Dubs shouldnt bend over backwards to please purists. Subs shouldnt plase Casuals

[Cure Dragon 255]

Sure its nice when a dub can be said to be really close to the source material, and I still believe dubs should aim to give the viewer the same experience as a watcher to the original. But now I have come to realize taking this approach too far is wrong. People will put down dubs for not being the same experience as the original. Its an adaptation of it. Things change in adaptation, things are going to be diferent wether we like it or not.

Oops! I meant to add that I DO NOT CONDONE what Funimation did to Dragon Ball. That's awful.

[Matches Malone]

I agree that there'll always be changes, as it'd be very hard to get a 100%, 1:1 translation of something. The issue people have with DB is that there's too much changes being made because of reasons. Kai for example is as accurate as you can get with a dub (I'm sure there are a few issues here and there, but I'm speaking in general), but then you've got Super that, based on what I've read, is full of added jokes for no good reason other than to cater to the fans of Funimation's early "dub". I have no issues with a dub making changes to better fit the language or culture it's being dubbed for, or to even remove plot holes, but I think there needs to be a limit to ensure that the original vision isn't changed too much.

[Cure Dragon 255]

Oops! I meant to add that I DO NOT CONDONE what Funimation did to Dragon Ball. That's awful.

[90sDBZ]

I agree.

I can completely understand why Funimation have gone back to their old approach for Super.

Many of the purists who spent years rallying against the Z dub still refuse to watch the Kai dub, despite it being mostly very accurate and well acted. They literally refuse to watch anything other than the original Japanese version.

This is why I totally emphasize with the OP for using the phrase "bending over backwards". It's like a kid in school being pushed around for being different, so they change to conform and fit in, only for the other kids to still reject them regardless.

Meanwhile there's the loyal dub fans who have always loved and supported the dub. Funimation treating those fans as the primary audience makes perfect sense at this point. It's mostly them who watch Super in English anyway, so they're the ones who should be catered to when it comes to script choices. Why should the dub try to meet some impossible standard for the sake of people who won't watch it anyway?

I love both the Z dub and the Kai dub. It's interesting to have two very different takes of my favourite show.

[XanatosVanBadass]

No one would have to bend over backwards to appease the other side if dub companies would do their jobs correctly the first time. Just saying.

Edit: otherwise, I somewhat agree. As far as I’m concerned, the damage has been done and the DB fandom in the west will always be fractured beyond repair. So much so that we have to face the facts. we’ll never have a dub we all can sit back and enjoy.

[TheGreatness25]

I don't see how making Super more inaccurate appeases fans of the original dub. It's totally new material -- it's not like they're referencing things from the old dub like the "cat loves food" jingle or "Frieza" saying "pop goes the weasel." I don't think that doing a more accurate translation/adaptation would alienate the original dub fans. If they really wanted to appease them, they could've just added some reworked version of the Faulconer score. But they didn't do that. So, I don't get how making a less accurate moves the needle for anyone.

That actually disappoints me. I thought that the Super dub would be accurate, which is why I was never interested in seeing the original version. But then again, what do we mean by "inaccurate?" If the general story is the same, I don't care. If it's a technical matter for people's "power scaling" or whatever, I couldn't care less.

It's like the Kai dub. I swear that other than heavy offenders like the ironically bad dubisms, I feel like the overwhelming majority of the Kai lines have been said before. If you run the Kai dub with the subtitles, it isn't any more exact than the original dub -- at least to me.

While I agree that the dub doesn't need to be exact, I think that it's disappointing to know that the version you watched was different than intended. But then again, I do like that DB/Z/GT had an inaccurate dub because I got three different experiences out of one series: the Japanese, the laughable Funimation dub, and the Ocean/Blue Water dubs. If Funimation never butchered the dub, I doubt that I would ever care enough to watch the original. So, thank you, Funimation... I guess. Also, thank you, Funimation for having that weird thing where you decided to change the cast, which spawned two English dubs.

[DBPirate]

Oops! I meant to add that I DO NOT CONDONE what Funimation did to Dragon Ball. That's awful.

Referring to the OG, Z, or the entire series?

[MasenkoHA]

Iirc the logic behind Super’s dub being less faithful than Kai was “everyone had already seen Super subbed” at least I seem to recall Sabat saying something to that effect and that’s not untrue. Due to how long it took to get Super dubbed (about a 2 year gap) and the easy accessibility to Super subs many Dragon Ball fans who would never watch the series in Japanese did at least watch Dragon Ball Super subbed. Not literally every single dub fan as some still held to the “i lIkE mY gOkU voIceD bY a mAn tHanK yOu” but many did. So trying to punch up the dialog was less “research shows kids need a joke every 5 seconds” ala the Barry Watson mindset and more “we need to give fans something a little different so they watch our dub”

I don’t think Funimation is pandering to old dub fans that bad with Super. They stuck to Chris Ayres (and his understudy/voice match) voicing Freeza instead of having Linda Young reprising the role, (and you could make the argument it would have make more sense for Young to be brought back for Freeza since her voice is more recognizable to dub viewers), they didn’t change the soundtrack, etc


At the end of the day Funimation just wants to make money. Most of the higher ups now seem well aware their Z dub is crap but it sells so they’re not going to waste time and effort redoing it to be more accurate with the restoring of the Japanese music being the extent of their “it’s more like the Japanese version now!” effort as it doesn’t cost them a dime and the dub music is still optional for those fans, Kai was a genuine attempt to be more faithful and “get it right” but they’re not about to start calling Krillin Kuririn and the Androids “artificial humans”’and pronounce Saiyan correctly because that would be too confusing to their fans, and portions of the script in Kai is actually verbatim from the 96 and 05 Z dubs because they were deemed “close enough” and it probably saved time and money since they were already written to match lip flaps.

[precita]

Can someone explain to me what the Super dubbed changed? There are a few added jokes here and there, but there's nowhere the amount of script changing the original dubs had. I know Magnetta was given a robot meme voice, and there's one big dub error in the tournament of power (saying a Universe 11 team member fell out when it was Universe 6), but other than that?

[Majin Buu]

I don't think sub fans for the most part are complaining about changes that are necessary for stuff that doesn't translate. It's about changes that by all accounts are not necessary for the script to work for a Western audience.

Also, I personally don't like the use of the word "purist" to describe sub fans nowadays. I mean, god forbid you like the original language version of the show more than the English adaptations. God forbid you not like unnecessary changes the dub makes to the script. That makes you a "purist", and that's bad (which in my experience is often the implication when that word is used in this context).

[TheGreatness25]

But, like... what is the added value for them to change lines? It's just a mystery to me.

They need to translate it anyway. They need to work a script regardless. But at soem point, they decide to add or change things. It's unnecessary.

[ABED]

Sure its nice when a dub can be said to be really close to the source material, and I still believe dubs should aim to give the viewer the same experience as a watcher to the original. But now I have come to realize taking this approach too far is wrong. People will put down dubs for not being the same experience as the original. Its an adaptation of it. Things change in adaptation, things are going to be diferent wether we like it or not.

Oops! I meant to add that I DO NOT CONDONE what Funimation did to Dragon Ball. That's awful.

What constitutes taking it too far?

It's not an adaptation in the same way a movie adapts a novel or a comic book series. The scripts are already written. All you need to do is change the dialog to fit the mouthflaps and figure out such things like do we change this name to keep the pun/meaning, or do we keep the name as is?

[LoganForkHands73]

Yeah, I agree within reason. I've seen huge threads outlining every single miniscule divergence in Funimation's Super dub, including the bloody tone of voice the actors use, which is just asinine to me. Yeah, Super's dub has many genuine goofs, inaccuracies and inappropriate jokes thrown in and that's fine to criticise -- I dislike most of the name changes, for example. But you're never going to perfectly translate Japanese to English 1:1, that's not the purpose of any dub. Most subs are only close interpretations of the language, and if read literally in English would certainly sound incredibly stiff and unnatural, especially when you get linguistic-exclusive phrases and whatnot.

[SuperSaiyaManZ94]

Some of the things people say about Super's dub, both here and elsewhere is a little exaggerated. This isn't nearly the kind of full on rewriting and inserting of terrible jokes and dialogue left, right and center that was done by script writers back in the days of Barry Watson and co running things on the production end. We're not getting god awful lines on the level "Cat loves food" and "That's one whopper of a lizard" anymore and it really isn't to the level of how things were back in 1999 when the transition to in house really came.

[CuppaKofe]

Some of the things people say about Super's dub, both here and elsewhere is a little exaggerated. This isn't nearly the kind of full on rewriting and inserting of terrible jokes and dialogue left, right and center that was done by script writers back in the days of Barry Watson and co running things on the production end. We're not getting god awful lines on the level of "Cat loves food" and "That's one whopper of a lizard anymore" and it really isn't to the level of how things were back in 1999 when the transition to in house really came.

I feel like some people will have issues with Funimation punching up dialogue no matter how unimportant the change is. But it's true that they never pulled anything on the level of the baffling story rewrites like they did with the Ocean and '99 dubs, and that's way more important to me. On top of that, the performances of Funi's cast is just on a whole other level from where they were back in 1999. Like, I never would have expected any of those guy to be great voice actors back when the switchover happened.

On the other hand, I still occasionally catch myself humming "Cat Loves food yeahyeahyeahyeah", thanks for whatever that's worth Funi.

[SuperSaiyaManZ94]

Some of the things people say about Super's dub, both here and elsewhere is a little exaggerated. This isn't nearly the kind of full on rewriting and inserting of terrible jokes and dialogue left, right and center that was done by script writers back in the days of Barry Watson and co running things on the production end. We're not getting god awful lines on the level of "Cat loves food" and "That's one whopper of a lizard anymore" and it really isn't to the level of how things were back in 1999 when the transition to in house really came.

I feel like some people will have issues with Funimation punching up dialogue no matter how unimportant the change is. But it's true that they never pulled anything on the level of the baffling story rewrites like they did with the Ocean and 99 dubs, and that's way more important to me. But on top of that, the performances of Funi's cast is just on a whole other level from where they were back in 99. Like, I never would have expected any of those guy to be great voice actors back when the switchover happened.

Spoiler:

On the other hand, I still occasionally catch myself humming "Cat Loves food yeahyeahyeahyeah", thanks for whatever that's worth Funi.

Yes, and it seems they've really moved away from quite a few of the localization practices i.e. music replacement and the kind of script rewriting that were par for the course in their early years as most dub production companies basically don't anymore or if so it's far and few between.

[SuperSaiyaManZ94]

Some of the things people say about Super's dub, both here and elsewhere is a little exaggerated. This isn't nearly the kind of full on rewriting and inserting of terrible jokes and dialogue left, right and center that was done by script writers back in the days of Barry Watson and co running things on the production end. We're not getting god awful lines on the level of "Cat loves food" and "That's one whopper of a lizard anymore" and it really isn't to the level of how things were back in 1999 when the transition to in house really came.

I feel like some people will have issues with Funimation punching up dialogue no matter how unimportant the change is. But it's true that they never pulled anything on the level of the baffling story rewrites like they did with the Ocean and 99 dubs, and that's way more important to me. But on top of that, the performances of Funi's cast is just on a whole other level from where they were back in 99. Like, I never would have expected any of those guy to be great voice actors back when the switchover happened.

Spoiler:

On the other hand, I still occasionally catch myself humming "Cat Loves food yeahyeahyeahyeah", thanks for whatever that's worth Funi.

Yes, there are some things in their recent dubs that feel off to me at times but not nearly to the extent of their oftentimes cringe worthy writing in the Z dub and to a degree OG DB and GT as well.

[precita]

There's one line Beerus says, "Get in MAH belly!" with an emphasis like he was channeling Austin powers Fat Bastard character.

Also pretty sure a lot of the dub dialogue from Goku is made more humorous especially in silly scenes or scenes where Goku is confused about something.

[Cure Dragon 255]

This thread was more meant for people that criticized not 100% perfect dubs but that were EXTREMELY close to. Like the Latin American dub. I fotgot this is mostly an english speaking fandom and didnt thought to make things clear.

[Matches Malone]

I think what upsets DB fans the most isn't the changes made to Super's dub, but rather it being one of the only dubs they changed. As far as I know, Funimation's other dubs are as accurate as a translation can be, yet thanks to the "MA CHALDHOOOOOD" fans from the early 2000s, Super is being deliberately denied an accurate dub like Funi's other shows.