I'm gonna rant about the French version.

[XD375]

People do it all the time for the English version, so I'm gonna do it for the crappy French version.

I wouldn't know if it's Canadian-exclusive, but the movies 5-7 have French dubs on them.

I used to watch it on a French cartoon channel I used to get, but nobody was watching so they it got cancelled, possibly around the Advanced or the end of Master Quest.

The first thing is - they dub it into English, then they redub the English dub into French. Every time someone grunts, says "Mmm..." with food, or anything that doesn't involve a word, they just use the English voice, then it switches to a completely different voice for the talking. Jirachi: Wish Maker is the worst dub. At the end, you when they're all singing, you hear May's Japanese voice, and the others are using their English voices. Then we get a switch to completely different voices. Jirachi was more low-pitched than in the English version, except when it was laughing, which used the higher-pitched English voice. You know what the thing is? Ash sounds even girlier and less emotional than Natochenny, May actually has a really nice voice in the French version. Brock sounds like his current PUSA voice with a touch of the Mastermind 1.0 voice. Max sounds like a higher-pitched version of his current voice.

Then you hear English music playing anytime other than the theme song or the Jukebox/PokéRap, which I can't remember if they were even included in the French version; it's been so long. If they're not gonna do up French songs, then why not use the original Japanese songs? I personally like the English songs better, but most people don't.

And that is my pointless rant which I don't expect many if any replies to.

 

[Blackjack Gabbiani]

I've never understood why countries use the English dub as the base. Wouldn't it be cheaper to get the original? That way they only have to pay one group instead of two.

 

[XD375]

That's partly what I'm saying.

 

[Habunake]

May's voice was the Japanese one in the US WM as well when she sung. I barely noticed though, sounded way better then the other characters humming...-_-

And, Ash is named Sacha, which is neat.

 

[XD375]

That's the thing. A French show has three peoples' English voices and one's Japanese voice, while they should be using their French voices.

XD375's Backpack is looking pretty good right about now...

 

[Dogasu]

I've never understood why countries use the English dub as the base. Wouldn't it be cheaper to get the original? That way they only have to pay one group instead of two.

It's a hell of a lot easier to find someone who can translate from English to French than it is to find someone who can translate from Japanese to French.

 

[Sunain]

FRENCH HARLEY FOR THE WIN!... thats ALL I'm going to say. Some of you fortunate to have watched the French episodes will know what I'm talking about. </Random comment>

 

[Blackjack Gabbiani]

It's a hell of a lot easier to find someone who can translate from English to French than it is to find someone who can translate from Japanese to French.

If they don't have anyone who can translate from Japanese, they have no business dubbing anime in the first place.

 

[Zhen Lin]

Ah, but they could well be busy dubbing American cartoons.

 

[TeddiUrsa]

If they don't have anyone who can translate from Japanese, they have no business dubbing anime in the first place.

I can only speak for Germany, but I think it is the same situation in france.

Japanese-German tranlsations are harder and therefore more expensive than a simple english-german translation.

Many channels try to get a US version of an anime if one is out before getting the japanese version.

Wouldn't it be cheaper to get the original? That way they only have to pay one group instead of two.

I doubt that the french studio has to pay two groups. they only pay the US group.


I´m just happy that we got a direct japanese port of One Piece and not the US version..thank god we were quicker ^^;

 

[Blackjack Gabbiani]

I thought that they had to pay the Japanese side for the advertising rights or something, since it's their property and not that of the English dubbers.

 

[AtoMan]

I've never understood why countries use the English dub as the base. Wouldn't it be cheaper to get the original? That way they only have to pay one group instead of two.

Because thay have to.

And countries who use english Pokemon names don't have to redub them.

I believe from the same reasons non-asian countries aren't allowed to air Sentai.

And, Ash is named Sacha, which is neat.

Only in French French dub, which also redubs Pokemon names. There's Canadian French dub which is done faster and leaves all names intact.

It's a hell of a lot easier to find someone who can translate from English to French than it is to find someone who can translate from Japanese to French.

If that was the issue... France and Germany airs a LOT anime dubbed straight from Japanese, so that's not the reason.

I can only speak for Germany, but I think it is the same situation in france.

Japanese-German tranlsations are harder and therefore more expensive than a simple english-german translation.

Many channels try to get a US version of an anime if one is out before getting the japanese version.

I doubt that the french studio has to pay two groups. they only pay the US group.

I don't think anyone even tries to reach The Pokemon Company, Japan, to get the rights. AFAIK 4kids (now TAJ, but there's no BF dub outside US AFAIK) gets exclusive rights.

I´m just happy that we got a direct japanese port of One Piece and not the US version..thank god we were quicker ^^;

Lucky lucky ^^

 

[Zhen Lin]

Actually, PUSA handles worldwide, minus East Asia IIRC, licensing, not TAJ.

 

[Snake Bandage]

In Israel, we got Pokemon dubbed from English because it was the easy and familiar thing to do. Buying anime straight from Japan was still too big a gamble for us when Pokemon arrived in the west. We got plenty of anime in the beginning of the 90's, but we dubbed it from French and Dutch dubs. Now, seven years after Pokemon first aired, it'll be completely silly to switch gears and get the Japanese dub. I'm not sure we can even do that. PUSA's in charge of distribution and licensing in the west, isn't it?

Of course, nowadays, after seeing how big anime can be with children (DBZ was dubbed from Japanese here and was a humongous success, as was Card Captor Sakura), about 90% of the anime we get is from Japanese, and most of it is popular and subbed rather than dubbed. In fact, the only anime I can think of that was dubbed straight from Japanese in the last year or so is One Piece. But when Pokemon was popularized in the west, that just wasn't the case.

I wish to complain about the current state of the Pokemon dub (which was so great for the first four or five seasons and is now so bad I can barely look at its direction). Can I do that here?

 

[Dogasu]

If they don't have anyone who can translate from Japanese, they have no business dubbing anime in the first place.

Why not? To the dubbers (and the viewers), a foreign dub is a foreign dub. The original language of the animation really doesn't matter to most people.

I mean, the same thing is done with American dubbing. Many studios get rougly translated scripts sent to them straight from Japan, meaning all they have to do is de-Engrish everything and make sure it fits in the mouth flaps. I doubt there are more than one or two people at a company like 4Kids who speak even basic Japanese, yet they dub anime all the time.

If that was the issue... France and Germany airs a LOT anime dubbed straight from Japanese, so that's not the reason.

I said it's easier. I didn't say that it was the only way things are done.

 

[QuietDragon]

Gah, that sounds nuts. So you get Japanese plus English voices and then suddenly the Canadian French voices come back?! xD;;;

The Arabic dub did that once with Larvitar's speaking English voice, otherwise everything else is done by the Arabic VAs of the human characters (the Pokemon keep whatever voices they had in the English dub).

Sunain, what about French Harley?

 

[TeddiUrsa]

If that was the issue... France and Germany airs a LOT anime dubbed straight from Japanese, so that's not the reason.

I wouldn´t say "a LOT". "One Piece" and "Detective Conan" are the only recent anime I can think of atm.

Dogasu is right here. at least for germany which sometimes even tries to get the french version as a basis before attending the japanese version.

Japanese translations are more complicated and therefore more expensive.

But we do get Japanese Openings with german lyrics most of the time. I still don´t know what basis the german Digimon had since we had original BMG and dubbed openings...

 

[AtoMan]

Openings - dubbed, yeah, but 1st Digimon opening was completely different to what i saw in Polish TV (and they don't make their own openings, just take english one and dub... or not).

In fact, when anime started appearing here, it was mostly voice over Italian dub, then some over French (DB, DBZ and Dr Slump comes to mind). Some where did over RAW (Sailor Moon, Slayers, DBGT!)... but nowadays, we only get either dub over US dub, or voice over US dub (although not much, like Beyblade 1st season); some stations ocassionally show voice-over-RAW, or even subtitled, but those stations are ghard to get and if you get one, you probably don't have any other.

Honestly, noone even thinks about dubbing "popular" anime from Japanese.

The Arabic dub did that once with Larvitar's speaking English voice, otherwise everything else is done by the Arabic VAs of the human characters (the Pokemon keep whatever voices they had in the English dub).

They did the same. There's no country who dubs over Pokemon voice, unless:
1) Pokemon name is different in this country (US [but not always!], Germany, France, China and Korea)
2) They had to do it for various reason (Rachael Lillis' Pikachu comes to mind)
3) Without any reason xD (4kids)

 

[michan]

When I was younger I watched PoKéMoN on TV, but I felt that something was wrong. It didn't look like real anime. It looked just like the other American cartoons. Why? Well, 4Kids' (this was long before PUSA's time) cencorships in several scenes are still there (the cut in Beauty and the Beach, for example), the characters speak 'Swenglish' (Swedish with an American English accent and a lot of American loanwords) and all text in kanji is tranlated to English.

When it comes to PoKéMoN, the translators sadly has no choice, since awful copyright and patent laws prohibits them to use anything else but the American dub as source.

Something (that turned out to be not so) very unique to the Swedish dub is that the PoKéRaP was banned from being shown in TV. There is a law that forbids showing comercials for children below eleven years of age. And since all pokémon are trademarks the PoKéRaP is a comercial.

 

[FabuVinny]

My exposure to the French dub is just through the titles... and I really love some of them.