Had to pick between watching subbed or dubbed for a marathon

Last Saturday I planned a 12-episode run of that new mecha series and got into a debate with my buddy on which version to go with. I picked subbed because he said the dubbed VA ruined the main character's voice. Three episodes in we realized the subtitles were translating some tech terms totally wrong and it made the plot confusing. Has anyone else had sub and dub versions tell completely different stories like that?

3 comments

3 Comments

murphy.aaron22d agoMost Upvoted

Oh man, I gotta disagree a bit here. In my experience dubs have gotten way better lately and sometimes the subs are just messy translations from a different team. Your mileage may vary but I've sat through some subbed episodes where the timing was off and the dub actually made more sense for the dialogue flow.

corablack22d ago

Oh wow, @murphy.aaron, that's a good point about translation quality. I've definitely run into subbed episodes where the translations felt super literal and the jokes just landed flat. But here's what I'm wondering - do you think it depends on the studio doing the dub? Like, some studios clearly put way more effort into the voice acting and script adaptation than others. Have you noticed a big difference between dubs from different companies?

spencer_owens5822d ago

Ngl I think that's a solid point about studios making a difference. Like, Funimation dubs back in the day used to really mess with scripts to make them more "relatable" to western audiences, but nowadays places like Sentai or Aniplex actually hire localization teams that work closely with the original writers. I watched that one sci-fi series last year where the sub had these long, clunky explanations for every piece of tech, but the dub just said "the reactor's overheating" and moved on. Honestly sometimes less is more when the sub team gets too wordy and bogs down the scene.