# What were you THINKING? **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [October 13, 2023, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-you-thinking/991532 "2023-10-13T19:36:53Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 207
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2025, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-you-thinking/991532/4420 "2025-03-28T18:19:19Z")
Whereas I figure the original intent was for me to hear the dialogue in a language I know. Unless the English voice actors are far shittier than the original language voice actors, I’ll take the dubbed version. ---
**Author:** ![DocCathode](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doccathode/32/18773_2.png) [@DocCathode](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DocCathode)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2025, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-you-thinking/991532/4421 "2025-03-28T18:19:41Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > I mean, all animation is dubbed, isn’t it? Technically, yes. But, the animation is made to match the speech. When voices in a differemt language are added, the mouth moving, opening and closing rarely matches the spoken dialogue. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2025, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-you-thinking/991532/4422 "2025-03-28T18:20:54Z")
> [@DocCathode](#): > > Technically, yes. But, the animation is made to match the speech. When voices in a differemt language are added, the mouth moving, opening and closing rarely matches the spoken dialogue. I dunno–while live-action dubbing gets really distracting to me, I’ve never been distracted by animated dubbing, even in a different language from the original. Maybe it’s just different expectations. Uh, maybe we should get back on topic… ---
**Author:** ![Atamasama](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/atamasama/32/12961_2.png) [@Atamasama](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atamasama)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2025, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-you-thinking/991532/4423 "2025-03-28T18:26:00Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > But I’d rather watch it as originally made, not as re-dubbed into English. Considering how badly translated subtitles can occasionally be, I don’t consider the “original” version to have any greater fidelity than a dubbed one, unless you can understand the language well enough to watch it without subtitles. I know enough Japanese that it’s jarring when a subtitle is mistranslated and frustrates me. (I am not nearly familiar enough with Japanese to watch an untranslated film and understand everything though.) Not to mention, you look away for a moment and you miss dialog. That is why I prefer films that are dubbed. Yes, the dub job may also have a mistranslation as well but as long as the dub is a good one, I’m not going to be distracted by mistakes the same way I will be with subtitles. > [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > Uh, maybe we should get back on topic… What were we thinking?! ---
**Author:** ![scudsucker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scudsucker/32/14101_2.png) [@scudsucker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scudsucker)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2025, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-you-thinking/991532/4424 "2025-03-28T18:29:17Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > but _Spirited Away_ is Ghibli’s and Miyazaki’s masterpiece and one of the best animated films ever made Hear hear. Astounding film. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2025, 6:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-you-thinking/991532/4425 "2025-03-28T18:37:01Z")
The Arabic word قِبْليّ _qiblī_ as a name for a wind really means ‘southern’, indicating that it blows from the south. The reason _qiblī_ is used to mean ‘southern’ is that Mecca, the _qiblah_, the direction one faces to pray, is south from the point of view of the Levant or Iraq, where the early caliphates were located (Umayyad in Damascus and ‘Abbasid in Baghdad). If Arabs in say Somalia or Zanzibar used _qiblī_ to mean south, that would be ironic, because Mecca is north from those countries. _Gibli_ is another name for the scirocco, which can blow from either the south or southeast, so I guess it still works as intended for Libya. (_Scirocco_ itself is Italianized Arabic from _sharqī_, ‘eastern’). I love the studio’s movies. There is no other animation on that level. I’m just unimpressed by the phonetic violence done to an Italo-Arabic word by the katakana, changing [g] to [dʑ]. It would be like pronouncing katakana as “chatachana.” How would Miyazaki-san like it if we changed his name to Miyazachi? ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2025, 6:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-you-thinking/991532/4426 "2025-03-28T18:42:17Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > Unless the English voice actors are far shittier than the original language voice actors That’s practically guaranteed to be the case for live-action dubs. For anime, who knows? I’d still rather watch the original. I don’t understand Japanese, but, just like the dog that I am in spirit, I can still sense the emotions of the original voice actors. > [@Atamasama](#): > > I know enough Japanese that it’s jarring when a subtitle is mistranslated and frustrates me. (I am not nearly familiar enough with Japanese to watch an untranslated film and understand everything though.) Not to mention, you look away for a moment and you miss dialog. That is why I prefer films that are dubbed. Yes, the dub job may also have a mistranslation as well but as long as the dub is a good one, I’m not going to be distracted by mistakes the same way I will be with subtitles. Wait, you’d rather have dubbed dialog that is mistranslated and you don’t know it, than subtitled dialog where you can **see** that the translation is wrong? Seems like an odd preference. For certain movies where dialog is really important, I like to turn on subtitles even when the dialog is in English so I don’t miss anything. But yes, this is getting off topic. OTOH, this is the Pit! Being “off topic in the Pit” is almost an oxymoron! 😁 ---
**Author:** ![Atamasama](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/atamasama/32/12961_2.png) [@Atamasama](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atamasama)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2025, 6:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-you-thinking/991532/4427 "2025-03-28T18:42:45Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > Wait, you’d rather have dubbed dialog that is mistranslated and you don’t know it, than subtitled dialog where you can **see** that the translation is wrong? Seems like an odd preference. Yes because it doesn’t bother my immersion. If something is wrong I’d rather not know. ---
**Author:** ![DocCathode](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doccathode/32/18773_2.png) [@DocCathode](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DocCathode)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2025, 6:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-you-thinking/991532/4428 "2025-03-28T18:44:06Z")
> [@Atamasama](#): > > I know enough Japanese that it’s jarring when a subtitle is mistranslated and frustrates me. I love Cronos. Most of the dialogue is in Spanish. The version I recorded from HBO had subtitles added by the studio. When I watched with the Panamanian woman I was dating, she noted that some of the subtitles were simply wrong. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2025, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-you-thinking/991532/4429 "2025-03-28T18:48:32Z")
> [@Atamasama](#): > > Yes because it doesn’t bother my immersion. That’s fair. I think my opting for the subtitled version of _Spirited Away_ is at least partly due to my extreme dislike of dubbed foreign live-action films. Just imagine watching a classic like _Das Boot_ dubbed in English! 😲 ---
**Author:** ![Atamasama](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/atamasama/32/12961_2.png) [@Atamasama](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atamasama)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2025, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-you-thinking/991532/4430 "2025-03-28T18:49:18Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > That’s fair. I think my opting for the subtitled version of _Spirited Away_ is at least partly due to my extreme dislike of dubbed foreign live-action films. A _bad_ dub job is unwatchable for me, I’d like to make that clear too. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Cervaise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cervaise/32/16693_2.png) [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2025, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-you-thinking/991532/4431 "2025-03-28T18:51:21Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > For anime, who knows? It’s wildly inconsistent. For example — Disney had the distribution deal for Ghibli in the US for a few years. (Not any more, for good reason. Anyway.) Disney, in putting together the English dubs for the American market, had no faith in the movies themselves and hired “name” actors to re-voice the soundtrack. In short, they prioritized recognizability over appropriateness to make the movies easier to sell, and the Disney releases of the movies are painful to watch as a result. I mean, I like Tina Fey, she’s a talented writer and performer, but she is _not_ an animation voice actor. ---
**Author:** ![DocCathode](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doccathode/32/18773_2.png) [@DocCathode](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DocCathode)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2025, 7:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-you-thinking/991532/4432 "2025-03-28T19:12:13Z")
> [@Cervaise](#): > > I mean, I like Tina Fey, she’s a talented writer and performer, but she is _not_ an animation voice actor. Yeah. See my comment above about Billy Bob Thornton. Billy Crystal played a fire spirit (I cannot recall his name) in Howl’s Moving Castle. He did a great job. Wait, I think it was Calcifer? Phil Hartman voiced a talking cat in Kiki’s Delivery Service. He did a great job. But he had already established himself as a voice actor. I remember reading an article than an American company was hiring American porn actors to dub hentai. The general feeling was that porn actors are paid primarily for the willingness and ability to have sex on camera. Their appearance was secondary. Their ability to act was an extremely distant third. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2025, 7:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-you-thinking/991532/4433 "2025-03-28T19:13:38Z")
“Itsumo Nando Demo” by Yumi Kimura is one of my favorite songs. I loved the extra on how she wrote it and how Miyazaki-san liked it. ---
**Author:** ![Pleonast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pleonast/32/1183_2.png) [@Pleonast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pleonast)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2025, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-you-thinking/991532/4434 "2025-03-28T19:18:23Z")
> [@Johanna](#): > > “Itsumo Nando Demo” by Yumi Kimura is one of my favorite songs. Yes! It’s one of those performances where translation is not necessary. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2025, 8:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-you-thinking/991532/4435 "2025-03-28T20:31:47Z")
I like watching these movies in Japanese (with subs) because, well, they’re Japanese movies. Many of them are set in Japan, and even those that aren’t, the characters and stories are distinctly Japanese. Hearing the people in them speak American English just doesn’t feel right. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2025, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-you-thinking/991532/4436 "2025-03-28T20:49:20Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > Many of them are set in Japan, and even those that aren’t, the characters and stories are distinctly Japanese. Hearing the people in them speak American English just doesn’t feel right. That’s exactly what I was trying to convey, my extreme example being _Das Boot_ – a classic German movie, with German actors, in the German language, conveying a German perspective of submariners in the war. It’s a fantastic and very compelling movie with some strong moral messages, but totally ridiculous when dubbed in English. P.S.- I don’t speak German, either. But damn, the sailors on that sub – represented by the original actors – had better be speaking German if I was going to appreciate the film! ---
**Author:** ![Cervaise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cervaise/32/16693_2.png) [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2025, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-you-thinking/991532/4437 "2025-03-28T20:59:50Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > but totally ridiculous when dubbed in English Apropos of not very much, a few weeks after we first moved to Europe, I was flipping channels and stumbled on an old rerun of “Hogan’s Heroes”… _dubbed into German._ As weird as you think it would have been, I promise you, it was actually much weirder. ---
**Author:** ![scudsucker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scudsucker/32/14101_2.png) [@scudsucker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scudsucker)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2025, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-you-thinking/991532/4438 "2025-03-28T21:02:45Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > I’d still rather watch the original. I don’t understand Japanese, but, just like the dog that I am in spirit, I can still sense the emotions of the original voice actors. This is how I know how to read childrens books in Norwegian. My ex-wife was an exchange student there, so she is fluent. We watched a lot of Scandinavian series and movies, mostly Norwegian and Swedish (languages are similar) and some Finnish (totally different!) We used subtitles for my benefit, but it got to the point where I can read/write/speak kindergarten level Norwegian. The spirit is easy to grasp in children’s books. I mean, my fluency in on the level of translating “Look! Spot runs. See Spot run!” I can read aloud Norwegian, even if I don’t understand what I am reading, because I know the sounds and stresses of each syllable. Which is kind of weird. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2025, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-you-thinking/991532/4439 "2025-03-28T21:15:02Z")
> [@Kron](#): > > The _kodama_, you can buy assorted sets of them as decorations to place all over your house … Mine from Temu: > [@What can y'all tell me about TEMU, the shopping site?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-can-yall-tell-me-about-temu-the-shopping-site/984251/25): > > Temu kodama have infested my amorphophallus. (A sentence never before written in the English language.) [[image] ](https://i.postimg.cc/pTqjCBwm/Kodama-20230526-215935-fb.jpg)[[image] ](https://i.postimg.cc/7P99t33M/Kodama-20230526-220054-fb.jpg) And a better photo than the ones in that post: [![](https://i.imgur.com/EOCDkil.jpeg) ](https://i.imgur.com/EOCDkil.jpeg) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-you-thinking/991532.md?page=206) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-were-you-thinking/991532.md?page=208)