Dragon Ball Z Snafu
Reader Julian Grybowski of Hamilton College has sent in a long email titled "Misuse of Japanese characters, by someone who should know better" detailing all the mistakes in the popular animation serie "Dragon Ball Z".
Since I myself is not an avid anime fan, I hope someone would verify the mistakes and see if they are all true or not.
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From: Julian Grybowski
To: tiangotlost at gmail dot com
Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2005 19:25:59 -0500
Subject: Misuse of Japanese characters, by someone who should know better...
Hello,
My name is Julian Grybowski, and I'm a longtime follower of your site. Until now, I haven't had anything to contribute, but I've sort of been looking forward with fiendish glee to the day where I could see something I've sent in get dissected. And I think now might be my chance.
It's not *completely* on-topic, as it doesn't deal with hanzi/kanji. Rather, it ought to have at least *some* kanji in it, but by sheer incompetence of those involved, it doesn't even get that far. Here is the link:
http://www.dragonballz.com
Allow me to explain. This series, "Dragon Ball Z," was originally released in the United States in an edited format, so as to be suitable for syndication as a children's program. Several years later, the show moved to cable, and an uncut version (with a Japanese language audio track) began to come out on DVD. However, the first two seasons (the aforementioned censored episodes) could not be touched due to contractual obligations with the English dubbing company's previous distributor.
Now that that contract has expired, these first 67 episodes are being released uncut with Japanese and English audio, and the trailer on the page linked above reflects that. But therein lies the rub.
All of the Japanese text is complete gibberish, except for the title logo ("Doragonbo-ru Z," which is correct). This is evident from the very first time the Japanese characters appear. Son Gokuu, whose name uses the same (unsimplified) kanji as "Sun Wukong" (孫悟空) in Chinese, is spelled out as "numahiyu" (ヌマヒユ) in Katakana (one of the two Japanese syllabaries). It only gets worse from there, to the point where the Japanese displayed behind the promotional phrases ("Original Uncut Japanese," etc.) is just long strings of absolute nonsense.
After comparing the English text with what is written in "Japanese," I discovered what happened: someone had simply taken the English text seen in the trailer, and converted it to a "kana font" where each letter is assigned a Japanese character. In this case, A = "chi," B = "tsu," C = "te" D = "to," and so on, in Japanese alphabetical order. I can guess that this was done because the primary demographic of "Dragon Ball Z" in the US isn't expected to know Japanese, but as someone who can read what's there, I find this both hilarious and insulting at the same time. Japanese is not English written in some "secret code," and a company that is playing up the Japanese aspect of its releases should know better than to use pretend Japanese to promote it.
Again, while this is somewhat off-topic, I humbly submit this to you as an example of the misuse of Asian writing in Western pop-culture. And on a Japanese product, no less (oh the irony...).
Thank you, and keep up the good work.
--Julian Grybowski
P.S. Here are some more examples (transcribed from the trailer) of the pitifully incoherent "Japanese":
"Vegeta" - "Yonanunayachi"
"Original Uncut Japanese Footage" - "momenonunohochifu yuhoteyuya hachimichihonamona nimamayachinuna"
"Ultimate Uncut Special Edition" - "yufuyanohechiyana yuhoteyuya mominatenochifu natonoyanomaho"
"Exclusive Goku Action Figure" - "naritefuyumonoyona numahiyu chiteyanomaho ninonuyumena"
"The way it was meant to be seen" - "yanena rachiru noya rachimo henachihoya yama tsuna monanaho"
posted by tian at
2:51 AM
22 Comments:
Confirming. Just watched the trailer, and all of the Japanese text are katakana (片仮名) gibberish, with exception to the title for Dragon Ball Z.
Kana font, hmm? You know, that may explain the crazy letter I got from some students who were trying to learn Japanese and mailed me three pages of absolute gibberish.
As someone who started learning Japanese from anime (which in turn led to me beginning Chinese study) by looking up the characters in the opening titles, this DBZ mishmash could potentially be very detrimental.
I tried to watch the trailer but I couldn't. Not surprised by this at all though. It's funny how American media products are carefully marketed by American companies overseas but imported media is always marketed by the Americans who import it.
Dan, that's not exactly true. Much anime and manga is distributed and marketed in the usa by companies like Viz (a partnership with Shogakukan and Shueisha) that may be American companies or LLCs but are clearly Japanese in management and funding.
I should point out that the graphic used in the article is actually fine -- it's the content of the ad itself (located here) that is bothersome.
As for the comment about marketing, Japanese animation companies (Toei Animation for DBZ) seem to leave marketing up to their licensees, for better or worse. Regardless of whether this SNAFU was intentional or a stupid mistake, it doesn't speak well of Texas-based FUNimation Productions (which produces the English-language versions of multiple Japanese shows), and should serve as a warning in general to other companies in the same business.
Oops... I forgot to put in the address for that link. This one should work:
Click here to witness the mutilation
This explains where the Japanese name tags came from on the official "Havoc, Inc." website. I had never understood where the bizarre katakana had come from.
Examples are here:
http://www.savethegalaxy.com/chester.html
http://www.savethegalaxy.com/deck.html
Judging from the transcriptions provided, it looks like the same font as this DBZ trailer.
This is, by far, the worst misuse of Hanzi/Kanji I've ever seen.
actually, it's not hanzi or kanji. it's kana. and yes, it's so funny how wrong it is.
you'd think people involved with importing anime would be more in the kno about these sorts of things, but i guess it's not a requirement for anyone but the translator to understand japanese. i don't watch dubs very often, but when i see some of them, everyone's names are horribly mangled by the voice "actors," as if no one bothered to take them thru and teach them how to pronounce someone's name.
i don't think this is very harmful at all to kids who are trying to learn japanese. besides, it would be their own fault in using a tv ad as their teacher.
Well, it's not kanji... it's katakana. But yeah, it's pretty awful, the way it's used here.
I think it would sound weird if the voice actors followed the Japanese pronunciation for the names of people and places. If it's in English it should be all in English. Imagine listening to Japanese where every English imported word was pronounced with English pronunciation rules. It would be pretty weird and hard to understand for native Japanese listeners.
Wulong:
That's not the problem here, though. The point here is that the Japanese characters in the trailer are used completely *indiscriminately* (especially in the long phrases; GOD that made my head hurt to try and transcribe). Not only does the Japanese not fit what's in English, it makes *NO SENSE* whatsoever.
Furthermore, the names of those two characters are pronounced in English nearly the same as they are in Japanese (although the "Son" in "Son Gokuu" is dropped, and the remaining personal name ought to have the pitch accent on the second mora, rather than the first). But regardless, the pronunciation of these names is irrelevant, because in the trailer, the names are written neither as they are spelled in English, nor as they are designated in Japanese (孫悟空 Son Gokuu, and ベジータ Bejiita / Vegeta). Instead, they're just complete nonsense (ヌマヒユ Numahiyu for the former, and ヨナヌナヤチ Yonanunayachi for the latter).
I would agree with you that they should stick to English for an American release, but regardless, FUNimation Productions (the show's English-language producer and distributor) is playing up the Japanese aspect of the release. (As noted, the DVDs will have Japanese audio with English subtitles in addition to the English-dubbed audio track.) While the better choice would obviously have been to use no Japanese rather than fake it, what's done is done, and now it's here for us to make fun of.
And also, you obviously haven't watched much Japanese animation if you think they don't use much English. :-P
Julian:
I agree completely. Honestly, if they wanted to go for a neat effect, it wouldn't have been too hard to have gotten someone from within the company to provide the Japanese for the characters' names. Heck, in the context of the trailer, I'd even argue that a simple katakana ゴクウ would have still been better than ヌマヒユ.
Thinking 'numahiyu,' now, my brain wants to parse it as 沼冷湯, which makes me smile because I'm an idiot. :)
i think when you pronounce someone's name and the name is in japanese, there is no "english" for that word, because it's not an english word.
the least the vas can do is put the stress on the rite part of the word. i'm not saying they should pronounce it exactly like a native japanese speaker would at all. to me, hearing "oh-SAH-kuh" (Osaka) or "tuh-KAY-shi" (Takeshi) is hard on the ears, distracting, and it makes all the characters sound stupid. plus, japanese names in japanese and words in japanese imported from english are two completely different things. you can't equate and draw direct comparisons to the two.
anyhow, that's not even the beginning of what i think is wrong with the voice acting in dubs, but that's not a subject we should get into here. i say those who like dubs should continue watching them, and those who like subs should continue watching those. let's get back to laughing at the misuse of east asian writing in the west.
Learning Japanese from Anime? Wow, I couldn't imagine a worse way to do it.
When I first entered University in Japan a girl from Germany fled home in tears because Japan was nothing like the country she saw while watching Anime.
I never said I was learning Japanese from anime, nor did I imply that popular culture was my only understanding of Japan. It was merely the catalyst that made me want to learn more about the country, the people, and the language.
I do plan on studying abroad there in the next year, but I intend to be as well-prepared as possible, both linguistically and culturally, before I go. Rest assured that I am well aware of how different the popular culture is from the reality.
Julian:
I didn't make it clear, but I was responding to Andy's comment; not your post via Tian. I totally agree with your arguments for the usage of katakana. Although you're right; I haven't really watched that many anime.
One last point I'd like to make about pronunciation. Keeping in mind how pervasive English loan words are in Japanese, imagine the NHK evening news with all the imported words pronounced with English rules. It would not be understandable unless you understood both English (or at least a little) and Japanese.
Maybe in anime it doesn't matter though -- it is art after all. Also, it's really only names that are being mangled in the English versions. Maybe you can't compare because standards in English require that we take a quasi-attempt at correct pronunciation in the original language for the loan word, but, I think in Japanese, words of a foreign origin -- even for names -- go through Japanese pronunciation changes. Are there exceptions? Of course! But I'm talking about on average, and maybe this doesn't apply to anime.
This is getting really off topic. Perhaps it would be better to take the discussion to some anime forum...
But here I go, adding more off-topic stuff.
I think mispronunciation in dubs is inevitable, especially when most Westerners encounter words transliterated with two consonants, when it happens, they either try to add an unseen vowel to the mix, or pretend one of the consonants is silent--such as in Tôkyô, Ryû, tsunami (東京, 龍, and 津波 in Japanese), and Tsai (蔡 in Chinese). (Typically pronounced in English as "toh-Ki-oh", "rye-you", "su-nah-me", and "sai")--I have given up on the "casual" American to try and learn these (by casual American, I mean those not interested in learning more about the language). The same goes for the group trying to learn the tonal differences in spoken Mandarin--some may be able to hear that there is a difference when I repeat the different tones to them, but to be able to distinguish them immediately takes dedication for someone learning it as a second language.
There are others, though, that can be easily corrected by stressing the correct syllable. Such as "Gokû" and "Washû." In these situations, it's not very difficult for the voice actor to learn the proper stress point--just listening to the original Japanese dialog once or twice should suffice--and the people watching would have no problem trying to pronounce them. It just makes those name painful to hear.
Sorry, Tian, this topic is moving farther and farther away from the original point of discussion ...
I'd have to admit that a lot of anime fans think Japan is exactly like what they see. That's why I didn't rejoin the Anime Club at my university after I came back from my exchange :-P
Also, with Wulong saying: "One last point I'd like to make about pronunciation. Keeping in mind how pervasive English loan words are in Japanese, imagine the NHK evening news with all the imported words pronounced with English rules. It would not be understandable unless you understood both English (or at least a little) and Japanese.",
I'd like to respond by pointing out that the NHK news is difficult to understand if you don't understand English in its present state. I recall my Korean friends struggling with the tsunami (pardon the pun) of katakana English, while I, being a native English speaker, quickly picked up the meanings.
But let's not get into that argument.
Julian, Sorry if I come off as a total jerk and I know this is off topic, but anime isn't (much) more popular in Japan than it is in the states or elsewhere. Japanese popular culture is Downtown, Yoon-Sama and Hamazaki Ayumi. Neon Genesis Evangaleon is as obscure as Star Trek Enterprise or even worse; no one I met during my years there had even heard of it.
Sure Miyazaki movies are popular but so is Aladin and Sherk in America. That doesn't mean your lab mates watch Aqua Teen hunger force. I think you get the idea.
I think what is amusing is that you can buy Dragonball Z t-shirts with katakana of the character's names written right on them. My boyfriend has had a few shirts with Son Goku's name written in kanji on it, and I've seen more than a handful of Trunks and Vegeta shirts with their katakana names beside their image. I realize FUNimation doesn't produce the shirts, but I just find it amusing that one shithead designer got away with such a glaring mistake.
To further comment off-topic: I tend to watch anime subbed, not dubbed; not because I care about original pronounciation or anything, but because I cannot stand American voice actors. I don't watch American cartoons for the same reason. This has gotten me in trouble several times because I would say the name of a character as closely as I could (being an idiot American) to the way the Japanese voice actors said it ("Prisu" from Bubblegum Crisis being the best example I can think of) and my friends who watched it dubbed would have no idea what I was talking about.
Drove me nuts.
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