I'm rewatching Spirited Away with English subs I grabbed off opensubtitles.org and I had already been confused by some phantom lines that didn't correspond to any spoken dialogue but this scene made it obvious what was happening- there's extra lines added in places where the characters are facing away from the camera michael-laugh

Either the subtitler was hallucinating or these originate from the dub. I grew up watching a VHS tape chomsky-yes-honey in Japanese with Finnish subtitles and I don't recall this scene having dialogue

  • charly4994 [she/her, comrade/them]
    ·
    2 months ago

    I remember reading a while back that after the travesty of the localization of Pom Poko Miyazaki refused to let them change the script because how much they disrespected the film.

    Especially with some aspects of the film they added things to try to make it a bit easier to understand for western audiences, like when she first sees the bathhouse, in Japan nobody would need it spelled out, but in the west it does so in the dub she says "it's a bathhouse." It's likely dumbed down more since in the US animation=children.

    • doublepepperoni [none/use name]
      ·
      2 months ago

      when she first sees the bathhouse, in Japan nobody would need it spelled out, but in the west it does so in the dub she says "it's a bathhouse."

      Oh yes, I think that was one of those phantom lines I saw. When Rin and Chihiro see the big radish guy they give Rin a line where she spells out that it is a radish spirit. Shortly after that, when Rin distracts one of the frog guys with the grilled newt, the dub added a whole back and forth between him and Rin while it shows Chihiro squeezing into the elevator with the radish man where in the Japanese version the frog employee just makes noises

      The differences were sort of fun and interesting to notice but after this scene I ended up just getting a new sub file that was based on the Japanese script. I might go back and check how they handled some of the later scenes and revelations

    • AndJusticeForAll [none/use name]
      ·
      2 months ago

      I don't think Pom Poko has an English dub, does it? Or at least, it didn't back when it released. Maybe G Kids did one.

      The movie dub that got Miyazaki mad was Nausicaa which got a heavily edited version, in both video cuts on top of the dialogue translation, called Warriors Of The Wind. It was to make it more black-and-white morality with the Ohma being more menacing and pest-like because of obvious westoid brain worms. Which honestly, it's such a good movie even that didn't totally ruin the quality underneath.

      But he saw that and was really protective of the western releases after that. Streamline has versions of Kiki's Delivery Service, Laputa, and My Neighbour Totoro. Buena Vista as part of Disney did their version of Kiki's Delivery Service and then Disney did all the ones after that until G Kids got the western licensing rights and did Ocean Waves, Only Yesterday, (I think) When Marnie Was There, etc.