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Anime Central - Day Two - Dubbing Discussion
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If you get the impression that there's a lot of material from Anime
Central on the dubbing of anime, it's because there was a lot of talk about
that subject at this event. Three people from the industry got together
to talk about the real world of dubbing production on Saturday afternoon.
They were (left to right) Michael Alben, who has directed dubs for Central
Park Media; Crispin Freeman, actor and former script rewriter for the Pokemon
series; and producer Toshifumi Yoshida of Viz Video. (Jeff Thompson of
The Right Stuf also was part of the discussion.) |
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| Freeman said Pokemon script adaptations were difficult because the
show is broadcast, not direct-to-video, and thus comes under tight controls
on childrens' programming imposed by the television industry and the Federal
Communications Commission. "There are committees over committees who have
to approve this," he said about the process of getting a Pokemon script
approved for broadcast. One of the sexier examples came when, in the original
Japanese, "A boy in an episode sees Misty and says `Can I breast-feed?'
I looked at the guys and said `What do we do here?' " No surprise that
the line was changed to something palatable for the censors. |
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Anime fans love to complain about the voice acting in dubs, but Alben
said they should complain about the voice direction, instead. "Allowing
bad voice acting to reside on a dub is the fault of the director. I don't
care if I have to go to 50 takes with an actor, if it's not right, it doesn't
go on the dub. I'll get another actor before I let it go on the dub." Alben's
choice of actors must be good; he cast Freeman in a role in his dub of
record of Lodoss War for Central Park Media. |
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| Those who complain that Japanese cultural references are softened or
removed from dubs should speak to Yoshida, who closely understands both
Japanese and American culture - and knows what works in a script for either
language. "If it has (Japanese) jokes that would make no sense in English,
we have to change that," Yoshida said. Among the changes: in a Ranma 1/2
episode, references to No plays were switched to quotations from Shakespeare
because the typical audience wouldn't be familiar with the Japanese dramas.
Yoshida also had his own Pokemon censorship stories: he noted that Viz
had to change their wildly popular Pokemon comics to remove bikinis on
female characters and reduce their bust sizes. |
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