Comment on subs > dubs
Syrc@lemmy.world 11 months agolike in Fate/Zero when Saber first appears. In the dub she says “are you worthy, to be my master?” Which is definitely the intended meaning especially once you get further into the show and know how she is, but the subtitles just say “are you my master?” which makes her seem not quite like a dumbass… but it does make you go “wtf kind of question is that?”
I mean, it’s been a long time since I watched it, but I really don’t think that was the intended meaning. Saber had always been a very detached and humble person, I doubt she wanted to “test” Kiritsugu or anything. Iirc she’s also the only servant to retain memories between summonings (as she’s not a “copy” but Artoria herself), and it was the fourth time being summoned, so I assume it was just a routine at that point for her, kind of a plumber asking “where’s the leak”.
Although the issue is when spelled out in English, it does sound like a dumb question, and it’s also shorter than the Japanese so it wouldn’t match the timing well. I don’t blame them for changing it, but it’s still not the same as the original.
The point is also that it’s impossible to be determine if a dub is good or not unless you’ve seen in their entirety both it and the original version. You may watch one episode and say “hey, I like the voices and the performance”, but maybe they made a mistranslation of something important and you’ll never realize unless you watch the original too. Maybe the first episode is done well but a bad voice actor later ruins everything.
All in all, sub is the original experience and you really can’t ever go wrong by watching it, as opposed to the dub which has an added layer of translation where stuff can potentially be messed up. I’ve personally watched dub first when my close friends recommended it, and did the same for them when I found good ones, but if I have to watch a series none of them watched dubbed yet, I’m not risking to ruin my experience.
Meganium97@lemmy.blahaj.zone 11 months ago
There may also be cases where there are many untranslatable jokes that may fall flat when viewing the sub. I know it’s a bit extreme, but take Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo. Multitudes of untranslatable text and jokes so they just decided to redo the whole thing.
Syrc@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Not even that extreme. There’s series like Monogatari that they didn’t even try to dub because of the sheer amount of puns and japanese double-meanings they’d have to adapt. Unfortunately, a lot of good series can’t work in a different languages without footnotes explaining stuff, and at that point I might as well watch the sub.