Between the Funimation dub of Kai and their dub of Super, which would you say is better?

[Robo4900]

They actually made a joke about [spoiler]HFIL?[/spoiler] That's...really random. What was it even in reference too? I can't seem to find a clip.

HFIL is an abbreviate for Home For Infinite Losers. Which is the name of the eight episodes of the "Saban dub" for Dragon Ball Z which aired on November 1, 1996.

In that episode, which was pure filler, Goku falls of Snake Way and ends up in hell. However, the shirt that Goz and Mez wear, instead of having "HELL" written on them, are digitally edited by taking the bottom two lines from the middle letters, and reading "HFIL" instead of "HELL". This change was made due to FCC regulations regarding usage of the word "Hell" in Saturday morning children's programing.

When FUNimation production Barry Watson was asked about this specifically an interview with Animerica magazine in 1998, he said this:

To be honest, that “Home for Infinite Losers” was about the best we could do. Something you have to realise is that to eliminate something like that, there are 30 frames for every second of animation, our painters have to work through about 15 to 20 minutes of footage, so you’re talking about literally tens of thousands of cels to clean up. We do try our best to keep to the spirit of the original animation and to keep in line with a lot of the Japanese spirit of the show.

I know all that. I was asking what the joke in the Super dub about it was.

I was trying to avoid mentioning outside of spoiler tags for those who haven't seen it and may enjoy the joke, but yes... There's a HFIL joke. It's when Senbei Norimaki is talking to the ghost of that evil guy, the guy says something along the lines of "I escaped from the Home For Infinite Losers..."

As a side-note, that Barry Watson interview is very interesting -- particularly in the part where he talks about the then-planned Pioneer uncut dub -- and well worth a read to anyone reading this post who hasn't read the interview yet.

Did they seriously put in a HFIL joke in Super? This makes me glad that I don't watch the Super dub, aside from the fact that the Funimation cast has become far too predictable.

I'm not sure what motivates Funimation not let go of their old habits of adding unnecessary stuff in their recent Dragon Ball dubs.
[...]
They're supposed to adapt a Japanese show into English, not make their own version of the show.

Yeah, this is the issue... Their script adaptors are just far too lax on maintaining the original spirit of the dialogue, and very used to just changing things for the hell of it... From what I've seen, Dragon Ball is hit the worst by it, but none of their dubs really get off that well...

I actually thought the HFIL line was pretty funny....it's a gag in a gag episode...relax.

If this was an isolated incident, I'd let it slide. But their dialogue is full of this, and this wasn't a joke that was in the original, nor is it an adaptation of the sense of humour into an English style; Dr. Slump is written very whimsically, practically every sentence has some kind of wordplay or pun in it, which is a lot of why no one even tried to fansub it for the longest time, and why Viz's translation of the manga is actually rather inaccurate to what's literally being said in the original, however you do have to adapt this style somehow to create the English equivalent...
But this is not a case of that. This is a self-referential in-joke that only hardcore fans -- or fans who've just been hanging around for a really long time -- would remember, and it's not even remotely clever. If it was just a one-off, and the rest of the dialogue in the episode was bang-on, and every other episode of Super had stayed very faithful, then I wouldn't mind it, and I'd actually say it's a decently fun nod to the older fans. I think it is perhaps a bit unwise to insert a joke like this that no one who started with Kai would get, but I wouldn't hold it against it. It's like the TFS scene in Kai TFC; it's dumb and stupid, but as a one-off it's okay... Problem is, they do this at least once an episode, usually multiple times an episode. The TFS scene -- despite it being funny -- says a lot about how Funimation feel about the original dialogue and spirit of the show, as does the HFIL joke.

[Forte224]

Ha, Well that's pretty lame. I agree that it isn't the lines in and of themselves that annoy me, it's the frequency of them. I did try to keep HFIL in spoiler tags, sorry

[WittyUsername]

As far as the HFIL joke is concerned, that sounds like a case of self-deprecating humor, rather than a display of any sort of contempt for the Japanese version. With that being said, I’m not fond of the joke, since I don’t like the idea of having in-jokes in an official dub of the series, hence why I didn’t like the TFS scene in Kai. Mind you, I didn’t like episode 69 of the series to begin with, since that whole episode relied on a sense of humor that’s completely foreign to me, and translating that to English only serves to make it even more cringeworthy, in my opinion.

[jjgp1112]

Is the HFIL joke really worth fretting over in a total gag episode that in itself would go over the heads of fans not familiar with Dr. Slump? Chances are, if you're an English fan that has familiarity with Dr. Slump to begin with, you probably know 20-year-old DB references as well.

[WittyUsername]

Is the HFIL joke really worth fretting over in a total gag episode that in itself would go over the heads of fans not familiar with Dr. Slump? Chances are, if you're an English fan that has familiarity with Dr. Slump to begin with, you probably know 20-year-old DB references as well.

The argument seems to be that there are too many instances of lines like that. I personally just don’t like including very specific in-jokes that would feel more at home in an abridged series, but I don’t like episode 69 anyway, so it doesn’t particularly bother me.

[8000 Saiyan]

Man, an uncut Pioneer Ocean dub would have been awesome.

[Robo4900]

Is the HFIL joke really worth fretting over in a total gag episode that in itself would go over the heads of fans not familiar with Dr. Slump? Chances are, if you're an English fan that has familiarity with Dr. Slump to begin with, you probably know 20-year-old DB references as well.

Yes. It is worth fretting over. Because they do this crap all the goddamn time and every single time there's an instance people take issue with, so many people say "well y'know it's just adapting it for english and it's not that bad."
Seriously, I don't care about the line in and of itself; Forte224 gets it, it's the fact they do this all the goddamn time, and the attitude of "oh well let's just throw some jokes in there" shows massive disrespect for the original work, and to the fans of the show as Toei originally produced and intended it to be seen. Did they need to put this line in there? Did they need to add that line about Yamcha in there? Did they need to put the TFS scene in TFC? Did they need to put "I forgot my tractor" in there? No. They just really like adding nonsense that was never there in the original script to their dubs. I wouldn't be surprised if the Kuririn and Goku filler 2-parter drops a reference to Ghost Nappa in the Funi dub.

It's 2018. There is no excuse to add nonsense to your dubs. Death Note was 11 years ago, and yet its scripts are pretty much perfect. 11 years ago, Funimation were doing the "Season" DVD redubs to Z, and basically just using the same crappy, inaccurate dialogue they wrote in 1999. Speaking of 1999, Funimation were doing "Season 3" of their dub at that point, widely agreed to be the worst part of their dub. Things only slightly improved as we rolled into 2001, and yet 2001 saw the dawn of the Cowboy Bebop dub, one of the best dubs(If not the best dub) of all time.
And yet, here we are, in 2018, with Funimation still really not caring about script accuracy to any reasonable degree. Blue Water's Dragon Ball GT was more accurately-scripted than Super has been, and that was a TV dub produced only for TV airings in the UK and Canada in 2003. Granted, it was an exceptional example as it ended up being a legit pretty good dub in which most episodes of the run were uncut, but if Blue Water could go the extra mile while being the low-budget sister studio to Ocean that was producing a TV-only dub destined to only ever air in the UK and Canada for a brief time in the mid-2000s, surely Funimation could be at least that good for an uncut dub in 2018 that's going on all the home video releases, streaming services, etc... Hell, Funi's Super dub isn't even the most accurate dub of Super...

As far as the HFIL joke is concerned, that sounds like a case of self-deprecating humor, rather than a display of any sort of contempt for the Japanese version. With that being said, I’m not fond of the joke, since I don’t like the idea of having in-jokes in an official dub of the series, hence why I didn’t like the TFS scene in Kai. Mind you, I didn’t like episode 69 of the series to begin with, since that whole episode relied on a sense of humor that’s completely foreign to me, and translating that to English only serves to make it even more cringeworthy, in my opinion.

The fact it isn't literally mocking the Japanese version isn't the issue, the fact it completely disregards the original spirit of the scene and the actual text of what they're saying is the issue.
The humour not translating isn't an issue with the episode itself, it's an issue with who's translating it; a competent translation would be like Viz's translation of the manga, which adapts the puns and wordplay into English(Which is so common in translation, especially from Japanese, they even have a special term for it named after a script adaptor who used to work for Square Enix, it's called a Woolseyism). You're not literally getting what's said in Japanese, because of course you aren't, but it gives you the English equivalent of what was said in Japanese, and in the end, that's the purpose of the translation.
And yet, instead of doing this, Funimation decided to put in an entirely self-referential joke in a place where there was originally no joke, and really, it wasn't even that funny...

Is the HFIL joke really worth fretting over in a total gag episode that in itself would go over the heads of fans not familiar with Dr. Slump? Chances are, if you're an English fan that has familiarity with Dr. Slump to begin with, you probably know 20-year-old DB references as well.

The argument seems to be that there are too many instances of lines like that. I personally just don’t like including very specific in-jokes that would feel more at home in an abridged series, but I don’t like episode 69 anyway, so it doesn’t particularly bother me.

Exactly. Thank you. Nice to know there's at least one person here who's willing to pay attention to the actual thing people are criticising, rather than just cherry-picking the pieces that make your opinion look better.

The problem with the "I don't like this episode anyway, so I don't care" attitude is that really, you should be thinking the opposite; take massive issue with when they get it wrong in an episode you don't like, because if you don't, they'll continue to make the same mistakes in the episodes you do like. Granted, there's probably no chance in hell Funimation are going to suddenly have a change of heart 25 years in, but I think it's not totally unreasonable to say that part of the reason Funi went downhill after Kai 1.0 was that no one took issue with their sudden down-turn in TFC and Super, or even the later parts of Kai 1.0 itself(Which, I will remind you, includes this), so they haven't made any effort to go back on it. So, I think it is worth taking issue with this on the off chance they at least go back to how they were in Kai 1.0.

[WittyUsername]

Like I said, I don’t really watch the English dub of Super, so I’m generally pretty ambivalent to how the dub handles it. In any case, I see little to suggest that FUNimation is reverting back to their old ways with the dub of the series. Yeah, it takes more liberties with dialogue than what we saw with Kai 1.0, but it still seems faithful overall, and most of the actors seem to be giving about as good a performance as ever. Plus, people apparently consider James Marsters’ Zamasu to be up there with Chris Ayres’ Freeza.

[8000 Saiyan]

I think I would have to watch the Zamasu arc with the Funimation dub to see if Marsters is truly on par on Ayres.

[Kataphrut]

I actually watched episode 69 dubbed and I think it goes to show just why the argument that Funimation have been backsliding on their dubs rings hollow. Because that episode was incredibly well dubbed. Considering how hard it would be to translate that style of humour, not to mention that a good majority of the audience have probably never watched or read Dr Slump, they translated the jokes well and most of them got a good chuckle out of me even though I'd seen it before. Add to that a catchy localised version of the opening song and good casting of Brina Palencia and R. Bruce Elliot as Arale and Senbei and it feels like you could could do an official dub of Dr Slump with this team and have it work.

But, they throw in one little HFIL reference and all of that good work is for nothing. Suddenly they're "disrespecting the original work". Considering most of the people lobbing those accusations haven't even watched the dub and are just assuming from cherry-picked examples that the whole product is a backslide, I'd take those arguments with a grain of salt even if I wasn't seeing all the ways the dub has provided a faithful adaptation of the source material. And the HFIL thing is so not worth getting upset about, especially in an episode and indeed a series that is generally light-hearted prone to a bit of meta-comedy. The Arale crossover of all episodes is not the one to storm the barricades over a bit of self-referential humour from the dubbing team. Neither is this week's "Hey remember the Yamcha death pose?" episode, which you know they're going to play up for the exact amount of self-referential cringey meme humour it was intended for.

[Forte224]

I actually watched episode 69 dubbed and I think it goes to show just why the argument that Funimation have been backsliding on their dubs rings hollow. Because that episode was incredibly well dubbed. Considering how hard it would be to translate that style of humour, not to mention that a good majority of the audience have probably never watched or read Dr Slump, they translated the jokes well and most of them got a good chuckle out of me even though I'd seen it before. Add to that a catchy localised version of the opening song and good casting of Brina Palencia and R. Bruce Elliot as Arale and Senbei and it feels like you could could do an official dub of Dr Slump with this team and have it work.

But, they throw in one little HFIL reference and all of that good work is for nothing. Suddenly they're "disrespecting the original work". Considering most of the people lobbing those accusations haven't even watched the dub and are just assuming from cherry-picked examples that the whole product is a backslide, I'd take those arguments with a grain of salt even if I wasn't seeing all the ways the dub has provided a faithful adaptation of the source material. And the HFIL thing is so not worth getting upset about, especially in an episode and indeed a series that is generally light-hearted prone to a bit of meta-comedy. The Arale crossover of all episodes is not the one to storm the barricades over a bit of self-referential humour from the dubbing team. Neither is this week's "Hey remember the Yamcha death pose?" episode, which you know they're going to play up for the exact amount of self-referential cringey meme humour it was intended for.

It isn't the lines in and of themselves that annoy me, it's the frequency of them.

[Robo4900]

I actually watched episode 69 dubbed and I think it goes to show just why the argument that Funimation have been backsliding on their dubs rings hollow. Because that episode was incredibly well dubbed. Considering how hard it would be to translate that style of humour, not to mention that a good majority of the audience have probably never watched or read Dr Slump, they translated the jokes well and most of them got a good chuckle out of me even though I'd seen it before. Add to that a catchy localised version of the opening song and good casting of Brina Palencia and R. Bruce Elliot as Arale and Senbei and it feels like you could could do an official dub of Dr Slump with this team and have it work.

But, they throw in one little HFIL reference and all of that good work is for nothing. Suddenly they're "disrespecting the original work". Considering most of the people lobbing those accusations haven't even watched the dub and are just assuming from cherry-picked examples that the whole product is a backslide, I'd take those arguments with a grain of salt even if I wasn't seeing all the ways the dub has provided a faithful adaptation of the source material. And the HFIL thing is so not worth getting upset about, especially in an episode and indeed a series that is generally light-hearted prone to a bit of meta-comedy. The Arale crossover of all episodes is not the one to storm the barricades over a bit of self-referential humour from the dubbing team. Neither is this week's "Hey remember the Yamcha death pose?" episode, which you know they're going to play up for the exact amount of self-referential cringey meme humour it was intended for.

Here's a comparisons of the first 5 minutes of the episode from the Simulcast subs and the Funi dub. I've highlighted some of the more weird, problematic, or grievous changes. I've also split it up into three parts for ease of comparison...
[spoiler]SIMULCAST SUBS:

Presenter: Hello to everyone watching on TV! We're reporting live from the World Invention Award. This year's most outstanding invention will be decided at this event. The presenter will be our own super star, Mr. Satan! The scientists who've had their inventions nominated are awaiting the announcement. May I have a few words? [Vegeta glares] ...! Please stay tuned!
[Vegeta makes a sort of "Pfft"-type sound angrily]
Bulma: Try to smile at least for today.
Trunks: That's right, dad. Today's the special day that mom's invention will win the grand prize.
Vegeta: I don't care.
Mr. Satan: Everyone, thank you for taking time off your busy schedules to come today. And now, the announcement you've been waiting for!
Goku: Part-time jobs are really boring.
Chichi (Flashback): Listen, Goku. Satan san went to the trouble of getting you a job working security. It'd be good to work properly once in a while. Do your hair and go!
Goku: That's what she said, but... [Hair loosens, and suit rips] Oh, man... [Takes off sleeves] This is no good.
Guard: Uh, excuse me...

FUNIMATION DUB:

Presenter: Greetings to everyone out there in TV land! We are coming to you live from the annual world inventor's awards, right here in beautiful West City! This event recognises the most outstanding inventions of the past year. And look, there's the master of ceremonies now, our very own superstar, Mr. Satan! All the talented tinkerers who've been nominated are gathered here, eagerly waiting to find out which gadget will take home the top prize of the night. Excuse me sir, could I have a word? [Vegeta glares] Stay tuned and find out who wins!
Vegeta: Yay [Sarcastic]
Bulma: Would it kill you to smile, just for one day?
Trunks: Yeah dad, this is supposed to be a big party; mom's invention is about to win top prize, it's a really big deal for her.
Vegeta: And it has nothing to do with me.
Mr. Satan: Yes, yes, uh... Thank you... Thank you... Uhh... Honoured guests, I'd like to thank you for taking the time away from inventing stuff to be here as we celebrate you inventing stuff. Now without further ado, the moment you've all been waiting for...
Goku: Oh man, having a day job sure is boring...
Chichi (Flashback): Now listen here Goku, Mr. Satan went outta his way to get you this security job so you're gonna take it! You know it's about time you did some serious work for a change! And be sure to fix your hair before you go!
Goku: Yeah, that's easy for her to say... [Hair loosens, and suit rips] Aww, dammit... [Takes off sleeves] Oh, forget about it, this is hopeless...
Guard: Uhh, you can't just leave![/spoiler]So, the main thing here is them making Mr. Satan seem a lot more nervous on stage(Which really doesn't make much sense when you think about it), and Vegeta being sarcastic and a lot more mean. They also changed the guard's line too. He was facing away from the camera, so there's no real reason for this at all.

Part 2...
[spoiler]SIMULCAST SUBS:

Mr. Satan: This year's most outstanding invention chosen by the World Science Academy is... The invention by Dr. Senbei Norimaki of Penguin Village, the "Reality Machine Number 2"!
Senbei: Hooray! [Worth noting: While this isn't subbed, he says in Japanese "Washi" in a questioning tone before he starts speaking about something the subs render as "Hooray!"]
Trunks: What?
Senbei: Thank you! Thank you, thank you.
Mr. Satan: Doctor, please come to the stage!
Senbei: Thank you for the introduction. I'm Senbei Norimaki. I'm called Dr. Slump by those who bad-mouth me. However! If you see this, you will understand that I am a genius! Its name is, "Reality Machine Number 2"!
Machine: Yay! Applause! Applause!
Mr. Satan: So Dr. Senbei, what sort of invention is this?
Senbei: Well, let me show you. As you can see, there's nothing inside. [Senbei concentrates]
Machine: Tadaaaaah! [Magazine shoots out of the top of the machine]
Senbei: What do you think?!
Mr. Satan (Reading magazine): They're quite impressive.
Senbei: Not the pictures! This photograph collection of young gals was created out of nothing! Basically, this machine detected my strong desire, and made it from the air! I'm terrified. I'm terrified of my own talent.
Mr. Satan: B-But why did you choose a photograph collection of young gals?
Senbei: This machine only detecs desires that you're dying for.
Mr. Satan: J-Just how much do you like young gals?!
Senbei: Would you like to try as well, Mr. Satan?
Mr. Satan: Wow! Can I?
Senbei: Of course! Now think as hard as you can.

FUNIMATION DUB:

Mr. Satan: Ladies and gentlemen, I'm pleased to announce the academy has chosen as this year's most outstanding invention... The "Reality Machine Number 2" created by Penguin Village's own Dr. Senbei Norimaki!
Senbei: Who, me? Well, alright! Thank you, thank you, you're too kind, really...
Mr. Satan: Hey doc, come on up here and say a few words...
Senbei: Thank you all for that warm reception, I am Senbei Norimaki... Or, as my cruel and hurtful detractors are so maliciously fond of calling me, Dr. Slump. HOWEVER!... Once you get a load of my prize-winning invention, I think you'll all agree that I am indeed a genius! I call this game-changer the "Reality Machine Number 2", tada!
Machine: Hey there, can I get a round of applause?
Mr. Satan: So, uhh, Dr. Norimaki, what exactly does this little gizmo do anyway?
Senbei: I'm glad you asked, my friend; here, allow me to demonstrate. As you can see, there's nothing inside. Nothing at all. [Senbei concentrates]
Machine: [Begins grunting] Ba ba-da-dum!! [Magazine shoots out of the top of the machine]
Senbei: Well, impressed?
Mr. Satan (Reading magazine): Oh yeah, they're impressive alright...
Senbei: No, not the girls in the magazine, the fact that the girly magazine you're holding was created out of nothing, that's what's impressive here. Don't you see, the machine was able to tell what the thing I most desired in that moment was, and then materialised it out of thin air. Scary now, sometimes I even scare myself with my genius.
Mr. Satan: Okay, but of all the things you could wish for, why would you waste a wish on a girly magazine?
Senbei: This machine can only sense the desires you want so badly, you'd be willing to die for them.
Mr. Satan: Just how interested are you in bikini-clad girls, 'cause it seems like a little too much.
Senbei: Well Mr. Satan, would you like to give it a try?
Mr. Satan: Ooooh! Can I?
Senbei: Of course, just concentrate as hard as you can on something that you really want.
Mr. Satan: Alright, here goes.[/spoiler]Here, they added some personality to the machine that wasn't originally there, continued the trend of making Mr. Satan rather nervous on stage, made Mr. Satan a lot more challenging of Senbei's desire for dirty magazines, and to go along with that, made Senbei seem a lot more desperate for them by making one line be turned very literal and making it come off a lot more strong, rather unnecessarily. It's also worth noting that the "desires you want so badly, you'd be willing to die for them" line was while Senbei was facing away from the camera...

And finally...
[spoiler]SIMULCAST SUBS:

Dr. Mashirito: Reject... Reject... Reject... Reject... Reject... Reject... Reject...
[Mr. Satan keychain shoots out of the top of the machine]
Mr. Satan: This is amazing! No one here objects to Dr. Senbei Norimaki winning the award, right?
Bulma: Not bad!
Trunks: Wow! I want one too!
Dr. Mashirito: Reject...
Senbei: Thank you, thank you! I never dreamed this day would come...
Mr. Satan: And now, to present the medal. Dr. Senbei Norimaki, congratulations.
Senbei: Yes.
Dr. Mashirito: I object!
Trunks: What?
Senbei: Dr. Mashirito?!
Mashirito: I'm the greatest scientific mind in the world and Senbei Norimaki's eternal rival, yet you didn't even send an invite to me, Dr. Mashirito.
Senbei: Hold on a second! ... I knew it! You definitely died in the original "Dr. Slump" comic!
Mashirito: I couldn't stand not being invited and escaped from Hell!
Senbei: Y-You're a scientist yet you're talking unscientific nonsense!

FUNIMATION DUB:

Dr. Mashirito: Left, right, left, right, left, left, eehhh right, right, left, right, l--
Machine: Da da-da-daaah!! [Mr. Satan keychain shoots out of the top of the machine]
Mr. Satan: Ooh! Wow, it's just what I wanted... Ladies and gentlemen, no one here objects to Dr. Norimaki receiving this prize, am I right?!
[Crowd cheers]
Bulma: That really is remarkable.
Trunks: So awesome, I want one right now!
Dr. Mashirito: Alright...
Senbei: Thank you... From the bottom of my heart, thank you. I never thought this day would come...!
Mr. Satan: In that case, I'll give you your medal now. You've truly earned this one, Dr. Norimaki.
Senbei: Thanks.
Dr. Mashirito: I object!
Trunks: Who's that?
Senbei: Dr. Mashirito?
Mashirito: As this generation's greatest scientific mind, not to mention Norimaki's most well-known rival, imagine my surprise when I failed to receive even an invitation to this silly gala!
Senbei: Wait just a minute... Ah, I knew it! See, in the original Dr. Slump comics, you died, so how the heck can you be standing here now? Huh?
Mashirito: I was so upset about being snubbed, I escaped from the Home For Infinite Losers just to get my vengeance.
Senbei: Well that's an unscientific thing for a scientist to do, have you no respect for the laws of nature?[/spoiler]It's possible there's a pun in Mashirito's dialogue that wasn't translating, but given he was saying the same word repeatedly in Japanese, but Funi changed it to him saying a pattern of "Left" and "Right", and at one point "Alright", I'm highly sceptical this is an effort to actually translate any pun, especially given that watching it dubbed, you don't really get the sense of any puns going on, you just get the thought popping into your head of "Why the hell is this guy saying 'Left' and 'Right'? And why is he saying 'Alright?'... Wait, he has no legs... Why the hell was he saying 'Left' and 'Right' as he was walking if he doesn't have legs?!!?!". Finally, they made him a lot more dismissive of the gala itself, but at the same time, made him specifically say he's very upset about "Being snubbed"...

The problem isn't one line, the problem is that this is not a faithful rendition of the original. What's up with Vegeta's sarcastic "Yay"? Why is Mr. Satan so much more anxious and mumbly on-stage? Why is the machine a lot more easygoing and regular-talking rather than just simply saying "Yay! Applause! Applause"? Why did they lean so much harder into the magazine thing? If that guard was facing away from camera, why did they need to change his line so much?

And all this is from just the first 5 minutes of the episode...!

I wouldn't call this a bad dub, you'll get by if you watch this version, but it's hardly good as far as scripts are concerned.

[jjgp1112]

Okay, I'm sorry, but that's just preposterous, and seeing the line by line comparisons only further validates my belief that these script complaints, at least in the case of that episode, are entirely overblown

[DB_Fan1991]

Yeah, a lot of you don’t know bad dubbing. All I see is nitpicking. If you want bad watch the dubs of Pokémon XY & Sun & Moon, Digimon (excluding Tri), heck for DB the Big Green & Speedy dubs are bad.

[Robo4900]

Yeah, a lot of you don’t know bad dubbing. All I see is nitpicking. If you want bad watch the dubs of Pokémon XY & Sun & Moon, Digimon (excluding Tri), heck for DB the Big Green & Speedy dubs are bad.

A. As I literally said in my post, "I wouldn't call this a bad dub, you'll get by if you watch this version, but it's hardly good as far as scripts are concerned."

B. Speedy is only bad because of the voices. The scripts are actually pretty solid, and that's all we're talking about here; scripting.

Scripts are not the most important aspect of a dub, however in this day and age, there's no excuse for subpar scripts, and getting good scripts is very important when the dub you're producing is likely going to be the only uncut dub, and the dub that'll end up on all the home media releases right alongside highly-accurate subtitles that would put any subpar scripts to shame.

[WittyUsername]

I wouldn’t call the Speedy scripts “solid”. They’re technically accurate to the original, but they also sometimes have trouble getting things as simple as the names for the characters right (Videl being “Kami” for example), and they often go for literal translations of the original that just sound awkward in English (“The Saiya People”). In general, it’s pretty obvious that they aren’t written by native English speakers.

[Robo4900]

I wouldn’t call the Speedy scripts “solid”. They’re technically accurate to the original, but they also sometimes have trouble getting things as simple as the names for the characters right (Videl being “Kami” for example), and they often go for literal translations of the original that just sound awkward in English (“The Saiya People”). In general, it’s pretty obvious that they aren’t written by native English speakers.

Yes, the Speedy dub often messes up the names, but pretty much every dub has screwed the namings of things up to some extent. The actual dialogue is not that bad. Could do with tightening up to make it flow better in English, but it's decent enough. Not much more clunky than Steve Simmons' subtitles(Try having a conversation about the "Artificial Humans" sometime).

[WittyUsername]

I wouldn’t call the Speedy scripts “solid”. They’re technically accurate to the original, but they also sometimes have trouble getting things as simple as the names for the characters right (Videl being “Kami” for example), and they often go for literal translations of the original that just sound awkward in English (“The Saiya People”). In general, it’s pretty obvious that they aren’t written by native English speakers.

Yes, the Speedy dub often messes up the names, but pretty much every dub has screwed the namings of things up to some extent. The actual dialogue is not that bad. Could do with tightening up to make it flow better in English, but it's decent enough. Not much more clunky than Steve Simmons' subtitles(Try having a conversation about the "Artificial Humans" sometime).

A for effort, but the dialogue itself still wouldn’t work, even with better voice acting. Plus, the naming thing is especially egregious because they get the names of the characters mixed up. To give another example, Bardock is apparently also Kakarot.

Anyway, as far as the dialogue for episode 69 that you cited is concerned, some of that is pretty nitpicky, don’t you think? I can just easily cite examples from the Blue Water dub of GT that are odd, and not just from the Vegeta flashback episode. The ending narration for the dub also took a fair amount of liberties compared to the original.

[Robo4900]

A for effort, but the dialogue itself still wouldn’t work, even with better voice acting. Plus, the naming thing is especially egregious because they get the names of the characters mixed up. To give another example, Bardock is apparently also Kakarot.

I think you're giving them too much credit there; I doubt very much effort went into it at all. However, what they created was in fact an attempt at a translation, rather than "Funimation Presents: Dragon Ball Z"

[WittyUsername]

A for effort, but the dialogue itself still wouldn’t work, even with better voice acting. Plus, the naming thing is especially egregious because they get the names of the characters mixed up. To give another example, Bardock is apparently also Kakarot.

I think you're giving them too much credit there; I doubt very much effort went into it at all. However, what they created was in fact an attempt at a translation, rather than "Funimation Presents: Dragon Ball Z"

Effort as in, they obviously tried the best they could to do a direct English translation of the Japanese version. The problem was that they obviously didn’t speak English very well.