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Please don’t let anyone Americanise it (1992)

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Re: Please don’t let anyone Americanise it (1992)

#211

Post by rendall »

mdp2021 wrote: post #193
rendall wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gotta love HN. > The '-ize' prefix... Since we're doing flagrant pedantry, let's go all in: don't you mean suffix ?

Oops! Of course I do. I'm just quite tired. By the way: no pedantry involved (unless you mean the "educating" value of information passed here where "intellectual curiosity" is the criterion for exchange). The purpose and implicit messages in your original post were unclear (many readings were possible).

Only positive, warm humor intended by any of it.

Re: Please don’t let anyone Americanise it (1992)

#212

Post by Symbiote »

kuang_eleven wrote: post #209

It's interesting, I actually do think there is value in regionalizing media to an extent, primarily low-level word change between dialects. For example, changing "Go throw the wellies in the boot of the car parked on the pavement before we get petrol" to "Go throw the rainboots in the trunk of the car parked on the sidewalk before we get gas" for an American audience. Higher-level changes are less justifiable, like t…

This would be reasonable if the audience is under 12 years old.

I expect any American older than this to cope with a few less familiar words.

Re: Please don’t let anyone Americanise it (1992)

#213

Post by sircastor »

mordechai9000 wrote: post #111

I've always been annoyed they replaced "Philosopher's Stone" with "Sorcerer's Stone" in the title of the Harry Potter novel, for American consumption. It feels kinda of insulting, frankly. I recently and randomly picked up a Japanese book, 1Q84. I was enjoying it quite a bit, when I started thinking about the cultural references it contained - it has numerous references to Western classical music and Sean Connery. It…

I remember learning about the title change, and the reason, and thinking “I know what a philosophers stone is…” because I’d come across it in my nerdy reading somewhere. I didn’t think American children would have had a problem with it. I’m kind of offended that publishers, television and movie producers, record executives, etc keep pulling this kind of garbage. We aren’t stupid, and I’m willing to bet that more often than not people are willing rise to the intelligence of a work rather than shy away from it.

Re: Please don’t let anyone Americanise it (1992)

#214

Post by hef19898 »

Digit-Al wrote: post #194
Abekkus wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first planet earth wasn't just given different voiceover for American audiences, it was recut. The brass called the Attenborough cut "excruciatingly slow-paced", so once they decided to re-edit, it was probably easier to recast the narration than to try and edit down Attenborough's own speech. The Attenborough cut is my personal preference too.

Replacing Attenborough as the narrator on a nature documentary is a crime against humanity, and should be treated as such ;-) What we need to do is feed all of his narrations from the last 60 years into an AI and get it to process them; then we can use this corpus to have all nature documentaries narrated by him forever more. I am, of course, joking... but would it really be that bad an idea? ;-)

Once wr did this it should be part of the UN charter that the Attenborough narration AI is the acceptable use of AI from that point onwarda into eternity.

Re: Please don’t let anyone Americanise it (1992)

#215

Post by Spivak »

dkdbejwi383 wrote: post #127
mordechai9000 wrote: post #111

I've always been annoyed they replaced "Philosopher's Stone" with "Sorcerer's Stone" in the title of the Harry Potter novel, for American consumption. It feels kinda of insulting, frankly. I recently and randomly picked up a Japanese book, 1Q84. I was enjoying it quite a bit, when I started thinking about the cultural references it contained - it has numerous references to Western classical music and Sean Connery. It…

Well, they didn't translate the pun in the title of 1Q84, at least, so they at least have some respect for the reader.

Wait, it's disrespectful to the reader if they change the wording so that it's a pun in both languages? Isn't that like... the best possible translation?

Re: Please don’t let anyone Americanise it (1992)

#216

Post by astrange »

mordechai9000 wrote: post #134
tristam_shandy wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haruki Murakami is particular that way. Western culture references are the reason he gets "exported" so much. But that cultural cross pollination isn't as ubiquitous as one would think.

I wonder if the western cultural references are part of the attraction to Japanese readers, the same way I am attracted to reading a book with a Japanese setting.

He used to be an English-to-Japanese translator, so his books tend to read like they were translated from English. That might be another reason they're so popular outside the country.

In fact they're so popular that everyone seems to have the idea he's going to get a Nobel Prize someday, but I don't see why they'd give a prize to a novelist who only writes "women are so mysterious, truly men will never understand them" novels like him.

Re: Please don’t let anyone Americanise it (1992)

#217

Post by dragontamer »

A lot of "Americanization" sucks.

But I want to point out some counter-examples.

1. Digimon Season 1 English Dub is far superior to the Japanese original. Many people choose Cowboy Bebop as the "Better in English" anime, but... Digimon S1 is night-and-day. Stronger script with better jokes/puns, cooler attack names (English "Pepper Breath" vs the Japanese "Baby Flame"), everything is straight up better in English.

2. Cowboy Bebop is probably the better known example in anime community.

3. Final Fantasy VII -- Perhaps it is more obvious that "Cloud" and "Earth" would have a doomed romantic relationship if we stuck to the original Japanese. But "Earth" was chosen as a name for the Japanese audience because English sounds exotic. To return that feeling of "exoticness", they transliterated it into "Aeris", and suddenly we return back to the original exotic feeling name.

4. Power Rangers -- Okay, I don't know how to think of this one. Power Rangers took the original Japanese stuff and changed it so much, it no longer looked anything like the original Super Sentai.

------

Saban Entertainment knew how to do dubs / Americanizations. (Digimon S1, Power Rangers, Samurai Pizza Cats, Dragonball Z '96).

Just because other companies failed where Saban succeeded doesn't mean that "Americanization" is bad. Its that "bad Americanization" is bad.

Re: Please don’t let anyone Americanise it (1992)

#218

Post by astrange »

not1ofU wrote: post #210
technothrasher wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it was mostly because we were used to the voice actors they had been using. The new ones just didn't fit the characters as well. I'm not sure it was an American vs British thing, I think it was more likely 1) you like what you were introduced to, and 2) they hired less qualified voice actors and re-writers to do the cheap dubbing than they originally did when they cast the show.

Sounds like watching The Simpsons with dubbing - interesting for a brief moment, but then you want the original.

The French-Canadian dub of The Simpsons is at least as good as the original.

https://twitter.com/matttomic/status/1158910781964083201

The Japanese dub from what I've seen is surprisingly okay, but also kind of wordy, which they make up for by speaking faster than usual. (But they have the guy who does all the anime priests as Rev. Lovejoy.)

Re: Please don’t let anyone Americanise it (1992)

#219

Post by auxbuss »

Freeboots wrote: post #126
mordechai9000 wrote: post #111

I've always been annoyed they replaced "Philosopher's Stone" with "Sorcerer's Stone" in the title of the Harry Potter novel, for American consumption. It feels kinda of insulting, frankly. I recently and randomly picked up a Japanese book, 1Q84. I was enjoying it quite a bit, when I started thinking about the cultural references it contained - it has numerous references to Western classical music and Sean Connery. It…

Sorcerer's Stone is particularly annoying i agree. Not like philosophers' stone is an existing mythos highly relevant to the story or anything. Another that bugged me was Northern Lights -> The Golden Compass. Apparently NL was too abstract for American audiences? Oh and Harlequin -> The Archer's Tale.

re: The Golden Compass (sic)

Not only did the American editors change the title, but the device in question – the alethiometer, which is not a compass – is made of brass not gold in the original text. The US editors basically changed it to gold to fit their created title.

Re: Please don’t let anyone Americanise it (1992)

#220

Post by larkost »

theshrike79 wrote: post #77
CalRobert wrote: post #5

There's a deeply frustrating infantilisation when something is localized in the same language. My kids and I love Bluey, an Australian show, but apparently the producers had to refuse to have it redone with US and UK accents to stop it happening. Never understood what the problem with having David Attenborough instead of Sigourney Weaver narrate Planet Earth was either.

Bluey is one of the few kids shows a parent can watch without having their brain melt. And it gives great ideas for playing with the kids.

I would also suggest the Storybots series. There are some amazing cameos by Snoop Dog and Weird All Yancovic among others.
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