Source of Rumor that FUNi's Early Z Masters "Came From Mexico"

[ikaos]

This came up in a discussion today and I thought I'd ask here about it since others are more resourceful than me. For quite a while there has been a rumor that Funimation received its early DBZ materials for Season 3 (the first episodes they did in-house) from Mexico due to Toei not "sending them video masters fast enough". Often this rumor is paired with this being an excuse for why the early in-house episodes have such a poor script, because they were translating from Spanish instead of Japanese, or that they had to "make up the story" because they "didn't have a good translator" or something of that nature. These rumors have since been de-bunked - we know that Funimation was sent film masters fairly early on in their production process and that visually, FUNi's releases from this era look different than broadcasts from Latin America.

My question is - what is the source for these rumors? I've seen people claim that it was said in a Chris Sabat interview, but in searching the site I could find no record of the actual quote. Is this just one of those things that originated in some forum 20 years ago and has persisted in the fandom to this day?

[MasenkoHA]

I would think the rumor came from some of the cast members saying they never saw the Japanese version until much later and fans just deciding they must have used the Mexican Spanish dub for references. But the cast technically doesn't have to see the Japanese version or any other language to dub the show. It would help them reference their characters (I believe Kelamis said he did occasionally but also he could never make his voice go as high as Nozawa and still reproduce) but its not a requirement. And back in those days I believe dubbing was usually done with a teleprompter feeding the actors their lines and it was the voice director's job to tell them how to deliver the line and how fast.

We know Funimation had the Japanese version available as early as 2000 and their practices didn't change so that was always a weak excuse. Just like literally every excuse given on Funimation's behalf.

, because they were translating from Spanish instead of Japanese,

It would be a hell of a lot easier finding a Spanish to English translator in motherfucking TEXAS. Are there really fans who used that excuse?

or that they had to "make up the story" because they "didn't have a good translator"

There is probably some truth to that rumor. As early as 1997 Barry Watson said the English is sketchy at best and I think other people from Funimation made similar comments.

But there were plenty of times in the first three seasons were it was obvious they understood the translation so again a weak ass excuse. Its not like the scripts were 100 percent rewritten. A fair amount of times the script could be dead on or at least adjacent to what was being said in the Japanese version. The English was probably awkward but perfectly understandable. And Funimation continued to make up stuff long after Simmons was hired as a translator.

The writing improved a bit in season 4 but I think that had more to do with John Burgmeier taking over as script supervisor from Chris Neel.

[Adamant]

I seem to recall hearing something about this, and some searching on the forum at least got me this:

Plus, I've seen numerous clips on Youtube where Sabat said FUNi didn't have access to the original show, and they had to get the Mexican dub.

Sonny Strait said in an interview that he tried to see if he could get FUNimation to let him watch the original Japanese version of the Bardock TV special so he could do research on the character, and that they didn't have a copy of the original Japanese version available, only the Mexican Spanish dub.

So there's your apparent sources named at least, someone that cares more than me can probably locate the actual videos and interviews these statements come from.

[VegettoEX]

That triggered something in the deep recesses of my memory.

The Sonny Strait bit comes from an interview Jon Allen did with him back when we were Daizenshuu EX. I still have the entire text of that interview, because it ties in with the "Sonny prank called Terry Klassen" rumor:

With Bardock, I asked John if beforehand could we just sit down and talk about this, and analyze the character, rather than just jumping into it, and he said "Well, if you want to. Sounds like a good idea." So we spent a couple of days just sitting down and watching it. I'd asked for the original Japanese version, but at the time all we had was the Spanish version, and we watched that, which still had the original Japanese music in it, which I thought was really cool. Especially at the end. I really thought that "Solid State Scouter" was great. Anyway, we sat down and talked about it and analyzed it, because I really wanted to know just what this character was all about before we did it. We then went into the recording studio and recorded about the first quarter of it, and I went home that night and started thinking about the character a little bit more, and read the script again and went "That all sucked," so I went back the next day and asked John "Could we just scrap everything that we did yesterday and start over?" to which he replied "Well you're lucky that we have time to do that," so we did.

[Robo4900]

Sabat discussed this in his interview with Geekdom six years ago.

Regarding the translations - they had Japanese translations directly from Toei, but the quality of the translations just weren't very good, so they had new translations done in Texas, but they didn't have great translators on hand until Simmons started working with them (which I think would've been season 4 or 5).
However, this is from Sabat's point of view; I think when they were recording in Canada, they also had the translations done in Canada by people who were good at the job, which is why the pre-season 3 dubs tended to be more faithful than season 3, even though there was still a layer of rewriting going on.

While talking about that, Sabat went on to say that when they were dubbing the show, the audio they had on-hand was the Spanish version, not the Japanese version.
The odd thing is, the film they were receiving from Toei would have had the Japanese audio on it (which is how they had Japanese audio on the DVDs), so this does make me wonder if they had low-quality VHS tapes from Mexico to use during ADR for the actors to dub over, and then would actually perform the editing on their nice film transfers. Perhaps film shipping took a very long time and this was just a good way for them to quickly get ahold of some footage, any footage, so they could get recording going as soon as possible, and record as much as possible in any given timeframe.
It's unclear, and this is just one theory, but it would explain why the actors and writers could only watch the Latin American version when we know they received film from Toei and had the Japanese version for the DVDs. It wouldn't, however, explain what Simmons and the other translators were working from when they were writing their translations; if Funi didn't have film, they didn't have the Japanese show, so how were the scripts written for the dub?

It's a very odd situation that almost defies explanation.

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

Chris Sabat said himself in the Geekdom interview that Funimation were not receiving Spanish scripts and the materials they got were in fact from TOEI.

We know Funimation had the Japanese version available as early as 2000 and their practices didn't change so that was always a weak excuse. Just like literally every excuse given on Funimation's behalf.

I'd go a step further and say they had it earlier, as Barry Watson flat out said they had been receiving pre-translated scripts from Japan.

Barry Watson wrote:
We get translated scripts from Japan, from the original Dragon Ball show, but a lot of the time it's very difficult--the English is sketchy at best, the character names will be very inconsistent, things of that nature. So our writers will go through and write a legitimate English script that's recordable.

Interestingly Watson went on to say in that same interview they had a "punch-up writer" whose job it was to "beef up the comedy", which explains a lot.

It's also worth noting the credits of the original uncut movie trilogy list Pioneer as producers, which implies that they had some hand in the creative process, and by all accounts they did plan on doing a full uncut dub for the series with the Vancouver cast.

Funimation clearly had different priorities as when they began to dub the rest of the series and movies their scripts paled in comparison to Pioneers, and when they went on to reduce the movies completely disregarded Pioneer's efforts using the less faithful script for the TV version of Tree of Might.

[Robo4900]

It's also worth noting the credits of the original uncut movie trilogy list Pioneer as producers, which implies that they had some hand in the creative process, and by all accounts they did plan on doing a full uncut dub for the series with the Vancouver cast.

Had the DBZ dub continued in the exact fashion it had done in its first two seasons, the plan was for Pioneer to record a full uncut dub in the same vein as their dubs of those movies. Barry Watson or Gen Fukunaga said that this was the plan in an interview from about 96 or 97 that's somewhere in the Kanzenshuu press archive, can't remember where. I think it's the same interview I've quoted in the past as calling out DBZ's second season as having gangbuster ratings.

But, when Funi took things in-house, they moved to making a (technically) uncut version of their TV dub, and moved away from having Pioneer sub-license the home video and all that, so this plan was kiboshed.

[ikaos]

While talking about that, Sabat went on to say that when they were dubbing the show, the audio they had on-hand was the Spanish version, not the Japanese version.
The odd thing is, the film they were receiving from Toei would have had the Japanese audio on it (which is how they had Japanese audio on the DVDs), so this does make me wonder if they had low-quality VHS tapes from Mexico to use during ADR for the actors to dub over, and then would actually perform the editing on their nice film transfers. Perhaps film shipping took a very long time and this was just a good way for them to quickly get ahold of some footage, any footage, so they could get recording going as soon as possible, and record as much as possible in any given timeframe.

Between this speculation and the Sonny Strait quote that Mike dug up, this seems to be the most logical answer - it's not that they only received masters from Mexico, it's that they probably asked for them from Mexico first for ADR purposes before they received the film masters directly from Toei. Obviously the quality of the video transfer wouldn't matter at all for dubbing, and as speculated it was probably easier to find someone to translate from Spanish to English for the purposes of characterization or general understanding of the story.

[TheBlackPaladin]

Heh, kind of funny (in a, "Man, time flies..."-kind of way) to see me being quoted from almost a decade ago. I'm old.

But yeah, as others have noted, FUNimation used the Spanish audio/visual masters for dubbing purposes, at when their in-house dub began. When they were using the Ocean cast, though, they did get their materials directly from Japan. At least if this quote from Peter Kelamis is anything to go by:

Peter Kelamis, in this interview with DBZ Uncensored:
I have seen and heard the Japanese version only during recordings of the show. There are times when the producer actually has to check direct translations to see if they make sense. The level and emotion of the original performance is attempted to be re-created but not the voice. If I tried to re-create the original voice I think I would run the risk of hitting a note so high that I may not be able to have children in future life.

Plus, Mario Casteñeda, the Latino Spanish voice of adult Goku, actually has a pretty deep, bassy voice, so between that fact and this quote, it seems obvious that he had indeed heard Masako Nozawa.

I can only speculate here, but by all accounts, when they got around to doing the in-house dub, FUNimation was on a ridiculous time crunch, so my guess is they decided to go with the Spanish audio/visual masters (since Mexico was geographically closer to Dallas than Tokyo) in the interest of getting the dub done on schedule. I don't know that they necessarily adapted the dub dialogue from translations of the Spanish version, though. To the best of my knowledge, they adapted their dialogue from translations provided to them by Toei, which FUNimation's eventual translator Steve Simmons once referred to in an interview as "rather haggard."

Unfortunately, the video is no longer up, but my sig used to link to a YouTube video in which Chris Sabat played a DBZ dub blooper reel at a convention, and one of the bloopers was one in which both Chris Sabat and Kyle Hebert (the dubbed voice of adult Gohan) found the translation for one of Gohan's lines to be so particularly horrible that, just as a funny thing to share with co-workers internally, they decided to record Kyle delivering the translation as-written with as serious a delivery as possible. The line itself is in my sig, and never fails to get a chuckle out of me, even to this day.

The ultimate irony of all this, though? When it came time to do the Latino Spanish dub of Kai, the exact opposite scenario occurred: the Mexican dubbing company got their dubbing materials from FUNimation...and the Nicktoons-censored version, no less. So their script for that dub is adapted from the Nicktoons-censored English dub, their performances were clearly based on the performances in the Nicktoons-censored dub, and they inherited all of the visual edits of the Nicktoons-censored dub (English title cards included).

[NitroEX]

However, this is from Sabat's point of view; I think when they were recording in Canada, they also had the translations done in Canada by people who were good at the job, which is why the pre-season 3 dubs tended to be more faithful than season 3, even though there was still a layer of rewriting going on.

I agree. Aside from Simmons, who was only working on the Japanese subtitled version, it's pretty evident that there was no in-house Japanese translator at Funimation in those days.

Ocean had translated scripts for anime previously so it makes sense that they'd have done the heavy lifting in that department. The main difference in Ocean's adaptation was if Barry Watson was involved or not. If he was (like with the Saban/Funi and in-house dubs) it would lean into heavy re-versioning and localization instead of a standard translation job.

Anyway, I suspect Funi probably resorted to dubbing season 3 with Mexico materials after realizing Toei's wouldn't arrive in time. Before then (when dubbing for Saban) they might not have been in such a rush, especially with it being the start of the series with extra time for pre-production rather than with Toonami where they were expected to just carry on doing what they did before (only now they didn't have the money or willingness to keep paying for that Vancouver production).

It wouldn't, however, explain what Simmons and the other translators were working from when they were writing their translations; if Funi didn't have film, they didn't have the Japanese show, so how were the scripts written for the dub?

Fansub tapes perhaps? I don't know much about Simmons but I was under the assumption he was hired at the time as a fan of the series, and anime in general. They didn't seem to trust him with anything more than Japanese subtitles though, he clearly wasn't involved in the writing team for dub scripts at the time.

It's also worth noting the credits of the original uncut movie trilogy list Pioneer as producers, which implies that they had some hand in the creative process,

Hiroe Tsukamoto was Producer and Hideki 'Henry' Goto was Executive Producer on the Pioneer/Ocean dubs.

For the Saban and in-house dubs, it was Barry Watson as Producer and Gen & Cindy Fukunaga as Executive Producers.

On the Pioneer dubs Gen and his wife were only supervisors, and Barry Watson was not involved in them at all, which explains why the heavy localising and mispronunciations were not present in the Pioneer production but persisted once dubbing continued in-house with Barry once again overseeing things.

It also goes a long way to explain why the Blue Water dubs were more accurate overall. No Barry.
Hell, even during the Westwood dub Kirby Morrow pronounced Kaioken right.

Funimation clearly had different priorities as when they began to dub the rest of the series and movies their scripts paled in comparison to Pioneers, and when they went on to reduce the movies completely disregarded Pioneer's efforts using the less faithful script for the TV version of Tree of Might.

Yup, though it would have most likely been Ocean handling the translation and script adapting rather than Pioneer. But Pioneer's producers would have had the final approval on things aside from keeping Funimation's names, which would have presumably been part of the agreement in order to make those dubs in the first place. That's my guess.

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

Ocean had translated scripts for anime previously so it makes sense that they'd have done the heavy lifting in that department. The main difference in Ocean's adaptation was if Barry Watson was involved or not. If he was (like with the Saban/Funi and in-house dubs) it would lean into heavy re-versioning and localization instead of a standard translation job.

Ocean don't get enough credit for their work on Dragon Ball. I can't blame them for what happened with the Westwood dub given the predicament the channels screwed over by Funimation's extortionate royalty demands. They had Terry Klassen to provide scripts, library music and a cast people loved, leaving no reason to continue allowing YTV, Cartoon Network UK and Yorin to get screwed. Morrow pronouncing Kaioken right is one of those corrections that only needed a minute or so to fix, but attention to detail like that is something we've rarely seen in Dragon Ball English dubs (Pan pronounces Saiyan right in the Big Green dub of the GT special, although that was likely a happy accident and that dub has no relation to Ocean).

Having rewatched the Blue Water dubs recently has reminded me of the efforts Ocean went to with a largely accurate GT dub, fixing dub errors in OG Dragon Ball like Piccolo saying he fought people from all around the galaxy and faithful terminology like Son Goku, Nyoi'Bo and Kinto'Un were a nice touch. I have no doubt if Ocean had more time to plan a dub of Z it also would have turned out much better, although Kai apparently made an effort to get pronunciations right with things like "Naw-Mek", "Go-Koo" (as Drummond has been heard pronouncing in more recent con appearances), so hopefully if that ever comes out we'll have a better idea how the Westwood dub (or even a hypothetical Blue Water Z as it uses some Calgary cast members) could have sounded with more time.

[MasenkoHA]

Re: Pioneer overseeing the first 3 Z movies; as I understand it Pioneer is pretty hands off in the dubbing process and usually leaves it to the ADR studio, as opposed to Funimation who always had their fingers in the dubbing process even when using BLT and Ocean. Pioneer's actual involvement probably didn't extend beyond the decision to have an uncut bilingual release that would retain the Japanese music for the dub. Pioneer also handled the Sailor Moon movies and other than keeping the Japanese music and being uncut and available in English and Japanese (although an edited dub of the movies that used the American music was also released for whatever reason) those dubs ended up pretty much like the DiC tv dub excessive valley girl slang and all because the Canadian dubbing studio had elected to use that dub's equivalent to Chris Neel to write the English scripts.

The actual quality of the Pioneer dub for the Z movies can be chalked up to Ocean Group specifically Ward Perry for the scripts (whose scripts even under Funimation tend to be pretty faithful from what I recall) and Karl Willems for voice directing, who also did season 2 of Z but was probably allowed to approach the project as a proper anime dub and not the Saturday Morning Cartoon Barry Watson demanded.

[Robo4900]

Ocean had translated scripts for anime previously so it makes sense that they'd have done the heavy lifting in that department. The main difference in Ocean's adaptation was if Barry Watson was involved or not. If he was (like with the Saban/Funi and in-house dubs) it would lean into heavy re-versioning and localization instead of a standard translation job.

Ocean wasn't involved beyond doing the union paperwork for the actors until season 2. The scripts were translated and written by freelancers, I believe.

Ocean's role in scripting Dragon Ball's dubs would likely have only begun with the Pioneer movie dubs, and then only continued with the Westwood dubs.

[dva_raza]

And back in those days I believe dubbing was usually done with a teleprompter feeding the actors their lines

Looooool.
...no.
That is not something that has ever happened or could happen in dubbing.

Plus, Mario Casteñeda, the Latino Spanish voice of adult Goku, actually has a pretty deep, bassy voice, so between that fact and this quote, it seems obvious that he had indeed heard Masako Nozawa.

...also no. How did you come up with this strange story?
Mario Castañeda does not ‘actually’ have a deep and bassy...?(wtf) voice. He’s between tenor and alto, the higher register for males, with a very unique soft timbre. With not an ounce of bass in it.
His Goku voice is 100% his natural voice and tone.

[TheBlackPaladin]

...also no. How did you come up with this strange story?
Mario Castañeda does not ‘actually’ have a deep and bassy...?(wtf) voice. He’s between tenor and alto, the higher register for males, with a very unique soft timbre. With not an ounce of bass in it.
His Goku voice is 100% his natural voice and tone.

Well, to each their own, I wouldn't classify him as a tenor and I certainly wouldn't classify him as being even close to an alto. Are their deeper voices than his? Absolutely. But when I hear the word "tenor," I'd use that to describe a voice like Eduardo Garza's voice for Kuririn.

You're also right, the voice he uses for Goku is his actual voice, I wasn't attempting to imply that he uses a fake voice for Goku. In context, my use of the word "actually" was simply meant to differentiate Castañeda's voice in comparison to what Goku's second English voice actor, Peter Kelamis, said he heard during his recording sessions for Goku. Based on how he was describing the voice he heard (" If I tried to re-create the original voice I think I would run the risk of hitting a note so high that I may not be able to have children in future life"), it certainly doesn't sound like he was describing Castañeda's voice.

Also, for whatever it's worth...

And back in those days I believe dubbing was usually done with a teleprompter feeding the actors their lines

Looooool.
...no.
That is not something that has ever happened or could happen in dubbing.

I don't know that I'd use the word "teleprompter," but there is a teleprompter-like method of dubbing called "rhythmo-band dubbing" that was invented in France (where it is primarily used). Increasingly, many more dubbing studios around the world are using it. Netflix is known to strongly prefer it in the dubs of their live-action material (including English dubs) since it's easier for actors who haven't done dubbing before to use. Here's some behind-the-scenes footage of Squid Game being dubbed that way.

[dva_raza]

Well, to each their own, I wouldn't classify him as a tenor and I certainly wouldn't classify him as being even close to an alto.

Okay? But my comment wasn't an opinion.

Mario Castañeda is a tenor.
Like, factually. And since alto is next higher register to tenor, then yes, he is in fact close to an alto.

when I hear the word "tenor," I'd use that to describe a voice like Eduardo Garza's voice for Kuririn.

And this works perfectly as a self-debunk since Lalo Garza has the exact same register as Mario Castañeda.

my use of the word "actually" was simply meant to differentiate Castañeda's voice in comparison to what Goku's second English voice actor, Peter Kelamis, said he heard during his recording sessions for Goku.

Got it.
But really the part that jumped at me was “Mario Casteñeda, the Latino Spanish voice of adult Goku, actually has a pretty deep, bassy voice, so between that fact and “, which regardless of the comparison with Nozawa, did sound like you were saying Mario Castañeda he has pretty deep and bassy voice, and that it's also a fact lol

Also, for whatever it's worth...

And back in those days I believe dubbing was usually done with a teleprompter feeding the actors their lines

Looooool.
...no.
That is not something that has ever happened or could happen in dubbing.

I don't know that I'd use the word "teleprompter," but there is a teleprompter-like method of dubbing called "rhythmo-band dubbing" that was invented in France (where it is primarily used). Increasingly, many more dubbing studios around the world are using it. Netflix is known to strongly prefer it in the dubs of their live-action material (including English dubs) since it's easier for actors who haven't done dubbing before to use. Here's some behind-the-scenes footage of Squid Game being dubbed that way.

I definitley didn't consider the fully annotated, loop segmented script on the screen to be resembeling the concept of a teleprompter when I responded to that comment, especially for the way in which dubbing was done years ago.

[AlexSketchy04]

And back in those days I believe dubbing was usually done with a teleprompter feeding the actors their lines

Looooool.
...no.
That is not something that has ever happened or could happen in dubbing.

There are some studios that use a similar system for the scripts, the one I work for (The Kitchen) has a similar system, same thing with some Venezuelan dubbing studios.

Now, about the thread, if I'm not mistaken, at the 3 Vegetas pannel, Chris Sabat mentioned that the first international voice of Vegeta he heard was Rene Garcia's voice, because they did not have access to the episodes in japanese, they used the spanish dub.

https://youtu.be/XG3vD4jrYTE?t=341

[dva_raza]

And back in those days I believe dubbing was usually done with a teleprompter feeding the actors their lines

Looooool.
...no.
That is not something that has ever happened or could happen in dubbing.

There are some studios that use a similar system for the scripts, the one I work for (The Kitchen) has a similar system, same thing with some Venezuelan dubbing studios.

Now, about the thread, if I'm not mistaken, at the 3 Vegetas pannel, Chris Sabat mentioned that the first international voice of Vegeta he heard was Rene Garcia's voice, because they did not have access to the episodes in japanese, they used the spanish dub.

https://youtu.be/XG3vD4jrYTE?t=341

I answered in the post above. I don't know if Masenko was referring to rythmo band when he said "teleprompter", but when I responded I didn't make the connection of dialogue subtitled at specific timeframes on the screen of the footage, and a coarse device scrolling text without timecode nor annotations. Also when Masenko said “the director is feeding the lines through a teleprompter” I actually thought he was referring to an apuntador which I know you know, but for the others here, it's what they use in telenovelas to “feed actors their lines” through an earpiece and is also referred to as teleprompter lmao which is why I found it funny to imagine.

Anyway. That's a cool video, funny too.

[Robo4900]

Now, about the thread, if I'm not mistaken, at the 3 Vegetas pannel, Chris Sabat mentioned that the first international voice of Vegeta he heard was Rene Garcia's voice, because they did not have access to the episodes in japanese, they used the spanish dub.

Yes, Sabat and others of the in-house Funi cast have noted this.

However, do note that this is the actors. As I suggested earlier, upthread, perhaps they had low-quality VHS tapes from Latin America as footage for the actors to voice along to, so they didn't have to rely on good-quality footage arriving from Toei before even starting on recording.