If you've ever spoken with a Japanese person at length, you may have noticed them making strange "agreeing noises" while you were talking. It's an interesting aspect of the Japanese language called aizuchi, basically verbal sounds that a person will make to show they're listening attentively and affirming their agreement with what the other person is saying. In Japanese, I could be explaining something that happened to me, and the person I'm speaking to would say things like eeh (yes), mah (well), so (that's true), and ne (a general word of agreement). It sounds quite strange to native English speakers, but in Japanese these words are necessary for communication to flow smoothly, and if you don't make them properly the other person is likely to stop and ask you what's wrong. When I heard the sad news of the passing of Carl Macek, I decided to hit YouTube for some old Robotech episodes just for old time's sake. (Happily, speaking Japanese means I don't need to watch English-dubbed anime that much.) I was surprised to notice that the English dubbed dialogue, which often includes strange gasps and exclamations that are absent from Japanese original (perhaps the American voice actors get paid per verbal utterance?), sounded very much like the social "agreeing sounds" used in spoken Japanese.
Wha? English-dubbed anime contains some strange sounds, uh-huh!
6 comments:
Aren't those sounds made to cover for some extra mouth movement that the translation produces?
Yes, mainly, when the character turns their head or reacts to something, they put in a big "Ahh!" "Eeeh!" "Oh my!!" which they didn't need to do. Or to add one more word at the end to try to fit the lip movements. It's quite funny watching it now.
Still one of my favourite shows. I was lucky enough to get Carl Macek to autograph some of my Robotech box sets (the first sets through ADV, not the remastered ones). On the Invid Invasion he wrote "Wish there were more, Carl Macek". Pretty funny.
Heh, he was a cool guy. I started doing anime shows right at the beginning and had my first booth next to his at AnimeCon in 1991 (ah, good times, good times). He was a great guy who did a lot to bring Japan and the world closer together. I mean, here's a tribute to him from Paraguay. Amazing. Lame for dumbing down some of what he did, but understandable.
At least he kept the deaths in Robotech. Anyone else at the time would have removed it. Did you watch Battle of the Planets vs. the original Gatchaman? 2 TOTALLY different shows. He did a good job merging three different stories into one semi-cohesive storyline too. That's pretty impressive. I've read some interviews with the cast where they started recording and he came in and helped them tremendously to match up the dubbing while keeping it fairly natural.
True, the soul of the work wasn't really changed, nothing was really removed (well, the shower scene from episode 4, and the hilarious "Annie shows her panties" scene from Annie's Birthday, which I had to buy the LD boxed set to get). And really, it's because of Robotech making anime popular that we are able to point out the ridiculous parts of Robotech.
Ah, memories of the 10th anniversary Robotech convention. I happened to have hunted down the worse movie ever, "She" starring Greg Snegoff, the voice of Scott Bernard/Khyron, and while he was on stage doing question and answer, I said, "Mr. Snegoff, do you remember these words? 'Your people will be mine, Goddess, while I give them a lesson in...monotheism!'" He was so floored that I knew that, and got very far from me for the rest of the show for some reason. Good times, good times...
Oh, and fun fact: the voice of Azonia is Greg Snegoff's mother. So Khyron and Azonia have some interesting thing going.
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