Gekiretsukodan

[Super Sonic]

Actually, if I recall correctly it was named in DBZ. It was the "Tri-Beam", which is also what DB called it. "Blast Cannon" was in some of the PS2 games though.

It was also "Tri-Beam" in DBZ. I definitely remember Burgmeier screaming "TRI BEAM HAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!" during the Cell arc. Surely I'm not the only one person in the world that remembers that...? I think "Spirit Cannon" was one of the DB episode titles during his fight with Gokuu, though. Or maybe it was one of those ones that were listed as one thing in the TV listings/FUNi's website, but something else entirely on the actual title card (which happened for all of the last few episodes of the 22nd Budoukai).

Been a few years since I've seen those eps, but he yelled, "TRI-BEAM HAAA!" in those eps too. I think the "HAAA!" part was done for lip-sync.

[Vekurotto]

Then there’s Kaioken. While spelled fine in FUNimation related print, it’s pronounced completely incorrectly (just like “Saiyan” is). I’ve seen a few dub fans try and argue this point. It’s inarguable. It’s an idiotic mistake that even a first year Japanese student wouldn’t make.

You mean words change pronunciation when they move between languages? WHAT MERCIFUL GOD WOULD ALLOW THIS?

If that was the case yeah, but not here. Those two words do not change pronunciation when they move across languages. It's plainly Kai-O-Ken and Sigh-Yan in Japanese and in English. Try asking any person without any knowledge of Dragonball to pronounce "Saiyan" and 9x out of 10 and they'll say "Sigh-Yan" not "Say-Yen" or "Sei-Yen".

[Super Sonic]

Some things get mispronounced in bringing to other media as well. Remember Super Friends mispronounced Mxyzptlk's name. Also Disney's Jungle Book pronounced the boy's name differently than what Kipling said and his widow wasn't too happy about it.

[Casual Matt]

In simple truth you know what the ideal solution to this issue would be? To just cut the bullshit and just have the English actors yell the untranslated Japanese names.

You really could just replace any of your posts with this and just change the nouns. Hell, just type "NIPPONNIPPONNIPPON ". You don't even care how retarded it sounds, as long as it's in GLORIOUS JAPANESE.

But... the show is Japanese... most of the attack names are Japanese... would it not make sense for a dub to have them yell Japanese attack names? Would it really sound any more retarded than yelling "Special Beam Cannon" at the bloody top of your lungs?

As for pronounciations, these are, for the most part, Japanese words. Now, Japanese, God bless it, unlike English, is a language with little to no ambiguity on how to pronounce words. The "ai" vowel combination has a very specific sound, that most english speakers would gather intuitively, anyway, and FUNimation has failed to pronounce it correctly in two different words, both of which are important, one of which is spoken in practically every episode of two out of the three anime.

As for Kamehameha vs Kamayamaya. Just because the Hawaiian King was pronounced in the latter manner, doesn't justify FUNimation saying at that way because they are NOT referring to the king. They ARE referring to the Japanese attack and they ARE pronouncing it incorrectly. In any event, I doubt FUNimation had any idea of how the Hawiian king's name was pronouced, considering they can't even pronounce words in their own shows right, so that just makes it even more of a royal screw up.

[Brad Redfield]

“Piercing Demon Beam”. There you go. It’s not a PERFECT translation, but it’s infinitely closer to the mark than Special Beam Canon ever was, and best of all it sounds so. Much. Fucking. Cooler.

I always thought that "Demonic Spiral Beam" would've worked, IMO. At least better than either "Special Beam Cannon" or "Light of Death".

[Hero 004]

For me it's not about the attacks being translated from Japanese. I don't watch both versions, I watch the dub, so what I care about is how cool the name sounds. I personally think "Tri-Beam" sounds a lot cooler than "Ki Blast Cannon". It is in no way at all translated or derived from the original name, but that's not the point for me (as far as attacks go). To me "Tri-Beam" also generally describes the attack. It's not always a beam, but he focuses it with his three eyes. It's the same with the "Destructo Disk" compared to "Energy Circle" and "Spirit Ball" compared to "Spinning Chi Bullet".

But there are also certain names in Funimation's dub that are translated from their Japanese counter parts, such as "Wolf Fang Fist". Of course there are also ones that remain the same such as "Masenko".

I think Funimation kept this in mind when writing the script. Certain techniques they though they needed to leave the same and some they thought they needed to change to be more appealing to certain people. It worked as far as fans such as myself go, it's been 7 years and one of the first things that appealed to me about Dragon Ball was the attacks. For many of you, it most certainly didn't work. They could have handled attacks the way they did or they could hae done it another way. It's all a matter of opinion.

[Super Sonic]

In simple truth you know what the ideal solution to this issue would be? To just cut the bullshit and just have the English actors yell the untranslated Japanese names.

You really could just replace any of your posts with this and just change the nouns. Hell, just type "NIPPONNIPPONNIPPON ". You don't even care how retarded it sounds, as long as it's in GLORIOUS JAPANESE.

But... the show is Japanese... most of the attack names are Japanese... would it not make sense for a dub to have them yell Japanese attack names? Would it really sound any more retarded than yelling "Special Beam Cannon" at the bloody top of your lungs?

I think what he meant was the other guy was coming off like a Japanophile who thinks "Japanese=language of the gods".

[MyVisionity]

I'll have to give that a listen then. Regardless though are you sure they weren't just using "devil" in a metaphorical sense rather than a literal one? You know, like as in "oh he's so evil he's like a devil!". If so then that certainly doesn't count.

If I recall correctly, the very first thing mentioned when the piece of paper Tambourine left behind after Krillin's death is that is has "The mark of the Devil".

Yes in FUNi's version, Bulma first looks at the paper and tells everyone it reads 'demon', and then in the following episodes they call it the "Mark of the Demon". However they don't refer to Piccolo himself as such except for in Roshi's speech before he used the Mafuuba. In fact, I don't think they really bother much at all to explain what Piccolo is outside of a couple quotes from the narrator about an "evil alien". From what I remember most characters in the dub just refer to him as "you monster" or something.

[Phenomenol]

Makankosapo I often hear used as the main example of why translating the attack names into English wouldn’t work. And that’s true of one were to translate it too literally. My response? “Piercing Demon Beam”. There you go. It’s not a PERFECT translation, but it’s infinitely closer to the mark than Special Beam Canon ever was, and best of all it sounds so. Much. Fucking. Cooler.

Was that the literal translation of it? "Makankousappou:" Piccolo's screw blast? I thought it Translates to "Devil's penetrating Energy killing attack", but can also be treated as "Industrial Light Magic Attack." (Used in vol. 17)

Corny? Yes.

[TripleRach]

The most literal translation for Makankousappou that you can get that keeps all five kanji in mind is something along the lines of "Demonic Piercing Light Killing Cannon." But because there are five different terms within it, there are obviously lots of different ways to word that if you play around with a thesaurus. You can even get really fancy and wordy things like "The Devil's Impaling Ray Gun" or something.

Not to be all wtfweeaboo, but Japanese is an awesome language for being able to compact so much meaning into relatively small words. Makankousappou may look long in romaji, but it's only five kanji, pronounced with nine syllables total. That's a hell of a lot less than you can get out of any English phrase that keeps the entire meaning intact. And hell, with a (reasonably) anglicized pronunciation, it would only have five syllables, which is no more than SPECIAL BEAM CANNON.

[Herms]

In simple truth you know what the ideal solution to this issue would be? To just cut the bullshit and just have the English actors yell the untranslated Japanese names.

You really could just replace any of your posts with this and just change the nouns. Hell, just type "NIPPONNIPPONNIPPON ". You don't even care how retarded it sounds, as long as it's in GLORIOUS JAPANESE.

Switching to decaf would probably do wonderful things for you, Rocketman. All Kunzait is really proposing is that the English dub treat the attacks the same way Viz does in their translation.

They were absolutely terrible with the introduction of Kami. It was like they were unable to decide whether "Kami" was his title or if it was just his name and his title being "Guardian of the Earth". I swear, they switched so many times between Korin's first mention of him and the beginning of Goku's training that it's not even funny. >_>;;

I remember that! The first time Kami was mentioned, they just called him “Kami”, and everyone seemed to already know what that was supposed to be. Then in the next episode they have that scene again (this was either in the recap or they had a flashback), but they replaced ‘Kami’ with “the Guardian of Earth’. Otherwise, the wording was exactly the same as before. Weird. I’d assume this was all because from a dub point of view, it really wasn’t the Kami’s introduction at all, since they figured everyone watching would already be familiar with the character and his role from watching Z.

[VegettoEX]

They were absolutely terrible with the introduction of Kami. It was like they were unable to decide whether "Kami" was his title or if it was just his name and his title being "Guardian of the Earth". I swear, they switched so many times between Korin's first mention of him and the beginning of Goku's training that it's not even funny. >_>;;

I remember that! The first time Kami was mentioned, they just called him “Kami”, and everyone seemed to already know what that was supposed to be. Then in the next episode they have that scene again (this was either in the recap or they had a flashback), but they replaced ‘Kami’ with “the Guardian of Earth’. Otherwise, the wording was exactly the same as before. Weird. I’d assume this was all because from a dub point of view, it really wasn’t the Kami’s introduction at all, since they figured everyone watching would already be familiar with the character and his role from watching Z.

Nah... it was all in the exact same scene. DBZ TV dub episode #4 (right after Goku fades away with everyone surrounding him):

Piccolo: "I know... it was Kami!"
Kuririn: "W- Who's Kami?!"
Piccolo: "The guardian of Earth... yes, Goku knows him well."

(I think I got Piccolo's wording in that line correct... if not, it's only one word off, or so.)

[Kunzait_83]

b

[FindKenshi]

Hm.. if King Kamehameha's name really was pronounced "Ka-maya-maya" then it would explain why Saban/Ocean chose that pronunciation to begin with. That always baffled me, why they simply couldn't keep the original pronunciation, and seemed to just make up their own for it. Especially since the move is sometime used "one syllable at a time" during the anime, which would make saying "Ka-maya-maya" difficult and not sound right.

Anyway, thanks for clearing that up guys, as to the meaning of Kamehameha itself. I was always curious, now I have further clarification on the matter.

[Rocketman]

Switching to decaf would probably do wonderful things for you, Rocketman. All Kunzait is really proposing is that the English dub treat the attacks the same way Viz does in their translation.

Pfah, I've only had four cups today.

Looking back, though, I was an asshole, and I apologize to Kunzait.

[Kunzait_83]

b

[SaiyamanMS]

Actually, if I recall correctly it was named in DBZ. It was the "Tri-Beam", which is also what DB called it. "Blast Cannon" was in some of the PS2 games though.

It was also "Tri-Beam" in DBZ. I definitely remember Burgmeier screaming "TRI BEAM HAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!" during the Cell arc. Surely I'm not the only one person in the world that remembers that...? I think "Spirit Cannon" was one of the DB episode titles during his fight with Gokuu, though. Or maybe it was one of those ones that were listed as one thing in the TV listings/FUNi's website, but something else entirely on the actual title card (which happened for all of the last few episodes of the 22nd Budoukai).

I clearly said there that I recall it being called "Tri-Beam" in DBZ.

And yeah, I do believe the Dragonball episode that introduced the Kikoho was called "The Spirit Cannon", but the attack itself was still "Tri-Beam".

Nah... it was all in the exact same scene. DBZ TV dub episode #4 (right after Goku fades away with everyone surrounding him):

Piccolo: "I know... it was Kami!"
Kuririn: "W- Who's Kami?!"
Piccolo: "The guardian of Earth... yes, Goku knows him well."

(I think I got Piccolo's wording in that line correct... if not, it's only one word off, or so.)

Yes, that's the way it was brought up in Dragonball Z, however if you look closer Mike, you would notice that both my previous post and Herms' one were talking about the original Dragonball, after the defeat of Piccolo Daimao.

[VegettoEX]

My bad. Point remains, though, that such is how at least FUNimation introduced the name/character of "Kami", long before Viz did .

[Herms]

Yes, that's the way it was brought up in Dragonball Z, however if you look closer Mike, you would notice that both my previous post and Herms' one were talking about the original Dragonball, after the defeat of Piccolo Daimao.

Still, the quote he provided did show that Kami was given a (reasonably) coherent introduction in Z, which would explain why the way the dub handled his initial appearance in Dragonball was so confusing and inconsistent. For the intended audience it was essentially a non-introduction introduction, so they didn’t have to worry about whether or not it was understandable.

My bad. Point remains, though, that such is how at least FUNimation introduced the name/character of "Kami", long before Viz did .

I’m not entirely sure what you mean by that. Where does Viz come into this?

[VegettoEX]

My bad. Point remains, though, that such is how at least FUNimation introduced the name/character of "Kami", long before Viz did .

I’m not entirely sure what you mean by that. Where does Viz come into this?

Nowhere. Just pointing it all out .