Forum - View topicAccents In Anime Dubs
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Snomaster1
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I just read the comments of FishLion and Andy26 and once again,they're both good. They've got some great insights on this topic and I'm very pleased at them,including FishLion's things on the Kansai accent. They're very good. I also like Andy26's comment on "Squid Game" and their handling of American accents. That was interesting and worked really well. Thanks a lot,you two. You both did great.
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shosakukan
Posts: 331 |
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I have re-read some scenes in the Fire Force manga and the Food Wars!: Shokugeki no Soma manga in the original which are equivalent to anime-version scenes in which characters speak the dialects in question. In the Fire Force manga, the dialect which Takeru Noto and his mother speak is a mishmash of some dialects including the Tōhoku dialect and the Kyūshū dialect. In a scene in the Food Wars! manga in which Tadokoro Megumi speaks the dialect in question, there is a piece of explanatory text which says that Tadokoro Megumi's hometown is in the Tōhoku region, and Tadokoro's dish is dobujiru of which ingredients include vegetables such as kogiku kabocha, tachikawa gobō, and akasuji daikon. So the dialect in question which Tadokoro Megumi speaks is supposed to be the Fukushima dialect. In fact, the line spoken by Tadokoro in the dialect includes words which belong to the Fukushima dialect.
As Professor Oda Takeo has clearly said in The Encyclopedia Nipponica, from the end of the 8th century to the Meiji Restoration, the capital of Japan was Kyōto.
As renowned scholars of the Japanese language such as Shibata Takeshi and Hayashi Ōki have said, from the Heian period to the middle of the early modern period, the Kyōto dialect had been the standard dialect, and from the middle of the early modern period, the Edo dialect gradually increased its weight. In a book about books and publishing business in past Japan, Dr Nakano Mitsutoshi, who was a specialist in Edo-period literature, has pointed out that the number of books published in Edo surpassed the number of books published in the Kei(Kyōto)-Han(Ōsaka) region from the middle of the Edo period. It suggests that Edo started to culturally and economically surpass the Keihan region in the middle of the Edo period.
You seem to have already read Alan45's remark. The capital's moving to the Kantō region did not necessarily mean large cities in the Keihan/Kansai region becoming rural. In the Meiji period, the Government of Japan promulgated a law in order to appoint three cities as the important large exceptional cities, and those three important large exceptional cities mentioned in the law were Tōkyō, Ōsaka, and Kyōto. Genji Keita was a popular novelist in the Shōwa period and he wrote many novels and short stories whose characters were white-collar workers and businessmen, and Genji Keita himself was once a white-collar worker who worked for the headquarters of the powerful Sumitomo Zaibatsu (industrial and financial conglomerate), and the headquarters of the Sumitomo Zaibatsu was in Ōsaka. In Ōsaka, the Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group still uses the building which was the headquarters of the Sumitomo Zaibatsu as the Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation Ōsaka Head Office Building.
If the character whom you referred to is Hakubo in the Jibaku Shōnen Hanako-kun manga, he talks in what is seemingly the Kansai dialect in the Japanese edition.
That's a good point, and it is an interesting topic. What the Kansai dialect can (rather stereotypically) connote includes: ・comedy, comicalness, humour ・jovial, sociable, talkative ・good at commerce, clever, calculating ・aggressive, rough, related to the underworld ・proud of the Keihan region, which rivalled/rivals Edo/Tōkyō. ・cultured, refined, aristocratic (in the case of variations such as the Senba dialect and the Gosho dialect) and so on. So, if a manga-ka had a character from the Keihan region appear in his/her manga and the manga-ka has intended to make the dialect spoken by the character connote things like 'This person is jovial, talkative, and clever, and he is a humorous person and often says comical words. He is from an important large city which is far from the modern-day capital and which has very rich tradition and a longer history than the modern-day capital and he is from a culture/world which is different from that of the modern-day capital region, and he is proud of his hometown, which once excelled and still rivals the modern-day capital and its predecessor,' and if a translator in a foreign country intends to also make the translated text connote those things, the translator may have trouble with finding a connotation-wise thoroughly equivalent dialect in his/her country. In Karajishi short-story series, the stylistic feel of the dialectal expression 'Tōkyō-mon' (which means a person from Tōkyō) said by characters who are natives of the Keihan region or who live in the Keihan region connotes that there is rivalry between the Keihan region and Tōkyō and those characters don't like Tōkyō. |
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Andy26
 Posts: 68 Location: Flippin Arkansas |
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@shosakukan
This is an impressive and informative amount of research you have put into this topic. I have to admit I am blown away at how many people have shown interest in this topic and have contributed to it. I can only assume you have written a book already, if not then I would love to see that happen. Sign me up for a pre order now! It is one thing to have a general feel for a topic and be content with my assumptions. But the level of clarity that exists for me now will only serve to enhance my Anime watching experience even further. Thank you everyone for the research and information! |
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Snomaster1
Subscriber Posts: 2906 |
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I agree with Andy26. Great work,shosakukan. I'm very impressed by your post and the research you put into it. I'm pleased with it. You should be proud of yourself.
 I certainly am. Fine work! You did very well here.
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FishLion
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Thanks for the praise! I just saw it somehow, I do take awhile to publish my responses so it may not have been there last time I hit "reply" lol In all fairness to TBHK this was a fan translation of the manga, the official translation I read was more natural, with some parts of the country affectations while not being as heavy or specific an accent as the fan translations, which said "fer ya" or something along those lines. @shosakukan Thanks for your detailed response! To be extra clear and not spread incorrect info, let me just I am very sorry I got anywhere close to implying that such a massive region is completely rural or that all characters that speak Kansai dialect are exclusively supposed to come off as rural. What I meant to say before is that there is a long history of character archetypes associated with Kansai dialect and one I have noticed (but could be wrong about) is it seems many characters from a farm environment speak Kansai-ben, possibly a specific type, which could possibly be because a specific region of Kansai being associated with farming and agricultural productions that I am unaware of. My saying "it's the de facto way to portray your character as 'rural'" would have been better said, "If a character is speaking rural English dialects in a dub then they seem to usually be speaking a type of Kansai dialect." I am really thankful you knew enough to find the specific dialects, I would be interested in learning if the Tōhoku dialect and the Kyūshū dialect has a connotation of farming activities that these characters are trying to convey. There are a variety of character archetypes and connotations that come with the way Kansai dialect is used in media, but the large variety of meanings is why localizing or translating all of the connotations of the specific dialects and types can be challenging. Because while Hakubo in the official translation isn't as egregiously rural sounding, he does still sound like he's from a major city in a southern state or speaking in a laid back way (my read of what the translation attempted to convey in American English). Because the dialect is a way of speaking we truly have to rely on translators to understand these conventions, parse the specific meanings of a dialect's use on a per character basis, and naturally convey those ideas without having a lot of exposition to explain it. I can't blame them for not having neat equivalents, but I am left feeling unsure what specifically the writer meant to say, besides the fact Hakubo is from that area. It can also be challenging to understand where these conventions come from because we just get the translator's impressions of what is being conveyed and we have to guess what got them to make that choice. For example, I would also be interested to learn what makes Ciel's servants speak in Cockney English. Do they speak a dialect or is it that Ciel speaks in a highly proper manner so they added the affectation to emphasize his aristocratic pedigree? I always wonder at these choices but don't know enough to parse the original Japanese myself. In any case, thanks to you and others again for pointing out what I was incorrect on and helping me learn more. |
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Snomaster1
Subscriber Posts: 2906 |
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Thanks a lot for the response,FishLion. I appreciate it a lot and I'm grateful for it. You've been doing very well here and I thought that it deserved some praise. Thanks again,sir or ma'am. Keep it up!
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shosakukan
Posts: 331 |
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It's a pleasure.
The first and foremost feature of the Keihan/Kansai region is its having two important large cities which once excelled and still rival Edo/Tokyo. The Keihan/Kansai region also had two über-prestigious Imperial Universities. (Other regions had only one Imperial University or did not have an Imperial University.) I have re-watched a DVD of Japanese oldie 1950s action TV show for children The Moonlight Mask, and the fifth arc of the Moonlight Mask TV drama series is partly set in Osaka, and the first episode of the fifth arc has introductory footage and narration about Osaka, and the introduction says that Osaka is a very large city which has the great Osaka Castle and which is the centre of commerce and industry in Japan. So those are pieces of elementary knowledge. Tanizaki Jun'ichirō was born in the Nihonbashi Ward of Tokyo, and he was proud of it. But, in an essay, even Tanizaki said that in a sense Edo/Tokyo was inaka (rural, country) in comparison to the Keihan/Kansai region. So, if you don't mind my saying so, if many Japanese novelists, scriptwriters, manga-ka, and the like chose the Keihan/Kansai dialect as the first-choice dialect to connote ruralness, it would be rather odd.
When a 'stage dialect' which connotes ruralness is needed in fiction, maybe the first choice is the Tōhoku dialect (or a quasi-Tōhoku dialect). I have read the results of an 'In your opinion, which prefecture seems to be rural?' questionnaire on the J Town Net website, and the Top 3 are prefectures that belong to the Tōhoku region. One of the reasons why Inoue Hisashi's Kirikirijin novel is set in the Tōhoku region is that the Tōhoku region tends to be regarded as the sticks. There may be writers of fiction who adopt the Kyūshū dialect as the first-choice 'stage dialect' which connotes ruralness, but the Kyūshū dialect often also connotes manliness. In some scenes in the Hyouge-mono manga, the text in speech bubbles spoken by a warlord from the Satsuma domain (equivalent to modern-day Kagoshima Prefecture and a part of the Miyazaki Prefecture) of the Kyūshū region has been partly written in characters which are unreadable. It indicates that the Satsuma dialect is difficult to understand for people from other regions. There is a myth that the Satsuma dialect is a half-artificial dialect which was made by order of warlords of the Satsuma domain in order to prevent enemy spies of other domains from understanding what Satsuma people spoke. If I remember correctly, in the sequel to Lone Wolf and Cub, there is a scene where the way to detect whether a person is actually a native of the Satsuma domain is to have him speak the Satsuma dialect. In fact, like code talkers, once the Satsuma dialect was used by Japanese diplomats as an encryption way. In Kyūshū dialects, 'soi' or 'shoi' is a dialectal word which means 'shōyu (soy sauce)'. There is a theory that some Occidental languages adopted the Japanese dialectal word 'soi/shoi' used in Kyūshū and the English word 'soy', too, is etymologically derived from the dialectal word 'soi/shoi'.
I have leafed through some chapters of the Black Butler manga in the original. Baldroy speaks in a rough style. Finnian speaks in a so-so polite and kind of childlike style. Mey-Rin speaks in a stereotypical non-standard style which suggests that the speaker is not a native user of Japanese or in a style which suggests that the speaker is a provincial. Ciel speaks in a way of which stylistic feel is manga-tically 'cold'. As to the 'Cockney' thing, if what you have read/watched is the American edition/version, perhaps the staffers of the American edition/version thought, 'Cockney would be fit for characters who are working-class Britishers,' or something along those lines? In a novel by Mishima Yukio, a nobleman usually speaks the upper-class sociolect which is used in Tokyo, but he sometimes also speaks the upper-class sociolect which is used in Kyoto. (After all, court nobles had lived in Kyoto.) If a foreign translator tries to make the translated text reflect the difference between the two sociolects, maybe he/she has difficulty in finding an upper-class sociolect used in the present capital and another upper-class sociolect used in the former, far older, and aristocratic capital in his/her country. |
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Snomaster1
Subscriber Posts: 2906 |
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Wow! Another great post from you,shosakukan. I'm very pleased with this. You really did your homework here. You should be proud of yourself. I certainly am.
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FishLion
Posts: 221 |
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Agreed, thank you for another informative post. Besides all the useful information on dialects "stage dialect" is a very useful term, thanks for your continued excellent posting.
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