life, I am abstaining from this discussion...

[Lynk Former]

For fear of my life, I am abstaining from this discussion...

You know you want to


@ Rebel: Yeah Aaron Dismuke is damn good, they really do find some great child actors from god knows where. FMA has Aaron, ROD the TV had Rachel Hirschfeld.

[Hawkeye]

Intresting.... very intresting..... Mu ha ha ha ha ha ha...

[Scar da Kookee]

It just means that people who hate bad dub's should shut up more, cus it just takes alot of work to even get somewhere with a translation.

[Chimasterwang]

@Darktruth Omg you called is Samurai X =P

Anyway im alrite with subs or dubs if i watch Japanese audio with English subs i remember the characters speaking in the Japanese voice but in English which is interesting =P

[Lynk Former]

It just means that people who hate bad dub's should shut up more, cus it just takes alot of work to even get somewhere with a translation.

I think you probably should clarify since that sentance could mean anything XD

[spectre]

I don't really listen to dubs, because I figure if the production studio for the original knows what it's doing, then the voices they give are as close as possible to what the director wants (by this I specifically refer to the more highly regarded, genre-defining animes where this sort of vision is necessary) and it's not too much of an inconvenience to me, personally, to read the subtitles if it gives me that extra degree of immersion, rather than having to deal with a western attempt (as good as it may be) at adapting it to western taste and capabilities. As for others like the romantic comedies and high-energy adventure stories that almost define anime, I really think the dubbing process results in almost a different product, and a lot of times it simply lacks what I've come to look for in it (which isn't necessarily to say the quality of the voice acting is bad, just -- if I pay for a hamburger, I don't want a chicken sandwich).

that's about it. Oh, and some english dubs are really, REALLY bad.

[Lynk Former]

I don't understand how someone can say that there's a definate scale for how good an English (or whatever other language) version is, but the Japanese version of everything must all be perfect by default.

There is a good reason to be more critical with en English version over the Japanese, true. But sometimes you get people who go nuts and pretty much declare that "all English versions suck, all Japanese version are perfect." It makes about as much sense as a gamer saying "all games that don't have a mature rating suck."

Don't worry spectre, I wasn't taking a stab at you there, you've given a good reason as to your views, though I still don't see any real difference between an English version and Japanese with English subtitles. Take into account that every animes I own on DVD, I've watched in both English and Japanese with subtitles.

[Hawkeye]

You Lynk you got a vaild point there.... Some one should do a chase study, produce an anime, then dub it at the same time with a Japanese and English voices.... just were the hell am I going to get a couple thousands pounds to produced an anime and where the hell am I going to get some unwilling test subjects

[darktruth]

How about this question. Is there an anime where the English dub actually surpasses the Japanese original?

[Lynk Former]

Last Exile. The Japanese version is very good but there are a few voices that don't seem to match the characters as well as the English version does. But a better example would be ROD the TV where the English version blows away the Japanese version.