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Message: <blockquote data-quote="WizarDru" data-source="post: 1773444" data-attributes="member: 151">Speaking for myself, it depends.  I understand some Japanese (sometimes enough to question a particular translation, but not much), but I'm not fluent.  However, the issue is often more to do with dramatic readings than anything else.Ten years ago, I couldn't conceive of a good english-language anime dub being anything other than an oddity or fluke.  Hideous visions of "Warriors of the Wind", the mangled and poorly dubbed version of Miyazaki's "Nasuicaa of the Valley of the Wind" come to mind.  Today, the voice acting is often equal to the task of the Japanese language dubs, or not far behind.  For example, I have no desire to hear the Japanese dubs of Cyborg 009, Master Keaton, InuYasha, Big O or Princess Nine...the English casts define those shows for me.  But for Samurai 7, Gungrave, Trigun or Last Exile, the reverse is true.  Sometimes the factor isn't the voice actors, but the script/translation.  Some shows are very inelegant about translating the dialogue, and produce a mishmash of characters running off at the mouth....creating exactly the kind of ridiculous dubs that I want to avoid.  Sometimes the translator fails to interpert the dialogue properly, and is too literal.  They need to know when to use a local idiom, and when to use an equivalent but different phrase.  Since so much of Japanese is contextual, literal translations don't always make much sense unless interpeted.To date, few shows have won me over to the English cast from the Japanese one.  One of the few is the English dub of Lupin the Third.  One of my favorite characters, Lupin's had more than a few Japanese voice actors in his time...but his US dub is just spot-on: a reinterpetation that's equal to his original, IMHO.  The fact that they've reworked whole chunks of dialogue to make it more topical and funny in english (since japanese puns, idioms and cultural references wouldn't work well) could have been a disaster...but good writing kept it from doing so.  Considering the show is over 25 years old, for some episodes, that's pretty darn good. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />More than you probably cared to hear, I'm sure. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /></blockquote>

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