by Master Kyodai » Mon Sep 01, 2014 8:31 am
Actually the voice acting in the Japanese Version is really good. Some stuff is also hard to translate and sounds a bit dumb in English. For example Ryo's "So desu ka?" is translated as "Is that so?" in English which is nominally the correct translation, but sounds a bit weird in English. There are some other aspects of the voice acting which are really great in japanese, for example Ine-San who really talks like a polite old woman, but in the English language there simply is no difference between a male and a female person speaking while in Japanese - traditionally - there are loads of words and idioms that are used by female speakers that would not be used by a male speaker. Loads of stuff like this got lost in the translation. If you speak proper Japanese you will agree that the Japanese language voice acting is much better than the "dull" English translation. Some stuff like Setsu Abe's "Ryo-Kun" being translated as "Baby Ryo" is at least kinda funny in English, but also far from being extremely precise - "kun" does not really equal to "baby", it is rather used for (male) youngsters in Japanese, a baby would rather be "chan". In the Japanese House of Representatives the house president calls the representatives "-kun" - so you guess that "baby" is maybe not a perfect translation.
Another problem is that the Japanese voice actors are often treated like "Super stars", just take the Ryo and Ren voice actors, there was a video series of them, they gave loads of autographs and the guy who voiced Ryo has his own cafe in Akihabara and even today is often asked for autographs and such. In other countries it is rather rare that anyone could name a voice actor from a computer game. Corey Marshal is sure an exception to the rule, but even for Shenmue pretty much the only one... That also means that the voice acting job is taken with a different approach outside of Japan and rather regarded "Not so important"...
There are loads of other problems that occur when translating Japanese to English, so imho it is not just "bad" voice actors but a rather difficult to translate text that thus is also very difficult for voice actors. I'd claim that if the translators and the voice actors had a much better understanding of the Japanese culture and language then the result would be much better.
Master Kyodai has received a thanks from: ShenmueTree