Subs or dubs?

[bingus_baby]

So which is it? I know this was more of an issue back in VHS days, but I think it’s still a valid question! Back in the day, I used to be subs-only since I thought that was the “artists’ vision” and… I didn’t think much more about it than that. But these days I find myself flip-flopping based on the series. No spoilers, once I get more votes I’ll state my reasons! But til then… I think both sides have good qualities! There are plenty of good dubs, but the dubs in rare instances outshine the subs! If you feel strongly, state why! I’d like to see what Melonland thinks, since the members around here are very level-headed and are more open-minded than other communities.

Edit: Typos ;;

[Nova]

I'm pretty unbiased between subs and dubs, people go with whatever they feel comfortable with.

However if the dub is bad or the subs are awful, I'll pick one over the other. Not everyone can do them perfectly but there's sometimes the media out there that can just... butcher either, or both if you're extremely unlucky.

[ThunderPerfectWitchcraft]

I go strongly(!) for subs, both for movies, series, animes, and so on.
While there are a few good dubs in my first language, the art of lip syncing seems to be largely forgotten, and the idea of trying to fit a voice to either an actor or a role largely forgotten - the dubs available have often a unintentionally funny quality, which ain't a thing that you watch anything but trash-movies.*
Being able to concentrate more on the images just isn't worth enduring this :D.


*

Spoiler

Trash movies, however, sometimes win a lot through German dubbing: We had a really good studio that was active in dubbing them to the mid 90s, and they even managed to improve some pretty bad movies to truly incredible results.

[close]

 

[apricior]

Hii 

I grew up watching dubbed movies, since I wasn't raised speaking English, so I don't have anything against dubbed movies/shows. In fact, in many cases, I prefer dubs, because if they are well translated, they're gonna be funnier to the audience that they're targeting. This is the case of The Simpsons, for example! The Spanish dub added a lot of changes that, in my opinion, make some scenes funnier. For example, during the gay steel mill episode, when Homer says "You're all crazy!" and a worker replies "Oh, be nice", in Spanish that was translated as "You're the crazy one, bald (using the feminine version of the adjective)".

Another point in favor of dubs is accessibility. I know people with dyslexia who have issues reading fast subtitles, or people with ADHD who need to be doing other things while watching a show, so in those cases I feel like dubs are a better option for them.

Personally, though, I watch most things in their original version with subs, if I can find it, but this is because I'm a linguist and I like hearing how the original language sounds. Also, though I said that sometimes dubs are very good, in other cases they can change the original in ways that make it worse. For example, in Our Flag Means Death, Jim's character was first dubbed as using she/her pronouns (when in the original they explicitly use they/them). This was later changed because of backlash, but it is an example of getting a better sense of what the writers wanted to convey when watching the original show with subs.

At the end of the day, I feel like dub vs sub is a matter of personal preference and, in my case, it's going to change from show/movie to show/movie 

[ConnorTheVGFan78]

For me, it depends on what I'm in the mood for, if I have the energy to read subs while also trying to pay attention to the plot, or just what version I happen to have available at the moment.

On another note:

Another point in favor of dubs is accessibility. I know people with dyslexia who have issues reading fast subtitles, or people with ADHD who need to be doing other things while watching a show, so in those cases I feel like dubs are a better option for them.

Accessibility isn't something I usually hear people talk about when discussing dubs vs. subs, but I'm glad more people are pointing it out. I've always thought to myself whenever I hear both sides of the debate things like "What if someone is unable to see the subtitles due to a vision impairment?" or "What if someone's hard of hearing and absolutely needs to have subs turned on?" or even "What if the subtitles are formatted in an unusual way or change too fast?"

Again, it's not something a lot of people I've talked to think about, but something that those with disabilities or caregivers for those with disabilities have to consider when choosing to view or listen to either dubbed or subbed versions of TV shows, movies, and/or games.

(also, apologies if I'm reading too much into this. It's just something that's been a thought in the back of my mind for years, and I saw an opportunity to talk about it just now.)

[TheFrugalGamer]

So while I can appreciate both, personally I prefer subs, because I enjoy listening to the original language, and trying to use the subtitles to pick apart and learn new words. I'm a bit of a language nerd, and it gives me something additional to focus on during the more boring scenes, lol.

Also, I remember back in the day in the anime communities when subs were seen as superior no matter what. I think they got that reputation because companies would often play fast and loose with the translations, even going so far as to change certain characters to fit US regulations and norms. For instance, in Sailor Moon, there are several same sex relationships depicted in the series. That was still seen as "taboo" on TV at the time (for kids anyway), so the translators actually changed the geneder of those characters to make the relationships heterosexual!!!! Thus understandably changed a lot of details for the worst and made fans very unhappy. I hope there's more awareness now and we don't have to deal with that kind of ridiculousness any more.

[bby]

i don't watch anime as much as i used to, but i do subs!

the reason i chose subs back when i started to watch more anime was because i learned about all the changes to sailor moon that they did, and the one that upset me the most was how they changed sailor uranus and neptune's relationship to cousins . i watched some sailor moon as a kid here and there and that just swore me off of dubs for a very long time.

it was also nice to watch subs because it didn't take a long time for newly aired episodes to get subbed in english. subs were also easier to find because i was sailing the high seas .

i don't hate dubs nowadays, i do watch them if i want to rewatch a series since it's easier to multitask. the one anime i only watched dubbed is pokemon because that was my first anime and i'm used to the voices.

[Seryndelle]

I've watched an equal number of subs and dubs, actually! I'm very unfussed as to which I watch, because there are definitely advantages and disadvantages to both.

But that by itself is a pretty boring answer, so I want to share something a found in a YouTube comment once. Basically, the idea that this commentator had was that you should watch the dubbed version of anime set in a more Western setting, and the subbed version of anime in a more Eastern setting.

One argument I used to use in favour of subs is that the original voice actors are more likely to have worked directly with the showrunners themselves, so I figured that it's more likely that the original vision remains intact. It stands to reason that with each new iteration of an anime series, certain elements get lost along the way, while other elements crop up unexpectedly. It's like a game of Telephone.

[bingus_baby]

Basically, the idea that this commentator had was that you should watch the dubbed version of anime set in a more Western setting, and the subbed version of anime in a more Eastern setting.

This is sort of why I made the thread actually! I was watching Attack on Titan, and noticed that while the actual deliveries are a bit corny at times, the voices picked for the characters in the dub were a lot better than the JP version. I've seen people say the same about Hetalia, but that one I'm still on the fence about lol, it's a bit hard to follow regardless of language since things move so fast and all the text that pops up on screen. People talking fast in any language is difficult.

And I think another thing that sparked this thread was that I grew up in the age where dubs were generally pretty terrible and everyone preferred subs, which has made me want to give dubs a second chance. I just feel like I was too hard on them back then! (Though some pretty bad ones still get put out ;; The Oshi No Ko dub is pretty awful. I'm a Jubyphonic fan, but the other actors were uhhhhh)

[invader_gvim]

I usually always want dubs, but my husband pressures me towards subs. So I put either because what we watch depends on the cultural context of the work and who has the strongest personality at any given moment.

I will say that I very much like the dub of trigun, as well as the sub for Akira. Vampire Hunter D Bloodlust is also in the dub pile. But then you have something like The Wind Rises or any Studio Ghibli feature.

Sonic X is sub only. The dub makes it a much less good show as opposed to the sub which makes it almost as good as Invader Zim. I must stress though that anyone who wants to watch Sonic X with the expectation of it being a good show should just skip the first season where it is just a knock off of the video games. Now, I like the first season. I'm just saying that watching it is like watching Sonic Adventure 1 and 2 as a cutscene while the next season is much more unique and valaubale. 

[BlazingCobaltX]

The Netherlands does not have much of a dubbing culture, only children's shows consistently get dubbed. This means that I've gotten used to reading subtitles from a very young age. Subs therefore always have my preference. The one exception to this is the Pokémon anime, which I prefer to watch in Dutch out of nostalgia. Even though I can concede that in some cases the dub is superior over the sub, I prefer to watch the sub out of habit. It almost feels weird to not have anything to read on screen, plus it is handy to have closed captions in quieter scenes (I basically always have subs on by default).

Spoiler

Trash movies, however, sometimes win a lot through German dubbing: We had a really good studio that was active in dubbing them to the mid 90s, and they even managed to improve some pretty bad movies to truly incredible results.

[close]

 

Funny you mention this. My family has very good memories of the German dub of the Police Academy movies. They also agree that the German versions are superior over the originals.

[ThunderPerfectWitchcraft]

Funny you mention this. My family has very good memories of the German dub of the Police Academy movies. They also agree that the German versions are superior over the originals.

"Kung Fu movies" and Westerns are especially prone to this effect  . "The Drunken Master" and "Tai Chi" are also great examples for this!

[JINSBEK]

The issue of translation and adaptation has always been an interesting one to me. When I was a kid, I made an English scanlation of the Franco-Belgian comic The Great Power of Chninkel (the one by Manga-Sketchbook is NOT mine, but it’s a decent scanlation), along with scanlations of Japanese BL comics floating around. My last scanlation I took various liberties to add to the text because it touched on matters of psychotherapy, which I was familiar with, but the mangaka was not. (Sigh…) The forced manner in which certain characters spoke was also cringe (it was very clear the mangaka had never actually heard lower class Japanese men talk and interact), so I had to make them actually sound like humans who exist... One of the localisers I admire most is Darcy Parquet, who created the English subtitles for the Korean 2019 live-action film Parasite. Timing is everything in comedy and he worked very closely with the filmmaker to accurately convey the feeling of the film, to the point where they even changed props for the English release (something many translators would kill for!). I like this interview with him:

- In one scene, a woman calls a dish "jjapaguri" but the subtitle says "ramdon." Is it true that "jjapaguri" was the hardest to translate?

I was embarrassed because I made up this word "ramdon." I thought people would laugh at me for it, but it works in the film. The word is first used during a phone conversation. Later, as one character prepares the food, we see the packages on the screen and I wrote "ramyeon" [instant ramen] and "udon" over them to show how "ramdon" came about. I did actually Google "ramdon" before writing it and nothing came up. It appears to not be a word in any language at all.

- Couldn't you have written in "jjapaguri" so that foreign audiences could look it up later?

There are always debates like that. In that case, if you put the original Korean word, people can search it up later. There are other examples, like "Seoul National University" (SNU) being translated to "Oxford." The first time I did the translation, I did write out SNU but we ultimately decided to change it because it's a very funny line, and in order for humor to work, people need to understand it immediately. With an unfamiliar word, the humor is lost.

My “problem” with most dubs are these:

• Inept script adaptation
• Inappropriate casting
• Poor voice direction (the script may be fine and the actors may be well-casted and capable, but aren’t given accurate information on character dynamics, private factors, and correct affect)

It’s very rare to find dubs that nail all of these things right. Even with great dubs that I prefer over the original performances, there’s almost always something that detracts from my enjoyment of the story: in the case of the Japanese animated film Howl’s Moving Castle, my biggest issue is the incredible rudeness that Disney added to the apprentice boy’s character. (He is nothing like this in Japanese and is supposed to come across as very stern and polite, like a schoolmarm.) I’m also dismayed that Disney added loud cheering to the war parades (in the original Japanese, the on-looking crowds are largely silent)—the result being that the original sense of hollow spectacle and forced pageantry, and a populace not so happy about going to war, is lost on English-speaking audiences. Aside from these two issues, I much prefer the English dub over the original Japanese!

Sometimes the different casting and voice direction can lend additional colour and depth to a character. Other times, it pisses me off. One of our& favourite examples of differing casting and voice direction adding to the story is Shou Minamimoto from the video game, The World Ends With You. In the original Japanese, this teen is given a deeper baritone voice and just comes across as a hammy, Saturday morning cartoon villain. His English VA actually sounds more like the artistic, earnest kid he’s supposed to be, and the sadness and self-disappointment in his voice when he says “I blew it…!” make him significantly more sympathetic to English-speaking audiences. In the context of the game’s narrative, he gives the impression of an alienated, ambitious artist, pushed over the edge of sanity by sheer pessimism-induced anhedonia (it’s implied that prior to his Reaperhood, he lost the one thing most important to him: the ability to see beauty in the world), rather than just flatly “evil” and obsessed with megaphones and piles of junk.

Our& other favourite example is the script adaptations and different performance of Eren from the 2013 anime Attack-On Titan (there’s some violence in that clip, and major spoilers). In the original Japanese, he’s much more restrained and less of a violent psychopath. Normally I’d have a problem with the overly villainous depiction in the English dub, but considering the ending, this works. Like he was already a weird kid in the original Japanese, but his English depiction is just.

Japanese: “Tch! Hrrraaahhhn! You animals! Die! Die already! This is what you lot deserve! You had it coming! Stay down for good!”

English: “Ah—HYAAAAAAAAAAIIIEEEAAHH! You’re an animal you hear me! NO! YOU’RE A DISEASE! This is what you get you son of a bitch! This is what you get for being what you are! Diee!! DIEE!!!”

And don’t get me started with the script and pacing changes involving him and Zeke. Gods, that was masterful. Superlative changes by the English team. 

It’s always really unfortunate when the subtitles are done by somebody so inept with either side of the language, that they completely botch the entire tone of a scene. Most people watching the subtitled versions are unaware when this happens, and it happens quite a lot, even with very important scenes, in very popular series, by very big distributors. For anyone into season 4 of Attack On Titan, the scene with Reiner at the dinner table has got to be one of the worst official translations I’ve ever seen. (Crunchyroll and Netflix, what the fuck?) I advise you not to open the linked video if you haven’t seen the show, or haven’t gotten to that part yet. I’ve written an accurate translation of what he’s saying is below, which doesn’t spoil anything:

“They don’t have concepts like fairness or compromise, see? All of those guys really are hopeless. There was one moron dumb enough to forget why he went into the latrines, a jackass who thought only about himself, another dumbass who thought about every single other person but himself, one bone-head who’d charge ahead without thinking, and the two who would follow him through anything... You know, there were all kinds of people there, right by our side.”

Imagine coming home from college and describing your college roommates. It’s that kind of language he’s using.

But to the people only knowing the subtitles, they think that Reiner’s being incredibly sarcastic, or trying to convince himself that he has the moral high ground.
But if you know what he’s actually saying, the subtext is that now that he’s finally at liberty with kith and kin, he feels safe for the first time in a long time, and he just wants to get some things off his chest to his family and talk casually for once. He doesn’t even realise how familiar, casual, and trusting he comes across.

[foxmosis]

I prefer dubs because I'm an animation nerd, and I like to try to watch these things with as much of an undivided attention as I can.  I think it could be argued that watching anime dubbed is closer to watching it how it was originally intended to be viewed, but I also think that argument could get a bit ableist.  I've just never really agreed with the "closer to the original intention" argument when it comes to subs, but I also don't really care that much.  I've been out of the anime loop for awhile but I actually want to watch some of the classics, and rewatch some of my classics, this year.

Honestly, it's really whatever I heard first is what I'll prefer.  So for One Piece, I only watch the dub.  But the new Panty and Stocking that's coming out?  I'll probably watch it subbed.

I haven't even watched One Piece in years though, I switched to the manga awhile ago so I've become an even worse type of nerd in this discussion lol

[Blue]

Nowadays pretty much everything I watch is with subs, BUT, if I'm rewatching a series from my childhood, I will always go for the dub for the nostalgia factor and the fact that after being used to dub when it comes to those specific anime, it is very weird to switch to subs. There are not too many anime like this, I've really only rewatched Deltora Quest and Yu-gi-oh GX like this, but if I were to go back and rewatch something like Tokyo Mew Mew or Naruto, I'd be going for dub for sure.

When I was starting out to watch anime once I had a proper name for it (so around 12-13 years old) I did watch some stuff in English dub, but after a while I switched to subs and those I could watch with subs now no problem, but anything before that time would be dub only, even if it's kind awkward and the translation might not be the best since they usually translated it from English to our language rather than translating it from Japanese (at the time there just wasn't much interest for studying the language so it makes sense).