The Latin American Redub of OG Dragon Ball uses Harmony Gold Scripts

[Cure Dragon 255]

I am astounded to find that the Latin American redub of OG Dragon Ball (Aka the one everyone knows and made DB a hit in Latin America) uses Harmony Gold Dialogue. I always wondered why the usually faithful Latin American dub deviated so much but I just saw the Harmony Gold version of the very first scene of Dragon Ball and it is pretty much the exact same as the Lat Am redub.

Harmony Gold Dub.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ol6MIK8zpQA

Lat Am redub.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USCfLU6Cd2E

You might be wondering why I feel the need to especify the redub, well its because there was an old dub and it was The Harmony Gold dub but uncut, like it has so many scenes that were cut in the second dub, complete with Goku being Zero and the Harmony Gold Opening.

[M16U3L2015]

Yes, the first dub was called Zero y el Dragon Magico and they dubbed the first 60 episodes, but they only used Harmony Gold's masters and scripts in the first 5 episodes. The rest were translated based on international scripts without cuts, although they continued to use the dubbed names.

This dubbing was not so successful and there was an attempt to re-dub it with the same cast and original names but the director refused and the company that commissioned it refused to finance it.

Later, when Cloverway did their dub, they reused Zero and
El Dragon Magico scripts but using mostly the original names for the first 60 episodes. The remaining episodes, Z and GT, were dubbed using the original Japanese scripts.

Therefore, both dubs have Harmony Gold's dialogue in the first 5 episodes.

A curious thing about the redub is that at the request of Televisa, the TV station that broadcast the series, this redub was censored much more than in the previous dub, which had been dubbed uncut except for the first 5 episodes.

The Spanish dub wiki details the history of DB's two Latin Spanish dubs very well.

https://doblaje.fandom.com/es/wiki/Dragon_Ball
https://doblaje.fandom.com/es/wiki/Zero ... %C3%A1gico

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

My guess is that English to Spanish translators were easy to come across in Latin America and because copies of the Harmony Gold masters were being distributed among syndicates it wasn't hard for Intertrack to get ahold of those materials.

It is curious for episodes 6-60 they went a more faithful route though, the European Spanish dubs had also started by the time Zero y el Dragon Magico came around and could have been used as a basis for that dub. Although I've heard the dubs from Spain are less faithful so I'm glad the rest of the Latin American dub was based on the Japanese version.

[Cure Dragon 255]

I think the first 60 episodes of the redub used Toei English Scripts they had but miraculously werent awful. Also I think Spain got OG Dragon Ball in 1990 and they had zero influence in Latin America.

[taikufuru]

We Brazilians also received this material, since the three original series were also dubbed from the Mexican version.

Despite some defects arising from the period in which the dubbing was carried out, such as the lack of knowledge of the original material and the pronunciation of some names varying as the episodes progressed, the Brazilian dubbing of Dragon Ball Z is faithful to the original language and has a great cast.

Unfortunately, this cannot be said about the three dubs of Dragon Ball (1986) performed. The cast was good, but the material came with numerous cuts and softening of dialogue.