Why change the script?

[aleksandrored]

Hi guys, I'm curious: Why did FUNimation change the scripts?

I mean, I understand that they put dialogue in still scenes, or soften certain moments. But why not use the original script?

Here in my country, Brazil, we dub based on the script that came in, and like all dubbing, there are the necessary adaptations.

I don't understand why instead of dubbing based on a script that was already ready, using the necessary adaptations and changes, FUNimation creates another different script, which I think is much more laborious.

It's not a question of being better or worse, in this case, I have this question, why change so much a story that is already delivered ready.

[Cure Dragon 255]

They felt kids were dumb and couldnt handle stuff without humor or jokes in it. This is why I love the Kai onwards dub. ESPECIALLY the broadcast versions.

[TechExpert2021]

FUNimation made various changes to many parts of the script in their in-house dubs of OG DB, DBZ, and DBGT, and the Ocean dub of the first two seasons of DBZ, because they wanted to make their dubs appealing to American kids and wanted the dub scripts to fit in with FUNimation's re-versioning style of those dubs since the in-house dubs and the Ocean dub of the first two seasons of DBZ were produced under Barry Watson. They also wanted to cash in on what was popular and edgy during the mid-to-late 90s and early-to-mid 2000s.

Take FUNimation's dub of the DBZ Bardock special for instance. That dub is largely unfaithful to the original Japanese version because almost the entire script was changed and dialogue is inserted in scenes where the characters' mouths are not shown. The dub also changed all of the names of Bardock's crew and gave two unnamed doctors (shown at the beginning of the TV special) the names "Planthor" and "Melakka" respectively.

FUNimation's dub of DBZ Kai is faithful to the original Japanese version but took some liberties with the script. Their dub of DB Super took more liberties with the script than their dub of DBZ Kai. Thankfully, both dubs aren't as horrendously inaccurate as their old in-house dubs.

[GhostEmperorX]

It was par for the course in anime that got brought to US kids TV specifically in the 20th Century (with very few holdouts post-Y2K).
Only in the home video licensing scene did distributors not try to turn it into something else entirely every chance they got.

[AliTheZombie13]

Reason #1: Censorship
American TV just had different standards than Japanese TV or even Latin American or Brazilian TV. You couldn't, for example, have Bulma flashing herself to Roshi under American TV unless you wanted to be blacklisted from the entire industry and sued by mobs of angry parents and moral groups who thought the show you were promoting was giving wrong messages to their children.

Reason #2: Attempting to "Fix" the Original
Sometimes, the power of hindsight makes the localizers feel like they need to make changes so something would make more sense given that they know how the entire story unfolds. Extremely easy example: #19 and #20 being directly named as the ones who destroyed Trunks' future, only for them to be revealed later one to not have been the ones who did. I know this isn't something that happens in the anime, but it's a good example.

Reason #3: Sheer Arrogance and Incompetence
I know Japanese isn't an easy language to translate and the Internet wasn't as big as it is now back then, but.
"Bardock is a brilliant scientist", where the fuck did that come from?

There's also other factors like feeling like the show would be better off with a quip here and there, adlibs, infamously citing Ghost Stories who for the longest time was thought to have been drastically altered into an Abridged Series because the original sucked, but that wasn't the case, it was just the dub director feeling like the original sucked that he turned it into a crass self-parody.

Also citing the Brazilian Dub itself for Super, who thought it was a great idea to fill it to the brim with stupid memes. I can think back to one scene where Vegeta declares, "Zamasu's power is over 8000!" And like... OK... I'm glad you hamfisted your stupid meme in there because you thought it would be funny and relatable, but you do realize that the main characters' powers are now in the billions, right?

Other things like swapping the original BGM is often done for greed, because they want royalties for the new music rather than just slapping the original BGM in there.

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

As others have said anime intended primarily for TV were generally not very faithful at the time. Dragon Ball is no exception and was likely considered a fad that would be forgotten in a few years, so providing a competent translation wasn't considered a priority.

More effort was put into anime intended for the home video market by companies like Streamline because they were considered for more mature audiences that would presumably care more about faithfulness to the source material.

There are two problems with Funimation using the original script:

• They received poor English translations from TOEI, apparently with pages missing
• Even if Funimation received Japanese scripts there was no one to translate them (Steve Simmons wasn't hired until 2000)

I suspect things like "your father was an average fighter Kakarot but he was a brilliant scientist" were a result of Funimation just making things up when there was a page missing from the English translations they got. This was probably used to justify the added jokes as well. Ideally Funimation could have asked TOEI to send better scripts that weren't incomplete, but because they had a short term goal of getting Dragon Ball on TV by whatever means they deem necessary to make it a success this was probably not considered, or it was ruled out as being too much of a time consuming process.

If Funimation had a Japanese to English translator it would have done wonders. They wouldn't have had to rely on whatever English translations TOEI gave them to base their dub scripts on. As Funimation were a new company with little money it is doubtful they were willing to go that route as the more foreign a language is the harder it is to find an English language translator, and the more costly their services will be.

I'm not familiar with Brazillian Portuguese dubbing in general, but my understanding is dubbing is far more respected as an artform in Latin America so the companies behind those dubs of Dragon Ball likely saw more reason to care than Funimation did. I can also imagine the Latin American dubbing companies, unlike a lot of North American dubbing companies didn't expect the shows they worked on to die out in a few years and never be given a second thought.

[AliTheZombie13]

I'm not familiar with Brazillian Portuguese dubbing in general, but my understanding is dubbing is far more respected as an artform in Latin America so the companies behind those dubs of Dragon Ball likely saw more reason to care than Funimation did. I can also imagine the Latin American dubbing companies, unlike a lot of North American dubbing companies didn't expect the shows they worked on to die out in a few years and never be given a second thought.

I can tell you as a Brazilian himself that we just saw it as "Just another job."
The dubbers themselves have said it in regards to Dragon Ball Z, they never thought it would explode in popularity like it did.
And sorry to their fans, but many of our old dubs for anime were... not good, having serious problems with basic things like character name consistency and audio mixing.

I mean, yes, we did follow the original scripts and retained the original music, but that was more indifference to the source material than anything.

[MasenkoHA]

The infamous "Your father was a brilliant scientist" line was probably a mix of Funimation's writers thinking the bruits wave explanation was too complicated for six-year olds and wanting to add in some "lore" and running with the idea "okay Goku is like Superman so his dad is probablly like Jor-el"

If Funimation had a Japanese to English translator it would have done wonders. They wouldn't have had to rely on whatever English translations TOEI gave them to base their dub scripts on. As Funimation were a new company with little money it is doubtful they were willing to go that route as the more foreign a language is the harder it is to find an English language translator, and the more costly their services will be.

Having a Japanese to English translator didn't do wonders for the back half of Z, or GT, or even the original Dragon Ball.


Like, I dunno, Toei's crappy Engrish scripts probably played a part in some lines being rewritten because Funimation's writers couldn't make heads or tails of what the translation was trying to say (but again I point to plenty of dialog was more or less adapted relatively faithfully even in those days so it couldn't have been all that indecipherable) but Funimation's adaptation style pretty much stayed the same even after Simmons was hired.

[Cure Dragon 255]

I'm not familiar with Brazillian Portuguese dubbing in general, but my understanding is dubbing is far more respected as an artform in Latin America so the companies behind those dubs of Dragon Ball likely saw more reason to care than Funimation did. I can also imagine the Latin American dubbing companies, unlike a lot of North American dubbing companies didn't expect the shows they worked on to die out in a few years and never be given a second thought.

I can tell you as a Brazilian himself that we just saw it as "Just another job."
The dubbers themselves have said it in regards to Dragon Ball Z, they never thought it would explode in popularity like it did.
And sorry to their fans, but many of our old dubs for anime were... not good, having serious problems with basic things like character name consistency and audio mixing.

I mean, yes, we did follow the original scripts and retained the original music, but that was more indifference to the source material than anything.

Yeah, the whole "Dubbing is a respected practice" is more of a Spanish speaking Latin America thing.

[GTx10]

People do realize the Bardock was a brilliant scientist line is changed in the Orange Brick/Remastered Dub right? That example isn't relevant anymore. Funny but merely a relic of the censored dub of the time.

[Cure Dragon 255]

People do realize the Bardock was a brilliant scientist line is changed in the Orange Brick/Remastered Dub right? That example isn't relevant anymore. Funny but merely a relic of the censored dub of the time.

You also realize we are talking about changed lines and thus WE ARE mostly talking about Ocean era/Early Funimation until Kai rewrites, Sure these were mostly redubbed in the later DVD's but the title isnt "When did Funimation correct the lines"

[Hellspawn28]

Barry Watson wanted Dragon Ball to feel like an American cartoon than a faithful adaption. DBZ on CN was no different than how Digimon and Pokemon were on TV at the time. They said had a similar vibe to those dubs and had the same target audience.

[aleksandrored]

The ironic thing is that the original version ended up doing well everywhere it went, even in places that weren't used to anime at the time. Here we had anime that came out based on the American version and others that came out based on the original, both of which were successful. As already mentioned, dubbing is something very common here, Dragon Ball came as just another product and ended up doing well. I even thought that maybe because dubbing isn't so common in the US, that was one of the reasons, or maybe it was a question of "each place works differently" in terms of adaptation.

[Hellspawn28]

Funimation also felt like Americans are stupid and can't appreciate or say an actual Asian names. If kids in the 90s can say the names for Street Fighter attacks, they would have no issue saying stuff like "Makankosappo", "Oozaru", "Kienzan", etc.

[Cure Dragon 255]

The ironic thing is that the original version ended up doing well everywhere it went, even in places that weren't used to anime at the time. Here we had anime that came out based on the American version and others that came out based on the original, both of which were successful. As already mentioned, dubbing is something very common here, Dragon Ball came as just another product and ended up doing well. I even thought that maybe because dubbing isn't so common in the US, that was one of the reasons, or maybe it was a question of "each place works differently" in terms of adaptation.

This is a great take, dubbing is VERY common in Brazil, even if its not a respected practice.

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

Brazil are still nuts about Dragon Ball, their vice president Geraldo Alckmin paid tribute to Toriyama and how he inspired generations of community. That's a mega deal.

Even if Brazillian Portuguese dubs are still not taken seriously I can't imagine they were received any worse before Dragon Ball came to Brazil, maybe Dragon Ball's dubs helped them gain more respect even if just a little?

I'm not aware of any horrible inaccuracies in the Brazillian Portuguese dubs (aside from AliTheZombexam's Super example), although I guess since their competition would be the European Portuguese dubs it's not exactly a high bar.

[Cure Dragon 255]

Brazil are still nuts about Dragon Ball, their vice president Geraldo Alckmin paid tribute to Toriyama and how he inspired generations of community. That's a mega deal.

Even if Brazillian Portuguese dubs are still not taken seriously I can't imagine they were received any worse before Dragon Ball came to Brazil, maybe Dragon Ball's dubs helped them gain more respect even if just a little?

I'm not aware of any horrible inaccuracies in the Brazillian Portuguese dubs (aside from AliTheZombexam's Super example), although I guess since their competition would be the European Portuguese dubs it's not exactly a high bar.

You missed the point, its not that Dragon Ball was not special to Brazil but rather it wasnt back when it premiered. It got dubbed very well, but it was not an unprecendented dub of a defining classic, it got the exact same treatment "Generic kids show #65" did.

Luckily the dub was good even if shoddy in some aspects. To be truly, fully honest, if one wants to be pedantic this is true of the Funimation dub and surprisingly The Latin American one too. The Latin American dub was good because that's how Latin America rolls with just about any dub (Sans Pretty Cure natch). Well that. and there was a prior attempt to dub it.

[Yuji]

I'd like to take the opportunity in this thread to complain about all the flowery dialogue and in-jokes/references or overall script changes to make the dialogue seem wittier in modern Funi dubs (Super, XV2, FighterZ).

[AliTheZombie13]

I'm not aware of any horrible inaccuracies in the Brazillian Portuguese dubs (aside from AliTheZombexam's Super example), although I guess since their competition would be the European Portuguese dubs it's not exactly a high bar.

Dragon Ball was one of the less worse examples, but it still had its pitfalls like Chichi's name varying from "Chichi" to "Milk" randomly, "Kaio" varying from "Mr. Kaio" to "Kaio-sama" randomly, and while the acting is generally good, the screams and grunts leave a lot to be desired compared to other dubs.

Regardless, Wendel Bezerra (Goku's voice actor in BR) said in interview Dragon Ball to him and the other staff was just another show they were dubbing, they never imagined it would get as popular as it did, so the notion that they respected the original script out of a sense of respect for the art form is kinda.... eh.

Also, my line was referring mostly referring to absolute trainwreck Brazilian dubs like Classic Sailor Moon, Digimon, InuYasha and YuYu Hakusho, where consistency and show integrity went to die.

Funimation also felt like Americans are stupid and can't appreciate or say an actual Asian names. If kids in the 90s can say the names for Street Fighter attacks, they would have no issue saying stuff like "Makankosappo", "Oozaru", "Kienzan", etc.

I mean, TFS seems to think "Makankosappo" is unpronounceable.

[TechExpert2021]

Funimation also felt like Americans are stupid and can't appreciate or say an actual Asian names. If kids in the 90s can say the names for Street Fighter attacks, they would have no issue saying stuff like "Makankosappo", "Oozaru", "Kienzan", etc.

I mean, TFS seems to think "Makankosappo" is unpronounceable.

"Kuririn" is also unpronounceable, right?

Anyway, I could easily pronounce most Japanese names with no problem.