Slashdot Mirror
Miyazaki's "Nausicaa" Dub Updates
srstoneb writes "Earlier this week the Disney dub of Miyazaki's "Porco Rosso" premiered at the Austin Film Festival. It will probably be the only theatrical showing of "Porco", sadly, but reviews of the dub have been quite favorable. Even more exciting, as reported at Nausicaa.net and elsewhere, is that the Hewitts -- who did the English scripts for "Spirited Away" and "Porco" -- said they're currently working on "Nausicaa"! The cast includes Patrick Stewart, as well as Uma Thurman and, tentatively, Natalie Portman. A post to the Nausicaa.net mailing list by fan Dan Vogler further states that Stewart's role is Lord Yupa. (Somebody already made the inevitable joke about Picard being stabbed by a Nausicaan, so don't bother.) Both movies are tentatively intended for DVD release in spring 2004." Porco Rosso is a great flick, check it out if you aren't to dead inside to enjoy a kids flick. Greatly looking forward to both DVDs.
What else can you call it when you get to mention Natalie Portman, Uma Thurman, and Patrick Stewart in the same posting.
It's good to use your head, but not as a battering ram.
-Tom
Based on a pre-existing fan-produced translation, I produced my own... if people are at all interested in reading it. I also talk about various translation issues I dealt with (or didn't deal with) in my "Notes and Reflections" page.
The hardest parts, for me, had less to do with cultural differences, but with linguistic differences where a Japanese expression was extremely compact and difficult to express in English, given the time constraint (one could argue that this is due to a cultural difference). One of my goals was to try and come up with something that could potentially be used for dubbing.
Of course, the opposite problem, where the Japanese phrase is longer, is not an issue, because it's always easy to make something more wordy.
Accountability on the heads of the powerful.
Power in the hands of the accountable.
Not only do many people have trouble reading fast enough, some people (a great number of them) have trouble because of dyslexia.
On the other hand, it's not so much that the dubs are bad as it is that often the Japanese voice actors use unnatural voices for the characters. Almost all young/teen girl voices are done this way. You look at some of these "the making of..." specials and you watch this little girl voice come out of a twenty something Japanese voice actress....it's weird.
English dubbing voice actors/actresses don't do this, of course. So those of use who are used to the unnatural voices of the anime characters get completely discombobulated by the difference in voice pitch.
Though it must be said, also, that Disney was one of the first ones to have done it - witness Snow White's voice - though I think the voice actress for Snow White didn't force it too much - her voice was already pretty high and girly.
Whether a dubbed anime will work depends also largely on the type of anime and how the characters are designed. With more serious or "adult" animes, dubbed voices actually work fine. I think that Cowboy Bebop dubbed was pretty good because of this. Of course, if you have "cute" looking girls in the anime, and then this deep western woman's voice come out, it's natural to think it's mismatched.
In Princess Mononoke, for example, Minnie Driver's rendition of Lady Eboshi's voice was a good match for the character.
Just once I'd love for them to do a good sub-titling job, and release it in the states, and have it be wildly successful to show that people really do enjoy the subs.
... like they did with "Princess Mononoke," "Spirited Away," "Laputa," and "Kiki's Delivery Service?" If you're going to knock the quality of subtitled releases, the Studio Ghibli releases in the US are the wrong place to start complaining.
You mean
And in any case, the dubs of those movies have generally been of very high quality as well, for those who like to be able to have the chance to pay extra attention to the animation. I see no reason to doubt that the dubs of Nausicaa and Porco Rosso will be fantastic as well. (Well, almost -- I admit that the dubbing work on "Castle in the Sky" was below the standards of the others.)
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
Nausicaa is pretty much Princess Mononoke actually - the story and characters are somewhat similar,
I honestly believe people who think this about these two films have utterly missed the point of Nausicaa. (You're not the only one - it seems a common view, especially among westerners I know who have seen both films.) Look at the time Nausicaa was made. Look at what was going on in the world at that time. Miyazaki has always made films that are allegories to issues he considers important now (though they also have timeless messages too - it's just that those timeless messages are always extremely apropos of the moment).
Nausicaa is an anti-war film - specifically, an anti-nuclear war film (Miyazaki himself has said the Cold War at that time deeply affected him, and he felt the Japanese public was not paying enough attention to it). Princess Mononoke is a film about man living in harmony with nature. They are two very different messages, though I suppose if you really stretch, you can connect them.
Hayao Miyazaki it's one of the greatest animators in cinema history. His films are highly praised wherever they're shown/sold.
Why haven't those in the USA heard mcuh of him? Because his films had not legally been distributed in the US, due to the fact that, the first time an American company got the rights to distribute one of those films (Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind), it was totally mangled and destroyed to some piece of crap known as "Warriors of the Wind" (heck, even the poster for that was wrong, featuring characters straight out of Marketing's mind).
Some 8 years ago, Disney acquired the distribution rights to Miyazaki's (and all previous Studio Ghibli's) films. Which is why American audiences have gotten more exposure to them.
Commercially available titles in the US are:
- Princess Mononoke
- Kiki's Delivery Service
- Castle in the Sky
- My Neighbor Totoro
- Spirited Away
with the first and the last being shown in theaters, and "Spirited Away" obtaining the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.
Now, Disney being as it is, their marketing for these films has been TERRIBLE, which is why lots of people hasn't heard about them, not even now they're commercialy available.
These films are different to any "anime" clasification you may have seen... They don't fit in highschool girls categories, nor in giant robot anime, nor in *mon categories.... none of that. (Miyazaki has said that anime shouldn't be categorized, and that each work, be they TV series, direct to video o theatrical films, should create its own category).
Give these titles a chance. They're FANTASTIC.
Regarding "Porco Rosso". Yes, originally it was intended as an action-comedy film to be shown in Japan Airlines flights, but the perspective and the project grew, and it became the box-office sensation in Japan in 1992.
"Nausiaa of the Valley of the Wind" (1984) is, in my opinion, the best Miyazaki film.
Chibi-1 out-
My take on it, is that americans are racist when it comes to translating asian films. I always found it funny, like you note, that they subtitle european films, but dub anime (or even like action). To me, it shows a lot of disrespect towards the cultures/languages (i think a lot is lost when you remove the emotional impact of the native language).
The reality, no matter how distasteful you may find it, is that a large fraction of the viewing public (as opposed to self-styled "anime fans") finds subtitles distracting, and a major obstacle to their enjoyment. And many of those people, no matter how much you may sneer at them, would enjoy a work like Nausicaa if they had a chance to view it in English.
Heck, it's not necessarily even an issue of artistic purity. I find that the original Japanese voice acting is usually higher quality than the dubs. I'm not sure exactly why, but I suspect that the way that the dubbing takes place has something to do with it. As I understand it, most American dubs have the cast come in and record their parts separately and then mix the whole thing together, while the Japanese actually have the whole cast together in the booth as a group. It's not at all clear to me why the dubbers do things that way, since that's not the way they do the voices when doing a cartoon that's originally in English.
There's also a clear advantage if you actually understand some Japanese. There are some shades of meaning that are very difficult to convey properly into English compactly that you can catch if you hear the Japanese. An example of this that I remember seeing recently is from RahXephon. When Ayato leaves Terra HQ to go back to Tokyo Jupiter, he tells Haruka "Ittekimasu". This is translated as "goodbye", but it's specifically the way of saying goodbye that you say when you're planning on coming back afterward. That's something that I would have missed had I been listening to the dub (or I'll admit if I had been watching the sub but hadn't been paying enough attention on other occasions to catch that particular distinction).
I don't think that the numbers support you on this point. The (admittedly unscientific) surveys that I've seen on Anime websites suggest that dubs have a substantial following. I'm not sure if it's a majority, but it's at least a large minority. It's enough that every Anime has a dub track unless there's some specific contractual or historical reason not to- and that's despite the fact that dubbing is clearly a lot more expensive than subtitling.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
Miyazaki stated his inspiration for the story was to create a film that businessmen could relax to while on a flight - a film that wouldn't require too much thought to follow. It's a simple, enjoyable tale.
Nausicaa is another fantastic film. Though, if you have the chance, read the manga as well - there's a lot more in there than the film can deal with. In the manga edition I have, there are 6 books. The film only covers the first book.
"Jesus saves, but everyone else in a 10 foot radius takes full damage from the fireball."
Yeah, clicking on a bunch of supplied links sure is hard.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.