The Importance of Language in Anime
Every now and then, someone asks, “Is it better to watch anime subbed or dubbed?” Obviously, the answer to this question largely involves personal preferences. For instance, while I normally prefer subs, there’s something wonderful about Ed’s English voice in Cowboy Bebop. Alternatively, there’s something absolutely hilarious about hearing the actual Russian accents in Yuri!!! on ICE that makes me want to watch the dub even though I’ve already seen the whole thing subbed.
Proponents of dubs have a couple of arguments, first and foremost being that dubs have gotten a lot better in the past decade. Very few shows suffer from the problems so common in the early 90’s. There’s no Brock saying “wow, I sure do love doughnuts,” while eating something that is quite obviously not a doughnut, nor are there many instances of absolutely intolerable voices shrieking “Mini-MoOoOoOoOon!” Additionally, they typically don’t change characters’ names or edit out footage anymore. Since these were the primary charges against dubs, their elimination has also eliminated most of the objections to them.
Another argument is that something is lost in having to read the words, and happen to I agree. I spend a lot of time with my eyes glued to the bottom of the screen, even for shows I’ve seen before. Given that whole experiment with a gorilla dancing across the screen, there’s a good chance I’m missing a fair amount of action onscreen.
The best argument, in my opinion, is that you can watch dubbed anime while doing other things. This is, in fact, the reason my husband prefers dub, and if I owned a treadmill or stationary bike, you can bet I’d be watching my shows dubbed so I could multitask and feel all healthy about it. (But let’s be honest, I’d probably give up after a couple days and go back to lounging about in my comfy computer chair.)
But despite these admittedly good reasons, I think subbed is the way to go — assuming you don’t suffer from chronic slow reading abilities. Actually, learning Japanese is really the way to go, but I’ll assume that’s not on the average anime viewer’s agenda. I understand. Even with a Japanese degree, and seven months of WaniKani behind me, I still can’t watch shows RAW. And even if I could, there’s context I would miss out on because I’m just not Japanese.
Basically, though, while I said a lot gets lost in having to read the words, a lot more gets lost in translation. For the sake of this not becoming eternally long, I’ll focus on just a few items that are difficult to translate well and the methods of dealing with them.
Side notes are, I think, the most obvious reason a person should watch subbed over dubbed. They’re useful in a variety of contexts. For instance, Yakitate!! Japan (Yakitate) is translated as “Freshly Baked, from Japan!” but that loses the pun inherent in the name. “Pan” is Japanese for bread, so this anime about Japanese bread is using “Ja-pan” as a form of wordplay. Yet we have no way of conveying this in a dub, while a good sub can stick a note on the top or side. It’s not perfect, of course, but better than never knowing.
From the same series, the word for horse in Japanese is “uma,” and the word for delicious is “umai.” And a slangy type thing in Japanese is to change an “a” sound to “e.” Combining all three, when a horse tastes delicious bread in Yakitate, it goes “umeeeeeeeeeee!” With a side note, a sub can easily explain this, but how would we do that in English? “Horse” and “delicious” (or “yum”) have nothing to do with each other. The heavy presence of puns in this show means I doubt it will ever have a dub. It would just be prohibitively difficult.
Outside of wordplay, subs have the option of just adding a note above or on the side explaining further depth of concept. So if they’re, say, talking about Nasu no Yoichi in Drifters, the subbers could potentially just add on the side saying: “oh, this is a famous bowman, and their name is often used for bows in games such as Final Fantasy,” which is something that will typically be known by Japanese viewers, but not necessarily by American viewers.
Additionally, difficult to translate phrases can be translated via side note. In Japanese culture, there’s a belief that every item has its own spirit. Some shows reference that using the phrase “yaoyorozu,” which gets translated as “myriad” mostly. So, say, when someone says “so-and-so can access the power of the myriad gods,” what they really mean is that so-and-so can access the power of the spirits inside every single thing in the world. A side note could easily explain this, while a dub viewer would be left just thinking, “wow, Japanese people worship a heck of a lot of gods.”
Of course, it’s not as though dubbed anime can’t have side notes, and some do. However, because it’s a dub, most viewers won’t be expecting text to suddenly appear on their screen, causing them to have to go back and re-watch the scene to read the note. Granted, sometimes notes are long enough even in subs that this has to happen. No system is perfect.
Besides wordplay and conveying historical/cultural significance, certain language conventions are difficult to translate accurately. Slang, for instance, is iffy at best in translations. In Boku Dake ga Inai Machi, the kids all say “shitakke” to each other instead of more typical partings like “ja ne.” That’s because their area/time uses this as slang. But how do you translate this into English? “Bye” versus “see ya” doesn’t really have the same connotation — and connotations are an entire different topic that I just don’t have time to get into, but suffice to say, they often don’t translate well either.
The most common example of hard-to-translate conventions is name suffixes. If you’re reading this article, there’s a good chance you know the typical ones, like -tan, -chan, -kun, -san, and -sama. If you don’t, though, they indicate a level of formality, and are important enough that some dubs have started to use them. Most don’t though, which is a problem. For instance, in Hai to Gensou no Grimgar, Yume calls Haruhiko “Haru-kun” while someone else starts calling him “Haru.” The first is a fairly familiar term, suitable for two friends, while the other is super duper familiar and indicates a much closer relationship than the other. It’s likely that a dub would leave out this naming convention though, removing a layer of meaning from the show, and also leaving viewers confused as to why other characters freak out at the second and not the first.
Additionally, shows that choose not to use suffixes often end up using things like “Mr.” or “Miss,” which don’t come across nearly as naturally in many cases. For instance, it’s common to translate, say, “Sasamiya-san” as “Miss Sasamiya,” but if that person’s the speaker’s classmate, it would be exceedingly strange to call her that. Which leads to another point. On occasion, you can’t help but use a Japanese word. Whether it’s a Japanese name — good try at avoiding this, original Sailor Moon — or terms that just can’t be translated, sometimes a good translation just has to not be translated. And in these cases, it just sounds weird. You know this word isn’t in the same language. And while you get similar things in Japanese, in those cases it’s meant to sound foreign, while, say, a main character’s name should not.
As I mentioned in the beginning, I like the Cowboy Bebop dub, but it doesn’t have to worry about this. Spike, Jet, Ed, Faye… The characters’ names aren’t Japanese to begin with, so it’s not a problem. In Sword Art Online though, every single time they say Kirito in English I can’t suppress a cringe. It just doesn’t sound natural with the rest of the speech — largely because that Japanese ‘r’ isn’t a natural sound in English.
Of course, as I said, the best way to do things would be to learn Japanese. There are so many things that you’ll miss even with the best subs in the world. Take Kill la Kill, for example. (Spoilers ahead if you haven’t seen it.) In Kill la Kill, Ragyo is trying to control people using the Life Fibers embedded in their school uniforms. Uniform in Japanese is “seifuku,” which is made out of the kanji for “control” and “clothing.” Get it? In Kobayashi-san Chi no Maid Dragon, signs in the scenery often have the radical for dragon in them. Totally unnecessary, but indefinitely fun. Various characters, including Izuna from No Game No Life and Kururi from Shakanetsu no Takkyuu Musume, add “desu” to the end of sentences, even if that sentence didn’t require a “desu.”
“Desu” is sort of a catch-all verb that goes at the end of sentences that don’t otherwise have a verb. That’s not a great definition for it, to be honest, but it’s hard to define. Regardless, sentences that already have a verb don’t need it, so these characters saying “desu” at the end of their sentence is a distinctly odd verbal tic that gets translated in all sorts of weird ways.
None of these things will be included, even if you watch the subbed version of a show (or at least, they’re unlikely to be included well…), so even at that level, you’ll be missing out on important, or at least interesting, information. But, for the average, not-willing-to-spend-hundreds-of-hours-learning-Japanese viewer, good subs are about as close to perfection as one can get. Or so I think.
