Weird Old Dub Stuff

[Scsigs]

I'm just talking Z. The OG DB dub is mostly fine & GT, who cares?

But if you re-dubbed Z 'from the ground up' you would then have inconsistencies with the Dragon Ball and GT dubs. Either that or you'd still have to compromise in some places in the way that Kai's dub had to. They weren't going to put themselves in a situation where, for example, the default audio track has Tien Shinhan's name change to Tenshinhan between series alongside half the other names and pronunciations.

You forget that names & nomenclatures were already set in stone years before Kai's dub was recorded. The only things they changed back to closer to their Japanese counterparts were how they pronounced "Kaioken" & some attack names (Destructo Disk to Kienzan, Solar Flare to Taioken, & Special Beam Cannon to Makankosoppo), but only for the first 2 arcs before randomly changing them back to their English dub names afterwards. Thus, even if they wanted to change certain things to better match the Japanese, they couldn't. This is part of why I feel like complaining about those things at this point is pointless. Unless they go full reboot in terms of the English dubs (which isn't likely until all of the current English voices are either dead or retired) & decide to revamp all of the terms like what happened with Sailor Moon, that's not liable to happen any time soon.

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

I'm just talking Z. The OG DB dub is mostly fine & GT, who cares?

But if you re-dubbed Z 'from the ground up' you would then have inconsistencies with the Dragon Ball and GT dubs. Either that or you'd still have to compromise in some places in the way that Kai's dub had to. They weren't going to put themselves in a situation where, for example, the default audio track has Tien Shinhan's name change to Tenshinhan between series alongside half the other names and pronunciations.

You forget that names & nomenclatures were already set in stone years before Kai's dub was recorded. The only things they changed back to closer to their Japanese counterparts were how they pronounced "Kaioken" & some attack names (Destructo Disk to Kienzan, Solar Flare to Taioken, & Special Beam Cannon to Makankosoppo), but only for the first 2 arcs before randomly changing them back to their English dub names afterwards. Thus, even if they wanted to change certain things to better match the Japanese, they couldn't. This is part of why I feel like complaining about those things at this point is pointless. Unless they go full reboot in terms of the English dubs (which isn't likely until all of the current English voices are either dead or retired) & decide to revamp all of the terms like what happened with Sailor Moon, that's not liable to happen any time soon.

I remember reading Chris Sabat delayed production of the Funimation Kai dub for as long as he could, but ultimately had to go back to voicing his characters before his doctor's recommended rest period was over because of Nicktoons' strict deadlines. It was also probably a nightmare having to manage all the different audio tracks Funimation had on hand:

• Uncut with Yamamoto
• Uncut with Kikuchi
• Nicktoons with Yamamoto
• Nicktoons with alternate Yamamoto score
• Nicktoons with Kikuchi
• CW with Yamamoto
• CW with Kikuchi

Taking all of those into account it was probably easy enough for lines intended for one version (like attack names intended for TV being used for an uncut version) of the dub to slip into another.

[LostTimeLord]

You forget that names & nomenclatures were already set in stone years before Kai's dub was recorded.

I didn't "forget" anything. The names were well established before the orange bricks came out, and even if they weren't it would still be an issue if half the names changed between the blue, orange, and green bricks. That is, presumably, why Funimation's dub of Kai stuck with the old names and voices in spite of them aiming to correct the inaccuracies of the Z dub.

[WittyUsername]

I distinctly remember Chris Sabat saying back in 2010 or so that they kept a lot of the old names and pronunciations because they had become too ingrained in the franchise’s Western identity that it would’ve been jarring to change them. Fixing the pronunciation of “kaioken” is one thing, but fixing the pronunciation of “saiyan” or changing “Krillin” to “Kuririn” would’ve been very difficult to get used to. Also, in the latter case, that might’ve made the merchandising situation awkward.

Like it or not, the old dub names and most of the pronunciations are here to say. Bandai seems to agree.

[Scsigs]

I remember reading Chris Sabat delayed production of the Funimation Kai dub for as long as he could, but ultimately had to go back to voicing his characters before his doctor's recommended rest period was over because of Nicktoons' strict deadlines. It was also probably a nightmare having to manage all the different audio tracks Funimation had on hand:

• Uncut with Yamamoto
• Uncut with Kikuchi
• Nicktoons with Yamamoto
• Nicktoons with alternate Yamamoto score
• Nicktoons with Kikuchi
• CW with Yamamoto
• CW with Kikuchi

Taking all of those into account it was probably easy enough for lines intended for one version (like attack names intended for TV being used for an uncut version) of the dub to slip into another.

That would honestly make the fact that he changed his Vegeta & Piccolo voices for Kai on make more sense. His voices for them are much less gruff. Hell, his Piccolo sounds basically like his Zoro voice, which isn't far off from his natural speaking voice.

I mean, I honestly think that's what ultimately happened with the home releases for Kai. Some of the audio people accidentally put some of the edited lines into the uncut tracks & no one noticed before the discs went out.

In terms of the pronunciations, I don't sweat them that, nor do I care about most them. Kaioken was one that SHOULD'VE been pronounced right in the first place, but the Canadian cast fucked up on that &, thus, the Texas cast did too for a while because, y'know, it's King Kai's technique. Thus, his name's part of it. "Saiyan" I don't think sounds good as "Sigh-an," tbh. "Say-an" just sounds better to me. The rrest weren't going to be changed no matter how much sub fans wanted them to. Like I said, unless they completely rebooted the whole dubs & redid all of them from the ground up, terms & all.

I distinctly remember Chris Sabat saying back in 2010 or so that they kept a lot of the old names and pronunciations because they had become too ingrained in the franchise’s Western identity that it would’ve been jarring to change them. Fixing the pronunciation of “kaioken” is one thing, but fixing the pronunciation of “saiyan” or changing “Krillin” to “Kuririn” would’ve been very difficult to get used to. Also, in the latter case, that might’ve made the merchandising situation awkward.

Like it or not, the old dub names and most of the pronunciations are here to say. Bandai seems to agree.

Honestly, I'm ok with that. I don't really care. Only purists do at this point & they can just watch the shows & movies in Japanese if they care that much & probably do anyways, so who cares?

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

In terms of the pronunciations, I don't sweat them that, nor do I care about most them. Kaioken was one that SHOULD'VE been pronounced right in the first place, but the Canadian cast fucked up on that &, thus, the Texas cast did too for a while because, y'know, it's King Kai's technique.

You can't blame the Canadian cast for that. I asked Karl Willems (ADR director for all the Dragon Ball content recorded at Ocean Studios, which includes the Saban dub, or at least season 2, I believe season 1 was Sarah-Anne Dafoe) in one of the Anime Time Machine livestreams and he said pronunciations come from a guide they get from the producers, so it would be whoever was above him that fucked it up.

[Scsigs]

In terms of the pronunciations, I don't sweat them that, nor do I care about most them. Kaioken was one that SHOULD'VE been pronounced right in the first place, but the Canadian cast fucked up on that &, thus, the Texas cast did too for a while because, y'know, it's King Kai's technique.

You can't blame the Canadian cast for that. I asked Karl Willems (ADR director for all the Dragon Ball content recorded at Ocean Studios, which includes the Saban dub, or at least season 2, I believe season 1 was Sarah-Anne Dafoe) in one of the Anime Time Machine livestreams and he said pronunciations come from a guide they get from the producers, so it would be whoever was above him that fucked it up.

I mean, sure, but that could've been fixed by actually watching the episode it's first mentioned in & listening to the Japanese actors to see how THEY pronounced it. They eventually did with the Pioneer dubs of the first 3 movies, though.

[LostTimeLord]

If the actors had been given a pronunciation guide, then what was going on in the Japanese audio would be irrelevant as far as they were concerned. The actors had one job to do, and the translators, ADR writers, etc. had their own jobs to do.

Besides, I don't think they always had the Japanese audio. I'm sure that Sabat's mentioned in interviews that in the early days the recording sessions would use Spanish copies of the episodes rather than the Japanese versions.