I have noticed that a lot of people mention that when dubbing from Japanese to English some of the meaning gets lost. I was wondering how much, and also whether it is worth the effort to try and learn Japanese (I have actually been contemplating about learning Japanese for over a year now). Also anyone know any good Books/Programs that were found to be usefull.

Well subtitles are a translation too, although they are sometimes more accurate than dubbing translations. But unless you know Japanese, you will be dealing with a translation.

Subtitles are almost always a more accurate translation than the dub because the lines don't have to be judged in terms of how they sound coming out of someone's mouth, and they don't have to be rewritten to match the character's mouths. If you look at subtitles you'll realize sometimes just how ackward they would sound if spoken.

Hunter21 wrote:I have noticed that a lot of people mention that when dubbing from Japanese to English some of the meaning gets lost. I was wondering how much, and also whether it is worth the effort to try and learn Japanese (I have actually been contemplating about learning Japanese for over a year now). Also anyone know any good Books/Programs that were found to be usefull.

If you are extremely interested in Japanese, more than just as an anime fan, then I'd say go for it! I myself have been studying Japanese for about 4 years, before I even became an anime fan. Japanese is a very fun language to learn if you're extremely interested in it. If you're not, its pure hell. You have to learn a sentence structure completely different than english and the kanji is a huge task. In terms of learning the kanji, nothings better than James Heisig's books for learning what they mean in english. After that, dealing with Japanese readings and combos, you're pretty much on your own as Heisig is quite poor in that respect. You'll probably want to look for a book by Kenneth Henshall or Jack Halpern to help with that. For grammar, the book published by Baron by Nobuo Akiyama's pretty good.

Subtitles are almost always more faithful than the original. The rare occasion is when the subtitle is actually just a caption of the dub.

Subtitles don't require being synched to mouth movements, or having a verbal fluidity to them, so they are usually more faithful. But they are always somewhat adapted/abstracted from the original.

If you're interested in reading a more "literal" translation of Evangelion, I would suggest the following, I don't know where it was originally published, but its archived on quite a few web sited. Credits are contained within the files.

Literal Translation Series
http://www.evamonkey.com/literal_translation/

As for learning Japanese, I would suggest having more motivation to learn than because of anime. Japanese isn't by an measure an easy language to learn. The Japanese classes in college are populated by a variety of Japanese gaming/anime/culture geeks. And pretty much the only ones who do well are the academically successful and or extremely obssessed and committed to learning it for their fandom. I of course am not one of individuals. But I'm going to give it another shot this fall semester, because I'm hell bent on doing research abroad for this site.

Thanks Quiddity, actually I was interested more because it is a useful language to know in the work world - one of us unfortunately decided to leave college with a BS, not a masters (reminder-kick self hard). Also I have starting to rewatch the episoids with the subs, and am seeing some of what you are talking about.