As a person with strong opinions on translation philosophies… as long as you don’t try to localize it or ignore the puns and culture, but instead explain it… Probably fine.
Back In the day up untill the 80’s-90’s (at least in my country) many show dubs were fully localized, specially cartoons, since tons of english humour / puns didn’t translate well; media took a sort of life of it’s own, but most dubs were really good. But that has fallen out of style a lot since the 2000s, which is natural. Sadly we also copied the trend of using famous people instead of professionals to do dubbing aaand that killed it or me.
Lacalization is not always bad. I get that media loses it’s original intent because of it. But there have been great examples of localization, like the asterix comics.
We pretty much have the exact opposite opinion then. I think dubbing should strive for good localization, thus preserving the original entertainment value and probably intention of the creators and that includes making puns work in the new language.
I never even thought about dubs working as a way of learining the culture of the original creators of the media, you probably already get that from the plot too. So yes I basically want the translators to suffer through all the puns.
You should try consuming good translations in subtitles with notes! There’s so much more to be had, since you aren’t wiping it all away permanently with a careless dub. It’s much closer to what the original work is.
You ever watch a thing as a kid growing up, and then years later you watch it again and realize your comprehension and perspective has grown and you understand the thing so much more? That’s the power of original art. And sure, you aren’t erasing all of it with a dub, but even the intention of subtle voice cracks are gone from the original actor’s exasperation.
There’s a lot more communication and language than simply the words said. Imagine if, in a courtroom in front of a judge, you typed your words and the opposing legal team then read them aloud to the judge and jury.
Or imagine if instead of an audio/video piece of art, it were a different medium like just music, and you produced and recorded and designed an album, and then in order to localize it, people would use eq to carve out the vocal range, and then recorded themselves saying Google translate of your words.
Translation is HARD with any method. Dubbing is much more of a compromise than added text translation, even with the best vocalist, because it is a complete loss of basically half of the original data.
Well it depends a lot on place and time too, there are obviously good and bad dubs as well. I’ve seen my fair share of both, but especially some of the 20th century English to Hungarian dubs I find to be of incredible quality, with a lot of intention of the original work being perfectly retained. Those really proved for me that yes, good dubs do exist. Of course our dubbing industry has gone to shit since but well, it is what it is.
That makes for great anime fansubs but good luck explaining that to kids in 5 seconds of audio. Or finding another joke that starts with Bill crying. At least in my country, localizers don’t get to make edits to the video despite doing a great job otherwise (licencing issues? In communist Czechoslovakia, they could: they replaced lettering in the M*A*S*H and Willy Fog: Around the World in 80 Days theme songs, for example, and even changed the melody in The Smurfs with Johan and Peewit’s; also note the repeated scene and the well-executed smurf walking in front of and through the “ŠMOULOVÉ” text animation)
Ohhh, you meant the entire show. I was thinking of just this comic.
Yeah if you wanted to do the entire show, that would basically have to be anime fansub style with a bunch of notes… But even then, I’m not sure. Sometimes, culture specific stuff is super hard and you just gotta let it either not get translated or do your best. On a non-pausable platform like tv might be a bit difficult, too.
I’ve heard some amazing localized dub songs recently. I think so far the crown still goes to the American original Pokemon intro. https://youtu.be/6xKWiCMKKJg compared to the original, it’s insanely different, not just in song, but also in tone https://youtu.be/d-lEahV5Q_o
And I recently watched Dragonball Z in Japanese for the first time and it was great. Then I heard the Spanish/Mexican dub of the intro and it’s… Wildly high effort and really close to the original for what sounds like a 100% from scratch performance. Original: https://youtu.be/zq-zp0VfQes vs Spanish: https://youtu.be/cie7scVUdQE
Like I just listened to the Latino version just now again and I was worried for a bit that maybe they used a vocal-less backing track. But I’m like 70% sure it’s a complete re-performace of all the instrumentals too. Which is like… Unheard of. Apparently Mexican people really love Dragonball.
Anyway, as far as a translation of Bill Nye as a show, I think it could be done, but would take a TON of effort, and the team would have to decide how much knowledge the target audience knows about American culture from the 90s. Honestly, it might be a cool project to see: a 2026 Czechoslovakian fansub of all of Bill Nye the Science Guy.
Actually, if you don’t mind me double post responding to you, I forgot to ask: how did they change MASH? I just looked it up (MASH is a little before my time) and MASH stands for “Mobile Army Surgical Hospital”. Which is pretty literal.
I tried to find the YouTube video but failed. I think everything is the same but the text is replaced with Czech (Československá televize uvádí at the start, and v hlavních rolích before the “starring” credits). Since they likely didn’t have a textless copy (those get licensed separately), they had to replace scenes with text like “Written by” with others, with no regard to lip syncing because it’s a dub anyway. They really despised covering text with opaque rectangles, which is what I wish ČT avoided at the “Česká televize uvádí španělský seriál” card of the Willy Fog intro linked above (I purposefully set the start time of the link to 39 seconds to avoid that awful edit at 00:30 obviously done with a 90s character generator and not meticulous hand-made lettering and film like the rest). Speaking of, they obtained textless scenes by cutting in parts of musical intermissions in certain episodes, which are all missing in the Czech dub (no idea what’s so bad about this, Dick Is My Name, America, America or Looking 'Round For Better Land, two of which can be heard elsewhere, so is the dance number so problematic? And how about the somewhat absurdist scenes that were cut from credits? Couldn’t they use a mask to remove the original Spanish text?)
As a person with strong opinions on translation philosophies… as long as you don’t try to localize it or ignore the puns and culture, but instead explain it… Probably fine.
Learning about other cultures is cool.
Not learning about other cultures is lame.
Back In the day up untill the 80’s-90’s (at least in my country) many show dubs were fully localized, specially cartoons, since tons of english humour / puns didn’t translate well; media took a sort of life of it’s own, but most dubs were really good. But that has fallen out of style a lot since the 2000s, which is natural. Sadly we also copied the trend of using famous people instead of professionals to do dubbing aaand that killed it or me.
Lacalization is not always bad. I get that media loses it’s original intent because of it. But there have been great examples of localization, like the asterix comics.
We pretty much have the exact opposite opinion then. I think dubbing should strive for good localization, thus preserving the original entertainment value and probably intention of the creators and that includes making puns work in the new language.
I never even thought about dubs working as a way of learining the culture of the original creators of the media, you probably already get that from the plot too. So yes I basically want the translators to suffer through all the puns.
You should try consuming good translations in subtitles with notes! There’s so much more to be had, since you aren’t wiping it all away permanently with a careless dub. It’s much closer to what the original work is.
You ever watch a thing as a kid growing up, and then years later you watch it again and realize your comprehension and perspective has grown and you understand the thing so much more? That’s the power of original art. And sure, you aren’t erasing all of it with a dub, but even the intention of subtle voice cracks are gone from the original actor’s exasperation.
There’s a lot more communication and language than simply the words said. Imagine if, in a courtroom in front of a judge, you typed your words and the opposing legal team then read them aloud to the judge and jury.
Or imagine if instead of an audio/video piece of art, it were a different medium like just music, and you produced and recorded and designed an album, and then in order to localize it, people would use eq to carve out the vocal range, and then recorded themselves saying Google translate of your words.
Translation is HARD with any method. Dubbing is much more of a compromise than added text translation, even with the best vocalist, because it is a complete loss of basically half of the original data.
Well it depends a lot on place and time too, there are obviously good and bad dubs as well. I’ve seen my fair share of both, but especially some of the 20th century English to Hungarian dubs I find to be of incredible quality, with a lot of intention of the original work being perfectly retained. Those really proved for me that yes, good dubs do exist. Of course our dubbing industry has gone to shit since but well, it is what it is.
That makes for great anime fansubs but good luck explaining that to kids in 5 seconds of audio. Or finding another joke that starts with Bill crying. At least in my country, localizers don’t get to make edits to the video despite doing a great job otherwise (licencing issues? In communist Czechoslovakia, they could: they replaced lettering in the M*A*S*H and Willy Fog: Around the World in 80 Days theme songs, for example, and even changed the melody in The Smurfs with Johan and Peewit’s; also note the repeated scene and the well-executed smurf walking in front of and through the “ŠMOULOVÉ” text animation)
Ohhh, you meant the entire show. I was thinking of just this comic.
Yeah if you wanted to do the entire show, that would basically have to be anime fansub style with a bunch of notes… But even then, I’m not sure. Sometimes, culture specific stuff is super hard and you just gotta let it either not get translated or do your best. On a non-pausable platform like tv might be a bit difficult, too.
I’ve heard some amazing localized dub songs recently. I think so far the crown still goes to the American original Pokemon intro. https://youtu.be/6xKWiCMKKJg compared to the original, it’s insanely different, not just in song, but also in tone https://youtu.be/d-lEahV5Q_o
And I recently watched Dragonball Z in Japanese for the first time and it was great. Then I heard the Spanish/Mexican dub of the intro and it’s… Wildly high effort and really close to the original for what sounds like a 100% from scratch performance. Original: https://youtu.be/zq-zp0VfQes vs Spanish: https://youtu.be/cie7scVUdQE
Like I just listened to the Latino version just now again and I was worried for a bit that maybe they used a vocal-less backing track. But I’m like 70% sure it’s a complete re-performace of all the instrumentals too. Which is like… Unheard of. Apparently Mexican people really love Dragonball.
Anyway, as far as a translation of Bill Nye as a show, I think it could be done, but would take a TON of effort, and the team would have to decide how much knowledge the target audience knows about American culture from the 90s. Honestly, it might be a cool project to see: a 2026 Czechoslovakian fansub of all of Bill Nye the Science Guy.
Stranger things have happened hahaha
deleted by creator
Actually, if you don’t mind me double post responding to you, I forgot to ask: how did they change MASH? I just looked it up (MASH is a little before my time) and MASH stands for “Mobile Army Surgical Hospital”. Which is pretty literal.
I’m very curious.
Unlike most, this title was not translated.
I tried to find the YouTube video but failed. I think everything is the same but the text is replaced with Czech (Československá televize uvádí at the start, and v hlavních rolích before the “starring” credits). Since they likely didn’t have a textless copy (those get licensed separately), they had to replace scenes with text like “Written by” with others, with no regard to lip syncing because it’s a dub anyway. They really despised covering text with opaque rectangles, which is what I wish ČT avoided at the “Česká televize uvádí španělský seriál” card of the Willy Fog intro linked above (I purposefully set the start time of the link to 39 seconds to avoid that awful edit at 00:30 obviously done with a 90s character generator and not meticulous hand-made lettering and film like the rest). Speaking of, they obtained textless scenes by cutting in parts of musical intermissions in certain episodes, which are all missing in the Czech dub (no idea what’s so bad about this, Dick Is My Name, America, America or Looking 'Round For Better Land, two of which can be heard elsewhere, so is the dance number so problematic? And how about the somewhat absurdist scenes that were cut from credits? Couldn’t they use a mask to remove the original Spanish text?)