Weird Old Dub Stuff

[Tian]

For some reason, in the MAT Serbian dub of Z, Kaioken was adapted as Leptonski Udarac (Lepton Punch)

A similar terminology was used in some episodes of the Greek dub:
https://youtu.be/YZGvWtNOtlc?t=15

I just saw that the term Leptune is listed in the original Japanese episode titles on home video releases by DeAgostini in Italy and Greece (in the first rows of the yellow box). This term must have been given incorrectly from the start by Toei Animation.

Also, King Kai himself is referred to as King Leptune in several episodes.
https://youtu.be/qLa7K0YoG8s?t=24

Thank you so much for sharing this! Now everything makes sense. It was one of the bizarre terms from Toei's international English scripts all along.

[VegettoEX]

Not sure if this is known / understood, but for any other passers-by wondering:

This is likely (almost certainly) due to the fact that the planet Neptune is adapted in Japanese as "Kaiou-sei" (海王星) and even the god Neptune from Roman mythology is known as "Kaijin" (海神). The "Kaiou" from Dragon Ball then gets misinterpreted back "in translation" as "Neptune".

(This is specifically punned and played with in Sailor Moon where Sailor Neptune's real name is Michiru Kaiou.)

[TheRed259]

Thank you so much for sharing this! Now everything makes sense. It was one of the bizarre terms from Toei's international English scripts all along.

You're welcome!

And here is an image from the Italian DVD release by DeAgostini which I forgot to post earlier.

Not sure if this is known / understood, but for any other passers-by wondering:

This is likely (almost certainly) due to the fact that the planet Neptune is adapted in Japanese as "Kaiou-sei" (海王星) and even the god Neptune from Roman mythology is known as "Kaijin" (海神). The "Kaiou" from Dragon Ball then gets misinterpreted back "in translation" as "Neptune".

(This is specifically punned and played with in Sailor Moon where Sailor Neptune's real name is Michiru Kaiou.)

And probably because of this, in some episodes from the Greek dub East Kaiō-shin was called Poseidon, the Greek equivalent of the Roman god Neptune.

[Yellow Flower King]

I know this might be drama importation but for some reason a huge argument has arisen thanks to infamous footage of Funimation's "We can Rule Together" from their redub of DBZ. Its really heated.

[WittyUsername]

I know this might be drama importation but for some reason a huge argument has arisen thanks to infamous footage of Funimation's "We can Rule Together" from their redub of DBZ. Its really heated.

Do you mean that bit in the both the 96 dub and the UUE dub where Vegeta is offering Goku to join him?

[Yellow Flower King]

I know this might be drama importation but for some reason a huge argument has arisen thanks to infamous footage of Funimation's "We can Rule Together" from their redub of DBZ. Its really heated.

Do you mean that bit in the both the 96 dub and the UUE dub where Vegeta is offering Goku to join him?

Yeah. that one.

[WittyUsername]

I know this might be drama importation but for some reason a huge argument has arisen thanks to infamous footage of Funimation's "We can Rule Together" from their redub of DBZ. Its really heated.

Do you mean that bit in the both the 96 dub and the UUE dub where Vegeta is offering Goku to join him?

Yeah. that one.

What exactly is the argument in question when it comes to that?

[Yellow Flower King]

Basically the english dub made up shit entirely, and that this was a DVD dub so it should have truly been adapted faithfully, ther are no censors or broadcasters forcing their hand.

[Scsigs]

I know this might be drama importation but for some reason a huge argument has arisen thanks to infamous footage of Funimation's "We can Rule Together" from their redub of DBZ. Its really heated.

Yeah, I saw that. WAY too many people either not understanding the actual argument (which should be obvious to anyone who saw that tweet with the clip of the English dub playing over the subs for the JP dialogue). The fact that the redub kept that bit of dialogue from the Ocean dub scripts & there are people over 20 years after it was recorded & released that don't at least understand the argument people make against the needless changes & additions the Z dub made to the original dialogue is a huge problem.

I can't even understand why anyone likes that change either. The original exchange is way more powerful where Goku's stating his intent to prove Vegeta wrong that Vegeta's not automatically stronger than him or going to win their fight just because he's of a higher class, then hands Vegeta his ass which results in Vegeta having to resort to measures he usually wouldn't to get the upper hand. Changing that to Vegeta offering Goku a job working with him is worthless when he also executed Nappa not a few minutes before that exchange, so WHY would Goku even entertain such a notion? Vegeta's smarter than that. He'd know Goku would refuse, so even offering that is stupid. They've gotten to the point where Vegeta & Nappa killed most of Goku's friends & they're about to fight. The time for Vegeta to offer a job to Goku has passed. Logically, the whole thing is so stupid.

[WittyUsername]

It was definitely a pointless change, but the fact that it remained in the redub wasn’t exactly surprising. The scripts for UUE dub were largely based on the syndicated dub, with some revisions here and there.

[Scsigs]

It was definitely a pointless change, but the fact that it remained in the redub wasn’t exactly surprising. The scripts for UUE dub were largely based on the syndicated dub, with some revisions here and there.

I mean, yeah, but they corrected some other things from what I know, like Goku thinking Vegeta was the one who killed his grandpa & the stuff about Bardock inventing the energy ball Vegeta used & the "Average fighter, but a brilliant scientist" line since they'd dubbed that special by then & understood that Bardock didn't do that & wasn't either of those. So, I'd think they'd correct other dumb bits of dialogue like that, but nope.

I know this might be drama importation but for some reason a huge argument has arisen thanks to infamous footage of Funimation's "We can Rule Together" from their redub of DBZ. Its really heated.

Yeah, I saw that. WAY too many people either not understanding the actual argument (which should be obvious to anyone who saw that tweet with the clip of the English dub playing over the subs for the JP dialogue), or don't care. The fact that the redub kept that bit of dialogue from the Ocean dub scripts & there are people over 20 years after it was recorded & released that don't at least understand the argument people make against the needless changes & additions the Z dub made to the original dialogue is a huge problem.

I can't even understand why anyone likes that change either. The original exchange is way more powerful where Goku's stating his intent to prove Vegeta wrong that Vegeta's not automatically stronger than him or going to win their fight just because he's of a higher class, then hands Vegeta his ass which results in Vegeta having to resort to measures he usually wouldn't to get the upper hand. Changing that to Vegeta offering Goku a job working with him is worthless when he also executed Nappa not a few minutes before that exchange, so WHY would Goku even entertain such a notion? Vegeta's smarter than that. He'd know Goku would refuse, so even offering that is stupid. They've gotten to the point where Vegeta & Nappa killed most of Goku's friends & they're about to fight. The time for Vegeta to offer a job to Goku has passed. Logically, the whole thing is so stupid.

Corrected this here since I couldn't go back & edit it.

[MasenkoHA]

There are a lot of weird holdovers from Funimation just hitting the copy and paste button on their syndicated dub scripts to the UUE dub

Raditz still says Planet Vegeta was destroyed three years ago


Gohan says he wants to be an orthopedist instead of a scholar. He also says he’s “4 and half instead of just 4 which is just a weird half fix where he said he was “5 and half” in the first dub

Snakeway is a “10,000 miles” instead of “1,000,000 kilometers ( or 1,000,000 miles in the Kai dub because Funimation insist the afterlife based in Buddhism must use the Imperial system I guess)


Goku knows who the hell Sir Isaac Newton is as if he was taught anything but basic reading and arithmetic by Roshi

Goku’s reading is still “over 9000” instead of “over 8000”
but because this was recorded before the meme took off Sabat’s line reading is more subdued

[WittyUsername]

The thing is, the “brilliant scientist” line and Goku implying that Vegeta killed Grandpa Gohan created explicit plotholes. As inaccurate as Vegeta’s whole “we can rule together” spiel is, it’s not exactly a plothole nor was it a result of censorship, so I guess FUNimation didn’t feel the need to change it.

[Scsigs]

Gohan says he wants to be an orthopedist instead of a scholar. He also says he’s “4 and half instead of just 4 which is just a weird half fix where he said he was “5 and half” in the first dub

Snakeway is a “10,000 miles” instead of “1,000,000 kilometers ( or 1,000,000 miles in the Kai dub because Funimation insist the afterlife based in Buddhism must use the Imperial system I guess)

So THAT'S why Team Four Star had Gohan say he was gonna be an orthopedist. I thought they just had him say it because it sounded funny.

I mean, when the dub's main target audience is the US where we still use imperial, it makes more sense from that angle. I mean, hell, even in the UK, they use miles sometimes when describing distance. It IS a bit weird, though, since 1,000,000 km is nowhere near 1,000,000 miles. You need over 300,000 more miles for that to make sense.

The thing is, the “brilliant scientist” line and Goku implying that Vegeta killed Grandpa Gohan created explicit plotholes. As inaccurate as Vegeta’s whole “we can rule together” spiel is, it’s not exactly a plothole nor was it a result of censorship, so I guess FUNimation didn’t feel the need to change it.

I mean, sure, but it's still rather stupid & illogical, which was my point. It's a line that wasn't properly thought through when they were writing the dub scripts back in 1996 or 2005. A lot of the Z English dub is like that where, sure, a lot of the changed lines aren't gonna cause plot holes, or were the results of censorship, but the script writers thought they could genuinely improve upon Toriyama's dialogue or story the ways they were & completely disregarded the intentions of Toriyama on top of trying to appeal more directly to Western children. Vegeta asking Goku to join him is genuinely just so stupid & I already explained why.

[LostTimeLord]

I don't think they were even looking at the translations when they wrote the revised dubs, except for scenes that were never dubbed in the first place. Even the uncut Blood Rubies retains the additional dialogue seemingly added by Harmony Gold dub. Surely they were making for work for themselves by keeping the extra stuff when they didn't need to?

"Over 8000" and “1,000,000 kilometers" are just arbitrarily big numbers though, right? Although it is funny that they'd be lazier with Kai than the 90s dub - at least removing a zero makes it slightly closer to the original figure.

[MasenkoHA]

I don't think they were even looking at the translations when they wrote the revised dubs, except for scenes that were never dubbed in the first place. Even the uncut Blood Rubies retains the additional dialogue seemingly added by Harmony Gold dub. Surely they were making for work for themselves by keeping the extra stuff when they didn't need to?

"Over 8000" and “1,000,000 kilometers" are just arbitrarily big numbers though, right? Although it is funny that they'd be lazier with Kai than the 90s dub - at least removing a zero makes it slightly closer to the original figure.

They did get a bit better at sticking to the Japanese scripts in the Namek saga redub. Off the top of my head: Vegeta’s “That’s not Kakarot…not Kakarot at all” when sensing the Ginyu Corps is changed to the more true to the original ki count “one, two, three, four, five” . Also in the infamous Vegeta gets a little too up close and touchy with Gohan scene.In the original dub he likens himself and Gohan to brothers all for the punchline of saying “That’s for holding out on me little brother”’when kneeing him in the stomach. The redub, weirdly, keeps Vegeta’s brother metaphor but changes the last line to telling Gohan to go home and cry in the arms of his mother, a toned down but more true to the spirit of the Japanese line where he told him to go drink his mother’s milk.
The Saiyan saga definitely stuck to the old dub and only used Simmons translations as reference for the originally deleted scenes. Occasionally the old dub would be more accurate, when Yadjirobe comes to Kame House in the Japanese version Kuririn mistakenly calls him “Armadillo” the old dub keeps the idea but has Krillin call him “Hokey Pokey”. The redub didn’t get the memo and just had Krillin say “what’s your name again?”
The Curse of the Blood Rubies redub is like 95 percent the same as the edited dub (which itself takes a lot from the aforementioned Harmony Gold dub)They just removed all or most of the stupid kidvid quips. They also put back in the sexual humor their tv dub mostly shied away from.
The 8000/9000 thing isn’t a big deal. The same idea is there. 10,000 miles is ridiculous when Goku already swam from the other side of the world in a day to get to Papaya Island when he was 15. 1,000,000 km and 1,000,000 mile gets the same idea across but it’s still ridiculous that Funimation needs to be so Americentric they insist the afterlife uses a unit of measurement most of the world doesn’t bother with. American kids will still understand 1,000,000 km is a really fucking long journey.

[WittyUsername]

The fact that the redub of Curse of the Blood Rubies stuck so close to the script for the 1995 dub isn’t surprising when you consider that FUNimation basically only made it out of a sense of obligation, so they probably didn’t want to spend too much time writing a new script. That’s also probably why they never bothered to redub Sleeping Princess in Devil’s Castle, despite how incredibly rough the dub for it is. It was already uncut and in-house, so why bother?

[omegalucas]

Not sure if this is known / understood, but for any other passers-by wondering:

This is likely (almost certainly) due to the fact that the planet Neptune is adapted in Japanese as "Kaiou-sei" (海王星) and even the god Neptune from Roman mythology is known as "Kaijin" (海神). The "Kaiou" from Dragon Ball then gets misinterpreted back "in translation" as "Neptune".

(This is specifically punned and played with in Sailor Moon where Sailor Neptune's real name is Michiru Kaiou.)

This. The French dub (and thus other dubs based on it like the Portuguese dub) translates Kaioshin as Neptune in the Z dub. I seem to recall reading that an early airing of their Z dub also using that name for Kaio (and later reverting to the japanese name) but I'm not 100% sure.

Fun fact: the Portuguese dub for no specific reason ended up changing Kaio to Kaibe. Maybe because the sound of Kaio is the same as "caio" which is the first person form of the Portuguese verb for "falling" (so basically "I fall").

Also back to the general topic of this thread, the idiotic jokes of the Portuguese dub are definitely a fit for weird old sub stuff lol

[Scsigs]

I don't think they were even looking at the translations when they wrote the revised dubs, except for scenes that were never dubbed in the first place. Even the uncut Blood Rubies retains the additional dialogue seemingly added by Harmony Gold dub. Surely they were making for work for themselves by keeping the extra stuff when they didn't need to?

"Over 8000" and “1,000,000 kilometers" are just arbitrarily big numbers though, right? Although it is funny that they'd be lazier with Kai than the 90s dub - at least removing a zero makes it slightly closer to the original figure.

Except, they revised certain things here & there that were too stupid when taking later stuff into consideration, or was too illogical to take seriously. So, I assume they looked at the subtitle scripts they had to do so.

The 8000/9000 thing isn’t a big deal. The same idea is there. 10,000 miles is ridiculous when Goku already swam from the other side of the world in a day to get to Papaya Island when he was 15. 1,000,000 km and 1,000,000 mile gets the same idea across but it’s still ridiculous that Funimation needs to be so Americentric they insist the afterlife uses a unit of measurement most of the world doesn’t bother with. American kids will still understand 1,000,000 km is a really fucking long journey.

I mean, the only place I've seen the DB dubs use metric is in Kakarot. Maybe they did in some of the other games too, but that's the first place I've seen them just leave them be. I would've rather them, if they were gonna convert the measurements to imperial, use the nearest equivalent measurement. Like, say 600,000 miles, not 1,000,000. They clearly only kept it 1,000,000 to have the number sound huge.
To say this, the only places I've heard metric units of measurement here in America outside of foreign programming are in science contexts & Star Trek. Hell, even in episodes that take place in then-present day when the characters go to the past, they still do as if that makes sense because it's usually to the US. A US-based dub using imperial at least makes sense, even if it doesn't line up with what the original dialogue said. I do agree that I think they should just keep the units of measurement the same, but I don't think it's a huge deal as long as it's converted correctly. I think some other dubs do that & I don't mind it as a result.

[LostTimeLord]

Except, they revised certain things here & there that were too stupid when taking later stuff into consideration, or was too illogical to take seriously. So, I assume they looked at the subtitle scripts they had to do so.

They wouldn't need to be checking the translation to notice plot holes or logic gaps within the context of their own dub. What I meant was that they seemingly made the decision to re-write or add dialogue based purely on the script they already had. I'm sure they looked at the translation for lines that had been thrown out or needed writing for the first time, but accuracy clearly wasn't a consideration when they decided what to re-use and what to re-write.