How Pokémon Is Dubbed From Japanese To English | Vanity Fair

I'm Ash Ketchum. I come from Pallet Town in the Kanto region and this is my good friend Pikachu. Pleased to meet you. Hello, I'm Sara nothing Tony. I am a voice actor. You probably know me best as Ash Ketchum in Pokémon I. I'm also going to go to the kitchen and start after and misdreavus. Today I will show you my process for dubbing Pokémon into English. Pokémon is a show originally voiced and animated in Japan, so when the show comes to me, my job is to reinterpret it. For an American audience, we start each session with my director telling me everything about the episode.

The turnaround time for these shows is extreme, so we sometimes work with scripts that were finished the night before. I can never see the script in advance. It's always a cold read hello, I'm Lisa, the voice director and Ashed, today you're going to be running on the beach, yes, some time on the beach, my favorite. I recorded a booth by myself, so I very rarely listen to the other actors' performances. My director is the dungeon. master, she knows how everything will sound, she can predict all of her performances and she knows exactly how to direct me to get exactly what she wants.

Next we look at the scene in Japanese, let's take a look, so there are a lot of things happening in the scene. he's running, he's out of breath, he's tripping over Litton and then he runs to his mom all excited and huffing and he's always huffing, he's always excited and having so I want to do justice to that just with my voice, so what I'm looking for when I see that this in Japanese is the mouth flap where he moves his mouth, where he opens his mouth very wide, where he has like this Oh, like that kind of clenched teeth and that will tell me where to put all the words on the page. so first we'll do a full run of the scene and then we'll go back and redo all the parts I messed up we're online 40502 3504 will be there you won't beat me you're about to meet Linton for the first time so this is where you'll continue running towards there as you saw in the scene.

As soon as you arrive, you will step on his tail and then enter. something like the comic drops after that, it's incredible, let's give it a spin, there are three beeps that Cumaean. I'm coming in on the fourth beep, so Sara, I'll give you three beeps for the first Q and then one beep for the next one. No, honey, I'm sorry, so basically my eyes, if you notice, are moving back and forth from the page to the screen to make sure I have the right line and the right flap at the same time, while I'm matching . the flap and taking out all the words I have to match the emotion that is happening on the screen more than the original performance, so I watch the animation and figure out how to get emotional, based on that I look at his eyes.

I look at his eyebrows, I look at his mouth, I look at the way the animation is, if it's like a really crazy scene and the background changes, I know I have to make it a lot bigger, so now that we've done a shot of this. long pass my director is going to give me some notes and she will have a lot of them, let's give another pass to the line you are on, I know it is, I know it is a long set for you to take on, there will be sorry, as soon as you give it turn around and continue with that, so when you speed up a little bit after Pikachu gets up a little bit, you can even go in a little bit more with that so that you're pretty intense when the moment he actually steps on Linton's tail to that the sari is on the screen the sari is on the screen the turn I'm sorry, yes, that turn right there that you are seeing, you are the one who has the reaction on the sari, okay, while this is happening, our engineer moves the three beeps. to where I need to hit the oh sorry cool so we're looking at line 50 you have an open shock reaction and then a sari so you're going to do the spin and then the double fin sorry sometimes I have to do it. deliver a line in a way that doesn't feel natural to me sometimes I have to go very, very slow or very, very fast sometimes a line will be very urgent but there is not enough mouth movement to say something very, very fast and that can be a problem blue water fluffy white clouds and delicious pineapple juice I ruined it I was too early so I ruined it I was too early and I ruined the line that's not why they're not fluffy white clouds they're fluffy white clouds I'm bad at this, let's do it again long before I get the script an adapter has to take the Japanese translation and make it make sense in English and make it also fit the mouth fins, that's how we get the moment of my Performance is really important because First of all, you don't want to hear someone talk when their mouth isn't moving.

Secondly, this is the job of the adapter who has to make sure that everything he gets from the translation makes sense in English and fits. on the mouth flap, so if a character has his mouth wide open mid-sentence, he has to justify that he has to write a script that justifies that white fluffy cloud of blue water and the delicious pineapple juice hmm, It's so refreshing, yeah, okay, great. That's cool, I play a lot of characters on this show, I usually play them one at a time, but for the purposes of this demo, I'll play them together, ready for it.

I guess, hey mom, I'm back, I hope you had fun, Ash, I sure did. We were diving with a Sharpedo I saw a lot of Pokémon I've never seen before, yeah that was cool, we're just going to stretch one of the ones in the middle, you give us enough time so we can do it perfectly so it's perfect. So sometimes my performance can be a little short and they can digitally lengthen it to fit the mouth flap perfectly. We were probably diving with a marker. No, a lot of Pokémon I've never seen before. Yes, we sure went diving. a marker No, a lot of Pokémon I've never seen before, yeah, okay, looks cool, sounds fun, we have to thank me for winning the tickets for our vacation, thank you very much, me, that's short, so a Sometimes the line in the script is a little short and we have to add a few syllables to make it fit the flap, so Lisa, what do you think?

Let's take a look at what we have, why don't we add having my self? Thanks for winning the tickets to our Lola vacation, okay, and how about that sounds fun instead? Cool, awesome, coming to you, that sounds fun. We have you knee-deep in gratitude for winning the tickets to our aloha vacation. Thank you so much. So much for me, great, it works well, let's see the whole scene, you won't see it, honey, I'm sorry, oh man, blue water, white fluffy clouds and delicious pineapple juice, hmm, it's so refreshing. Hi mom, I'm back, I hope you had fun, ash, we sure did. dive with a marker No, a lot of Pokémon I've never seen before, yeah, that sounds fun, we have my knee to thank for winning the tickets to our Aloha vacation, big thanks to me and that's what I call Pokémon, because the English Dubbing is so widespread that I get emails from people in India, Bangladesh, Russia, Japan and Brazil, thanking me for helping them learn English.

It's amazing, it's a really important thing that helps unite cultures. In 1931, a French actors' union told its members that it can't be done. dubbing because it is beneath you and is offensive to the original actor. I disagree