Why do JP games get English DUBBED badly?

N

Neferpitou

Stand User
I don't get this? Why spend loads on making English dub on niche Japanese game when they don't bother to lip-synch it properly. It can't be that hard to do as they being doing good lip-synch in Anime English dub for years.

Why don't they save money and just keep the Japanese voice track instead. It not so much problem now I must admit but I amazed the number of ps2 games I have seen suffer from it and big titles too like FFX.
 
Audio is always added after in anime, and the syncing is never perfect, even in Japanese (excluding Akira, of course.) You can't expect these full-blown CGI cutscenes to be animated multiple times to feature different lip flaps, right? Imagine watching a Pixar film in a foreign language, the sound would be completely out-of-sync - the same as dubbing live action things. Nobody is going around fixing it, because its not like the localization people can actually afford it.

Also, dubs give a Japanese game, like Final Fantasy, a wider audience. A 10 year old might not really want to read subtitles to play a game. Most on this generation have the option to change to the native language if you so wish as well.
 
Jayme said:
Audio is always added after in anime, and the syncing is never perfect, even in Japanese (excluding Akira, of course.) You can't expect these full-blown CGI cutscenes to be animated multiple times to feature different lip flaps, right? Imagine watching a Pixar film in a foreign language, the sound would be completely out-of-sync - the same as dubbing live action things. Nobody is going around fixing it, because its not like the localization people can actually afford it.

Also, dubs give a Japanese game, like Final Fantasy, a wider audience. A 10 year old might not really want to read subtitles to play a game. Most on this generation have the option to change to the native language if you so wish as well.
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Funily enough, Pixar is amazing on this regard.

I've got a portuguese / english version of The Incredibles and even on-screen text as newspapers gets translated if you choose the portuguese track.

But they only started doing this after Finding Nemo, afaik.
 
I've never had problems with dubs on PS2 games. MGS, Persona 3/4, God Hand, Digital Devil Saga, to name a handful all had excellent dubs.
 
I tend to play my games in the original with subs where possible but really dubbed games are generally quite good. and i think that FFX wasn't a particularly bad dub.
 
Jayme said:
Audio is always added after in anime, and the syncing is never perfect, even in Japanese (excluding Akira, of course.) You can't expect these full-blown CGI cutscenes to be animated multiple times to feature different lip flaps, right? Imagine watching a Pixar film in a foreign language, the sound would be completely out-of-sync - the same as dubbing live action things. Nobody is going around fixing it, because its not like the localization people can actually afford it.

Also, dubs give a Japanese game, like Final Fantasy, a wider audience. A 10 year old might not really want to read subtitles to play a game. Most on this generation have the option to change to the native language if you so wish as well.
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Lip-synch in Anime is far far better than what I see in in translated english ps2 games. I never see Lip-synch in anime where the the character mouths keep on moving a few second after dialogue stooped :(.

It would be no harder to Lip-synch Japanese games dialogue into english than its is for anime. Both always have their English audio added after on localization on Japanese games/anime.

They seem never to bother to adjust the dialogue to match the lip movement which they do all the time in Anime English productions, its incredibly sloppy thing to do when games sell way more than Anime's ever do.

Most are niche title which the majority of fans would rather keep the original Japanese voice soundtrack instead of it been replaced with these badly put together Lip-synch jobs.

It would equivalent would be offering an anime with Japanese voice tracked removed and english track in its place with dialogue not beeing Lip-synch correctly to character mouths correctly. What anime fan would be happy with that?

Maxon said:
I've never had problems with dubs on PS2 games. MGS, Persona 3/4, God Hand, Digital Devil Saga, to name a handful all had excellent dubs.
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Playing Digital Devil Saga currently and the Lip sync in it is frankly awful.

Kirrimir said:
I tend to play my games in the original with subs where possible but really dubbed games are generally quite good. and i think that FFX wasn't a particularly bad dub.
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Quite a few others comment about the Lip sync problems on FFX looking on google, so its quite common criticism about FFX.

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=fi...=t&client=firefox-a&rlz=1R1GPCK_en-GB___GB355
 
I'm with Maxon on the dubs for the later Shin Megami games, games like eternal sonata however, seemed hit and miss. Some points the lip-synching was great and seamless, then at other points it was like watching one of those old kung fu movies.
 
Dave said:
Maxon said:
I've never had problems with dubs on PS2 games. MGS, Persona 3/4, God Hand, Digital Devil Saga, to name a handful all had excellent dubs.
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Playing Digital Devil Saga currently and the Lip sync in it is frankly awful.
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No, it's not that bad, so stop being picky. Just enjoy the damn game.
 
I can't say I've really had an issue with Dubs. I admit I've cringed at some lipsinking in the past but to be honest I don't judge on dub quality, only game play.

Actually, while on subject, what's Valkyria Chronicles dub like?
 
Maxon said:
Dave said:
Maxon said:
I've never had problems with dubs on PS2 games. MGS, Persona 3/4, God Hand, Digital Devil Saga, to name a handful all had excellent dubs.
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Playing Digital Devil Saga currently and the Lip sync in it is frankly awful.
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No, it's not that bad, so stop being picky. Just enjoy the damn game.
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I am not been that picky it simply very poorly Lip sync in places and the words just doesn't feel natural a lot of the time. It feels like watching a Ventriloquist's dummy which spoils the cut scenes which are very important in story driven
RPGs.

But the voice acting is quite good with the voices suiting each character very well, I recognised quite few from anime productions :). It just shame they could not spent longer Lip sync it or just kept the Japanese voice track instead or as well.
 
There are games out there that do pretty accurate lip-synching in real time, to whatever sound-file is run through them. I just can't think of any Japanese titles that do this... so perhaps we should be asking whether the blame lies with the original developers, rather than the localisation teams?
 
kupocake said:
There are games out there that do pretty accurate lip-synching in real time, to whatever sound-file is run through them. I just can't think of any Japanese titles that do this... so perhaps we should be asking whether the blame lies with the original developers, rather than the localisation teams?
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Can you think of many games released in the west with Japanese Language option?. Its hard to compare them when so little of them ever get released over with that option. The only one I can think about than had Japanese language was Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter. It had only small amount of voice work right at the end of game but its one my Favourite ending to RPG.

You probably less likely to notice lip syching problems with Japanese language in games as you would be reading English subtitle. So you would be taking your eyes off the character to notice this type of flaw. Similar to when you watch Anime in Japanese with English subtitles and don't notice the lack movement which notice more when watching an English Dub
 
You know what the problem is Dave, your not buying games with bad dubs, just bad games. Anyhow on a related note I do find it funny that one has to COMPLETE .hack// before they can listen to the original dub track, but NIS are often very good in giving that option to the player at the very start.

Though just like Maxon when he mentioned persona 3/4, you can't really see the people talking.

And at this last moment I've thought of a good dub track to a game, Suikoden, five for that matter (since I've tested it). Bricks will be shat gentlemen
 
It maybe the weakest PS2 Megami Tensei game but Digital Devil Saga is far from being a bad RPG, an RPG with bad lip syching. A bad localization job got nothing to do with how good a game is, Suikoden II is considered the best in the series and there quiet few translation problems on the NTSC version.
 
well from I read up on Suikoden 2 it errors were more translating problem & missing sounds than voice work. As I don't think it even had any voice work on it:

Despite all of the advancements, there are still some minor flaws, mostly due to a hasty English translation. For example, some of the army battles won't play any music, making them completely silent outside of the sound effects. One NPC is supposed to sing a song, but instead you just hear silence. Also, the translation is quite inconsistent. You'll find a lot of grammatical errors and even name inconsistencies. For instance, the name "Jowy" often changes as "Joei" in some of the dialogue. The translation even goes as far as garbled text in some of the areas. They also screwed up the naming of the main character from the first Suikoden, if you choose to transfer your old save game. Fortunately, the PAL version fixes most of the issues found in the NTSC version.

Just show how bad localization can be some times.
 
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