…The what and who?
What I think has got to be one of the toughest jobs for dubbers is deciding how to treat references to the language. If some dude in a Spanish film is saying “my Spanish isn’t very good”, should they change that to “my English isn’t very good” when they dub it? What about references to language that can’t be translated? I always think of Asuka in Evangelion complaining about having to learn kanji. Image-related jokes are also very hard to translate. Dubbing forces you to localize a lot more than you might even want.
Shin Getter Robo vs. Neo Getter Robo. The two american pilots. While being heavily stereotyped (this is something somewhat related to Go Nagai, after all), they actually bothered to make them speak some english (although it’s engrish pretty much) instead of having them speak Japanese like it’s the US’s official language.
…I was talking about Xenosaga. What are you talking about?
Kero: It all depends on whether the dubbing does any changes to the setting of the series. The default approach is that the public assumes the characters are talking in their language; so yes, if someone says “My Spanish isn’t good” it gets changed to “My English isn’t good” in the English translation- UNLESS the story itself makes it clear that it’s Spanish that’s being spoken. Same thing with Kanji- if a character in an Anime says “I hate writing in Kanji” but it’s nothing more than an offhand remark, it gets changed to something like “I hate writing in shorthand”. IF they actually show the kanjis, then they have no choice but to admit it, and leave it to the audience to figure out what Kanji is supposed to be.
And you’re right, if a joke relates to a visual or cultural element, it is MUCH harder to translate, somethimes impossible. Look at cartoons like FAIRLY ODDPARENTS, which has a ton visual puns in it, for example sound-effects that are actually puns about what is happening onscreen. You can’t translate those, causing some of the humor to be lost.
Who says I was talking about Xenosaga?
Since you quoted my post about Xenosaga and then said “The Texas Mac pilot and his wife are also pretty well done in the original version.”, it’s pretty logical to think you’d be referring to Xenosaga; if you were referring to something else you should have mentioned what you were referring to. O_o
Yeah. But logic? At RPGC?