Toei is throwing uncut and improved dubs at every OLD franchise of theirs (Would you like some for Dragon Ball?)

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

David Gasman's Goku is actually higher pitched in the GT special. Also think the voice they had for Goku Jr was quite decent and had some Nozawa vibes.

A Heroes Legacy actually deviates from your typical Big Green movie or special. The name "saiyan" is uttered rather than "space warrior" and is pronounced correctly, so I do wonder if production picked up later on. There's nothing known about when each Big Green movie or special was dubbed, although the GT special and original Dragon Ball movies were released a bit later than most (aired summer 2005 on Toonami UK).

[Tian]

David Gasman's Goku is actually higher pitched in the GT special. Also think the voice they had for Goku Jr was quite decent and had some Nozawa vibes.

I'm aware he changed the pitch for that special, but since the guy above me mentioned the deep superhero-esque voice, well, I had to talk about David's performance as Goku in the first 9 Z movies.

Now, that change of pitch probably has to do with the fact that Patrick Borg wasn't called to reprise Goku in GT and was replaced by Thierry Mercier, who had a lighter voice than Borg:
https://youtu.be/FCajgv8noao

About Saiyan being used in that special, I feel that special just used a different source script than the other movies and specials.

It was most likely dubbed using a Toei Engrish script rather than French to English script.

[SuperSaiyaManZ94]

David Gasman's Goku is actually higher pitched in the GT special. Also think the voice they had for Goku Jr was quite decent and had some Nozawa vibes.

I'm aware he changed the pitch for that special, but since the guy above me mentioned the deep superhero-esque voice, well, I had to talk about David's performance as Goku in the first 9 Z movies.

Now, that change of pitch probably has to do with the fact that Patrick Borg wasn't called to reprise Goku in GT and was replaced by Thierry Mercier, who had a lighter voice than Borg:
https://youtu.be/FCajgv8noao

About Saiyan being used in that special, I feel that special just used a different source script than the other movies and specials.

It was most likely dubbed using a Toei Engrish script rather than French to English script.

The other movies and specials themselves were all effectively dubbed more or less from AB's/S.O.F.I's (apparently poorly translated) French dub scripts of them. You have names and terms adapted from it like Space/Super Warriors, Crystal Dragon Balls, Magic Stick/Baton and so on. What really baffles me is how they somehow arrived at "Big Green" from Piccolo's name in French which was roughly translated as "Satan's Little Heart" and idk how the hell they got that.

[Tian]

The other movies and specials themselves were effectively dubbed more or less from AB's/S.O.F.I's (apparently poorly translated) French dub scripts of them. You have names and terms adapted from it like Space/Super Warriors, Crystal Dragon Balls, Magic Stick/Baton and so on. What baffles me is how they arrived at "Big Green" for Piccolo's name which was translated as "Satan's Little Heart" and idk how the hell they got that.

Well, since they didn't have access to the original material and they were in a hurry to dub the stuff, my guess is that they went for Big Green as soon as the translator saw Piccolo.

Now, the Toei Engrish script, which as I mentioned above, probably used for the GT special, has already been used in some dubs like the Castillian Spanish dub, whenever they surpassed their source material, which was the French dub.

There's the possibility AB couldn't find the French script of the special at time, so they decided to sent Toei's, which was already in English.

[SuperSaiyaManZ94]

The other movies and specials themselves were effectively dubbed more or less from AB's/S.O.F.I's (apparently poorly translated) French dub scripts of them. You have names and terms adapted from it like Space/Super Warriors, Crystal Dragon Balls, Magic Stick/Baton and so on. What baffles me is how they arrived at "Big Green" for Piccolo's name which was translated as "Satan's Little Heart" and idk how the hell they got that.

Well, since they didn't have access to the original material and they were in a hurry to dub the stuff, my guess is that they went for Big Green as soon as the translator saw Piccolo.

Now, the Toei Engrish script, which as I mentioned above, probably used for the GT special, has already been used in some dubs like the Castillian Spanish dub, whenever they surpassed their source material, which was the French dub.

There's the possibility AB couldn't find the French script of the special at time, so they decided to sent Toei's, which was already in English.

Yes, based on what's been mentioned before like from Goku's VA apparently they were literally in a hurry to do the dubbing and the direction was next to nonexistent...Which is why the characters all sound like they're speaking run on sentences at 10 miles per hour Speed Racer style.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiVk6mOiiDY&t=117s

[Tian]

Yes, based on what's been mentioned before (like from Goku's VA) apparently they were literally in a hurry to do the dubbing and the direction was next to nonexistent...Which is why the characters all sound like they're speaking run on sentences at 10 miles per hour Speed Racer style.

From what Sharon Mann told to this guy in the BTVA forums, David Gasman was the voice director of this dub as well.

She told the guy that David was the only other person present in the booth when she was recording her characters.

I also should point out that David has directed a lot of stuff before and after the Big Green dub. So yeah, this wasn't the first dub he directed.

The Speed Racer-like dialogue pace can be also blamed to the poorly prepared rhythmo-band, the method of recording mainly used in France and Quebec for dubs.

[SuperSaiyaManZ94]

Yes, based on what's been mentioned before (like from Goku's VA) apparently they were literally in a hurry to do the dubbing and the direction was next to nonexistent...Which is why the characters all sound like they're speaking run on sentences at 10 miles per hour Speed Racer style.

From what Sharon Mann told to this guy in the BTVA forums, David Gasman was the voice director of this dub as well.

She told the guy that David was the only other person present in the booth when she was recording her characters.

I also should point out that David has directed a lot of stuff before and after the Big Green dub. So yeah, this wasn't the first dub he directed.

The Speed Racer-like dialogue pace can be also blamed to the poorly prepared rhythmo-band, the method of recording mainly used in France and Quebec for dubs.

Wow, that shows how limited the dubbing for this really was. Given that there were only like six/seven or so VA's in the whole thing and apparently they were under a small (and rushed amount) of time to dub the movies.

Yes, and given that was the process the French dubs of the original run of the anime had used when recording their VA's/ADR as have many others before and since then. Apparently trying to adapt rhythmo-band for French to English dubbing in this case yielded...very clumsy and lackluster results to say the least.

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

Now, that change of pitch probably has to do with the fact that Patrick Borg wasn't called to reprise Goku in GT and was replaced by Thierry Mercier, who had a lighter voice than Borg:
https://youtu.be/FCajgv8noao

About Saiyan being used in that special, I feel that special just used a different source script than the other movies and specials.

It was most likely dubbed using a Toei Engrish script rather than French to English script.

Oh, that's interesting, never knew that. Ditto David Gasman being the voice director.

I actually considered comparing the French dub script to the Big Green GT special script, as having done some research it turns out the former predates the latter. For reference these two versions of the special were aired on January 30, 2003 and August 19, 2005 on Mangas and Toonami UK respectively.

[Tian]

Now, that change of pitch probably has to do with the fact that Patrick Borg wasn't called to reprise Goku in GT and was replaced by Thierry Mercier, who had a lighter voice than Borg:
https://youtu.be/FCajgv8noao

About Saiyan being used in that special, I feel that special just used a different source script than the other movies and specials.

It was most likely dubbed using a Toei Engrish script rather than French to English script.

Oh, that's interesting, never knew that. Ditto David Gasman being the voice director.

I actually considered comparing the French dub script to the Big Green GT special script, as having done some research it turns out the former predates the latter. For reference these two versions of the special were aired on January 30, 2003 and August 19, 2005 on Mangas and Toonami UK respectively.

And GT Goku wasn't the only case.

The Big Green dub as a whole owes its cast inconsistency to the frequent changes made in the French cast of those movies.

I mean, whenever somebody changed their voice actor or voice pitch in the French dub, it would be changed in the Big Green dub as well.

An example of many:
In the French dub of Z Movie 6, Éric Legrand was unavailable to voice Vegeta, so they brought this other guy called Fredéric Bourály in, while in the Big Green dub of that movie, he was voiced by Doug Rand.

Now, from movie 7, Éric Legrand returned as Vegeta in the French dub and for some reason in the Big Green dub, David Gasman decided to recast the role with Ed Marcus as Vegeta instead of keeping Doug.

That's something I found completely bizarre and unnecessary.

Now regarding about when the GT special's dub was produced, I think the Scandinavian releases may help us get a better idea about it.

I mean, the Scandinavian distributors only licensed Z movies 1-9 and specials 1-2, right?

In that case, if they only licensed those, then it would mean that dubs for OG DB movies 1-3 and GT special weren't even made at that time.

[TheRed259]

Now, that change of pitch probably has to do with the fact that Patrick Borg wasn't called to reprise Goku in GT and was replaced by Thierry Mercier, who had a lighter voice than Borg

I am wondering if something similar happened with the Greek DBZ dub in episodes 188-189 where Stelios Kalathas is voicing Goku instead of Themis Psihogios. Episode 188 was the first one where the French dub was used as a source. But that's just a speculation since we can never be sure with the Greek dub I guess.

[8000 Saiyan]

Like that's ever gonna happen.

Funi will continue to make liberties with their dubs for Dragon Ball and for other shows. Throwing stupid pop culture and Gamergate references in there, with ridiculous sounding voices for some of the characters. The Kai dub itself wasn't immune to liberties, as there's one line from Piccolo in the episode where he and Kami talk about fusing with each other, and the line makes him too heroic.

That's what the fans of the dub like, their own version of the show. The dubs for the recent YYH stuff probably will have more of the same. The crass dialogue, because it's apparently more faithful to the original source material than the Japanese original version ever was, according to people who are unfamiliar with Japanese culture.

[GhostEmperorX]

Even if anyone wanted one now, it would be too late. As has been mentioned numerous times, the damage has been done and is irreversible.
So the only way it would matter is if it was done back when one was needed. Or if somehow you could erase all of the past failures as well as their effects.
(Also, as it is now, the series has been cheated even in Japan out of the kind of treatment it should have gotten that lots of other series have.)

[MasenkoHA]

The Kai dub itself wasn't immune to liberties, as there's one line from Piccolo in the episode where he and Kami talk about fusing with each other, and the line makes him too heroic.

That and a lot of problems with Kai is Funimation's continued insistence on whitewashing the story (admittedly nowhere near as bad as Z) Kami is still "Guardian of the Earth" instead of God, they continued to go out of their way to avoid any reference to Piccolo being a demon or even using the term "Mazoku" , and they still insist on calling ki "energy" even though the video games use the term so even the most hardcore dub fans sort of knows what ki is, even if they think its a Dragon Ball specific thing and only applies to energy blast.

And I think this secularization would rob a lot of the final third of Dragon Ball of its flavor. You have Goku going to the heavens to train with God himself (or rather his minstrel show of an attendant) to fight the reincarnation of God's dark side, essentially Satan, in a rematch to be declared "Strongest Under the Heavens" and then God offers Goku the position of God and Goku goes "Nah I'm a good fam, I'm staying here to get stronger "

But in the dub nope Goku trains with the Guardian of the Earth to fight King Piccolo reborn (King of what?) in the Word Martials Arts Tournament

[MCDaveG]

I would say from business standpoint, that it is a waste of money.
The original show (DB, DBZ, DBGT) for TV runs and making profit is past it's zenith, they can use Kai for streaming.
Dragon Ball Z actually has a complete english dub for it's original run plus some edits for home releases even with the Japanese score, so no reason to update that either, when they also can use Kai in it's place.

With Saint Seiya, the situation was quite different. The show struggled with highly edited version, that was unwatchable and uncomplete dubs.
The episodes from Asgard Arc and Poseidon Arc were never adapted in one run. And even before, The Sanctuary Arc was cut short.
I know that they have finished the entire Sanctuary, uncut and released it, so basically dubbing the rest 30/40ish episodes that were missing wasn't much of a hustle. Not sure if they dubbed Hades arc as well, I don't have Saint Seiya in my region sadly.
And it also coincided with the release of that SS remake on Netflix and the recent live action movie, so yeah, as a part of the marketing push and burning money on trying to make Saint Seiya finally popular in US, they probably updated the never complete original show.
To fail yet again. Both the new series and movie are not good.

So yeah, dubbing 291 episodes from scratch again, as much as I would support it if that meant a proper release, doesn't make much profitable sense.
But a release of source material in Japanese and with proper quality, yes please, I am waiting my whole life for such thing to happen.
I was waiting for reviews on that anniversary release Funimation did, as even tho I hated the packaging, I love the content... but that was just a cruel joke.

[coola]

Yes, but first, they need to take license away from CR/Funimation, and sell it to company like Discotek Seeing their great anime and tokusatsu releases make me really sad Dragon Ball in USA is at hands of such incompetent people

[MCDaveG]

The Kai dub itself wasn't immune to liberties, as there's one line from Piccolo in the episode where he and Kami talk about fusing with each other, and the line makes him too heroic.

That and a lot of problems with Kai is Funimation's continued insistence on whitewashing the story (admittedly nowhere near as bad as Z) Kami is still "Guardian of the Earth" instead of God, they continued to go out of their way to avoid any reference to Piccolo being a demon or even using the term "Mazoku" , and they still insist on calling ki "energy" even though the video games use the term so even the most hardcore dub fans sort of knows what ki is, even if they think its a Dragon Ball specific thing and only applies to energy blast.

And I think this secularization would rob a lot of the final third of Dragon Ball of its flavor. You have Goku going to the heavens to train with God himself (or rather his minstrel show of an attendant) to fight the reincarnation of God's dark side, essentially Satan, in a rematch to be declared "Strongest Under the Heavens" and then God offers Goku the position of God and Goku goes "Nah I'm a good fam, I'm staying here to get stronger "

But in the dub nope Goku trains with the Guardian of the Earth to fight King Piccolo reborn (King of what?) in the Word Martials Arts Tournament

I am afraid that you can never have 100% faithful adaptation to a show anyway, as there will always be differences when adapting from different language. Thankfully, in this more globalized age, people are more in touch with various cultures across the world, so you don't have to change much, but translator/editor team can always say, this doesn't make sense for our target audience and will adapt it slightly as they see fit.
If you check the probably best english version from Simmons through subs, it's basically the most faithful transcript. That won't work for the dubbed lines...
There are some shows that are virtually unadaptable for dubs and the most obvious would be Gintama. With the subs being hard to follow with all those notes explaining some pop culture references and culture references in general.

But I have to agree that Dragon Ball is quite easy to adapt with it's fantastic setting and very few cultural references... I would like to see them for example use God instead of Kami, it's dumb and there are times when it's confusing (praying to god – you know that the god is kami/Dende – requiring stupid extra hint even in subs).

I will disagree on energy. While I prefer them using cchi in the comic books, ki and Ch'i are common terms in Japanese and Chinese meaning the same commong thing, spiritual energy or circulating life energy, so for a westerner, energy will be a literal half translation of that term. But it will be best to keep it as ch'i, as the term is known all around the world from chinese cinema, chinese literature, culture and medicine – also Feng Shuei.
Ki to me never made much sense as it is the same as basically leaving the word Kami in english release. It makes the weird sense of it being a thing made just for Dragon Ball like The Force in Star Wars from commoner's point of view, which it really isn't.
Hence I am fine with energy the same way that 4-star ball is not shushinchu.

How do you guys feel about Kinto'un being translated as Flying Nimbus? While it doesn't make sense meteorologically, I'd say it is fine creative abreviation for kids from the original and makes more sense than anything else (sounds better than magic cloud and gives it a sense of name and character). Similar to Power Pole/Magic Staff.
Ch'i

[MasenkoHA]

I will disagree on energy. While I prefer them using cchi in the comic books, ki and Ch'i are common terms in Japanese and Chinese meaning the same commong thing, spiritual energy or circulating life energy, so for a westerner, energy will be a literal half translation of that term. But it will be best to keep it as ch'i, as the term is known all around the world from chinese cinema, chinese literature, culture and medicine – also Feng Shuei.
Ki to me never made much sense as it is the same as basically leaving the word Kami in english release. It makes the weird sense of it being a thing made just for Dragon Ball like The Force in Star Wars from commoner's point of view, which it really isn't.

I will say just using energy as a localization for ki/chi is a hell of an upgrade from the days of the Z dub, where they used power levels interchangeablely as a localization for ki and battle powers. But it still just comes across as trying to whitewash a distinctively east Asian series. I do agree that the issue with using ki is it's not a familiar rendering for native English speakers, hence why it seems so many Dragon Balls fans assume ki was something Toriyama made up for Dragon Ball and it's some kind of EXP bar or some shit. Using chi would have been my preferred term, since most Westerners know enough to associate it as a spiritual eastern martial arts thing and not something Toriyama pulled out of his butt.

[MCDaveG]

Then comes the important and daring question, what is and what is not whitewashing when adapting.
I wouldn't have problem of calling ch'i a spiritual energy in a show for kids as it is an adaptation for western audience.
Even tho I prefer the ch'i term.

My only problem would lie with appropriating the translation to be suitable for Christian audience, by omitting the elements like god, hell etc. and other clearly cultural things that are harmless, which changes the story meanings. If that people consider damaging to their kids, they will probably burn in hell anyway...

The question would then be, are some of the cultural references going to be understood by kids?
Like the case of Japanese honorifics, which has to be westernised so it has a proper meaning in english and also, will have to sound natural to the target language. Or the attack names. I think that while it sounds stupid to us, something like Turtle Energy Wave will be an OK translation for kids as well. I think that Portuguese dub actually translated it as such.
And I wouldn't westernise the character names at any cost! It's already hard with romanizations of Japanese names made from English.
But you know, calling Goku Jack for example.
Sometimes even names have to be changed, if they sound offensive or dumb, like Piccolo in Italian – which is funny, as Junior seems OK coming from original Ma Junior, but King Piccolo is called Al Satan

In the end, the mission of translation is to make the source material elligible for the target audience and to sound natural. Not an easy task.

I don't think that translators deliberately white wash things, except for the taboos around faith and christianity in US, but rather try to adapt it, so all the kids will know and it will make sense in their heads.

They might even get creative. The translation of Harry Potter in Czech is actually interesting, as the translator took most of the etymologies in English and created new ones, to make sense in Czech language and have similar meaning and vibe to the original, otherwise, kids would read through book full of nonsense. Even Dumbledore was reinvented, but real locations and names that actually exist in real life, like Harry Potter, stayed the same.
We had similar debates here about Vegito, as it is a weird mix of Vegeta and Kakaroto, but as Goku is called Kakarot in English, it should be rather Vegerot. And it is in Viz translation!

With all the censorship, you simply have to love your studied, classic and proper book translators!

[MasenkoHA]

Then comes the important and daring question, what is and what is not whitewashing when adapting.
I wouldn't have problem of calling ch'i a spiritual energy in a show for kids as it is an adaptation for western audience.
Even tho I prefer the ch'i term.

Calling chi "energy" refusing to refer to Kami as God because it goes against the standard Anglo-Saxon concept of what God is. Etc. Sure, certain things can't be properly adapted because of quirks in the language or because it requires far too much culture context for someone outside of that culture to understand.

A good example, I like to point to, is when Shu disguises himself as Goku and Pilaf berates him because he used the watashi pronoun instead of the ora pronoun like Goku. The English language doesn't have personal pronouns so this is impossible to translate 1:1. The dub just has Pilaf say "You sound nothing like Goku!" which is a perfectly fine localization choice
.

Honorifics, I think can be tricky but doable. Since Gohan always calls Piccolo, Piccolo-san the dub goes with "Mr.Piccolo" (but I think they dropped it in Kai for some reason?) For the most part (there's always exceptions) I feel like san is usually easily replaced with Mr/Miss

-Chan usually gets replaced with some form of endearment. When Bulma calls Oolong "Oolong-chan" to butter him up to change into a motorbike for her the dub goes with "Oolong Dear!" and I think a few times ChiChi calling Gohan "Gohan Chan" has been replaced with her calling him "My Little Gohan"

-sama is harder, I think. Freeza's henchman calling him Freeza-Sama which gets rendered as Lord Freeza in the dub makes perfect sense, but then you have Bulma calling Yamcha "Yamcha-sama" in the first arc to express how highly she thinks of him. Having her call him "Lord Yamcha" would make no sense and would be awkward as hell so the dub just having her lovingly stretch out his name "Yaaaaaaammmchaaaaa" is an acceptable replacement.

Or Kuririn calling Muten Roshi "Muten Roshi-sama" since the dub already has him called Master Roshi by everyone adapting sama into "Master Master Roshi" is obviously redundant so he's just "Master Roshi"

[Majin Buu]

We had similar debates here about Vegito, as it is a weird mix of Vegeta and Kakaroto, but as Goku is called Kakarot in English, it should be rather Vegerot. And it is in Viz translation!

Didn't later releases switch to "Vegito" though?