Weird Old Dub Stuff

[Metalwario64]

You guys mentioned the movie dubs adding lines that acknowledge the main Canon. There's also an example of the opposite though;

When Gotenks and Piccolo escape the Time Chamber to find the Lookout in ruins from Buu's rampage; Piccolo says "This place is ruined. Again". This has to be a nod to the battle with Garlic Jr, as that's the only other time the Lookout got demolished.

The line is in both the Funimation and Westwood dubs of that scene.

Also the Narrator references Garlic Jr when Gohan goes SS2 against Cell. Something along the lines of "from fights with the Ginyu Force, Garlic Jr, and even Frieza..".

Yep, even references the filler of baby Gohan showing his power "before he could firm words in his mouth"

[Scsigs]

I do apologize for this post as it is. I just discovered this thread & am reading through it.

The Funimation dub pre-Kai has always been weird on what they are and aren’t okay with. They’ll use kill and die but every now and then throw a more kids tv broadcast friendly “destroy” even in the uncut dub.

The uncut dub from the Captain Ginyu saga to Kid Buu generally avoided any swearing but had no problem referring to hell as in the place but then in the uncut Saiyan saga they wouldn’t even do that and referred to hell as “the underworld” and “the place of no return” and then in the Namek saga they’re finally throwing around PG swearing with bastards, pissed, damns , and hells


Then you had the original Dragon Ball dub trying to downplay the sexual content that the footage didn’t force them to keep but every now and then they’ll make the dialog worse than the original like Old Lady Paozu calling Goku a “randy boy” instead of blushing that he noticed she’s a girl after patting her crotch or Bulma telling Yamcha he’s going to make it up to her for being gone for so long “and he’s going to enjoy it” instead of just telling him he needs a haircut

So, towards the Z dub, that's the result of a few different things, imo. The redubbed first 67 episodes allowed them to correct weird inconsistencies the Ocean dub had since they'd dubbed the first series before redubbing those Z episodes. They also dubbed the episodes for the Ultimate Uncut sets & Toonami broadcasts, which allowed them to go more mature with some of the language. 2005 was also the time frame when FUNimation was making great strides with their other dubs to be more faithful & mature with the scripts. Watching their later dubs of the Z movies shows this in an interesting way. The scripts are generally pretty close to the Japanese ones (I think the closest is definitely the first Broly movie), but some had some additional dub text that don't necessarily add or subtract much from the movies (Tapion's extended backstory in movie 13's dub being the one I remember first) that are reminiscent of the Z dub. The acting from some of the actors, though, is still kinda wonky for no reason, mainly from Sean Schemmel as Goku, who up until Kai, minus his ability to scream, I felt was 1 of the weakest links in terms of the main cast. The later episodes of Z, because they just reused the audio from when they aired on TV, just uncut, are a result of them dubbing the series still for kid's TV. Although, when you compare to other kid's shows from the time that are for the same demographic, Cartoon Network & even Nickelodeon had inconsistent standards for whether the writers could actually use actual words for death or words like "destroy."
As a result, it's a dub done at a time where dubbing wasn't taken that seriously to be accurate in translation as well as has script changes to appeal more to western children, but was also dubbed to the uncut episodes that they were putting out on DVD at the time, so you have a really mixed result of a dub where fractions of it were done at different times to different standards & with different intentions. It's really dumb. They should've given Z a whole more accurate redub for the Orange Bricks. That would've at lease been SOMETHING worth buying those shits for 20 years ago.

Yeah I remember that. Trunks also told future Bulma he was dead. So weird to randomly skirt around it, then backpedal, but the old dubs were, if nothing else, inconsistent. Lol.

Reminds me of another line from Funimation's dub. When Vegeta dares Frieza to transform and mentions Zarbon telling him about Frieza being able to transform, even though Zarbon's line was omitted from the dub.

And there's also instances of recaps/flashbacks using slightly different dialogue to the actual scene.

They basically dubbed the series episode by episode, not caring for if continuity was off or not. It's where we get lines like in the Ocean dub where Vegeta says Bardock invented the energy ball he used to transform into an Oozaru & he was a brilliant scientist when Vegeta neither said that in the original Japanese, nor was Bardock even remotely like that.

What about World Martial Arts Tournament? Was that a Funi dub name or was that a localized name adapted from another dub?

"Tenkaichi Budokai" translates to "The Number One Under Heaven Martial Arts Gathering." That is WAY too much of a mouthful & long to match the mouthflaps for an English dub, so they used "World" (which, well, fits considering there's usually fighters from a ton of different places at them), left the "Martial Arts" part, & added "Tournament" instead of "Gathering" because, well, it's a tournament.
Ten-kai-ich-i Bu-do-kai = 7 syllables
Wor-ld Mar-tial Arts Tour-na-ment = 8 syllables
Although, they usually just shorten it to "World Tournament" which gets the entire idea across simply & in less syllables. Because, if they left it in Japanese, unless you looked it up or they somehow explained it in the dialogue, it'd make NO sense to English-speakers who'd never heard it before.

I’ve mentioned this before in another thread, but at some point in the ‘90s, Z was aired in Hong Kong on the channel TVB Pearl, in Japanese with Chinese and English subtitles.

I don’t know of it’s mere coincidence, or if influence from Toei was involved, or what, but the TVB Pearl English subs translate Kaioh as “King Kai.”

https://imgur.com/a/tvb-pearl-king-kai-8c5wYAm

Maybe “King Kai” came from those legendary badly translated English dialogue scripts from Toei that Funimation used back in the day? Who knows.

"King Kai" is an accurate translation of "Kaio-sama" from what I understand, which literally translates to "Lord of Words." Because the early Z dubs wanted to leave out references to Gods, they changed "Lord" to "King" & dropped the o from "Kaio."

Spoiler:

And it's minor gripe, but I do think Kai's English dub, while an improvement, is quite overwritten.

Kai's dub DOES have a tendency of being overly wordy with the scripts. Some characters, I feel it fits like Vegeta, Freeza, & Perfect Cell because it shows how full of themselves they can be, but others, it's unneeded. A weird thing I have as well is why they felt to needlessly change certain lines in Kai that they actually translated well in Z (by biggest gripe is Goku unnecessarily saying, "Thanks, Vegeta. Here we go!" when they fuse into Vegetto. The line was simple & effective in the manga, Japanese, & OG Z dub with the "Thank you, Vegeta." Schemmel's delivery was just off in Z & it would've used another pass). I've gotten used to it as I've rewatched Kai, but it was definitely a thing I noticed watching the first time through. I think that type of writing would've worked better in Z with the slower pacing, but Kai, sometimes it's too fast in a series that's already paced faster than Z.

It’s funny because yeah the UUE dub actually acts as a pretty consistent follow up to their dub of the original Dragon Ball i.e flashbacks use archive audio from that dub, the beginning of New Threat acknowledges Goku defeated Piccolo 5 years ago. Then you get to the portion that was dubbed before original Dragon Ball and flashbacks don’t line up like a flashback to Goku and Krillin training and Sonny Straits is doing the grunts instead of Laurie Steele. Or stuff we would know its not true like Bulma claiming she knew Goku since he was 5 or Piccolo acting like he and Goku fought at multiple tournaments.


And of course going back to amateur hour on the cast. Yamcha suddenly sounds like a surfer boy, Bulma is now a valley girl, Piccolo now sounds like a dumbass and makes stupid jokes, Gohan goes from sounding like Goku as a kid to smoking 20 packs a day. Only for them to back to sounding like their original Dragon Ball to Namek saga selves around Buu.

This actually got me thinking. It's GOT to be jarring for people getting into the franchise today going through the franchise in continuity or OG Japanese order & watch the dubs. There's what you said, but what if someone watches OG DB, then goes to Kai instead of Z, then tries to watch the Trunks & Bardock specials & the movies, then maybe GT if they don't skip it for Super. Then there's Daima's continuity problems with Super. I don't envy them. If the dubs were of equal high quality across the board, it wouldn't be as bad, but they're not. The Z dub suck (which includes the Bardock & Trunks specials), OG DB's is fine, bout could be better, the 13 Z movies are inconsistent, Kai's is close to flawless, & Super's is fine, but not as good as Kai's when it comes to the scripts.

Was that a common thing the movie dubs did? The only other instance I can think of at the top of my head where FUNimation did that was in Movie 6, where they mentioned that Goku had been to New Namek before.

Oh. That's dumb for them to do. Not only because it's not int he Japanese version, but because chronologically, it can't take place after that no matter what the Daizenshuus try to bullshit for them.

Yeah the Japanese version references the events of the main timeline too because the Z movies were never meant to take place in a separate universe. They’re just products of trying to tell standalone stories meant to take place after the current events of the show/manga without knowing how things are going to unfold. It’s the big reason why the movies from the end of their respective eras (5,9, and 13) have the least amount of issues with fitting in.

I actually remember watching the dub of Bojack and assuming the reference to King Piccolo was a dub only line meant to cross promote the King Piccolo Saga DVDs they had released a year prior but no the reference to Daimao was in the Japanese version too.


The Emperor Chiaotzu line was kept in the remastered dub. I don’t believe there was any attempt to fix continuity issues and errors. The Bardock flashback has Sonny Strait redub the exact same incorrect dialog from the original dub, where they assume Frieza’s men are allied with Bardock , instead of just taking dialogue from their somewhat more accurate Father of Goku dub.

I’m pretty sure any dialogue difference between the original dub and the remastered dub is just a result of the rushed actors working off a recording script instead of whatever last minute ad libs they did in 1999.

I disagree that they weren't trying to exist in an alternate universe. At least most of them. Sometimes they got lucky with a timeskip happening when they started writing them, but I don't think they expected the majority of those movies to be able to slot cleanly in between events of the manga or anime. I mean, it's my theory that the first Broly movie was supposed to be set after the defeat of Cell rather than in the 10 day wait for the Cell Games, then got unfortunately placed there because of how Toriyama decided to end that arc. It's the same with a lot of the non-serial movies for Super Sentai or Kamen Rider where most of the time the writers don't care if continuity lines up cleanly to slot them into places in the timelines of the shows they belong to.

In terms of the remastered dubs, they were full of the original actors rerecording their old lines for better or more consistent performances if they were done at a time where they were very amateurish. From what I've read, Sonny Strait's Bardock sounded more closer to his Krillin originally before he more properly developed the voice in stuff like the video games. Which, I gotta commend them for that because only 1 other time have I seen a studio go to & do something like that & that's Discotek with their latest Digimon movie collection where they had some actors from the shows redub characters that were recast in the movies & brought some of the other actors back to dub scenes that had been cut when Disney initially dubbed & aired them on TV back in 2005. Usually, what you see is companies just using the old dubs or redubbing the shits entirely. So, I don't think there's much of a difference between the original & redubs outside of performances. The only actor that they didn't have redub their early performances in the remastered dubs was Sean Schemmel for some reason, who could've used it for his Goku recordings.

You guys mentioned the movie dubs adding lines that acknowledge the main Canon. There's also an example of the opposite though;

When Gotenks and Piccolo escape the Time Chamber to find the Lookout in ruins from Buu's rampage; Piccolo says "This place is ruined. Again". This has to be a nod to the battle with Garlic Jr, as that's the only other time the Lookout got demolished.

The line is in both the Funimation and Westwood dubs of that scene.

Also the Narrator references Garlic Jr when Gohan goes SS2 against Cell. Something along the lines of "from fights with the Ginyu Force, Garlic Jr, and even Frieza..".

I mean, the Garlic Jr. filler arc was also a thing, so maybe it's a reference to that? They don't fight on the Lookout in the Dead Zone movie to my knowledge.

[90sDBZ]

You guys mentioned the movie dubs adding lines that acknowledge the main Canon. There's also an example of the opposite though;

When Gotenks and Piccolo escape the Time Chamber to find the Lookout in ruins from Buu's rampage; Piccolo says "This place is ruined. Again". This has to be a nod to the battle with Garlic Jr, as that's the only other time the Lookout got demolished.

The line is in both the Funimation and Westwood dubs of that scene.

I mean, the Garlic Jr. filler arc was also a thing, so maybe it's a reference to that? They don't fight on the Lookout in the Dead Zone movie to my knowledge.

The filler arc is what I was referring to. They acknowledge the battle from the filler arc, so by extension they're also acknowledging the first movie.

[Thouser]

I’ve mentioned this before in another thread, but at some point in the ‘90s, Z was aired in Hong Kong on the channel TVB Pearl, in Japanese with Chinese and English subtitles.

I don’t know of it’s mere coincidence, or if influence from Toei was involved, or what, but the TVB Pearl English subs translate Kaioh as “King Kai.”

https://imgur.com/a/tvb-pearl-king-kai-8c5wYAm

Maybe “King Kai” came from those legendary badly translated English dialogue scripts from Toei that Funimation used back in the day? Who knows.

"King Kai" is an accurate translation of "Kaio-sama" from what I understand, which literally translates to "Lord of Words." Because the early Z dubs wanted to leave out references to Gods, they changed "Lord" to "King" & dropped the o from "Kaio."

界王/Kaiō literally means “World King,” so what they did is translate Ō to “King”, and “Kai” as if it was just his proper name.

It’s like if someone translated Journey to the West and decided to translate the god Yudi/Jade Emperor as “Emperor Yu.” On a certain level it’s not “wrong,” but it is odd, and unnecessarily loses information that was obvious in the source text, similarly to the example you provided about “Tenka’ichi Budōkai” being meaningless to an English speaker if they don’t already know what 天下一武道会 means.

“King Kai” isn’t as egregious as something like “Supreme Kai” or “Grand Kai,” where “kai” is treated as if it was a title itself, or is implied to be a Japanese word that means “god” or something. It’s also not impossible that two translations could come to the same result, but I don’t think it’s the most obvious translation and it’s an odd coincidence at least.

That said, I don’t think ”King Kai” is the end of the world or anything. People certainly overreacted to some of Funimation and Viz’s translation choices, often just for being different from what fans already used, rather than how accurate or inaccurate they actually were. I find it funny how the official subs for Z used “Yamucha” and “Chaozu,” while the dub’s “Yamcha” and “Chiaotzu” are actually more accurate. I would even argue that “Tien” is a decent localization, since half the point of the name “Tenshinhan” is that it sounds Chinese to a Japanese audience, which it definitely doesn’t to an American (I wouldn’t say the dub using “Tien Shinhan” is good though; mixing the Mandarin and Japanese pronunciations across the halves of his name is just odd).

One could even argue that Funimation was too conservative with keeping Tien and Chiaotzu so close to the originals, since the idea that they both have joke names derived from Chinese food was completely lost on probably 99% of the US child audience. Funi could have easily changed their names to, perhaps, Lo Mein and Egg Roll or something ridiculous like that and even that could be defended, despite how much the pre-dub fans at the time would have hated it.

Sorry to go on an even further tangent, but on the subject of Funi dubisms and Chinese names in Dragon Ball, I’d argue that, considering the US taboo of saying “god” in children’s TV, “Eternal Dragon” was a decent localization of 神龍/Dragon God. Does Funimation even use that term anymore? Or do they only use “Shenron” in the current dubs? Does anyone know the last time Funi used it? I have the impression it’s a relic of the pre-Kai or even pre-UUE days but that’s just going off vibes; I have no idea.

[MasenkoHA]

I’ve mentioned this before in another thread, but at some point in the ‘90s, Z was aired in Hong Kong on the channel TVB Pearl, in Japanese with Chinese and English subtitles.

I don’t know of it’s mere coincidence, or if influence from Toei was involved, or what, but the TVB Pearl English subs translate Kaioh as “King Kai.”

https://imgur.com/a/tvb-pearl-king-kai-8c5wYAm

Maybe “King Kai” came from those legendary badly translated English dialogue scripts from Toei that Funimation used back in the day? Who knows.

"King Kai" is an accurate translation of "Kaio-sama" from what I understand, which literally translates to "Lord of Words." Because the early Z dubs wanted to leave out references to Gods, they changed "Lord" to "King" & dropped the o from "Kaio."

界王/Kaiō literally means “World King,” so what they did is translate Ō to “King”, and “Kai” as if it was just his proper name.

It’s like if someone translated Journey to the West and decided to translate the god Yudi/Jade Emperor as “Emperor Yu.” On a certain level it’s not “wrong,” but it is odd, and unnecessarily loses information that was obvious in the source text, similarly to the example you provided about “Tenka’ichi Budōkai” being meaningless to an English speaker if they don’t already know what 天下一武道会 means.

“King Kai” isn’t as egregious as something like “Supreme Kai” or “Grand Kai,” where “kai” is treated as if it was a title itself, or is implied to be a Japanese word that means “god” or something. It’s also not impossible that two translations could come to the same result, but I don’t think it’s the most obvious translation and it’s an odd coincidence at least.

That said, I don’t think ”King Kai” is the end of the world or anything. People certainly overreacted to some of Funimation and Viz’s translation choices, often just for being different from what fans already used, rather than how accurate or inaccurate they actually were. I find it funny how the official subs for Z used “Yamucha” and “Chaozu,” while the dub’s “Yamcha” and “Chiaotzu” are actually more accurate. I would even argue that “Tien” is a decent localization, since half the point of the name “Tenshinhan” is that it sounds Chinese to a Japanese audience, which it definitely doesn’t to an American (I wouldn’t say the dub using “Tien Shinhan” is good though; mixing the Mandarin and Japanese pronunciations across the halves of his name is just odd).

One could even argue that Funimation was too conservative with keeping Tien and Chiaotzu so close to the originals, since the idea that they both have joke names derived from Chinese food was completely lost on probably 99% of the US child audience. Funi could have easily changed their names to, perhaps, Lo Mein and Egg Roll or something ridiculous like that and even that could be defended, despite how much the pre-dub fans at the time would have hated it.

Sorry to go on an even further tangent, but on the subject of Funi dubisms and Chinese names in Dragon Ball, I’d argue that, considering the US taboo of saying “god” in children’s TV, “Eternal Dragon” was a decent localization of 神龍/Dragon God. Does Funimation even use that term anymore? Or do they only use “Shenron” in the current dubs? Does anyone know the last time Funi used it? I have the impression it’s a relic of the pre-Kai or even pre-UUE days but that’s just going off vibes; I have no idea.

King Kai is an okay localization and quite possibly something that existed in Toei’s Engrish scripts my only problems are


1. The o itself is gender neutral. King is not. Hence you get female Kaio and Goku assuming Snake Princess is Kaio. For that reason I would have left Kaio as is or if you want to be super literal “Monarch of Worlds”

2. It’s kind of weird to localize Kaio but not Kaio Ken. If you’re gonna change Kaio to King Kai you should probably change Kaio Ken to “King Kai’s Fist”


I imagine Tien comes from Chaozu and Lunch referring Tenshinhan as “Ten-san” and Funimation thinking Ten is an awkward name. To your own point about going further localizing their names to Lo Mein and Eggroll. At a certain point you gotta draw a line I think. Especially with names.

You could make an argument Gohan should be localized as “Meal” because there are a few jokes in the Japanese version based on that pun. Like Chi Chi saying “Gohan Chan Gohan Yo!” in the first episode and first two Z movies (Meal! It’s Meal Time!) and Mr.Satan hearing the word Gohan at the Cell Games and assuming this kid must be a Bento Salesboy. But I think Gohan and Goku have similar sounding names is more important than trying to preserve a pun for a few jokes. To that end you could argue they should have called Goku “Wukong” because the point is he’s supposed to have the exact same name as the Monkey King. Son Goku is just the Japanese reading of Sun Wukong


Then you have Bulma. People usually know it’s supposed to be Bloomers but they always misinterpret it to refer to 19th ladies undergarments but it’s actually referring to Japanese Girls Athletic Shorts “Buruma” . Do you call her Bloomers? Intent of the author be damned? Call her Gym Shorts? Or do you call her Bulma because that’s how Toriyama chose to spell out her name in almost every non fan service outfit she wears in the early part of the story?

I believe the last time they use Eternal Dragon was in their redubs of the first 3 Z movies. Eternal Dragon and Shenron are both fine to be honest. Better than calling Nyoibo “Power Pole” and Kinto’Un “Flying Nimbus”

[Thouser]

King Kai is an okay localization and quite possibly something that existed in Toei’s Engrish scripts my only problems are


1. The o itself is gender neutral. King is not. Hence you get female Kaio and Goku assuming Snake Princess is Kaio. For that reason I would have left Kaio as is or if you want to be super literal “Monarch of Worlds”

2. It’s kind of weird to localize Kaio but not Kaio Ken. If you’re gonna change Kaio to King Kai you should probably change Kaio Ken to “King Kai’s Fist”

All valid points. I’m not a particular fan of “King Kai” as a translation. It’s just not the worst. I like the Harmony Gold dub’s translation of the dialogue but I’d take “King Kai” over “Zero” or “Zedaki” any day.

Things like Kaiō can really make a mess because any choice made creates a domino effect when there are related/derived names. Another perfect example is translating “Majin.” Boo is obviously supposed to be a genie, but if you translate majin to genie then you lose the phonetic connection between majin, madoushi, makai, and the “M” symbol. The “ma” connection is also lost if you translate madōshi to sorcerer/wizard or makai to demon world. If you translate Kame Sen’nin to “Turtle Hermit” then you lose the connection with “Kamehameha” and “Kame House” (of course the Funi dub lost this connection anyway).

Something will be lost and I guess it’s just a matter of deciding what’s more important and what can more acceptably be lost.

I imagine Tien comes from Chaozu and Lunch referring Tenshinhan as “Ten-san” and Funimation thinking Ten is an awkward name. To your own point about going further localizing their names to Lo Mein and Eggroll. At a certain point you gotta draw a line I think. Especially with names.

You could make an argument Gohan should be localized as “Meal” because there are a few jokes in the Japanese version based on that pun. Like Chi Chi saying “Gohan Chan Gohan Yo!” in the first episode and first two Z movies (Meal! It’s Meal Time!) and Mr.Satan hearing the word Gohan at the Cell Games and assuming this kid must be a Bento Salesboy. But I think Gohan and Goku have similar sounding names is more important than trying to preserve a pun for a few jokes. To that end you could argue they should have called Goku “Wukong” because the point is he’s supposed to have the exact same name as the Monkey King. Son Goku is just the Japanese reading of Sun Wukong

I don’t think it was necessary for Tenshinhan and Chiaotzu’s names to be changed. I was just thinking that if they had done something like that, it would have had more reasoning than some changes they made. In my eyes at least. Of course, I think “Vegerot” is acceptable. Honestly though, they definitely were not thinking about it that hard.

Like, it’s just strange that they bothered to convert the katakana-ized Chaozu to the proper “Chiaotzu,” when “Shenron” exists in the same dub. Of course they also have “Shenron” and “Oolong” coexisting.

On the same note, the Viz manga uses “Pu’er” and “Arushinchū” in the same translation!

If Funimation did in fact translate Goku as “Wukong” back in the day I wouldn’t have a problem with it. It’s not necessary but it’s definitely not wrong. I guess the closest thing anyone has done to that is when Viz translated the first manga chapter title “Buruma to Son Gokū” as “Bloomers and the Monkey King,” since to a Japanese reader seeing that title for the first time when it came out, that’s exactly what that name would conjur in their mind before knowing who the DB characters were (making allowance of course for the conflation of the underwear and the athletic shorts).

I believe the last time they use Eternal Dragon was in their redubs of the first 3 Z movies.

Ah, that makes sense. The Tree of Might redub used just a slightly touched-up version of the script from the TV Tree of Might dub where it was split into three episodes, and they were definitely still using the term in that.

[MasenkoHA]

All valid points. I’m not a particular fan of “King Kai” as a translation. It’s just not the worst. I like the Harmony Gold dub’s translation of the dialogue but I’d take “King Kai” over “Zero” or “Zedaki” any day.

I was always baffled by a lot of Harmony Gold’s names. Usually these name changes are the result of out of touch baby boomers thinking that Asian sounding names are off putting to American children, to that end I get “Zero and Lena and Bongo” but then you get names like Mao Mao, Shinto, Zedaki and Lord Wu Tzu. “We acknowledge the story is from the East but we don’t want to use those names”

Another perfect example is translating “Majin.” Boo is obviously supposed to be a genie, but if you translate majin to genie then you lose the phonetic connection between majin, madoushi, makai, and the “M” symbol. The “ma” connection is also lost if you translate madōshi to sorcerer/wizard or makai to demon world. If you translate Kame Sen’nin to “Turtle Hermit” then you lose the connection with “Kamehameha” and “Kame House” (of course the Funi dub lost this connection anyway).

Exactly. Viz elected to call Boo Djinn Boo which is fine bit the M motif is just there without explanation. Funimation went the opposite route. Keeping Majin; I imagine partially because it sounds cool and alien to them and partially because the letter M is fucking everywhere, but completely avoiding any reference or acknowledgement of Boo being a genie. Consistent with their MO to downplay the mystical elements of Dragon Ball in favor of the Sci fi stuff, I suppose. More important that Majin Buu is seen as being an all powerful space alien than him being a genie.

As far as Kame Sennin goes, yeah I wish they kept his name as is and just clarified it means Turtle Hermit. The Tenchi Muyo dub did something like that, iirc, where Ryoko has to explain her name means Demon Caller and Tenchi’s grandfather mentions Tenchi’s name means “Heaven and Earth”. Just call him “Kame Sennin the Turtle Hermit” once and Kame Sennin there on out.

To their credit they did have Goku tell his escort to Serpentine Road that he practiced the “Kame Sennin style of martial arts”’ in both the edited Ocean and uncut
in-house dub. But that was the one and only time. And without the Japanese version to piggyback off you wouldn’t necessarily pick up that it’s referring to his martial arts master.

Something will be lost and I guess it’s just a matter of deciding what’s more important and what can more acceptably be lost.

I don’t think it was necessary for Tenshinhan and Chiaotzu’s names to be changed. I was just thinking that if they had done something like that, it would have had more reasoning than some changes they made. In my eyes at least. Of course, I think “Vegerot” is acceptable. Honestly though, they definitely were not thinking about it that hard.

Oh yeah other than the obvious English ones I don’t think they understood most of them. Doubt we would have gotten Burter and Jeice (Jace) and “Turles” if they knew better.

Like, it’s just strange that they bothered to convert the katakana-ized Chaozu to the proper “Chiaotzu,” when “Shenron” exists in the same dub. Of course they also have “Shenron” and “Oolong” coexisting.

I can only assume Chiaotzu is how Toei’s translator chose to romanize it. It would be weird if they fucked up Oolong and called him Uron or something . Course we also got Puar instead of Pu’erh and Frieza instead of Freeza

On the same note, the Viz manga uses “Pu’er” and “Arushinchū” in the same translation!

The Viz manga is annoyingly inconsistent to be honest . Sometimes Muten Roshi is left as is sometimes they do the literal translation of “The Invincible Old Master” and I’m pretty sure they used Master Muten and Master Roshi at least once each.

[Scsigs]

界王/Kaiō literally means “World King,” so what they did is translate Ō to “King”, and “Kai” as if it was just his proper name.

It’s like if someone translated Journey to the West and decided to translate the god Yudi/Jade Emperor as “Emperor Yu.” On a certain level it’s not “wrong,” but it is odd, and unnecessarily loses information that was obvious in the source text, similarly to the example you provided about “Tenka’ichi Budōkai” being meaningless to an English speaker if they don’t already know what 天下一武道会 means.

“King Kai” isn’t as egregious as something like “Supreme Kai” or “Grand Kai,” where “kai” is treated as if it was a title itself, or is implied to be a Japanese word that means “god” or something. It’s also not impossible that two translations could come to the same result, but I don’t think it’s the most obvious translation and it’s an odd coincidence at least.

That said, I don’t think ”King Kai” is the end of the world or anything. People certainly overreacted to some of Funimation and Viz’s translation choices, often just for being different from what fans already used, rather than how accurate or inaccurate they actually were. I find it funny how the official subs for Z used “Yamucha” and “Chaozu,” while the dub’s “Yamcha” and “Chiaotzu” are actually more accurate. I would even argue that “Tien” is a decent localization, since half the point of the name “Tenshinhan” is that it sounds Chinese to a Japanese audience, which it definitely doesn’t to an American (I wouldn’t say the dub using “Tien Shinhan” is good though; mixing the Mandarin and Japanese pronunciations across the halves of his name is just odd).

One could even argue that Funimation was too conservative with keeping Tien and Chiaotzu so close to the originals, since the idea that they both have joke names derived from Chinese food was completely lost on probably 99% of the US child audience. Funi could have easily changed their names to, perhaps, Lo Mein and Egg Roll or something ridiculous like that and even that could be defended, despite how much the pre-dub fans at the time would have hated it.

Sorry to go on an even further tangent, but on the subject of Funi dubisms and Chinese names in Dragon Ball, I’d argue that, considering the US taboo of saying “god” in children’s TV, “Eternal Dragon” was a decent localization of 神龍/Dragon God. Does Funimation even use that term anymore? Or do they only use “Shenron” in the current dubs? Does anyone know the last time Funi used it? I have the impression it’s a relic of the pre-Kai or even pre-UUE days but that’s just going off vibes; I have no idea.

A lot of the early FUNi translations are really weird with where they seemingly got a lot of their information or translations on things, tbh.

Ok, I'm gonna go out on a limb & say that the translations of the Kaio names aren't as bad as you're saying. I'm not claiming to know everything they went through when trying to create a parsable version of his name in 1996, but this one makes more sense when you break it down. So, they removed the "o" from "Kaio" & I assume they chose to translate "sama" as "king" to try to let the audience know he's very important & have a similar way of showing the type of formality of the honorific since English doesn't have honorifics like in Japanese. There's also the fact that English dubs also usually drop the o's at the end of names, like how they dropped it at the end of "Kakarrotto" to make "Kakarot" instead, which makes the "carrot" name pun more obvious (though backfired on them later on when we get Vegetto, which they rendered "Vegito" & don't even try to make sense of in the dubs why there's suddenly an "o" at the end of his name, though I prefer that to "Vegerot").
The aim back then was to make sure the kids at home understood the name, but also censoring out religious references since they were also trying to make the series palatable to everyone & not upset any overly religious parents who might catch their kids watching the show. Hence why when they got to the Otherworld Tournament filler arc & introduced the 3 other Kais, they just called them "[Insert direction here] Kai." Then, when they introduced Kaioshin, they had to translate it in a way that fit with their previous translation of the original Kais, so they chose "Supreme Kai" to get across how he's a higher echelon of them, then you get "Grand Supreme Kai" (infamously rendered "Daikaioh" in the original Z dub, but corrected in Kai) from "Grand Lord of Lords"/"Dai Kaioshin" & the "Grand Kai" (or the actual Dai Kaioh) to establish their hierarchy in a way that makes sense to an English-speaking audience while also keeping to their established initial translation choice.
I also have a feeling that the choice to drop the o, but keep "Kai" might've been because they saw that his technique was called "Kaioken" & they wanted to maintain the connection since his name's in the technique. This was, unfortunately, mangled for years before they corrected it in Kai by the Canadian dub actors pronouncing it "Kei-oken" instead because they just read it, thought it was supposed to sound like a word like "traitor," & weren't correct it in the booths by the ADR directors (which is also why they pronounced "Saiyan" like they did, though, & call me a heretic or whatever, but I actually prefer the dub's pronunciation over the Japanese one, tbh. It just hits my ear better).

Because Dragon Ball is based on Journey to the West, but filtered through a Japanese lens, the names will be weird in terms of pronunciation or changed entirely depending on how you read the kanji if you're familiar with the languages at all. In all honestly, I don't think fully translating the names into English would've been a good idea. Just having their names as food rather than puns kinda ruins what Toriyama was going for by making them puns. The only real solution would've been to change the puns to something more parsable to English speaker ears, but then you lose something from the original language names. I will say, though, that it's really funny hearing Sean Schemmel try to say "Tien Shinhan" fast in the video games sometimes. He says it too fast a lot of the time & it sounds unnatural as a result.

So, in terms of Shenron, the dubs flip flop on what they wanna do, I think mostly based on lip flaps & timings of the lines. I've heard "Shenron" & "Eternal Dragon" depending on what the material is. I think it's mostly "Shenron" in the present day, though.

Then you have Bulma. People usually know it’s supposed to be Bloomers but they always misinterpret it to refer to 19th ladies undergarments but it’s actually referring to Japanese Girls Athletic Shorts “Buruma” . Do you call her Bloomers? Intent of the author be damned? Call her Gym Shorts? Or do you call her Bulma because that’s how Toriyama chose to spell out her name in almost every non fan service outfit she wears in the early part of the story?

I believe the last time they use Eternal Dragon was in their redubs of the first 3 Z movies. Eternal Dragon and Shenron are both fine to be honest. Better than calling Nyoibo “Power Pole” and Kinto’Un “Flying Nimbus”

Bulma, I think her name makes more sense to romanize as "Bluma" instead of "Bulma," tbh, since it still refers to something women wear by keeping the name pun whether it's underwear or shorts. Since the joke about the shorts would be immediately lost on non-Japanese people, I think having the underwear pun would be more important to maintain. IMO, Toriyama dropped the wrong "u" when romanizing her name.

"Nyoibo" being translated as "Power Pole" makes more sense than its more literal translation "Compliant Pole." You keep half the translation while changing the adjective. It also makes sense in context, so I don't think this translation is bad, tbh. Translating "Kinto'Un" as "Flying Nimbus," I actually like especially considering the more direct translation, "Somersault Cloud." I think it's actually kinda clever, as nimbus is a type of cloud & it allows Goku to fly in the air well before he learns how to do it himself. Could they have done it better? Sure, but this is a translation choice I'm fine with.

King Kai is an okay localization and quite possibly something that existed in Toei’s Engrish scripts my only problems are


1. The o itself is gender neutral. King is not. Hence you get female Kaio and Goku assuming Snake Princess is Kaio. For that reason I would have left Kaio as is or if you want to be super literal “Monarch of Worlds”

2. It’s kind of weird to localize Kaio but not Kaio Ken. If you’re gonna change Kaio to King Kai you should probably change Kaio Ken to “King Kai’s Fist”

All valid points. I’m not a particular fan of “King Kai” as a translation. It’s just not the worst. I like the Harmony Gold dub’s translation of the dialogue but I’d take “King Kai” over “Zero” or “Zedaki” any day.

Things like Kaiō can really make a mess because any choice made creates a domino effect when there are related/derived names. Another perfect example is translating “Majin.” Boo is obviously supposed to be a genie, but if you translate majin to genie then you lose the phonetic connection between majin, madoushi, makai, and the “M” symbol. The “ma” connection is also lost if you translate madōshi to sorcerer/wizard or makai to demon world. If you translate Kame Sen’nin to “Turtle Hermit” then you lose the connection with “Kamehameha” and “Kame House” (of course the Funi dub lost this connection anyway).

Something will be lost and I guess it’s just a matter of deciding what’s more important and what can more acceptably be lost.

I imagine Tien comes from Chaozu and Lunch referring Tenshinhan as “Ten-san” and Funimation thinking Ten is an awkward name. To your own point about going further localizing their names to Lo Mein and Eggroll. At a certain point you gotta draw a line I think. Especially with names.

You could make an argument Gohan should be localized as “Meal” because there are a few jokes in the Japanese version based on that pun. Like Chi Chi saying “Gohan Chan Gohan Yo!” in the first episode and first two Z movies (Meal! It’s Meal Time!) and Mr.Satan hearing the word Gohan at the Cell Games and assuming this kid must be a Bento Salesboy. But I think Gohan and Goku have similar sounding names is more important than trying to preserve a pun for a few jokes. To that end you could argue they should have called Goku “Wukong” because the point is he’s supposed to have the exact same name as the Monkey King. Son Goku is just the Japanese reading of Sun Wukong

I don’t think it was necessary for Tenshinhan and Chiaotzu’s names to be changed. I was just thinking that if they had done something like that, it would have had more reasoning than some changes they made. In my eyes at least. Of course, I think “Vegerot” is acceptable. Honestly though, they definitely were not thinking about it that hard.

Like, it’s just strange that they bothered to convert the katakana-ized Chaozu to the proper “Chiaotzu,” when “Shenron” exists in the same dub. Of course they also have “Shenron” and “Oolong” coexisting.

On the same note, the Viz manga uses “Pu’er” and “Arushinchū” in the same translation!

If Funimation did in fact translate Goku as “Wukong” back in the day I wouldn’t have a problem with it. It’s not necessary but it’s definitely not wrong. I guess the closest thing anyone has done to that is when Viz translated the first manga chapter title “Buruma to Son Gokū” as “Bloomers and the Monkey King,” since to a Japanese reader seeing that title for the first time when it came out, that’s exactly what that name would conjur in their mind before knowing who the DB characters were (making allowance of course for the conflation of the underwear and the athletic shorts).

I believe the last time they use Eternal Dragon was in their redubs of the first 3 Z movies.

Ah, that makes sense. The Tree of Might redub used just a slightly touched-up version of the script from the TV Tree of Might dub where it was split into three episodes, and they were definitely still using the term in that.

FUNi only really lost the connection for Kame Senin because they went with Harmony Gold's rendering of Roshi's name (Master Roshi), which completely missed the trick on "Roshi" meaning "master" in Japanese & so they thought they could render "Muten" as "Master" & it makes total sense. I think just keeping it "Muten Roshi" & exchanging it with "Turtle Hermit" every so often would've been better. Sure, you'd lose the meaning of "Muten Roshi," but at least you retain the other nickname he goes by. Also, I think you're overthinking the "Kamehameha" connection since the name is just a reference to King Kamehameha of Hawaii.

Let's be honest, in terms of the translations, the FUNimation dubs are a weird hodgepodge of different ways of translating & rendering Japanese terms into English. Because the dub was started in the 90s as well & so many decisions when localizing it to mistranslate so many things to directly appeal to US children & kid's TV sensibilities of the time, as well as apparently really badly translated scripts from Toei at the start. Had the dubs started later on, I think that we'd have less confusing & more consistent localizations of these things like we do in the more modern stuff. Especially when it comes to some of the name puns that weren't readily apparent.

The Harmony Gold dub changing the names so freely, I don't understand at all when they keep some names sounding fucking Asian. It's like when Saban dubbed the first 3 Digimon series, they kept the location as Japan & the characters as Japanese (a rarity at the time), but some names were either shortened for nicknames ("Takeru" as "T.K.", "Yamato" as "Matt," etc.), or they changed 1 Japanese name for another for no reason ("Taichi Yagami" being changed to "Taichi 'Tai' Kamiya," which then transferred to his family as well). I don't understand it. Just leave the names alone if you're gonna keep the setting & character ethnicities in the dub.

[MasenkoHA]

[ So, they removed the "o" from "Kaio" & I assume they chose to translate "sama" as "king" to try to let the audience know he's very important & have a similar way of showing the type of formality of the honorific since English doesn't have honorifics like in Japanese. There's also the fact that English dubs also usually drop the o's at the end of names, like how they dropped it at the end of "Kakarrotto" to make "Kakarot" instead, which makes the "carrot" name pun more obvious (though backfired on them later on when we get Vegetto, which they rendered "Vegito" & don't even try to make sense of in the dubs why there's suddenly an "o" at the end of his name, though I prefer that to "Vegerot").

They didn’t drop the o though. O/Ou/Oh literally means King , Ruler, Lord, or Monarch. They translated it but left Kai as is.

Similar concept to Piccolo Daimao. They translated the o to King wand dropped the Great Demon part entirely and got King Piccolo.

I don’t think the -sama mattered in their localization process. They just dropped the sama in Kami-sama entirely and called him Kami pretending it was his actual name and creating an unnecessary plot hole.

.
I also have a feeling that the choice to drop the o, but keep "Kai" might've been because they saw that his technique was called "Kaioken" & they wanted to maintain the connection since his name's in the technique. This was, unfortunately, mangled for years before they corrected it in Kai by the Canadian dub actors pronouncing it "Kei-oken" instead because they just read it, thought it was supposed to sound like a word like "traitor," & weren't correct it in the booths by the ADR directors (which is also why they pronounced "Saiyan" like they did, though, & call me a heretic or whatever, but I actually prefer the dub's pronunciation over the Japanese one, tbh. It just hits my ear better).

Peter Kelamis pronounced Kaio-Ken correctly in the movies. Sean Schemmel also pronounced Kaio-Ken as “Kayoken” It wasn’t a Canadian thing it was a Barry Watson thing. Hence it only got pronounced correctly when he wasn’t involved i.e the Pioneer movies and Kai onwards. I don’t think they even realized Kaio’s name being in the technique was a thing or important.

FUNi only really lost the connection for Kame Senin because they went with Harmony Gold's rendering of Roshi's name (Master Roshi), which completely missed the trick on "Roshi" meaning "master" in Japanese & so they thought they could render "Muten" as "Master" & it makes total sense. I think just keeping it "Muten Roshi" & exchanging it with "Turtle Hermit" every so often would've been better. Sure, you'd lose the meaning of "Muten Roshi," but at least you retain the other nickname he goes by. Also, I think you're overthinking the "Kamehameha" connection since the name is just a reference to King Kamehameha of Hawaii.

How they localized Muten Roshi isn’t really relevant to how they translate Kame Sennin. They did still use Turtle Hermit sometimes but as Thouser pointed out translating it loses the connection to Kame House and Kamehameha. Kamehameha isn’t just a reference to the Hawaiian King, it’s also a pun that Kame means Turtle. That’s why the technique was created by Kame Sennin and why it’s pronounced Kame Hame Ha and not Kuhmuyhuhmaya like the King. Half the joke is lost and you get a dub pronouncing it like the Hawaiian King for years.

The Harmony Gold dub changing the names so freely, I don't understand at all when they keep some names sounding fucking Asian. It's like when Saban dubbed the first 3 Digimon series, they kept the location as Japan & the characters as Japanese (a rarity at the time), but some names were either shortened for nicknames ("Takeru" as "T.K.", "Yamato" as "Matt," etc.), or they changed 1 Japanese name for another for no reason ("Taichi Yagami" being changed to "Taichi 'Tai' Kamiya," which then transferred to his family as well). I don't understand it. Just leave the names alone if you're gonna keep the setting & character ethnicities in the dub.

If I remember right from an interview I saw like nearly two decades ago (so I could be misremembering) the story editor for the Digimon dub wanted to make the show take place in America but Bandai or Toei told them they had to keep it in Japan because there were already plans for season 2 to go international and it would be confusing for these “American”’ kids to go to America like it’s a foreign country .

I’m also like 90 percent sure Kamiya is just the kanji for Yagami switched around and a translator error.

[Yellow Flower King]

[ So, they removed the "o" from "Kaio" & I assume they chose to translate "sama" as "king" to try to let the audience know he's very important & have a similar way of showing the type of formality of the honorific since English doesn't have honorifics like in Japanese. There's also the fact that English dubs also usually drop the o's at the end of names, like how they dropped it at the end of "Kakarrotto" to make "Kakarot" instead, which makes the "carrot" name pun more obvious (though backfired on them later on when we get Vegetto, which they rendered "Vegito" & don't even try to make sense of in the dubs why there's suddenly an "o" at the end of his name, though I prefer that to "Vegerot").

They didn’t drop the o though. O/Ou/Oh literally means King , Ruler, Lord, or Monarch. They translated it but left Kai as is.

Similar concept to Piccolo Daimao. They translated the o to King wand dropped the Great Demon part entirely and got King Piccolo.

I don’t think the -sama mattered in their localization process. They just dropped the sama in Kami-sama entirely and called him Kami pretending it was his actual name and creating an unnecessary plot hole.

.
I also have a feeling that the choice to drop the o, but keep "Kai" might've been because they saw that his technique was called "Kaioken" & they wanted to maintain the connection since his name's in the technique. This was, unfortunately, mangled for years before they corrected it in Kai by the Canadian dub actors pronouncing it "Kei-oken" instead because they just read it, thought it was supposed to sound like a word like "traitor," & weren't correct it in the booths by the ADR directors (which is also why they pronounced "Saiyan" like they did, though, & call me a heretic or whatever, but I actually prefer the dub's pronunciation over the Japanese one, tbh. It just hits my ear better).

Peter Kelamis pronounced Kaio-Ken correctly in the movies. Sean Schemmel also pronounced Kaio-Ken as “Kayoken” It wasn’t a Canadian thing it was a Barry Watson thing. Hence it only got pronounced correctly when he wasn’t involved i.e the Pioneer movies and Kai onwards. I don’t think they even realized Kaio’s name being in the technique was a thing or important.

FUNi only really lost the connection for Kame Senin because they went with Harmony Gold's rendering of Roshi's name (Master Roshi), which completely missed the trick on "Roshi" meaning "master" in Japanese & so they thought they could render "Muten" as "Master" & it makes total sense. I think just keeping it "Muten Roshi" & exchanging it with "Turtle Hermit" every so often would've been better. Sure, you'd lose the meaning of "Muten Roshi," but at least you retain the other nickname he goes by. Also, I think you're overthinking the "Kamehameha" connection since the name is just a reference to King Kamehameha of Hawaii.

How they localized Muten Roshi isn’t really relevant to how they translate Kame Sennin. They did still use Turtle Hermit sometimes but as Thouser pointed out translating it loses the connection to Kame House and Kamehameha. Kamehameha isn’t just a reference to the Hawaiian King, it’s also a pun that Kame means Turtle. That’s why the technique was created by Kame Sennin and why it’s pronounced Kame Hame Ha and not Kuhmuyhuhmaya like the King. Half the joke is lost and you get a dub pronouncing it like the Hawaiian King for years.

The Harmony Gold dub changing the names so freely, I don't understand at all when they keep some names sounding fucking Asian. It's like when Saban dubbed the first 3 Digimon series, they kept the location as Japan & the characters as Japanese (a rarity at the time), but some names were either shortened for nicknames ("Takeru" as "T.K.", "Yamato" as "Matt," etc.), or they changed 1 Japanese name for another for no reason ("Taichi Yagami" being changed to "Taichi 'Tai' Kamiya," which then transferred to his family as well). I don't understand it. Just leave the names alone if you're gonna keep the setting & character ethnicities in the dub.

If I remember right from an interview I saw like nearly two decades ago (so I could be misremembering) the story editor for the Digimon dub wanted to make the show take place in America but Bandai or Toei told them they had to keep it in Japan because there were already plans for season 2 to go international and it would be confusing for these “American”’ kids to go to America like it’s a foreign country .

I’m also like 90 percent sure Kamiya is just the kanji for Yagami switched around and a translator error.

I dont think so, because Digimon was dubbed REALLY FAST and REALLY EARLY, like premiering episodes only a few months after they aired in Japan. There was no 02 in the works. Toei and Bandai simply wanted to keep the show Japanese and they have the final say. And a producer also wanted to keep the show's Japanese roots intact (Rita Majkut). The only one who wanted to fully rework the whole thing was Jeff Nimoy, who is the story editor and dub director. I really lost a lot of respect for him.

https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/featur ... ub/.201234

[MasenkoHA]

[ So, they removed the "o" from "Kaio" & I assume they chose to translate "sama" as "king" to try to let the audience know he's very important & have a similar way of showing the type of formality of the honorific since English doesn't have honorifics like in Japanese. There's also the fact that English dubs also usually drop the o's at the end of names, like how they dropped it at the end of "Kakarrotto" to make "Kakarot" instead, which makes the "carrot" name pun more obvious (though backfired on them later on when we get Vegetto, which they rendered "Vegito" & don't even try to make sense of in the dubs why there's suddenly an "o" at the end of his name, though I prefer that to "Vegerot").

They didn’t drop the o though. O/Ou/Oh literally means King , Ruler, Lord, or Monarch. They translated it but left Kai as is.

Similar concept to Piccolo Daimao. They translated the o to King wand dropped the Great Demon part entirely and got King Piccolo.

I don’t think the -sama mattered in their localization process. They just dropped the sama in Kami-sama entirely and called him Kami pretending it was his actual name and creating an unnecessary plot hole.

.
I also have a feeling that the choice to drop the o, but keep "Kai" might've been because they saw that his technique was called "Kaioken" & they wanted to maintain the connection since his name's in the technique. This was, unfortunately, mangled for years before they corrected it in Kai by the Canadian dub actors pronouncing it "Kei-oken" instead because they just read it, thought it was supposed to sound like a word like "traitor," & weren't correct it in the booths by the ADR directors (which is also why they pronounced "Saiyan" like they did, though, & call me a heretic or whatever, but I actually prefer the dub's pronunciation over the Japanese one, tbh. It just hits my ear better).

Peter Kelamis pronounced Kaio-Ken correctly in the movies. Sean Schemmel also pronounced Kaio-Ken as “Kayoken” It wasn’t a Canadian thing it was a Barry Watson thing. Hence it only got pronounced correctly when he wasn’t involved i.e the Pioneer movies and Kai onwards. I don’t think they even realized Kaio’s name being in the technique was a thing or important.

FUNi only really lost the connection for Kame Senin because they went with Harmony Gold's rendering of Roshi's name (Master Roshi), which completely missed the trick on "Roshi" meaning "master" in Japanese & so they thought they could render "Muten" as "Master" & it makes total sense. I think just keeping it "Muten Roshi" & exchanging it with "Turtle Hermit" every so often would've been better. Sure, you'd lose the meaning of "Muten Roshi," but at least you retain the other nickname he goes by. Also, I think you're overthinking the "Kamehameha" connection since the name is just a reference to King Kamehameha of Hawaii.

How they localized Muten Roshi isn’t really relevant to how they translate Kame Sennin. They did still use Turtle Hermit sometimes but as Thouser pointed out translating it loses the connection to Kame House and Kamehameha. Kamehameha isn’t just a reference to the Hawaiian King, it’s also a pun that Kame means Turtle. That’s why the technique was created by Kame Sennin and why it’s pronounced Kame Hame Ha and not Kuhmuyhuhmaya like the King. Half the joke is lost and you get a dub pronouncing it like the Hawaiian King for years.

The Harmony Gold dub changing the names so freely, I don't understand at all when they keep some names sounding fucking Asian. It's like when Saban dubbed the first 3 Digimon series, they kept the location as Japan & the characters as Japanese (a rarity at the time), but some names were either shortened for nicknames ("Takeru" as "T.K.", "Yamato" as "Matt," etc.), or they changed 1 Japanese name for another for no reason ("Taichi Yagami" being changed to "Taichi 'Tai' Kamiya," which then transferred to his family as well). I don't understand it. Just leave the names alone if you're gonna keep the setting & character ethnicities in the dub.

If I remember right from an interview I saw like nearly two decades ago (so I could be misremembering) the story editor for the Digimon dub wanted to make the show take place in America but Bandai or Toei told them they had to keep it in Japan because there were already plans for season 2 to go international and it would be confusing for these “American”’ kids to go to America like it’s a foreign country .

I’m also like 90 percent sure Kamiya is just the kanji for Yagami switched around and a translator error.

I dont think so, because Digimon was dubbed REALLY FAST and REALLY EARLY, like premiering episodes only a few months after they aired in Japan. There was no 02 in the works. Toei and Bandai simply wanted to keep the show Japanese and they have the final say. And a producer also wanted to keep the show's Japanese roots intact (Rita Majkut). The only one who wanted to fully rework the whole thing was Jeff Nimoy, who is the story editor and dub director. I really lost a lot of respect for him.

https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/featur ... ub/.201234

That’s probably it. I thought I remember there being a specific reason as this was like mid season 1 for the dub and they were only 5 months behind or so. But it probably was just a “ You can Americanize it as much as you want but we want you to keep it in Japan” policy


Something similar happened with the old Sailor Moon dub. For the longest time the setting was pretty vague with American names and references and slang and then like midway through the R series they finally acknowledged the characters lived in Tokyo since it figured into the plot and Toei/Kodansha probably wouldn’t budge on them calling Crystal Tokyo something else

[Yellow Flower King]

They didn’t drop the o though. O/Ou/Oh literally means King , Ruler, Lord, or Monarch. They translated it but left Kai as is.

Similar concept to Piccolo Daimao. They translated the o to King wand dropped the Great Demon part entirely and got King Piccolo.

I don’t think the -sama mattered in their localization process. They just dropped the sama in Kami-sama entirely and called him Kami pretending it was his actual name and creating an unnecessary plot hole.






Peter Kelamis pronounced Kaio-Ken correctly in the movies. Sean Schemmel also pronounced Kaio-Ken as “Kayoken” It wasn’t a Canadian thing it was a Barry Watson thing. Hence it only got pronounced correctly when he wasn’t involved i.e the Pioneer movies and Kai onwards. I don’t think they even realized Kaio’s name being in the technique was a thing or important.






How they localized Muten Roshi isn’t really relevant to how they translate Kame Sennin. They did still use Turtle Hermit sometimes but as Thouser pointed out translating it loses the connection to Kame House and Kamehameha. Kamehameha isn’t just a reference to the Hawaiian King, it’s also a pun that Kame means Turtle. That’s why the technique was created by Kame Sennin and why it’s pronounced Kame Hame Ha and not Kuhmuyhuhmaya like the King. Half the joke is lost and you get a dub pronouncing it like the Hawaiian King for years.




If I remember right from an interview I saw like nearly two decades ago (so I could be misremembering) the story editor for the Digimon dub wanted to make the show take place in America but Bandai or Toei told them they had to keep it in Japan because there were already plans for season 2 to go international and it would be confusing for these “American”’ kids to go to America like it’s a foreign country .

I’m also like 90 percent sure Kamiya is just the kanji for Yagami switched around and a translator error.

I dont think so, because Digimon was dubbed REALLY FAST and REALLY EARLY, like premiering episodes only a few months after they aired in Japan. There was no 02 in the works. Toei and Bandai simply wanted to keep the show Japanese and they have the final say. And a producer also wanted to keep the show's Japanese roots intact (Rita Majkut). The only one who wanted to fully rework the whole thing was Jeff Nimoy, who is the story editor and dub director. I really lost a lot of respect for him.

https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/featur ... ub/.201234

That’s probably it. I thought I remember there being a specific reason as this was like mid season 1 for the dub and they were only 5 months behind or so. But it probably was just a “ You can Americanize it as much as you want but we want you to keep it in Japan” policy


Something similar happened with the old Sailor Moon dub. For the longest time the setting was pretty vague with American names and references and slang and then like midway through the R series they finally acknowledged the characters lived in Tokyo since it figured into the plot and Toei/Kodansha probably wouldn’t budge on them calling Crystal Tokyo something else

Yeah. Ironically CARL MACEK (Yes, the Robotech guy) refused to move the setting of Sailor Moon outside of Tokyo, Japan because he felt that was vital to both the character and the brand's identity. And he got fired and replaced with Fred Ladd (The Anime Pioneer that brought Astro Boy) and then he just never mentioned it until they gave up and just went with Tokyo, Japan anyway

[ABED]

Dragon Ball episodes 85 and 134 are both named Preliminary Peril

[Thouser]

Dragon Ball episodes 85 and 134 are both named Preliminary Peril

We could have had an episode named Preliminary Peril in every tournament, but of course Funi found a way to mess that up too

[Yellow Flower King]

Dragon Ball episodes 85 and 134 are both named Preliminary Peril

And amusingly both episodes share the same name in the Blue Water dub too!

[ABED]

I can't recall how different the redub of DBZ movies 1, 2, and 3 are from the Pioneer versions, but I still recall listening to them and thinking "They made more work for themselves and I don't have a clue as to why they didn't simply use the previous scripts."

[MasenkoHA]

I can't recall how different the redub of DBZ movies 1, 2, and 3 are from the Pioneer versions, but I still recall listening to them and thinking "They made more work for themselves and I don't have a clue as to why they didn't simply use the previous scripts."

They definitely used the Pioneer scripts as a base (or in the case of Tree of Might their old tv script from their Saban days) but definitely made changes to the scripts usually for the sake of being wordier. Kai gets accused of being too wordy but nah Funimation been on that kick since at least 2005

I also always found it funny despite the movies being redubbed as part of their hardcore edgy RED and Japanese Katakana everywhere Ultimate Uncut era they still went out of their way to remove references to hell in their Dead Zone redub

[Metalwario64]

Yeah, the tree of mights re-re-redub sucked. Somehow ended up less accurate than the TV version in spots, like Tueles surprised Goku's power level was rising was changed to him just boasting and monologuing about how Goku only got a "cheap shot" in

[jjgp1112]

I can't recall how different the redub of DBZ movies 1, 2, and 3 are from the Pioneer versions, but I still recall listening to them and thinking "They made more work for themselves and I don't have a clue as to why they didn't simply use the previous scripts."

Movies 1 and 2 are largely the same as Pioneer while Movie 3 is some weird mutation of the TV script

[Scsigs]

So weird how they didn't use the Pioneer dub script of Tree of Might as the basis for their in-house redub like the first 2 movies. Reminds me of the fact that they just reused their '95 dub script of Curse of the Blood Rubies when they redubbed it in 2010 rather than redo the whole thing. The fact that they also just didn't redub the first 3 movies in the 2000s when they dubbed Path to Power is also a big question mark for me. There's no consistent cast with those 4 movies, as you have 3 different Gokus, 3 different Bulmas, & probably some other recurring characters as well between them. Path to Power is the only dub of the pre-Battle of Gods movies to have the full cast from the OG DB dub. I think only Chris Sabat as Yamcha & Mike McFarland as Roshi are the only consistent cast members across the 4 movies unless I'm forgetting a few more.