This is very common, only a few anime providers actually translate things accurately, and then its usually rather jumbled up or difficult to understand if you don't know the entemoogy of the Japanese language.
Often, what tends to happen is phrases are swapped for their western equivelent.
For example
In the west, you would say "He saw his life flash before his eyes"
In Japan, the equivelent would be "He saw a 'spinning lantern' (Ok I've taken liberties with this translation)"
They mean the same thing, but are described differently.
Unfortunatly, Disney have perposfully changed a few details too in order to catter for a slightly younger audince, but this is besides the point.
If you live in Europe, try the new DVD from Optimum. It has better subtitles than the Disney version. They're not perfect, but they're better. You can import it into the US, but you would need a R2 DVD player.
I have the Chinese version, which has more accurate translations, but that's probably not much use to you unless you speak Chinese.
English Language Anime: Dub it, don't pervert it.
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Chilisfootball
19 years ago
" This is very common, only a few anime providers actually translate things accurately, and then its usually rather jumbled up or difficult to understand if you don't know the entemoogy of the Japanese language.
Often, what tends to happen is phrases are swapped for their western equivelent.
For example
In the west, you would say "He saw his life flash before his eyes"
In Japan, the equivelent would be "He saw a 'spinning lantern' (Ok I've taken liberties with this translation)"
They mean the same thing, but are described differently. "
Ok my only problem is that from what little japanese i understand (neko = cat)
and arrigoto (horribly mispelled) means thank you.
At one point in the film she repeats what one of the cats says about the cat kingdom neko-(japanese word for kingdom) but the " translation" is Well that was strange.
At the end of the film she waves to the baron and the fat cat leaving saying " Arrigoto" (again mispelled but it means Good bye) The " translation " was Ill miss you.
And at times there was no talking on the screen but there was dialogue going across.
This was a horrible job by Disney at Translation because they didnt do any.
It was just a copy of the Dub script.
OK btw i know my spelling is horrible but it was 3am when i wrote this.
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marsodyssey2010
19 years ago
Disney commonly put in extra text where there was non before when dubbing Ghibli films.
for example, the first five minutes of Laputa have almost no dialog at all in Japanese, yet Disney puts in half a dozen lines.
English Language Anime: Dub it, don't pervert it.
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pinay_animerican
17 years ago
It was indeed a total copy of the dub script. You can clearly see that if you put on the English dub with the supposed Japanese translation subtitles. I think they did it to get the same effect and emotions with American children that Japanese children got when they saw it with the original dialogue. For example when Haru is in the Baron's house, she thanks Muta for agreeing to look after her but accidentally calls him "Buta" (which means "pig" in Japanese). The English dub had her call Muta "Moo-ta" to have a similar effect of Haru making a slip-up with Muta's name and referring to his fat physique. Is it a difficult task because even with subtitles, there'd have to be some kind of fan-sub type note pointing out that "buta" means "pig" (one of the good features of fan-subs =D).
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Tweekums
17 years ago
The subtitles also say Moota and he asks if she thinks he is a cow, at least they do on the UK Optimum Release. I think the change makes sense personally, it is in the spirit of the original.
I'm only going to say this once: stay out of Camberwick Green - Sam Tyler
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