BombermanBoard

Soniti 254 · #7 Posted: Fri Jul 02, 2010 10:31 am

Hammer Bomber wrote:

I'm not a fan of animé, sometimes a few kids ones were on TV when i was young, they all had terrible voice acting and ignorant bumbling around a translated script, a cheap conversion process with a different team often failing to accurately portray what the original production staff set out to achieve. Jetterz is very heavy in Jappy culture, not something kids all over the world are particularly interested in

There are some localization studios that actually do an excellent job bringing over anime. I know that you didn't say "all translated anime is done badly," but I don't like when one associates and compares a localized anime made into a weekday morning cartoon with the entire anime genre. It's not fair, as there are some shows that are actually done very well that you wouldn't ever see on TV.

Hammer Bomber wrote:

With a time gap like this, it would be even sloppier. One idea i will throw into the mix however is throwing the scripts away completely and writing something reasonably different around what can be visually seen. I've seen this done in a french 3D animation before where the American dub stuck to the script and produced something mediocre while the UK dub went in a separate direction re-writeing the entire dialog, appealing to its target audiences humour more and avoided comparisons from the original because it was in effect, a completely different show.

I don't have too much of problem when the localizers decide to change small things like certain jokes and such to more so appeal to their culture (there are some exceptions, of course, but I won't get into that). However, I don't like when localizers decide to rewrite the entire story from scratch.

For example, what 4kids did to the Kirby anime. I use this comparison a lot because it shows exactly what I don't want localizers doing to anime. The original anime, from what I've seen, has a surprisingly dark story and it takes itself rather seriously. There were some jokes every now and then, but they didn't ruin the moment and some were actually kind of clever. You wouldn't know any of this if you watched the 4kids dub, as 4kids pretty much watched each episode and decided to make their own script, rather then actually translating the original script and making appropriate changes. They try to fix something that isn't broken, if you will. 4kids also has this tendency of throwing in stupid unfunny puns into their scripts and they drag out said pun, as if it's actually suppose to make it funnier or something. If you don't believe me, watch one episode of the anime subbed (you can skip to about 1:30 if you don't want to see the intro song), and then watch that same episode 4kids dubbed. The only thing that's the same is the animation. Everything else is very different.

So yeah, I'm against localizers rewriting the entire script from scratch. I'm sure some can actually do it right, but based on what I've seen, most don't. There should be some basis from the original script when localizers bring over shows. Otherwise, why bother bringing over a show if they change everything but the animation? Why don't just make their own show in that case?