And then politicians in these countries wonder why they're so bad at English...
For some reason, the French language's intonations work really well to accurately portray and convey the original tones in Japanese anime. e.g. Lupin III (the anime) works really well in French dub.
English dubs usually fail to do the same. It's as though English just doesn't work for the genre.
That being said, as animation is mostly targeted at kids, it's good there are dubbed, because as a kid reading subtitles of any movie or assimilated is a total fun killer.
The few other dubs i was exposed to later in life weren't good experiences either and you could feel the limited cast (in quality and quantity of actors) failing at not butchering things along the process.
Like you said animation and dubbing it wasn't taken seriously at all in the past, and is still limited nowadays in France as i understand it (short discussions with actual french dubbing actress and few articles).
How does German work? Is it possible that Germanic/Saxon languages aren't good for dubbing anime?
Hilarious, confusing, and I couldn't care less. At that time, it was so much above any other cartoon TV show, brutal, violent, funny and opened for me the whole world of anime that is not necessarily childish. Good times
A lot of that might just be nostalgia speaking, though.
I didn’t understand English that well when I was a kid but since we don’t translate English language media, except for subtitles, I got to hear English over and over again and now my ability to comprehend spoken English is very good. As is most Swedes, we spend just as many hours a week in English class as they do in France, Spain or Germany yet we are better at it (in general). We’re not geniuses, we just get more practice and less hand holding.
Can’t do anything about books though, sadly. If I read a book in a language I don’t understand I probably have the intention to learn that language.
Another phenomenon is that, due to the sheer amount of Japanese drama/anime I have watched with English subtitles, I can often spot translations that are unidiomatic, even though I have no formal training in the Japanese language.
Edit: I’m used to subtitles. In the same language, in another language, even in two other languages at the same time. One reads them unconsciously, a few minutes later maybe one can’t even recall if there were subtitles or not. But when you’re reading them, even if it’s just a fraction of the time, you’re not looking at the whole picture. Comparing them to the network logo is ridiculous.
The only annoying thing could be bad subtitles, as in the translation is poor and you notice it. And of course jokes that don’t work in Swedish get lost or changed in translation, which you notice in the subtitles. These situations happen maybe once, for five seconds. Far less annoying than not even hearing the actors’ performance.
Regarding the « no difference whatsoever », you noted in a previous comment that you know a few seconds in advance what’s going to be said.
Yes, sometimes that will affect the drama of the scene since the pacing of information in the scene might be compromised. That's likely to happen with dubbing too, because the grammar doesn't match and a name has to be mentioned at the beginning of the sentence in one language instead of the end, as the director intended. Since Swedish and English are both Germanic languages it doesn't happen that often in the few movies that are dubbed to Swedish, but I've seen it get really weird in Swedish films dubbed to Spanish.
Either way, in my experience, if I see Clint Eastwood's line a moment before he says it, I can still feel the scorching sun and smell the gunpowder like I'm there in the old American west. That atmosphere disappears completely when I hear his line in German or French.
“There was a crude “guide track” recording what was spoken, but often Leone lost or ignored this guide track and when the time came to loop the dialogue, frequently no one could remember who had said what. Eastwood recalls being warned to keep his OWN NOTES about what he said in each scene, and sure enough, when he was called on to loop the two Dollar movies, production had lost the guide track. They had NO IDEA what Clint had actually said in each scene and Clint had to re-record them as best he could remember. (Another reason why his lip movements don’t entirely match up.)“
Reduction of atmosphere is just one of the reasons I don't like dubbing, the fact that it robs the actor of his or her oral performance is the major one. But there are more reasons, many of them I've already mentioned such as mismatch in grammar leading to changes in the dramatic pacing.