I was just asking myself if i would still enjoy the sound of certain anime characters voice lines, if i was able to understand the language completely. And i wanted to ask if someone here made the experience of learning japanese midway in their life and habe watched anime before and after.
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To my ears, they sound exactly the same. To my brain…hmmmm. They sound better. Because I know what’s happening.
I think your question really depends a lot on your own personal opinion, but I will say that in almost all cases, Japanese is MUCH more fitting than English dubbing. If you read subtitles, that is closer, but never perfectly fitting. I personally like Japanese culture and so the way anime characters talk in Japanese really appeals to me, but if you are not into Japanese culture in general so much, I think that subtitles would work fine.
They SOUND the same but it did change how I enjoyed shows. I can’t watch kids shows anymore, hearing the actual dialog makes me cringe. I watched a bunch of super sentai while I was learning and there reached a point after I watched a season without subtitles that I just couldn’t enjoy it anymore.
Anime in general though it enhances. Not having to look down at subtitles means I can see more of what’s going on. It’s even better with live action since you get to actually look at the characters’ faces.
It made most anime sound much more stupid and infantile to me, since they repeat the same cheesy lines over and over. But it makes me appreciate creativity that subs translators put into their work.
There’s certain personalities that you just don’t pick up on when reading subtitles. This is caused by many different things based on keigo and other aspects of their speech. You also really notice that no one actually talks like anime characters irl lol.
Sure they sound fine but not realistic. But traditionally Japanese acting isn’t really naturalistic anyway.
It felt more like tuning a radio until you got a station that you can hear clearly. Other than that it sounds the same
I’m still pretty much a beginner but you may start to hate the subs too. Normally subs are closer to what is being said than dubs especially if they are done by those dedicated fans that right notes too.
I was playing Nier and many lines were slightly different than what the subs indicated. Sometimes those slight changes made the personality of the character inconsistent.
So basically everything should get better and more consistent with further JP knowledge. I don’t like the artistic liberties taken by many translators. Many lines seem fine to me when translated verbatim (idk much about this since I’m not native EN)
Edit: spelling error
Thank you. You might be sopo right but since i dont know the language i havent had problems with false translation since i dont know what would be right. But yeah sounds like it would be an upside really listening to what was meant to be said. I think for me it would just be a sounding problem.
basically the same. sometimes if im watching something really complicated ill have english subs on and go oh hey that’s a really good translation. (or a bad one, as the case may be)
but it’s not like this really changes the experience. words in stories express feelings, not logic. if the translation is mostly accurate you’ll get basically the same experience.
overall if anyone plans to learn japanese to watch anime just turn on english subs lol
basically the same. sometimes if im watching something really complicated ill have english subs on and go oh hey that’s a really good translation. (or a bad one, as the case may be)
but it’s not like this really changes the experience. words in stories express feelings, not logic. if the translation is mostly accurate you’ll get basically the same experience.
overall if anyone plans to learn japanese to watch anime just turn on english subs lol
They sound the same but now it just make sense but it’s more enjoyable because I don’t have to read the subtitles
Better, since i can actually understand what they are saying, and, on top of that, actually infer a whole bunch of details that are omitted by crappy subtitles (usually the official ones). The more i learned Japanese over the years, the more depressed i got over just sheer amount of “cut” context in the official translations.
On a plus side, it’s worth rewatching old shows now that you know the language better, and seeing how much you have missed being able to only read subtitles back in the days.
UPD: to better illustrate the point: say there’s a scene where A is talking to B, then suddenly C enters and A says “Jun, what do you want?” (or even worse, just “what do **YOU** want?”). Then you rewatch the same scene with some understanding of Japanese, and notice that originally A talks to B using very crude casual speech, meanwhile the moment they address C they switch to using perfect keigo and address them instead as “Yamada-**sama**”. This completely changes the context of the scene, relationship between A and C, and A’s personality in general… And you won’t get any of it from the crappy translation, unless you have some understanding of Japanese
They sound the same, but I enjoy hearing the nuances of how different characters speak, such as which word a male character uses for “I” (boku/ore), uses of polite Japanese, wordplay, etc.