Terrible German dub


The film itself was allright, the climactic fight in the village really well done but one thing really bothered me: the German dub I was watching.

Firstly, they didn't provide ANY translation (no subtitles, no narration) for the intro and outro texts or the writing during certain scenes (e.g. showing a location for the first time). That's still ok, I could live with that. However the pronounciation of the names really stuck with me....

1. I'm pretty sure they would not have said "Harakiri" but seppuku. As we know, harakiri is just a way of reading the kanjis, a wrong reading in this case...
2. The pronounced shogun as "shogoon" rather than "shohgun" (with a long o and short u). Should really pay attention to this common mistake.
3. Hanbei was really pronounced as "Han-buy" instead of "Han-Bay".

Just sayin...

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[deleted]

Why were you watching a dubbed version? Was a subtitled version not available? I would never watch a dubbed film, the acting is always terrible. Subtitles are the way to go.

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German dubbing is usually of very good quality and I really mean very good quality. German and english share many similar words, so it's even possible to go almost lip-sync when dubbing and english movie which is the majority of foreign movies. So dubbing is the norm here (although you can always find original language plus german subs on any DVD) and highly sophisticated - for example can you imagine that each major actor has his "own" german dub voice? That's because dubbing is an industry here, not a job for some students, there are so many professional voice actors here that it's easy to find very good matches of the original voice and once you found that, you stick to that person.

Anyway, the dubbing wasn't bad, the harakiri/seppuku mishap was one of the very few obvious mistakes. Some pronounciations might have been off, then again the way they pronounced "Shogun" was exactly how regular people would pronounce it. If they pronounced every name in perfect japanese, it would only confuse the german audience.
I am sure the OP just wanted to brag with his knowledge about japanese language and culture, that's all.

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Interesting, I did not know that. It's laughable in the US.

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Anyone who watches a dubbed movie deserves it when the dub turns out to be crap. Quit being lazy and just read the damn subtitles, it won't kill you. Voiceovers take so much away, they often just ruin movies.

"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free."
- Goethe

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At least German is another foreign language and I don't see any problem with a German dub

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