What's the concensus on dubs replacing sound effects?

[KBABZ]

While the voice acting is of course an oft-discussed topic, after viewing some clips of the Ocean cast dub, it occurred to me: what's everyone's opinion on when a dub replaces the sound effects? Personally I think it removes the exact tone and "spice" of the show, similar to when the music is switched out, particularly when generic stock sound effects are used.

[MasenkoHA]

While it doesn’t bother me as much as replacing music I’m against it unless there is a very good reason.

Actually replacing SFX makes even less sense than replacing music scores. If you want to make the excuse that American kids need wall to wall music as many dubbing companies of kids commercial anime made in the past fine whatever I guess, even if that’s load of crap. But what excuse could you possibly have to replace the sound effects?

Of course dubbing companies should leave all that stuff music and sfx alone but I believe that practice had died out with 4Kids and Saban both gone.

[KBABZ]

While it doesn’t bother me as much as replacing music I’m against it unless there is a very good reason.

Actually replacing SFX makes even less sense than replacing music scores. If you want to make the excuse that American kids need wall to wall music as many dubbing companies of kids commercial anime made in the past fine whatever I guess, even if that’s load of crap. But what excuse could you possibly have to replace the sound effects?

Of course dubbing companies should leave all that stuff music and sfx alone but I believe that practice had died out with 4Kids and Saban both gone.

What made the Ocean clips weird was that the way the mixing was done, the vocals and music drown out the original SFX. One of the scenes I was watching was when Trunks blows up Gero's lab, and you can BARELY hear his ki beam being fired. But then you hear very clearly a stock "BADOUWUUHH" sound effect when the lab blows up. It's like they're trying to smear over and cover up the original sound effects!

[JohnnyCashKami]

Most dubs didn't mess around with the sound effects nor its background music (FUNi and Ocean did) but I kinda liked the extra SFX that Ocean had on their dub, it was goofy but it worked.

[Forte224]

I'm in the camp the just doesn't like replacements, liberties taken, etc. That said, if I HAD to choose one thing to be altered between music, script, or sound effects, I'd choose sound effects.

[WittyUsername]

I never was a fan of the replacement sound effects that the Ocean Group dubs did. It was especially jarring with the movies. The sound effects just seemed so out of place when put together with the original music and the accurate scripts. That sound effect that played when Gohan passed out near the end of Movie 1, for example, was just silly.

[Vegard Aune]

My stance on replacing anything is basically this:
"Does it need to be done? If not, don't."
Pretty much the only circumstance I can think of where replacing sound-effects is necessary, would be if the original SFX track had been lost somehow. Or if you're dubbing a show that's really old and/or recorded with really bad equipment resulting in the sound effects sounding terrible and not matching up at all with the presumably crisp and clear voice-acting.

That said, as long as the new sound-effects still fit the scene, I'll probably have an easier time accepting it than music replacements. Your mileage may vary, but music is one thing I tend to notice a lot more than the sound effects.

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

Much like replacing the musical score I would prefer if it's not done but if the dub has good acting and scripts I can enjoy it for what it is at the very least.

I look at the Ocean dub of Kai this way, the decision to replace the score and SFX was made before Yamamoto was fired so the intention was there to not respect the source material but when it's finally realized I will look past that flaw in order to appreciate the cast recording a (hopefully) accurate script with good direction.

I honestly don't care much for the SFX in the Pioneer movie dubs. They are what they are. I'd prefer if they weren't used but they are so few and far between that the rest of the dub entirely makes up for it.

[Kunzait_83]

I'd say that in the specific example of something like DB/Z, replacing sound effects is a bit more of an issue as the series has some fairly iconic, distinctive, and instantly recognizable sound effects.

Much as I'd hate to draw the comparison, it kind of in some ways IS like if someone were to replace a lot of the similarly iconic sound effects from Star Wars (blaster fire, lighstabers, etc).

Just off the top of my head, the sound of the Kamehameha charging up and firing, a Ki aura flaring, and characters teleporting, are all immediately distinctive sounds that are permanently burned into my brain as intrinsically unique and symbolic of Dragon Ball.

[MasenkoHA]

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I honestly don't care much for the SFX in the Pioneer movie dubs. They are what they are. I'd prefer if they weren't used but they are so few and far between that the rest of the dub entirely makes up for it.

While entirely pointless (I guess they wanted kids to know that despite the hell and golden showers and bare Goku ass and better music this was still the same show as what they watched on Saturday mornings on Kidswb/UPN/Fox Kids/wherever ?) but honestly recently watching The Dead Zone pioneer dub I only noticed it when Krillin was trying to not get sucked into the dead zone)

[KBABZ]

Just off the top of my head, the sound of the Kamehameha charging up and firing, a Ki aura flaring, and characters teleporting, are all immediately distinctive sounds that are permanently burned into my brain as intrinsically unique and symbolic of Dragon Ball.

A bunch of others I'd list are, *deep breath*

The sound effect used for Frieza/Cell's footsteps, the three sound effects used for Kinto'un ("Bwaaaaaaaaahh", "putputputputput" and the screeching brakes sound), the sound of a basic ki blast being fired, the "wooooooOOOOOOOooooohhhhhh...." aftermath sound, blasting into flight, the low "BWUHDUHDUHDUH" sound for machine gun fire used in the first series, the various sounds associated with characters hitting rocks (including the "bwuh-DONG" sound if it's like stone specifically), the sound of Shenron as he's coming out of the Dragon Balls, a character collapsing into the ground, Krillin's Kienzan being held and thrown, that buzzsaw sound effect used for Frieza's discs and when Cell is flying, the whooshes and vwips of rapid melee attacks and dodges, the beeps of the Dragon Radar... so many from over the years.

[Robo4900]

The small kinds of changes we've tended to see in Dragon Ball's dubbing rarely bother me.

... Never thought that was a sentence I'd say.

Seriously, though... Aside from a couple of occurances that annoy me just a bit, whenever a Dragon Ball dub has changed/added sound effects, it hasn't really bothered me.

Wholesale replacing the sound effects of the show in a similar manner to the score being replaced would probably bother me, though. The sound design of Dragon Ball is fairly iconic. Even though I think a small change here or there doesn't really irk me much, replacing everything would really bother me... I cannot overstate the fact that the iconic sound effects of Dragon Ball are irreplacable... It would be an utter travesty if Dragon Ball were to stop sounding like Dragon Ball... (Glares sideways at Super)

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

I guess you could look at it in some ways like Pokemon, which only got a partial rescore so combined with the fact it already had good voice acting the dub was more easily forgiven (although I couldn't tell you how much was rescored but I assume the SFX and scripts were accurate for the most part) as opposed to anime like Dragon Ball, which had entire original scores and SFX replaced, and up until the mid to late 2000s the voice acting was pretty bad (and even in cases where the voices were good the scripts were bad).

[Robo4900]

I guess you could look at it in some ways like Pokemon, which only got a partial rescore so combined with the fact it already had good voice acting the dub was more easily forgiven (although I couldn't tell you how much was rescored but I assume the SFX and scripts were accurate for the most part)

Censorship aside, I understand Pokémon's dub to be surprisingly accurate.

Anyway, IIRC Pokémon had its original score, but added music to fill silence. Though I would hazard a guess some of the original music was also replaced.

as opposed to anime like Dragon Ball, which had entire original scores and SFX replaced, and up until the mid to late 2000s the voice acting was pretty bad (and even in cases where the voices were good the scripts were bad).

Dragon Ball has had some exceptional dub voice acting dating all the way back to 1989. The problems only really arise from 1999 on... Though many, such as myself, argue that at least some of the English world had it pretty good again for at least a little while in the early '00s... Though, I suppose only on TV...

Still, point taken, however I think it's worth noting that the voice acting didn't really get better in Funi's dubs until Kai, in 2010. Before that, their last real dubbing work aside from the partial Z redubs -- which I think would hardly count -- would be GT, in 2003, which well... Less said about that, the better...

I suppose there's something to be said for the later movie dubs though, if you want to get into that.

[Vegard Aune]

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Anyway, IIRC Pokémon had its original score, but added music to fill silence. Though I would hazard a guess some of the original music was also replaced.

Correct. The 4Kids dub basically picked and chose from scene to scene what music to keep and what to change, and somehow they wound up removing every single instance of the Lavender Town theme, but aside from that basically every piece of BGM made for the Japanese version was retained at some point or another... As for it being "surprisingly accurate", that depends; At least the dubs for the first two movies are a prime case study of the dub completely missing the point and trying to make them out to be about something entirely different than what they were supposed to. The second one in particular literally inverted the original theme (Japan: We may be weak individually but we can do anything by working together! US: One person can make all the difference!)
Of course, those movies also threw out the entire original score except Team Rocket's theme, so maybe I just shouldn't use them as a measure for the show's faithfulness. They were clearly made with a different mindset.

[Robo4900]

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Anyway, IIRC Pokémon had its original score, but added music to fill silence. Though I would hazard a guess some of the original music was also replaced.

Correct. The 4Kids dub basically picked and chose from scene to scene what music to keep and what to change, and somehow they wound up removing every single instance of the Lavender Town theme, but aside from that basically every piece of BGM made for the Japanese version was retained at some point or another... As for it being "surprisingly accurate", that depends; At least the dubs for the first two movies are a prime case study of the dub completely missing the point and trying to make them out to be about something entirely different than what they were supposed to. The second one in particular literally inverted the original theme (Japan: We may be weak individually but we can do anything by working together! US: One person can make all the difference!)
Of course, those movies also threw out the entire original score except Team Rocket's theme, so maybe I just shouldn't use them as a measure for the show's faithfulness. They were clearly made with a different mindset.

Heh, thought that might be the case.

As far as scripts go, I was referring to the series... I've heard some of Pokémon's movie dubs have been good(I seem to recall hearing good things about the third one...?), but, well, as I say, I was more thinking of the series there.

[KBABZ]

In terms of Pokemon, there are some rather infamous cases of changed-for-censorship like when Brock calls a Rice Ball a jelly doughnut to scrub over the Japanese flavour. And apparently the higher-ups in Japan agreed, because after the original Kanto season there was a conscious effort to genricize the locations and cultures to be less overtly Japanese to make it more marketable over the world, which is a shame because it being Japanese and foreign in setting is part of what made it so interesting.

[MasenkoHA]

I think my favorite example of 4Kids trying to Westernwash Pokemon was when Ash fought a girl wearing Japanese robes and had very Japanese music playing as her arrival with cherry blossom petals and everything

And 4Kids named her Jeanette FISHER

Censorship aside, I understand Pokémon's dub to be surprisingly accurate.

Yes more so in the early episodes but other than changing Japanese jokes (that don’t translate in English) and removing the show’s Japanese identity (which ultimately the studio producing Pokemon did on their own) the early episodes were pretty faithful with the dialog often being dead on.

Anyway, IIRC Pokémon had its original score, but added music to fill silence. Though I would hazard a guess some of the original music was also replaced.

Yep and eventually late in the 4Kids era, as I understand it, it got to the point that only the Team Rocket theme and the title music was being kept

[KBABZ]

Anyway, IIRC Pokémon had its original score, but added music to fill silence. Though I would hazard a guess some of the original music was also replaced.

Yep and eventually late in the 4Kids era, as I understand it, it got to the point that only the Team Rocket theme and the title music was being kept

As a side-note, it wasn't until a few years ago that I realized that the anime orchestrated a lot of music from the games, even through to Hoenn, alongside original compositions. I greatly admire the show for that.

[SpiritBombTriumphant]

Ash fought a girl wearing Japanese robes and had very Japanese music playing as her arrival with cherry blossom petals and everything

And 4Kids named her Jeanette FISHER