What would you choose: Good voice acting with bad translation or Bad voice acting with good translation?

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Re: What would you choose: Good voice acting with bad translation or Bad voice acting with good translation?

Post by Vegard Aune » Tue Nov 08, 2022 4:38 pm

Vegard Aune wrote: Tue Nov 08, 2022 10:50 am Bad acting with good translations. Other folks here say that good acting can elevate a bad translation, but personally, an inaccurate portrayal of the story annoys me infinitely more than a poorly acted dub. Like, say the "Season 3" dub for Z was basically cast with nothing but Patrick Stewart-tier actors who delivered the jankiest of dialogue with complete conviction, making for a situation similar to Star Trek TNG season 1 where the scripts might be rubbish but you still kind of buy it because of how dang charismatic and immersive the acting is... But you still have a version that outright tells people that Vegeta is only evil because Freeza "made him" that way and that in his final moments he desperately regrets how his life turned out, or where Goku delivers the most Superman speech ever to Freeza, and I'm like... at that point it's just not the same story anymore. Can the inaccurately portrayed story still be compelling in its own right? Sure. But I just fundamentally disagree with the idea that dubs should even be allowed to massively alter the plot and characterization. My ideal for a dub is one where a person who watched the original version and a person who watched the dub can discuss the show together, and the fact that they watched different language versions never becomes relevant. Assuming neither is all that concerned with voice acting quality, this could in theory happen with a badly-acted, well-translated script. But when literal plot-points differ between the two versions, as is sometimes the case in Dragon Ball... Yeah the fact that they watched different versions is going to lead to confusion.

End of the day, I do think a dub needs both strong acting and a good and accurate script to be a quality dub, but if I have to pick one or the other, I will absolutely pick the translation.
Oh, and another thing, since this seems to pretty much focus on English translations specifically:
Over here in Norway, a lot of our anime content is re-translated from English. Many other countries do it the same way. Bad performances with good translations only hurts one language version. Bad translations have a compounding effect into every other subsequent adaptation.

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Re: What would you choose: Good voice acting with bad translation or Bad voice acting with good translation?

Post by Saiya6Cit » Tue Nov 08, 2022 7:23 pm

Good translation with bad voice actors

Otherwise you are being told only lies!!!

And you know what they say, original language with subtitles will always be the best, unless that is the children who are watching, cause... you know they can't read that fast and so on....

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Re: What would you choose: Good voice acting with bad translation or Bad voice acting with good translation?

Post by FoolsGil » Tue Nov 08, 2022 9:49 pm

Good Voice Acting, bad translation.

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Re: What would you choose: Good voice acting with bad translation or Bad voice acting with good translation?

Post by OmegaRockman » Wed Nov 09, 2022 4:43 am

Good script with bad acting for me. I think it's more important for the substance of the story to be preserved. No amount of good acting makes the TV Ocean cast dub watchable for me, for example. Thankfully the uncut Ocean cast movies gave us the best of both worlds.

I will admit I am open to a bit of nuance here, though. Like, if the script is more playful but still accurate to the story and the cast is better, I'll probably opt for that dub over a technically more accurate dub with worse performances. See: almost any show that Animax or other SEA-based companies dubbed that also has a US dub counterpart. US dubs are generally accurate these days, but are flexible enough to allow the dialogue to sound like natural conversations in English, whereas Animax dubs tend to sound like they're reading the subtitles or a bad Google translation.

Now, I'd prefer the cast reading the subtitles over something like the Z dub or a 4kids dub so we still retain a baseline of accuracy (for example, I like 4kids's more stiffly scripted but actually accurate Uncut run of Yu-Gi-Oh! over their TV dub), but my ideal approach would be the ADR writers reworking/rephrasing the original lines in a way that, while still accurate, allow the actors to sound like people talking and not like a subtitle translation read aloud.* This way the dub is more immersive and the actors can give more believable reads. At the end of the day, if the script gets the original intent across while also coming off naturally and the actors give good performances, you have all the ingredients for a good dub.

*To be clear, I do think some subtitle translations like Megalobox's are very good at sounding like natural dialogue in English out the gate, meaning the ADR writers don't have to adapt as much; it really depends on that translator's style, like whether they go for something more literal like Simmons's old subs or go for more natural-sounding lines like in Megalobox, both of which are valid approaches to subtitle translation IMO.
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Re: What would you choose: Good voice acting with bad translation or Bad voice acting with good translation?

Post by nineko » Wed Nov 09, 2022 8:42 am

Here in Italy the anime got an extremely bad translation, but the acting was pretty nice. As a kid, I didn't mind that that much, but now I wonder if the alternative would be better.

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Re: What would you choose: Good voice acting with bad translation or Bad voice acting with good translation?

Post by Dragon Ball Ireland » Wed Nov 09, 2022 9:19 am

I think good arguments have been made for both options here. I agree that there has to be a balancing act because literal translations often don't work in English. Aside from the Pioneer movies, the Blue Water dubs are the best examples of scripts that were both translated directly from the Japanese version and sound natural on-screen.

In GT episode 55, Steve Simmons' subs for Vegeta read "In order that he might defeat me by his own hand, he let me get away on purpose. It was from that time on- from that time on, that the infuriating Kakarrot began to settle within me", whereas in the Blue Water dub he says "He let me go. It was so humiliating. But I realised then that he was more than just a lowly commoner; he was a true Saiyan warrior". The former would of course sound very clunky and stilted if heard in English, but the latter is cleverly paraphrased in a way that it gets the point across while still sounding like something Vegeta would say.

It's also important to take into consideration the fact dubbing is a very technical skill and requires fitting the mouth flaps so of course the dialogue has to be written with this in mind.
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Re: What would you choose: Good voice acting with bad translation or Bad voice acting with good translation?

Post by 90sDBZ » Wed Nov 09, 2022 1:30 pm

Dragon Ball Ireland wrote: Wed Nov 09, 2022 9:19 am In GT episode 55, Steve Simmons' subs for Vegeta read "In order that he might defeat me by his own hand, he let me get away on purpose. It was from that time on- from that time on, that the infuriating Kakarrot began to settle within me", whereas in the Blue Water dub he says "He let me go. It was so humiliating. But I realised then that he was more than just a lowly commoner; he was a true Saiyan warrior". The former would of course sound very clunky and stilted if heard in English, but the latter is cleverly paraphrased in a way that it gets the point across while still sounding like something Vegeta would say.
Looking back that's a really good line for Vegeta. I like how it suggests he'd gained respect for Goku in that moment.

What's interesting is Goku's speech right before that. I remember it being totally different from any other version, with him saying to let Vegeta go because killing a warrior like that would dishonor him, and would prevent his spirit from being set free. At least I think that's how it went.

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Re: What would you choose: Good voice acting with bad translation or Bad voice acting with good translation?

Post by FPSSJ4_Goku » Wed Nov 09, 2022 5:06 pm

I think that I'd take bad voice acting with a good translation, because if you give them a decade, then their voice acting becomes much better. Then you get good voice acting AND a good translation.
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Re: What would you choose: Good voice acting with bad translation or Bad voice acting with good translation?

Post by Fionordequester » Thu Nov 10, 2022 3:23 am

Good voice acting with bad translation: With Trunks talking to Bebi Vegeta in the Blue Water dub as proof.

Seriously—this scene is impossible to take seriously, the way it's faithfully translated but badly acted.

Trunk's reaction kills any drama the scene might've had, and everything from 1:22 onward sounds like a low-budget porno. And I swear Bebi Vegeta almost tripped on his line at 1:44—like his actor realized "wait—what the hell am I saying?" as he went through it, and only barely made it.
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Re: What would you choose: Good voice acting with bad translation or Bad voice acting with good translation?

Post by Kamiccolo9 » Thu Nov 10, 2022 4:22 am

I'd have to go with good voice acting with a bad translation.

In the end, a show's job is to make money, and you'll get a lot more viewers and higher ratings if the acting is good than you would with just a faithful translation. And, in the end, most people don't really care about things being super close to the source material. It doesn't really matter if you have a perfect translation if the actors can't pull it off; at that point, you might as well just publish the script or make it into a book.
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Re: What would you choose: Good voice acting with bad translation or Bad voice acting with good translation?

Post by supersaiyamangod » Fri Nov 11, 2022 10:19 pm

What stinks is I know the current English cast of dragon ball has actual range and could change up the voices to be an English equivalent to the Japanese. I’m not Kidding I’ve heard their other roles so to hear them stick with the same voices is disappointing because they could maybe give us a better dub than the ocean dub don’t know if I think Chris sabat could do even better than the ocean dub piccolo if he tried because I know Chris sabat has range but I don’t know if I just prefer Scott McNeil piccolo in this case. But yeah I still think that an even better dub than Kai was is in the funimation cast voice acting range they weren’t amateurs that’s for sure. after hearing them in other dubs over the years. they didn’t have to keep king kai sound like a moron etc. they can pull off a cowboy bebop caliber dub yeah I said it. because they are that talented and it saddens me to know they rather stick with the old hat. It’s not like all of the dubs voices aren’t good it’s just parts of dub cast voices.

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Re: What would you choose: Good voice acting with bad translation or Bad voice acting with good translation?

Post by Grimlock » Sat Nov 12, 2022 12:51 am

Guess this might be enough... I'm still astonished by the responses and preferences.
ABED wrote: Mon Nov 07, 2022 8:44 pmIt's certainly vital, but performance is vital and a good script can be mangled with poor execution.
Indeed, but if we have to sacrifice one, up until I saw this thread, I would think people would pick voice acting. I never imagined English-speaking viewers (I assume most here are Americans or have the English dub in their countries?) would actually support the idea of changing whole dialogues in favor of fake drama, thus missing the entire point of the original message the author wanted to convey.

Bardock scientist? He created artificial moon? In fact, his TV Special paints him as a caring father since 1990, one has to question then why there most likely are a lot of English-speaking people who don't like Dragon Ball Online/Minus Bardock, but grew up watching the English dub and praise the English version of the TV Special to this very day. A bit contradictory, isn't?

You're not actually watching/reading what you were supposed to be watching/reading with a bad translation. You're watching/reading something else entirely. Why would you want to have conversations based on misconceptions? Based on practically lies being told to you? That line the character said? That's not what they actually said, you're being fooled. Why would you want that? Just so the character can deliver good drama? Where is this drama coming from? Because certainly, with a bad translation, it can't be from the original intention that work wanted you to experience. Drama for the sake of drama is pointless. Any emotion for that matter, if conveyed by wrong means, is pointless. You should be happy/sad because of what the character is really saying, not because of a made up occasion that barely has any connection to the real message, if it has any connection at all.

That on top of a bunch of made up lines the English dub add to the characters when they are not on-screen, which can (and generally will) change the perspective and the understanding a viewer will have of that character, in fact, it may even change that character's personality altogether, which is by far the worst crime any dub can commit (speaking out of experience, the dub in my country unfortunately commited that crime for the latest series, adding a lot of slangs and other stuff that the characters never said before. It was quite a bad and embarassing situation for everyone involved). I would never have pictured Bardock being that talkative, had I not watched his TV Special a couple of times in English.

I understand it may be difficult to follow through anything with a bad voice acting, but at least you're getting the real meaning that scene wants you to have. You're not being fooled, you can have conversations based on what was actually said. If you can't get past bad voice acting, you may want to consider not watching that work. Or just go and watch the original version, which I guess is the best scenario at any rate.

It seems the situation has been becoming better lately, though we still have to put up with stuff like "Frost Demons" (Xenoverse, 2015) and I think I heard the English dub came up with a name for an originally nameless character in Dragon Ball Super Super Hero, don't know if it's true, but if that's the case, it's a relatively harmless thing to do, but it's still best to avoid it and there's no reason to do something like that anyway.


Disclaimer: I'm using the English dub as an example because it is widely known for the changes in the dialogues, but this obviously goes to all dubs and every other means of translation that do the same thing.
Last edited by Grimlock on Sat Nov 12, 2022 1:04 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: What would you choose: Good voice acting with bad translation or Bad voice acting with good translation?

Post by MasenkoHA » Sat Nov 12, 2022 12:58 am

supersaiyamangod wrote: Fri Nov 11, 2022 10:19 pm What stinks is I know the current English cast of dragon ball has actual range and could change up the voices to be an English equivalent to the Japanese. I’m not Kidding I’ve heard their other roles so to hear them stick with the same voices is disappointing because they could maybe give us a better dub than the ocean dub don’t know if I think Chris sabat could do even better than the ocean dub piccolo if he tried because I know Chris sabat has range but I don’t know if I just prefer Scott McNeil piccolo in this case. But yeah I still think that an even better dub than Kai was is in the funimation cast voice acting range they weren’t amateurs that’s for sure. after hearing them in other dubs over the years. they didn’t have to keep king kai sound like a moron etc. they can pull off a cowboy bebop caliber dub yeah I said it. because they are that talented and it saddens me to know they rather stick with the old hat. It’s not like all of the dubs voices aren’t good it’s just parts of dub cast voices.
To be honest I think the Funimation cast improved just enough from season 3 and have cemented themselves as THE voices in English for Dragon Ball that they're just kind of accepted. It is rather telling the Japanese cast performance in Kai, which is universally agreed to be phoned in, still sounds better than the English cast at the top of their game in Kai.

Not to completely knock on the Texas cast or anything. It's still impressive they improved as much as they did in just a few years - from absolute dog shit when they started in the Ginyu episodes to more or mess tolerable by GT if not by Buu-

The replacement cast in Pokemon's dub still sounds as obnoxious, forced, and unnatural in the more recent material I've seen as they did way back in 2006.

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Re: What would you choose: Good voice acting with bad translation or Bad voice acting with good translation?

Post by supersaiyamangod » Sat Nov 12, 2022 4:35 am

MasenkoHA wrote: Sat Nov 12, 2022 12:58 am
supersaiyamangod wrote: Fri Nov 11, 2022 10:19 pm What stinks is I know the current English cast of dragon ball has actual range and could change up the voices to be an English equivalent to the Japanese. I’m not Kidding I’ve heard their other roles so to hear them stick with the same voices is disappointing because they could maybe give us a better dub than the ocean dub don’t know if I think Chris sabat could do even better than the ocean dub piccolo if he tried because I know Chris sabat has range but I don’t know if I just prefer Scott McNeil piccolo in this case. But yeah I still think that an even better dub than Kai was is in the funimation cast voice acting range they weren’t amateurs that’s for sure. after hearing them in other dubs over the years. they didn’t have to keep king kai sound like a moron etc. they can pull off a cowboy bebop caliber dub yeah I said it. because they are that talented and it saddens me to know they rather stick with the old hat. It’s not like all of the dubs voices aren’t good it’s just parts of dub cast voices.
To be honest I think the Funimation cast improved just enough from season 3 and have cemented themselves as THE voices in English for Dragon Ball that they're just kind of accepted. It is rather telling the Japanese cast performance in Kai, which is universally agreed to be phoned in, still sounds better than the English cast at the top of their game in Kai.

Not to completely knock on the Texas cast or anything. It's still impressive they improved as much as they did in just a few years - from absolute dog shit when they started in the Ginyu episodes to more or mess tolerable by GT if not by Buu-

The replacement cast in Pokemon's dub still sounds as obnoxious, forced, and unnatural in the more recent material I've seen as they did way back in 2006.
But if you heard the other voices this same English cast has done for other anime you’d know they weren’t giving us their a+ material it’s more like b c or c- effort. when you know this you can’t help be be very disappointed. Listen to sabat as Louis Armstrong in fullmetal alchemist it’s a professional anime character voice not a kuwabara in yu yu hakusho when it comes to z what vegeta sounded liked at one point yajarobe yamcha piccolo though I’ll admit some of his z characters sound better my point still stands.

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Re: What would you choose: Good voice acting with bad translation or Bad voice acting with good translation?

Post by Fionordequester » Sun Nov 13, 2022 7:03 am

Grimlock wrote: Sat Nov 12, 2022 12:51 am I understand it may be difficult to follow through anything with a bad voice acting, but at least you're getting the real meaning that scene wants you to have.
No I'm not. I'm listening to a horrible actor telling another horrible actor about the time "[he] was inside of [him, and]...left a little something behind".

I'm wondering "why the H.F.I.L. did they cast a literal child to voice an adult Vegeta?".

And for that matter "why did they cast a woman to voice Korin? And why's she talking so fast?"

I'm listening and trying to figure out "what is this voice actor doing?" while a character's supposed to be killing their father.

At this point, you may as well be watching kindergarteners trying to re-enact Shakespeare.
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Re: What would you choose: Good voice acting with bad translation or Bad voice acting with good translation?

Post by ABED » Sun Nov 13, 2022 4:31 pm

Grimlock wrote: Sat Nov 12, 2022 12:51 am Guess this might be enough... I'm still astonished by the responses and preferences.
ABED wrote: Mon Nov 07, 2022 8:44 pmIt's certainly vital, but performance is vital and a good script can be mangled with poor execution.
Indeed, but if we have to sacrifice one, up until I saw this thread, I would think people would pick voice acting. I never imagined English-speaking viewers (I assume most here are Americans or have the English dub in their countries?) would actually support the idea of changing whole dialogues in favor of fake drama, thus missing the entire point of the original message the author wanted to convey.

Bardock scientist? He created artificial moon? In fact, his TV Special paints him as a caring father since 1990, one has to question then why there most likely are a lot of English-speaking people who don't like Dragon Ball Online/Minus Bardock, but grew up watching the English dub and praise the English version of the TV Special to this very day. A bit contradictory, isn't?

You're not actually watching/reading what you were supposed to be watching/reading with a bad translation. You're watching/reading something else entirely. Why would you want to have conversations based on misconceptions? Based on practically lies being told to you? That line the character said? That's not what they actually said, you're being fooled. Why would you want that? Just so the character can deliver good drama? Where is this drama coming from? Because certainly, with a bad translation, it can't be from the original intention that work wanted you to experience. Drama for the sake of drama is pointless. Any emotion for that matter, if conveyed by wrong means, is pointless. You should be happy/sad because of what the character is really saying, not because of a made up occasion that barely has any connection to the real message, if it has any connection at all.

That on top of a bunch of made up lines the English dub add to the characters when they are not on-screen, which can (and generally will) change the perspective and the understanding a viewer will have of that character, in fact, it may even change that character's personality altogether, which is by far the worst crime any dub can commit (speaking out of experience, the dub in my country unfortunately commited that crime for the latest series, adding a lot of slangs and other stuff that the characters never said before. It was quite a bad and embarassing situation for everyone involved). I would never have pictured Bardock being that talkative, had I not watched his TV Special a couple of times in English.

I understand it may be difficult to follow through anything with a bad voice acting, but at least you're getting the real meaning that scene wants you to have. You're not being fooled, you can have conversations based on what was actually said. If you can't get past bad voice acting, you may want to consider not watching that work. Or just go and watch the original version, which I guess is the best scenario at any rate.

It seems the situation has been becoming better lately, though we still have to put up with stuff like "Frost Demons" (Xenoverse, 2015) and I think I heard the English dub came up with a name for an originally nameless character in Dragon Ball Super Super Hero, don't know if it's true, but if that's the case, it's a relatively harmless thing to do, but it's still best to avoid it and there's no reason to do something like that anyway.


Disclaimer: I'm using the English dub as an example because it is widely known for the changes in the dialogues, but this obviously goes to all dubs and every other means of translation that do the same thing.
I'm not sure what you mean by "fake drama."

I get what you mean by a bad script impeding authorial intent, but Fio made a pretty apt analogy by saying it's like watching kids enact Shakespeare. The story still exists but the emotion is gone.

As bad as season 1 and 2's scripts often were, the acting is way better than it gets credit for, so much so that I genuinely get choked up from the moment of Piccolo's death until Goku's arrival to rescue his son. The performance and music make up for a lot.
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Re: What would you choose: Good voice acting with bad translation or Bad voice acting with good translation?

Post by Vegard Aune » Mon Nov 14, 2022 7:35 am

Fionordequester wrote: Sun Nov 13, 2022 7:03 am
Grimlock wrote: Sat Nov 12, 2022 12:51 am I understand it may be difficult to follow through anything with a bad voice acting, but at least you're getting the real meaning that scene wants you to have.
No I'm not. I'm listening to a horrible actor telling another horrible actor about the time "[he] was inside of [him, and]...left a little something behind".

I'm wondering "why the H.F.I.L. did they cast a literal child to voice an adult Vegeta?".

And for that matter "why did they cast a woman to voice Korin? And why's she talking so fast?"

I'm listening and trying to figure out "what is this voice actor doing?" while a character's supposed to be killing their father.

At this point, you may as well be watching kindergarteners trying to re-enact Shakespeare.
I would rather have a badly acted delivery of the story the original writers wanted to tell, than a well-acted fanfic from the localizers. One is them trying to convey the original work and failing. The other is just... not the same work anymore.

I think ultimately this comes down to whether you value getting an enjoyable work more, or if you value getting what the original creators wanted you to convey. I can certainly see how a badly translated or intentionally rewritten work can still be enjoyable. I mean, I greatly enjoyed DBZ Abridged. But if DBZ Abridged had been the actual dub of Dragon Ball, I would have had a problem with it. I can appreciate it because it is openly a parody that doesn't try to present itself as anything else, and in fact emphasizes that fact in every single episode and tells its viewers to check out the original work. Meanwhile, Ocean Dragon Ball Z just is like "Yup, this is Dragon Ball Z."

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Re: What would you choose: Good voice acting with bad translation or Bad voice acting with good translation?

Post by Majin Buu » Mon Nov 14, 2022 2:24 pm

Assuming we're talking about English dubs here: Bad voice acting with a good translation.

I can just switch to the Japanese version if I think the voice acting in the dub sucks, and if the translation is accurate in the dub, then it'll probably be accurate on the sub end as well (hopefully).
Vegard Aune wrote: Tue Nov 08, 2022 10:50 am Can the inaccurately portrayed story still be compelling in its own right? Sure. But I just fundamentally disagree with the idea that dubs should even be allowed to massively alter the plot and characterization.
This. Changing word puns and cultural references that don't translate is one thing, but altering whole plot points and characterization for no discernable reason other than "we think we can do it better" is the hallmark of a bad dub for me; because at that point the dubbing company is just throwing their own shit into a story that wasn't theirs to alter like that in the first place. I wanna experience the story "the way it was meant to be seen" by the people who actually made it. I don't wanna watch a significantly altered version of the story and characters (and score) made by some Western dubbing company that decided those elements needed to be "improved".

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Re: What would you choose: Good voice acting with bad translation or Bad voice acting with good translation?

Post by Anonymous Friend » Mon Nov 14, 2022 5:38 pm

This is like asking if I want a terribly written song sung beautifully, or a well written sung song horribly.

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Re: What would you choose: Good voice acting with bad translation or Bad voice acting with good translation?

Post by ABED » Mon Nov 14, 2022 6:52 pm

Anonymous Friend wrote: Mon Nov 14, 2022 5:38 pm This is like asking if I want a terribly written song sung beautifully, or a well written sung song horribly.

Our entertainment should not make us want to rip our ears out.
Either scenario can make someone want to rip their ears out.
I can just switch to the Japanese version if I think the voice acting in the dub sucks,
you can also switch of the translation sucks. The question is two what if scenarios concerning the dub. Unless I'm wrong, this isn't about the subtitle track.

This all boils down to personal preference. I understand where people whose opinion differs from mine on this issue, and both scenarios aren't ideal. We're picking the lesser of two evils.
The biggest truths aren't original. The truth is ketchup. It's Jim Belushi. Its job isn't to blow our minds. It's to be within reach.
"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take - Wayne Gretzky" - Michael Scott
Happiness is climate, not weather.

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