How accurate is the Kai dub compared to Z's dialogue?

[huzaifa_ahmed]

So it hit me recently that the voice-over of Kai was literally the VAs standing in a room, shoving words into the characters' mouths - not that far off from dubs, besides the obvious drastic difference in language/script rewriting. (They also, of course, replaced the music in Kai). It should also be noted that a Kai-esque production would never happen to a Hollywood cartoon - because everything must be prelay here, & we'd rather reanimate or remake a whole show for a new audience than simply cut up & dub an old show.

But still - while the difference between Z & Kai is not drastic due to being the same language & mostly same dialogue, I wonder how much of Kai's dialogue is different from Z's?

[Jinzoningen MULE]

Z is probably about 70% accurate, and much lower in the earlier material. Kai is around 90% accurate on its worst day.

[TheBlackPaladin]

Well, I don't think anybody has sat down to actually do a line-by-line calculation of how accurate the dub scripts are, for either DBZ or Kai. It's also worth noting that, to a degree, whether a line counts as "changed" or not is a little subjective. For example, when Goku fires his final ki blast in his duel with Freeza on Namek, the subtitles that Steve Simmons wrote had him saying, "You stupid bastard!" The dub, however, had him saying, "You fool!" I've been told by people more knowledgeable in Japanese that technically both of these are acceptable translations of the Japanese word Goku used.

So, all you will get are rough estimations. Having said that, here's my rough estimation.

DBZ: Taking into account the whole dub...I'd say it's about 65% accurate, getting noticeably better as time went on. The general rule of thumb with FUNimation's DBZ dub is that the later it was dubbed, the better it will be, both in terms of script accuracy and the acting. When FUNimation first took over with their in-house dub in the "Season 3" era, I'd put it at closer to 40%, with some episodes going as low as 30%.

Kai: ...Mmm, yeah, I'd say 90% overall is fair. Some of the post-Freeza material had scripts that were a little too liberally-adapted for my tastes (with certain episodes coming in at around 80%), but nothing horrible. If the worst you're doing is 80%, that's still very good.

[Thouser]

I think he's asking how different the dialogue is in Japanese Kai vs. Japanese DBZ, not about the differences in Funimation's dub.

[Jinzoningen MULE]

I think he's asking how different the dialogue is in Japanese Kai vs. Japanese DBZ, not about the differences in Funimation's dub.

If that's the question, there's not even enough difference to warrant comparison.

[TheBlackPaladin]

I think he's asking how different the dialogue is in Japanese Kai vs. Japanese DBZ, not about the differences in Funimation's dub.

Ooohhhhhhhh. OK. Well, erm...I don't know about that.

I don't seem to recall any substantial differences in terms of altered lines. Plenty of lines that were cut as part of the broader effort to trim time off of, but I don't think any lines that were kept were altered (though I could be wrong).

[precita]

DBZ dub only really started getting accurate on Buu.

I rewatched the early Cell saga dub recently, I couldn't believe they didn't have Future Trunks say he was 17 in the dub. They completely ignored him saying his age in the english version. No wonder why people had no idea how old he was who watched the dub.

[jjgp1112]

Wait, you don't think Kai was done entirely by FUNimation, do you? It wasn't. Toei did the original, and then FUNimation dubbed it, as usual.

[TheBlackPaladin]

DBZ dub only really started getting accurate on Buu.

That's true for the most part, but there were some well-adapted episodes here and there prior to that. For example, with the exception of one needlessly added joke, the script for the episode where Gohan kills Cell was stunningly accurate, on par with the accuracy of a typical dub script of a Kai episode.

[Theophrastus]

I think he's asking how different the dialogue is in Japanese Kai vs. Japanese DBZ, not about the differences in Funimation's dub.

Ooohhhhhhhh. OK. Well, erm...I don't know about that.

I don't seem to recall any substantial differences in terms of altered lines. Plenty of lines that were cut as part of the broader effort to trim time off of, but I don't think any lines that were kept were altered (though I could be wrong).

This is so incredibly minor as to mean almost nothing, but one of Cell's lines was changed slightly from (Z) "Ii taimingu da!" ("Good timing!") to (Kai) "Guudo taimingu!" ("Good timing!", but with the actual English word "good"). ...Yeah.

[8000 Saiyan]

Compared to Z's dialogue, Kai is definitively more accurate.

[Danfun64]

To me it would be interesting to see which dubs for which material are the most accurate, for example, grading the accuracy of dubs of the Pilaf saga by giving percentages to the accuracy of the BLT, In-House Funi, and Blue Water dubs, percentages of the Namek saga from Saban, In-House Funi, and Funi Kai, percentages of the Bardock special from Funi, AB Groupe, and the two fandubs, percentages of DBZ Movie 5 from Speedy, Creative Productions, Funi, and AB Groupe, etc.

Basically grading the accuracy of each English dub of every Saga, Special, and Movie...

[huzaifa_ahmed]

I think he's asking how different the dialogue is in Japanese Kai vs. Japanese DBZ, not about the differences in Funimation's dub.

Indeed. It occurred to me that Kai's VO (in Japan, to be clear), was dubbed the way that, say, The Walking Dead is dubbed (into its own language), although in DB's case, it's to spruce up the audio quality. It could be considered "ruining the art" as you are in fact replacing the performance (though it isnt as bad an issue as foreign-dubs, which force rewrites to sync to picture).

So I figured that there are definitely possibilities of the VAs ad-libbing, or perhaps the script being updated. & I was wondering just how much of that there is.