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I don't get "undubs"

TucoBenedictoPacifico said:
You are assuming this is just a thing with Japanese stuff. That's not the case.
Give me the option and I'm going with the original ("undubbed") version with anything in any language.

Subtitles are more than enough to grasp the general sense of a dialogue (in not a single way inferior to dubs, really) and the original voice over is in 99 case out of 100 the way to enjoy the most genuine experience, with the most appropriate tone, expression, vocal timbre.
And, let's face it, more often than not even the best actors. Which matters a lot.
I don't need to understand Japanese, Chinese or French to recognize a believable tone of surprise/amusement/rage etc, but "knowing the language" doesn't make a bad actor sound any better. If anything makes his terrible performance even more jarring.

P.S. on a side note, even when I listen to English movie/games I'm picking the original over my native language, the one I understand better. But I guess for some reason that doesn't sound very exotic to you.
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Sectus said:
I go for whatever sounds the best. I started playing Onimusha 4 in English but I didn't find the voice acting very good, and then I switched over to the Japanese voices which sounds a lot better. In Assassin's Creed 2, I played with Italian voices because I felt it helped it with the setting. Recently I played through Chains of Satinav and I wish I could play with the original German voices because the English dub is a bit all over the place.

I should note that I always play with subtitles (even when playing with English voices) and my native language isn't English, so that may be part of the reason why I'm okay to change to different dubs depending on what I think works best.
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I see that there seems to be quite a large difference in overall sentiment between native and non-native English speakers, or at least it seems like that to me from this (and previous) thread(s) on the subject.

Having the vast majority of your consumed entertainment produced in your native language probably makes you more likely to demand that as the status quo.

I guess, beyond the discussion about which is better, we can certainly say that subtitled entertainment is more "educational". Just look at the English skills across the general population in European countries with widespread dubbing compared to those without.
 
CrazyDude said:
Most of the time it's people who think Japanese dub is better because they can not understand the language so they cannot pick up on whether it's bad or not.
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It's not a "dub". And no, you're just assuming. I can tell you if someone sucks at singing, whether he sings german, french, english, japanese or finnish.
 
Durante said:
I guess, beyond the discussion about which is better, we can certainly say that subtitled entertainment is more "educational". Just look at the English skills across the general population in European countries with widespread dubbing compared to those without.
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I always heard that claim, and don't doubt it, but are there numbers to back it up?
Esspecially, how big is the difference?
 
Honestly, I would rather listen to garbled gibberish I can't understand than a lot of english VOs from back in the PS2 RPG era. Ear death.
 
danielcw said:
I always heard that claim, and don't doubt it, but are there numbers to back it up?
Esspecially, how big is the difference?
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I don't have them at hand, but I remeber seeing EU numbers for English skills among teenagers and noticing that the smaller countries with less dubbing generally do better than e.g. Germany or France. That's of course hardly conclusive evidence, but I think it makes sense.

I searched for some numbers for a bit but Eurostat is uncooperative so far.
 
it does help to have some knowledge of a language but it doesn't have to be anything close to fluency. i took one semester of Japanese as my language credit (because the mandarin class was full) and I can only understand about 10% of the words they say in games but I'm not missing much, in part because I think stress on individual words is being inflated here. for example you could hear that a sentence ending in "ka" is the form of a question but the tone of the entire sentence is often in the form of a question. sometimes someone will say something with a neutral or other tone then add "ka" with a questioning tone at the end and that's where it would be useful to know something... but through inference you could figure out it's something similar to "right?" in that instance. a good translation will support that

as to the more general question to me it's simply a matter of poor acting in many English dubs relative to the Japanese dubs. that's not to say that there aren't significant annoyances with that industry like over use of super high pitched women, characters trying to sound too cool, and the same actors getting roles over and over but it's preferable to the English dubs that either over use the same voice actor for a variety of voices many of which sound ridiculously bad or use voices that sound good but are poor actors (usually both among a few who are actually good)

I'd like to make an even more general point that the dub industry that translates Japanese games and anime has too much cross over from childrens cartoons. Most of the better acting in games I've heard are cross over from the screen or theater. For whatever reason the casting of VO for English dubs of Japanese games is often worse than games that were originally cast in English. Part of the reason could be foreign speakers making choices to employ companies that bundle translation and VO services which are under performing on the VO side because of budget limitations and how their casting is structured to draw on a specific pool of voice actors that aren't particularly good actors.

edit: and I think this problem carries over to quality of dub within languages e.g. any time the script calls for a character with an accent they are terrible. which is why I'm impressed by games such as Demon's Souls which went out of its way to cast out of a Scottish theatre acting troupe which not only got non Hollywood accents right but had actually competent delivery of lines
 
Geedorah said:
I find English dub-actors just read from the lines... and often fall flat/short of my expectations. Original voice actors seem to really care, and you can feel that energy in the voice acting. Maybe it's 'cause I can't understand the original language, but the inflection just is miles ahead.
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this for me as well.
 
To tell the truth, it's getting better. If every dub had the emotional punch of some of the recordings in The Last of Us for example, I would probably be less concerned if a game didnt have the original voices. Of course, for some games I'll just always want the originals, like Hyperdimension Neptunia.
 
As a teenager I would have probably loved undubs. In those days everything had to be in it's native language to maintain purity. But nowadays I seem to watch all my games and anime in English. Since I don't know the Japanese language well enough I don't feel any attachment to what is being said. Tonally I might think something sounds good, but I really can't know. Most of the time I just like listening to dialogue being said in games and not having to read it, which is why I will usually go the dub route.

For live-action movies though....subs for life.
 
When options are available, I listen to whichever audio track has better actors. That's basically all there is to it, for me.

The first standout case that comes to mind is Persona 4, where I only moderately disliked the actors, but chose the Japanese audio because hearing Japanese honourifics in English is astonishingly dumb.
 
it's more painful to listen to bad dialog than to read it.

I am a bigger supporter of made-up language voices (ICO) or voice samples that indicate character (Zelda: Wind Waker) though.
 
99% of the time the original audio is always better. It's not a Japanese > English thing, because the reverse is true too. The Japanese dub of The Last of Us for example isn't nearly as good as the original English. The only time I like hearing the English dub is when it is humorous levels of bad, like in Dynasty Warriors or something. I usually just pick up the Japanese version of Japanese games though, because I don't want to read poorly translated text in addition to a bad dub, like in Persona 4 or something.
 
duckroll said:
Undubs are not ideal and I think those looking for "original intent" sort of miss the point if they don't actually understand the original language in the first place. Games are not like the movie medium where there is a subtitle track, a dub track, and closed captions for the dub track. Games generally have a single text script which is based specifically on the language track it's supposed to go with. The text is synced to the dub. Trying to separate them defeats the purpose, since you will end up with a voice track which doesn't even match the text. If you don't understand the voice, you will be reading the text and still not getting the "original intent". If you understand the voice, you'll be annoyed by the fact that the text doesn't match it at all, so you might as well just play the game in Japanese to begin with since you understand the language.

Yeah, I don't understand "undubs" either honestly. It really does seem to be a weeaboo thing where people who don't understand the original language want to pretend they're getting something closer to the original intent, but they really aren't. This is a completely different discussion from whether games should have actual subtitle tracks though. But cost is probably a prohibitive factor for that.
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I'm probably misunderstanding this, but how is it different from subtitled movies? If I watch a Japanese movie, or a French movie, I prefer to hear the actors voices, and read the subtitles. Of course these don't match identically because they have been translated. Often some nuance is lost or the timing of delivery won't match because ultimately you're reading an approximation of what is actually being said.

But I'll take that compromise to hear the original voice. I may not understand it fully, but I,d prefer the original actors than dubs.

For videogames I will accept some dubs, but the more the game relies on voice acting, the more I'd prefer original voice acting with subtitles. Occasional amazing dub work notwithstanding
 
danielcw said:
I always heard that claim, and don't doubt it, but are there numbers to back it up?
Esspecially, how big is the difference?
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I think there's a visible correlation between countries that generally subtitle foreign-language movies and TV shows and rates of English speaking in European countries on the maps. But I'm not sure if the preference for subtitles is a symptom or a cause: many of those countries teach English as a compulsory subject in school and so have high rates of English anyway. What's more, a lot of them are countries whose native language is linguistically similar to English, which helps.
 
duckroll said:
Undubs are not ideal and I think those looking for "original intent" sort of miss the point if they don't actually understand the original language in the first place.

Yeah, I don't understand "undubs" either honestly. It really does seem to be a weeaboo thing where people who don't understand the original language want to pretend they're getting something closer to the original intent, but they really aren't.
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Probably top reasons I recall some proponents say are

1) American voice actresses can't do moe. (most of the undubs are of anime RPG with large cast so... yea weeaboo factor)
2) Want to playthrough again but with different voices
3) RARE - Speaking/listening ability but terrible reading skills.
 
kewlmyc said:
The only undub I've played was Tales of the Abyss, and that was only to get voiced skits.
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Only reason I got that undub too. I really need to finish up Abyss...

RoninChaos said:
To add, I also think that some voice acting can really show how absurd the dialogue of something actually it is. One of the best/worst things to happen to games was voice acting. Some things sound fine when read, but when spoken are absolutely atrocious.
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And this. Exhibit A: Kingdom Hearts.
 
mrklaw said:
I'm probably misunderstanding this, but how is it different from subtitled movies? If I watch a Japanese movie, or a French movie, I prefer to hear the actors voices, and read the subtitles. Of course these don't match identically because they have been translated. Often some nuance is lost or the timing of delivery won't match because ultimately you're reading an approximation of what is actually being said.

But I'll take that compromise to hear the original voice. I may not understand it fully, but I,d prefer the original actors than dubs.

For videogames I will accept some dubs, but the more the game relies on voice acting, the more I'd prefer original voice acting with subtitles. Occasional amazing dub work notwithstanding
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people will say "but both are dubs" unlike movies and tv however in practice one dub is usually primary and had the most effort put into it so I think your point stands even in games, although a minority of games have an equally competent dub (I'm guessing this isn't the case in the smaller European markets).
 
Durante said:
I don't have them at hand, but I remeber seeing EU numbers for English skills among teenagers and noticing that the smaller countries with less dubbing generally do better than e.g. Germany or France. That's of course hardly conclusive evidence, but I think it makes sense.

I searched for some numbers for a bit but Eurostat is uncooperative so far.
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Probably looking for this.
 
I'm playing Persona 4 Golden for the first time right now, and I had to turn the voices off cause they were driving me nuts. I searched the options for a Japanese voice track, but nope. :-(
 
Kiriku said:
This makes me think of Valkyria Chronicles, where I tried to play it with Japanese voices and English text, but even with my limited knowledge of Japanese it became apparent that a lot of times the text didn't match what was being said, to the point where I had to switch back to English voices because it got too confusing.
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VC was a bit of a different issue. The English VA localization took more liberties in the translation, and the subtitles were completely based off of the English track. Hence why when you pair those subs with the Japanese VA there's a disconnect.
 
I imported the Russian version of Stalker COP and played with all the text extracted, run through Google translate, then injected back in.

I feel like I still had a better experience than those who had to endure the English VA. :)
 
LiK said:
There are always exceptions to the rule. Certain dubs are improvements, imo. MGS etc

And not all Japanese dubs are good. Gaffers here will tell you games like Shenmue and Ni no Kuni are shit in their original languages.
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I personally thought the big problem with Shenmue wasn't the voice acting but the dialog. IE it wasn't how things were said that was the big problem it was what they were saying. (I'm looking for sailors.... I'm looking for a tattoo parlor, what's that? A place where you go for a tattoo, ETC)
 
Sometimes I like to play with a different language in each playthrough. It shakes things up.

You normally get more precise translations that get the essence of what people are saying in subtitles compared to trying to fit the right amount of english words to match mouth flaps that were tailored for a different language and a different sentence structure, while trying to make it sound natural.

I grew up watching subtitled movies so I appreciated it when games gave you the option.
I even put on english subtitles when it's in english, so I don't miss a single line *_* (so I'm one of the super weird people who really appreciate it when they supply english dub subtitles as well as proper english subtitles for the original language)

I'd like the opportunity to play any game in its original language. Playing Metro 2033 in Russian was amazing.
 
I recently played through Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner for the first time. I don't understand Japanese, but the English voice acting was bad enough to be seriously detrimental. If it was in Japanese, I would have no idea how good or bad it was. I would have preferred it in Japanese.

Briefly, assuming the written translation is "good enough": Perfect localized voice acting > Voice acting in a language I don't understand > No voice acting > Bad voice acting.

I haven't seen many dubs that I prefer over subtitles, but I honestly wish that weren't the case. Subtitles are a visual hurdle that I wish I didn't have to deal with, but having to take my eyes away from the frame and read the subtitles is still preferable to being distracted by bad or out of place voice acting.
 
kittens said:
I'm playing Persona 4 Golden for the first time right now, and I had to turn the voices off cause they were driving me nuts. I searched the options for a Japanese voice track, but nope. :-(
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That's the main reason why I can't bring myself to buy it, such a pain to hear.

Most of the time I try to keep the original voices because that's usually the best quality you will get and bad voice acting tends to completely kill the experience for me.
There are some exceptions though where the VA is still very good, like for blizzard's games, but I still have a preference for the original VA nonetheless.
 
Some localizations omit battle voices that were present in the Japanese game. I think a GameCube or Wii RPG did this.

Some localizations are terrible. Rhythm Heaven DS has English singers that put less effort into their singing compared to the Japanese version.
 
English 99.9% of the time for me. In the few cases where I did want to switch languages, I found that the Japanese track was even more annoying.

The fact that I'm not a native Japanese speaker means that some of the author's "original intent" is already lost to me, so I'm not concerned about that.
 
Most of it is cultural, like in fighting games I cant stand the characters yelling out their special moves in English, its very off putting! In Japanese however, its something youre kind of used to.

Another aspect is quality level. I feel like there isnt enough of a dubbing culture in America yet, so quality dubs are harder to come by.

Its also a matter of fit. MGS or LoU in Japanese would feel out of place, Tales games feel out of place in English.

Mostly, just give me the option.
 
Timeless said:
Some localizations omit battle voices that were present in the Japanese game. I think a GameCube or Wii RPG did this.

Some localizations are terrible. Rhythm Heaven DS has English singers that put less effort into their singing compared to the Japanese version.
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Gotcha Force should be the poster boy for this. Oh how I wish that game had an "undub" option, yea? I usually go for the dub, though.
 
Non native english speaker here. (third language in fact)

I will always go for the original audio material when possible in movies, series and videogames. The original language could be in english, french, japanese, italian or whatever really, I'll almost always go for it rather than any kind of available dub in an another language that I perfectly understand. Even for books, I'll always read it in the original language when possible.

My reasoning is pretty simple, even with the highest quality dub and the best quality translation, you'll often get minor things lost going from one language to another. These things are very easily noticeable for people that speak more than one language or that have grown among different cultures. So even if you factor in the most optimal situation of a perfect dub in my mother tongue which let's be honest... rarely happens, there are things you can miss from the author's original intent/idea/view.

This particular point is for languages that I can understand, but it can be used as a basis for material that is in a format I can't perfectly understand. I personally think that hearing the actors or game characters original voices, dialogue and intonations paired up with a good translation (even if it does not fit perfectly) is far more faithful than most dubs given my experience with the 4 languages I can read and watch stuff in.

You can also add the fact that it has been highly educational for me, learning english for me was mainly because of eurosport international which I used to watch religiously as a kid. Before I had access to the internet, and before we had english classes (which happened way later) I was already able to perfectly understand spoken/written english which obviously helped me immensely afterwards. Else, I don't think I'd be here on this forum discussing this very topic with you if I was watching eurosport arabic instead growing up.

Saying that this is a "weaboo" thing speaks to me as a very american way to look at it since most americans are used to watching stuff in english and the very rare cases of people wanting to watch stuff in a foreign language happens mainly with japanese content. The thing is. this is valid for people all around the globe and for all kind of languages. Or wait, maybe I'm a weaboo too? Thanks duckroll!
 
entrement said:
I used to a big stickler for them. I don't care much anymore. Localizations have gotten so much better. Tales of Vesperia for example.
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Agreed. I only care for undubs if the voice acting in the game has obviously been lazily done (Mega Man ZX Advent, for example).

I have heard complaints about voice acting in even Vesperia, though, which really surprised me, lol. I keep wondering if the people who claim that dubs are terrible even today were around during the PS1 era or not. Because I look back at games like Grandia and compare that to today and... yeah. Huge improvement.
 
Wheeliedude said:
I guess I can see if the dub of a game is bad enough that one would just want the original audio, but most of the time it's not as if the typical person applying an undub patch understands, say, Japanese.

Is it just putting the game's voiced audio back to its original state for "purity" reasons, or is there an exotic factor?
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In Japan, those who make voice acting are pretty good (while they may cut the budget here for dubbing), but that's not all there is to it.

Japanese acting in general is all about dramatization. And that is much better in videogame form when it was created and tested for Japanese games obviously. Many times the sentiment can be lost in a dub, and a character perception is going to be totally different depending on their voice tone.
 
I like to listen to the native language of the setting of the game. If it isn't possible, I'll usually go with English unless the VA is absolutely terrible.

There was no option of course for the wide range of languages that would have been spoken in Assassin's Creed 1, but the VA for Altair was very lacking so I set it to Spanish. Even though the Italian spoken in Ezio's time wouldn't really be the Italian spoken today, I set the voice to Italian. Assassin's Creed III took place in an English-speaking country at a time when most of the populace with which you would interact would be speaking English, so English it was.
 
I understand English, so when an English dub is bad, I can tell. I don't really understand Japanese, so when a Japanese dub is bad, I can't tell particularly well.

I'm sure sometimes the Japanese dub is actually better, but, even if it's not, so long as the English dub is bad, I'd prefer to listen to the Japanese one (unless there's some character with a horribly shrill voice, or something).

I don't mind an English dub if it's actually good.
 
For games I'm fine with dub. But I just can't take it seriously listening to English VA try to talk about the nonsense you see in jrpgs seriously.
 
For me, it is also about consistency with the setting. If i am playing Persona with Japanese teens id rather have it in Japanese. If it s uncharted, in American. For AC2 i switched it to Italian but i always thought it was so so stupid that you couldnt have the animus and the real world scenes in two different languages!!!

All the other reasons (closer to the creators, more talented actors etc) also apply

But it is of course less important than for a movie (i havent watched a dubbed movie in 15 years, and i m European so it s not like i only watch american movies)
 
Durante said:
Well, some of us simply don't like dubs. I'd rather have the original audio with subtitles, be it in games or movies, and regardless of their country of origin.

I do feel like the original creator's intent is always most directly expressed in the original language -- that much should be obvious.
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Yup, this ^^^

I always prefer original language and subtitles, overdubs just look weird to me having somebody else's voice not suiting a person's appearance.
 
I find the character archtypes that are used in typically undubbed games (JRPGs) just don't translate 1:1 into American actor voice tracks.

The same goes for anime, hearing perky Americans just doesn't work for me. It's not Japanese being superior because I can't understand it or it's exotic or whatever else some people have said - The same can be said for the opposite. I'm sure Gears of War or Skyrim soundtracks sound better in English than Japanese. It's that simple.

You know what soundtrack did work - DQVIII, Yangus is great voice work, though IIRC the Japanese version didn't have voice work. Still they did a good job using English actors rather than American, which again goes with the idea of matching the game world and character types to the voice artists. American cartoon VO artists just wouldn't cut it.
 
I go for whichever sounds better. I prefer English, 'cause that's my native language.

But I think going through a game in another language during another playthrough for the sake of change is fine. Might make it a fresher experience.
 
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