Finally been on the receiving end of an actor with a terrible foreign language.

Sixty Niiiiine! That is my favourite number!

This also happened when I read the translated version of Three Body Problem. Even though it was translated to English, there was so much clunky dialogue along the lines of "I will tell him that it displeases me, and he shall surely stop as he would not wish to continue with such behavior once knowing the truth." And it's like sure that probably sounds better in the original Chinese, and I get the gist of it, but the translation seems way too literal in English. I think the 2nd book was the worst, especially because they had these secret rival characters called "Wallbreakers" that would show up randomly in some public moment and give like a silly anime villain speech, "Greetings, Sir Douglas. You may know me simply as Ramon the Valet, but in truth I have long been operating a ploy which I can only now reveal to you and the world. I am not Ramon! I am Samuel and I am your Wallbreaker. Consider your wall broken. Now I must go and leave you all to sit in the displeasure of my deception now finally revealed!"

I *think* I can explain this, actually. I remember reading a good while back that in Japanese anime, the English is often heavily accented when spoken on these shows because it's actually easier for the *Japanese* audiences to understand what the characters are saying since the pronunciations are similar to how Japanese is pronounced. If they used proper English in these shows, the Japanese audiences would think the accents are fake. In fact, this was brought up by the Daily Dose of Internet guy who admitted he puts on a silly voice to make it easier for all his viewers to understand what he's saying. So, they probably did it only for the benefit of the Korean audience. It's basically like how people complain that something is unrealistic even if the creators made an effort to make things as accurate and true to life as possible, like how they made the astronauts in Apollo 13 panic more and get on each other's nerves; in real life, they were actually more calm and professional throughout the entire mission, even when they realised their ship was leaking air. In fact, since I brought up Japanese I might as well talk about it but in the game Yakuza 3, the game has Americans being present in Tokyo as a major plot point >!as a result of a rogue CIA operation taking place in the country!<. The game was never dubbed in English^1 but two characters speak English - one during certain scenes, the other exclusively - and both of their English is heavily played up; a Japanese man speaking English with a heavy Japanese accent and an American speaking English in a deliberate, laid-out pace. 1: It did recently get a remake which was dubbed, but that's a technicality.

I think that the actors were intentionally directed that way. The show is intended for a Korean audience that may have some English skills but find it difficult to follow if English is spoken at a natural speed.

Feels like they speak like the Netflix Kingpin, it's only his hype and aura which makes him not sound like a crying little baby like the squid game VIPs lol

They can't subtitle it because nobody can tell what they are saying!

Well you wouldn’t want anyone to take offense… https://youtu.be/CN666q3ptAU

Is the intention to make it easier for Koreans who speak English to understand what they're saying (at the expense of having them sound natural to a native English speaker)? And is the voiceover done because they weren't happy with how the original actors sounded on set?

So, just like most billionaires? 

Was the character speaking perhaps Katy Perry?

Vinnland Saga's crappy subtitles provided unintentional hilarity with that on occasion. Like when one guy is like "are we even friends" and the subtitles are along the lines of "yes, it's just difficult because of..." and the voice actor says a flat no

In Siberia I once watched a hong-kong gangster movie that had bern dubbed into English and then overdubbed into Russian, in the standard Russian style. The standard Russian style btw is one very bored man with a deep bass voice reading all the lines. Presumably for minimum wage, based on the level of interest he put into it. Was definitely a memorable experience, even if I don’t remember much of the movie itself.

The dubbing added another layer to the show that my husband and I found hilarious.

Subtitles can be shit, too. I speak a little German, and have seen shows where the German dialog was clearly making a joke or a pun, and the subs just gave the literal meaning, which was just nonsensical. Occasionally I also see them simplify sentences. For example, a character might say, "I opened the door for her," and the subs just say, "The door was open." The change can be subtle and not matter, or it can be vital for the plot. Either way, I assume a lot of subtitles are created automatically instead of by someone who actually knows the language.

The subbing on Dark is damn good since they used the same actors to redo their lines in english.

In English - never. In Spanish, I think because they’re used to dubbing all Hollywood movies and such, live action dubs are usually decent, including Netflix shows.

He said that he always tries to give the audience something he would enjoy. But never forget Katana has his back.

I saw an image on the show on Netflix and thought it resembled him, but didn't give it much thought. I think I'll check how well he fared doing his own dub just out of curiosity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joel_Kinnaman > Kinnaman was born and raised in Stockholm, Sweden.[4] His mother, Bitte (née Nordström), a therapist, is a Swedish citizen.[5][4] His father, Steve Kinnaman (originally David Kinnaman), is an American who was drafted during the Vietnam War and deserted the military from his base in Bangkok.[6][7][8] Kinnaman is a dual citizen of Sweden and the United States.[3][9] His father, whose family was from the American Midwest, is of Irish and Scottish descent; whereas his maternal grandmother is of Ukrainian Jewish descent.[10][11][12] > He has five sisters, one of whom is actress Melinda Kinnaman (paternal half-sister).[13] During his childhood, Kinnaman learned two languages as he "spoke English with my dad and Swedish with my mom".[4] He grew up with fellow actors Alexander Skarsgård and Noomi Rapace,[14] and spent a year in Del Valle, Texas, as a high school exchange student.[15] After graduating from high school, he decided to travel around the world. To finance the trips, he worked in various jobs — as a beer factory line worker and roof-sweeper in Norway, and as a bar manager in the French Alps.[16][17] He then traveled for four to five months at a time over a period of two years in Southeast Asia and South America,[18][19] the latter with fellow Scandinavian actor David Dencik.[20] Mind-blowing. I always thought he was American because he sounds exactly like an American. Edit: Also, > Due to his constant traveling, Kinnaman's accent is noticeably mixed. While he identifies it as an American accent, he stated in a 2014 interview that the "melody" is wrong and worked to perfect it.[62]

I have no issue with them not translating as a directorial choice, but for f***’s sake caption it usefully so I can look it up. But if you’re going to go to the effort of dubbing it, don’t half ass it (on time, budget, or labor). That’s just insulting to the original production team and writers.

Possible for recent shows, but anything more than 2 years old is definitely voice actors. You can see their names in the credits at the end of each episode.

The problems with lazy dubbing and AI dubbing are very different. The former means all the voices sound like someone in a sound booth doing voiceover narration regardless of what is happening in the scene. The latter sounds like the vocal equivalent of a ransom note where all the of the letters are cut out of magazines.

It's funny that other actors playing native-raised Japanese characters do a better job speaking English back to her character.

Yeah I wish they had cast an actress that's a native English speaker fluent in Japanese. Couldn't have been that hard to find someone who meets that criteria.

She does, at least a little - she tips P&P off that she understands their gossiping by telling them “see you later” in Tagalog. IIRC she also speaks a bit when discussing Javadi’s birthday in this season but I don’t remember how her accent comes off. Of note the lullaby she sings to the baby is in Hiligaynon, not Tagalog!

We definitely saw her understanding it, I don't think she has spoken it though

just to add to this, if it's bisaya then it's not a dialect, it's a completely different languange from tagalog (there's a bunch of different languages spoken in muslim mindanao I just thought of bisaya since it's the most common), also as stated above the lullaby is in hiligaynon/ilonggo which is another different language

It's slightly better in modern anime yeah. I also have to assume that lot of younger Japanese VA are also a bit more exposed to english nowadays due to how accessible internet and streaming has been.

Hory shiiiiiiet!

In both a Charlie Brown's special and a very early episode of The Simpsons, they go to France and speak English so nobody understand them. They switch to French and get understood. But that plot point falls off when you're watching it dubbed in French. So they fixed it by having the character speak "international french" and not be understood. Then switching to a stereotypical exaggerated France accent and be understood. Which is honestly so silly, they're both the same language. Shoutout to Michel the French character on Gilmore Girls who became Spanish in the French version :P

Chilean is such a beast of an accent, and so niche too it would be hard for any Spanish actor to pass as Chilean. I remember, me fully fluent in Spanish living in the Carribean watching a Chilean movie and had to give up cause I had no idea what they were saying.

They really could have just made Gus an American and given a back story that he travelled / lived in South America for a while to explain why he can speak choppy Spanish. Really forced him being Chilean for not much reason

The fact that he doesn’t look Chilean is fine, even a plus, it ads to his mystery. The accent is a massive problem because it not a somewhat convincing Spanish (speaking country) accent in general, so even the possibility that he originally wasn’t from Chile doesn’t exist. Not with his accent in English. I think it’s a shame because his dialogue in Spanish is so limited that he could have learned to copy the sound of just those lines. Allegedly that’s what Danny DeVito does when he dubs in languages he doesn’t speak. I understand that it would have taken to much time for a show though.

Portuguese and Spanish are really close, and we (in Brasil) have a lot of people who can speak Spanish perfectly... Wagner Moura is just not one of those people lol

Narcos still has the best Spanish out of any gringo production thought. Well, vida has better Spanish but only two people watched that

No, he sounds like someone that once heard someone speak spanish and is badly repeating what he heard. It's not an accent, its just not spanish.

He doesnt sound like a country bumpkin he sounds like someone reading off a driver's license number over the phone

Is it possible the “Tio” Salamanca things was either 1) Hank being snarky and calling him that because he knows that Tuco calls him that or 2) that he might be called that by a lot of people within his criminal network as a term of respect/endearment? (I don’t remember the context)

Yeah whole "Russian" lore of John Wick is laughable at best. I'm not a Russian but I'm from a Slavic country, so many things they reference and how they treat it 100% serious is why my only enjoyment from the movies is the action part.

Mike Mignola’s Hellboy had a great Russian folklore arc, with Koschei, Baba Yaga, Vasilisa, and others.

In the comics he yells 'leap leap leap' while he bounces around like a f****** ping pong ball, so I dunno if they had any idea what French people are like.

Yeah I think it’s the switch to/from Spanish that threw me off

Something that definitely doesn't help Butcher is the dialogue is so blatantly written by Americans, for Americans. Like if you got a random American from a farm who'd never left their home state to guess what a cockney says. But I don't even really hate it, still like the character and the show.

I found Hazbin Hotel a very fun adult animated musical. Until the character of Cheri Bomb came along. Holy f***. The actress who voices her has no idea how to do a proper Aussie accent. It's a bizarre mix of bogan Australian, New Zealand, South African, and American and I legit struggle to watch any scene she's in. Which makes the second season a fuckin slog to sit through because the b**** is everywhere in it. I read up on it and apparently the actress decided to do it at the last minute before recording her lines. The character being Australian does not impact the plot in any way whatsoever. Really, really irritating choice in a show I was genuinely enjoying.

I thought the character was an Australian trying to sound American and ‘stereotype police’ (the FBI deceit.) It took me while to realise the character is English.

Spooks was full of terrible American accents. Presumably they couldn't find any real Americans.

I mean he was in Australia. His native language that he prefers speaking in could be French and he could still be speaking English in Australia

All the British actors who can do perfect American accents move to Hollywood and do American film and TV, while all the ones who can't stay in the UK and play dodgy Americans on British TV.

Yeah, he was the least of that show's problems. I liked Dafne Keen too but they killed her off really quickly.