English Translation (pseudo-rant)

I am always curious about the translations of foreign films. For what it's worth, I am American.

Why is it that the dub translation and the subtitle translation are often different?

In the case of Tokyo Zombie, the word 'baka' is used about a thousand times during the course of the film. The subtitle translation changes the translation throughout the movie, rendering this same word as 'idiot', 'moron', 'retard', and *beep* retard' depending on context and the severity of the amount of contempt the word is meant to deliver.

I did not watch all of the Enligh dub, as the voice actors were abysmal and stilted, but I did notice that 'baka' seemed to be translated as 'idiot' every time. For example, in an important scene, the phrase "Are you *beep* retarded?" is consistently translated as "Are you a total idiot?" in the dub.

I see this sort of thing all the time. Why does the same translator not work on both versions, or at least the two translators could put their heads together! Why is it that the subtitle translation is usually better than the dub translation?

This was particularly irritating in the example I named above. I understand that the word 'idiot' is more politically correct than calling somebody a 'retard' but in fact these words are all synonyms in both languages. To be precise, while 'retard' is a catchall epithet for all levels of retardation, 'moron' used to indicate bordline retardation (IQ of 50-69) and 'idiot' was reserved for the most severe retardation (IQ under 25).

Anyways, when a word is translated different ways in one place and not another, I get curious!