Also, at least on the Disney blu-ray releases, there were some notable differences between the English dub and the English subtitles. The most glaring one I ever saw was in Porco Rosso when Curtis says he's from Alabama in the subtitles but from Texas in the dub. The Japanese voice acting is also usually way superior, even though they hire quality actors for the dubs.
For example, Gillian Anderson is a great actress but she doesn't do the character of Moro (in Princess Mononoke) justice, especially compared to the Japanese VA (Akihiro Miwa).
I think if you watch Pom Poko[1] with the dub, you're watching a completely different movie.
> Prominent scrotums are an integral part of tanuki folklore, and they are shown and referred to throughout the film, and also used frequently in their shape-shifting. This remains unchanged in the DVD release, though the English dub (but not the subtitles) refers to them as "raccoon pouches".
> Also, at least on the Disney blu-ray releases, there were some notable differences between the English dub and the English subtitles.
Some or all of them have 2 different English subtitle tracks — "English" and "English for the Hearing Impaired". For reasons I don't understand in the slightest, they sometimes differ. English for the Hearing Impaired is the one that matches the English Dub.
Dubbing imposes constraints on translation, you have to chose words that look alike when lip syncing. Sometimes dubbing is more like a creative translation, different from original text
There are a lot of differences between the English and Japanese audio in Kiki. For instance, there are more silent periods in the original Japanese version, whereas in the (American) English version they almost stereotypically cannot stop talking. So it seems there was some cultural adaptation beyond simple translation.
> There are a lot of difference between the English and Japanese audio in Kiki
Definitely. Jiji (the cat) has a totally different character if you listen to the dub vs the original Japanese. One of the few instances where I prefer the dub... but I think it's just because I watched it that way as a child. This article [1] is convincing me to go back and give the Japanese audio another try.
Another layer for this—Kiki's Delivery Service was originally a book series. As far as I am aware, only the first was ever translated into English, and it was translated twice. The second time somewhat recently, and should still be easy to find. There are quite a lot of differences between the two, and you can really see how Miyazaki focused the plot of the movie on what he considered the most important aspect. But in the books, Kiki never loses her ability to converse with Jiji (at least not by the end of the first book; I don't know what happens in later books).
Anyway: if you like the movie, I would recommend tracking down the book. Some of the movie's scenes are lifted directly, but (as always) there's scenes I would have loved to see show up in the movie that didn't.
Last year I watched Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988), a fairly amusing Spanish farce (Almodóvar, so, you know). In the movie some of the characters play voice actors dubbing an American movie to Spanish and I wondered, what movie is that?
The movie they were dubbing is Johnny Guitar (1954). Which is how I came to discover a film that's now well in my top 10.
This isn't the case - Studio Ghibli's English dubs have always been perfect, with the studio being very careful about their quality, and in some movies such as Spirited Away, there's sometimes even details of the original design that are expressed in the English dub that weren't in the Japanese version, like a side character's name.
They're still a different production than the English, often with different dialogue. They're "equivalent" in terms of production value but they are "different".
I would add though, that if you aren't into subtitled movies the dubs are still perfectly serviceable and I'd still strongly recommend watching them.
Also despite some of the issues with earlier dubs, some of the later ones are good in their own ways. In the case of Howl's Moving Castle, I prefer the dub by a large margin, Billy Crystal was especially good.
