Ask John: Why Aren’t Dubs Faithfully Translated?

Question:
Often when you read reviews of anime, it often mentions that the dubbed version has been changed or deviates from the original version. So my question is how come the subtiled version is translated one way, and the dubed version another. Since it’s the same show, shouldn’t they be the same?

Answer:
The debate over subtitling and dubbing has raged now, literally, for decades, and veteran anime fans are so familiar with the arguments and circumstances that questions seem redundant. However, given the nature of anime fandom, new fans discover the hobby all the time, and not all new fans can be expected to immediately comprehend all of the circumstances that impact anime. I’ll try to avoid a subjective valuation of either dubbing or subtitling. Instead, I’ll aim to objectively answer the question posed.

While fans of English dubbing may prefer to think otherwise, the fundamental function of dubbing is to make foreign film more palatable to English speaking viewers. The purpose of English dubbed anime is not to create an alternate equivalent presentation of the original work – only the original director should have that right. English dubbing serves to make anime appealing to viewers that aren’t primarily interested in watching foreign language film. Since dubbing is a concession to mainstream and average viewers that otherwise probably wouldn’t watch anime, dubbing naturally involves liberties and approaches that maximize its effectiveness.

Because English and Japanese are fundamentally different languages, the amount of information conveyed in the same span of time is different between English and Japanese. So English dub scripts must sometimes rephrase, condense, or expand its rhetoric in order to fill the same amount of time that the original Japanese dialogue used. Furthermore, certain expressions in Japanese may not have equivalencies in English, making a literal translation into spoken English impossible. Average American viewers are also used to the conventions of American animation. American animation is typically finished after the dialogue is recorded, so that on-screen character mouth movements, or “lip flap,” matches the spoken dialogue. In order to concentrate on speed and cost-efficiency, Japanese animation is typically animated first, then voice actors match their dialogue to the finished animation. So lip flap may not always be precisely accurate in Japanese language anime. Average American viewers expect animated mouth movements to match the spoken dialogue, so English dub scripts sometimes need to be modified or abbreviated to match the on-screen character’s lip flap. For average American viewers, the appearance of naturalness on screen is more important than minor alterations in the meaning or nuance of the original script.

In many cases, English dubbed anime strives to adhere as closely as possible to the original Japanese dialogue. After all, the goal of dubbing is to provide a more convenient and accessible version of the original Japanese film, not create an entirely original film using the Japanese work as a basis. However, in select cases, English dubbing largely discards the original Japanese script in favor of an English dialogue script that will appeal to American viewers. The English dubbed versions of anime including Voices of a Different Star, Ghost Stories (Gakkou no Kaiden), Oh Super Milk-chan, and Crayon Shin-chan, for example, are significantly different from their original Japanese scripts because their American producers determined that jokes and references in the original Japanese scripts would alienate American viewers, or typical American viewers simply wouldn’t have the patience to watch an English equivalent of the original Japanese film. So the English dub took its core function to heart and became an entirely original American script designed to appeal to American viewers rather than accurately translate the original Japanese script.

The function of subtitling is to provide a literal and faithful transcription of the original dialogue for viewers that want to appreciate foreign film in its original context. The function of English dubbing is to provide an appealing viewing experience, and providing that “appealing viewing experience” may necessitate changes to the script that accommodate the knowledge, preferences, and tastes of English speaking viewers. Practical differences between spoken English and Japanese language sometimes necessitate alterations and modifications in dub scripts. The goal of creating a widely accessible and marketable product for American audiences sometimes necessitates small and large changes to the original Japanese script.