It's a line that translators have to be attuned to. The Funi Z dub did cross it repeatedly in pretty huge ways which went way beyond flavouring dialogue into altering characters and plotpoints.Majin Buu wrote:Again, there's a difference between altering the dialogue in a way that reads better in English while remaining faithful to the original script vs. changing it to something completely different that removes the original intent. The latter is what the Z dub did (a lot) and that's where we run into the issue of actual plot points and characterization being altered, which gets to what I and many others have always said about Z: When you take into account all of the changes Funimation made to the show for their English dub, dub fans and sub fans are watching two very different shows. Sub fans and dub fans are not fans of the same Dragon Ball Z.MrTennek wrote:The Japanese language is extremely limited in range and variety compared to that of English. Look at how many words they have to borrow from us. It's no wonder translators make so many changes to the monotonous and repetitive dialogue...
A degree of cultural localisation is a valid part of the dubbing process, by which I mean for example literal translations are not always the best way to convey intent to a different audience. The role of cultural localisation changed a lot between Z and Kai, and I think most of us would agree that many 90s dubs (including DBZ but Pokemon may be the exemplar here) shouldn't have pasted over elements of Japanese culture with American culture in the way they did.
When someone says, with a cocky smirk, that their power level is higher than yours, all the line needs to convey is that belief,confidence and animosity, which can be done in an enormous number of ways in English, many of which of which are better suited to our Western attention-spans than straight up translation when the same thing is being said a lot this episode.