A Quick look at the Evangelion Dub Compared to the Original

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A Quick look at the Evangelion Dub Compared to the Original

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Postby Limienerd » Fri Jun 03, 2016 1:34 pm

Part 1
https://youtu.be/afBf9n355BE

Part 2 - 14/06/2016
https://youtu.be/xwZFTZLOlHA

Part 3: 24/06/2016
https://youtu.be/lBwRMDjM4F0

This was orginally intedned to be rather different. This may be a series though if I do that I would like the video to be shorter and in a sightly different style.

I would appreciate feedback. I did struggle to get this on youtube and I hope it still gets the message across.
Last edited by Limienerd on Fri Jun 24, 2016 11:42 am, edited 2 times in total.

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Re: A Quick look at the Evangelion Dub Compared to the Original

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Postby pwhodges » Fri Jun 03, 2016 2:55 pm

It's well known that the first few episodes' dub is substandard (regardless of your view of the rest). This can reasonably be put down to the fact that the translation and dub was done with almost everyone having no knowledge of the series at all other than the two episodes on the videotapes as they were each sent.

I did feel, though, that your throwaway line near the end to the effect that almost no dub is any good did rather lessen the validity of your preceding criticism by showing you to be unsympathetic from the off. And I'm afraid your mispronunciation of Fuyutsuki grated (there's no "o" in there).

Wouldn't it be nice if there was a new dub for a BD version! I don't know what chance there is, but perhaps it's simply a matter of enough people asking! Note, for instance, that Funimation are redubbing EscaFlowne (which is required because the BD version has extended video) and are paying for it through a (well-overfunded) Kickstarter.
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Re: A Quick look at the Evangelion Dub Compared to the Original

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Postby Limienerd » Fri Jun 03, 2016 4:13 pm

I mentioned in the video that people had already seen the series when they started the dubbing unless they are misrembering when they retold there stories in 2005ish. I've also spot checked later episodes and they have the same problems as the first one, like when I showed a bit of EOE.

I remember adlibing that line and thinking to myself dub fans wouldn't like that but I kept it in because I would rather be blunt about it. Yeah you're right i mispronouced his name though i've learnt to care less and less about that through the years.

I'm rather uninterested in dubs for various reasons. I think what I'm more interested in is that a dub is faithful enough that if I'm talking to someone I feel like I'm talking about the same show. This dub is not the same tv show in dub formas the original. It would be nice for there to be a new dub but considering how expensive the evangelion tv series licence is, it seems doubtful.

View Original Postpwhodges wrote:It's well known that the first few episodes' dub is substandard (regardless of your view of the rest). This can reasonably be put down to the fact that the translation and dub was done with almost everyone having no knowledge of the series at all other than the two episodes on the videotapes as they were each sent.

I did feel, though, that your throwaway line near the end to the effect that almost no dub is any good did rather lessen the validity of your preceding criticism by showing you to be unsympathetic from the off. And I'm afraid your mispronunciation of Fuyutsuki grated (there's no "o" in there).

Wouldn't it be nice if there was a new dub for a BD version! I don't know what chance there is, but perhaps it's simply a matter of enough people asking! Note, for instance, that Funimation are redubbing EscaFlowne (which is required because the BD version has extended video) and are paying for it through a (well-overfunded) Kickstarter.

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Re: A Quick look at the Evangelion Dub Compared to the Original

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Postby pwhodges » Fri Jun 03, 2016 5:09 pm

View Original PostLimienerd wrote:I mentioned in the video that people had already seen the series when they started the dubbing unless they are misrembering when they retold there stories in 2005ish.

I noted that you said that, but I recall reading the exact opposite; I guess I need to look for a source before discussing that further.

View Original PostLimienerd wrote:i mispronouced his name though i've learnt to care less and less about that through the years.

Isn't that attitude rather at odds with claiming to care so much about the accuracy of the dub?
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Re: A Quick look at the Evangelion Dub Compared to the Original

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Postby Limienerd » Fri Jun 03, 2016 6:03 pm

View Original Postpwhodges wrote:I noted that you said that, but I recall reading the exact opposite; I guess I need to look for a source before discussing that further.


Isn't that attitude rather at odds with claiming to care so much about the accuracy of the dub?

Oh It wasn't my intention. I would say pronouciation is less important than the other problems with the engllish adaptation. I would say it's more important to be accurate in a adaptation than in a critique video but yes it is a flaw in the video I created.

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Re: A Quick look at the Evangelion Dub Compared to the Original

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Postby NemZ » Sat Jun 04, 2016 5:16 am

Frankly this comes across as overly concerned with some pretty trifling details. By the standards of the time it wasn't bad.
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Re: A Quick look at the Evangelion Dub Compared to the Original

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Postby Limienerd » Sat Jun 04, 2016 6:57 am

View Original PostNemZ wrote:Frankly this comes across as overly concerned with some pretty trifling details. By the standards of the time it wasn't bad.

Fair enough. My intention was to go over the basics in this one but I kind of didn't like only covering one episode and talking about the minor changes but most of the work had been done so I finished it by the time I got to that conclusion. I think it's less interesting but important to talk about minor changes and no one seems to talk about them (and they do create inconsistencies/changes in characters personalities/story).

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Re: A Quick look at the Evangelion Dub Compared to the Original

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Postby Limienerd » Tue Jun 14, 2016 10:33 am

I created a additional video on this topic.

Part 2 - 14/06/2016
https://youtu.be/xwZFTZLOlHA

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Re: A Quick look at the Evangelion Dub Compared to the Original

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Postby pwhodges » Tue Jun 14, 2016 11:57 am

Glad to have provided you with some material for it :wink:

On dubs in general, just two brief comments. You mention acting to mouth flaps as a reason for English dubs to be inferior - but of course the Japanese voice actors are acting to mouth flaps as well; although I can think of one film (a couple of decades ago) where they went back after dubbing to adjust the mouth flaps to the recorded (Japanese) dub, I'm not under the impression that this is often done. Also, you ignore some reasons for people to use an English dub - it can be (and is, I know, for some) a matter of finding the distraction of reading subtitles (and in some cases working out what they even mean) as much of an issue as hearing a different version of the dialogue. Oh, a third comment - there are, of course, also bad Japanese dubs (though not the Eva one, I agree).

On the main part of your video, I have nothing much worth adding to my previous comments, really. I find it hard to agree that "yeah" instead of "yes" is a less accurate translation, though.
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Re: A Quick look at the Evangelion Dub Compared to the Original

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Postby Limienerd » Tue Jun 14, 2016 4:54 pm

View Original Postpwhodges wrote:Glad to have provided you with some material for it :wink:

On dubs in general, just two brief comments. You mention acting to mouth flaps as a reason for English dubs to be inferior - but of course the Japanese voice actors are acting to mouth flaps as well; although I can think of one film (a couple of decades ago) where they went back after dubbing to adjust the mouth flaps to the recorded (Japanese) dub, I'm not under the impression that this is often done. Also, you ignore some reasons for people to use an English dub - it can be (and is, I know, for some) a matter of finding the distraction of reading subtitles (and in some cases working out what they even mean) as much of an issue as hearing a different version of the dialogue. Oh, a third comment - there are, of course, also bad Japanese dubs (though not the Eva one, I agree).

On the main part of your video, I have nothing much worth adding to my previous comments, really. I find it hard to agree that "yeah" instead of "yes" is a less accurate translation, though.

Most animation production the voices are done before the exact flaps and the basically inbetweening, details etc and a lot of the time colouring has not been done. The original actors are not acting to mouth flaps (they have more freedom but they are also. The english are nearly always and in terms of anime, I can't think of any where they have not acted to mouth flaps. Japanese dub is the wrong term since they are not dubbing.

I mentioned in my prior video if you had learning diffculties etc that it is understandable (This is say 3% of people). I think a lot of people that are saying that that aren't used to a language can be the case but for most you would defintely not say that about a foreign film (non animated film). I would say reading subtiltes is distracting from the experience but nowhere near the level to any dub interpration of any medium.

In terms of the yeah and yes thing. At the start of the video I said these are the things I will not mention as much or something to that degree. Which is the whole yes or yeah thing which was a example. It's a acceptable way to translate it yes but the difference in saying yeah and yes shows a different personality. Translating is a art and not a science so I will give leeway to a degree having done a bunch of it myself but there wasn't enough thought put into how Shinji would act. Japanese Shinji in that situation would not have said yeah he would have said yes. Yeah would have shown more familarity with who he was speaking with and maybre slightly disrepectful which English Shinji has been prone to show.

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Re: A Quick look at the Evangelion Dub Compared to the Original

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Postby pwhodges » Tue Jun 14, 2016 5:18 pm

View Original PostLimienerd wrote:Most animation production the voices are done before the exact flaps and the basically inbetweening, details etc and a lot of the time colouring has not been done. The original actors are not acting to mouth flaps

Thanks for the correction. However, a little research tells me that although this is true for US animation, it is not generally so for Japanese animation. This page (which mentions the film I referred to - Akira) has the following paragraph:
View Original PostTV Tropes wrote:In anime, the Japanese studios create the animation first, and then record the voices. This means that characters' mouth often just moves up and down, however, the larger the animation budget, the more effort animation studios make to make the lip flaps match the dialogue (Honey and Clover is a good example with mouth flaps that match the lines perfectly). With American cartoons, the voices are recorded first and the animation is built around them. This means the mouths move in a manner much more consistent with the dialogue, at the cost of making it more difficult to translate into another language. This difference can be very clearly seen in the English dub of AKIRA, a Japanese animated movie which, unusually, recorded the voices before the animation and took pains to make the mouth flaps match the dialogue. The result is that the English version looks distinctly off. Ironically, live-action dub scripts are easier to write because the natural movements of the mouth while speaking are a lot more vague than in cartoons.
(There are two English dubs of Akira - It would be interesting to see whether one matches the mouth flaps consistently better than the other.)

Limienerd wrote:I mentioned in my prior video if you had learning difficulties etc that it is understandable [...] I would say reading subtitles is distracting from the experience but nowhere near the level to any dub interpretation of any medium.

You can, of course, say that for yourself, but not in general for other people. It's actually pretty insulting to suggest that only those with learning difficulties might prefer dubs; and you may, for instance, have a different view when you are my age (for reasons you will discover in the fullness of time).
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Re: A Quick look at the Evangelion Dub Compared to the Original

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Postby Limienerd » Tue Jun 14, 2016 6:13 pm

View Original Postpwhodges wrote:Thanks for the correction. However, a little research tells me that although this is true for US animation, it is not generally so for Japanese animation. This page (which mentions the film I referred to - Akira) has the following paragraph:
(There are two English dubs of Akira - It would be interesting to see whether one matches the mouth flaps consistently better than the other.)

You can, of course, say that for yourself, but not in general for other people. It's actually pretty insulting to suggest that only those with learning difficulties might prefer dubs; and you may, for instance, have a different view when you are my age (for reasons you will discover in the fullness of time).

The mouth flaps etc and basics are done but not the timing of the mouth flaps so yeah maybe I didn't explain myself well enough. Yeah I've read/seen multiple sources that makes me confident in this( Japanese actor's blogs etc). For example some of them have mouth movements when they do their recordings but they are not the final timings for the mouth movement and as I've said before some have barely or no animation at all.

On the Akira thing yeah it's interesting which would be more accurate on a technical note though I'm more interested in faithfulness of them.

I did say etc so it wasn't the only thing (for example you can deterioration of the brain/eyes etc but if that was the case then you would appreciate the series less/and my videos even less). I still stand that in general people should watch the original language no matter their language.

I imagine the connotation of the word learning difficulties is maybe what could be insulting. I think the biggest reason for people watching a dub is a mixture of the unwillingness to try something new, getting used to experience they are not used to, having to concentrate on something, wanting to do other things at the same time etc and not actually the whole learning difficulties things etc.

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Re: A Quick look at the Evangelion Dub Compared to the Original

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Postby Bagheera » Wed Jun 15, 2016 3:34 am

View Original PostLimienerd wrote:Japanese dub is the wrong term since they are not dubbing.


The English isn't either, since it isn't overlaying a new voice track on top of the one that's already there -- it's just swapping out one voice track for another. We shouldn't be calling either of them dubs, but we should be consistent in describing them since they really are the same thing.
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Re: A Quick look at the Evangelion Dub Compared to the Original

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Postby Limienerd » Thu Jun 23, 2016 10:24 pm

View Original PostBagheera wrote:The English isn't either, since it isn't overlaying a new voice track on top of the one that's already there -- it's just swapping out one voice track for another. We shouldn't be calling either of them dubs, but we should be consistent in describing them since they really are the same thing.

That's it's original meaning or you could say a production term.
The accepted terminology on Anime etc is to call the English versions on English home releases is to call them dubs. The production of a original version and a adaptation in terms of voices is produced rather differently though maybe on surface level they may seem the same.

Also Additional Video
Part 3:
https://youtu.be/lBwRMDjM4F0

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Re: A Quick look at the Evangelion Dub Compared to the Original

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Postby Bagheera » Fri Jun 24, 2016 5:18 am

View Original PostLimienerd wrote:The accepted terminology on Anime etc is to call the English versions on English home releases is to call them dubs. The production of a original version and a adaptation in terms of voices is produced rather differently though maybe on surface level they may seem the same.


No, they are the same. There's nothing superficial about it, it's just one vocal track or another. There is no meaningful difference beyond the quality of the performances. If you want to critique those performances, go nuts; I'm with you most of the time when you say the original Japanese is superior. But don't try to tell me the English vocal track is a dub while the Japanese isn't, because that's just flat out not true. They are exactly the same in every relevant particular.
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Re: A Quick look at the Evangelion Dub Compared to the Original

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Postby Reichu » Fri Jun 24, 2016 7:00 am

You know there's an easy way to resolve this, right? (That is: linking to relevant information instead of repeatedly asserting, "no, it's this way because I say so".)
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Re: A Quick look at the Evangelion Dub Compared to the Original

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Postby Limienerd » Fri Jun 24, 2016 12:08 pm

View Original PostBagheera wrote:No, they are the same. There's nothing superficial about it, it's just one vocal track or another. There is no meaningful difference beyond the quality of the performances. If you want to critique those performances, go nuts; I'm with you most of the time when you say the original Japanese is superior. But don't try to tell me the English vocal track is a dub while the Japanese isn't, because that's just flat out not true. They are exactly the same in every relevant particular.

Kind of coming from where from what Reichu is saying. Is there a way you can convince me that you are correct with consideration to the response I made. They are different vocal tracks yes. The main difference of a original production versus a alternate audio version is that the original production is not a finalised version in terms of visuals and maybe sound effects etc (which allows somewhat more freedom, and the finalised visuals are made to fit the exact words/sounds being done) whereas the English adaptation is using footage that isn't going to be altered (well modern releases anyway). I understand that maybe you don't like the connotation of the word dub but it is accepted lexicon/terminology in today's market. For example the word "dub" can have several meanings and one of them is the definition that you are saying. Maybe point to an article or something if you're struggling to explain further.

If this a circular discussion then feel free to ignore this reply. Using a word instead of dub isn't really a issue for me, I would say it's more that the recording/planning process is a bit different. I thought I explained myself clearly but it's hard to put myself in other peoples shoes and to see what they are understanding in regards to what I'm saying.


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