Many forms of foreign media cross boundaries of not only nations, but barriers of language as well. This is certainly true for anime, which is native to Japan. As our world becomes increasingly interconnected, popularity of foreign entertainment is growing as well. But there's still the language barrier to overcome. There are three ways to do so:

1. Learn the language
2. The film is subtitled
3. The film is dubbed

Most people would agree learning a language is overkill for watching TV, although you might be surprised by the number of people that take up Japanese just so they can watch anime. Understanding can also be bridged though subtitles. This is the most common method in films as it's cost effective, and easy to do. Most American films exported to other countries are in fact subtitled, and many people in foreign countries enjoy American films, yet the reverse does not seem to be true. An American watching a subtitled film is be a rarity at best. Is it because foreign languages sound strange to Americans, or because Americans don't like to read, or they simply don't want to see foreign films? I can't say, although it is true that Americans are generally less in tune with things outside their own country compared to people elsewhere in the world. Ask an American how many subtitled movies that they've seen, and I'd be surprised if the answer was even one. Yet everyone knows of the Godzilla movies which happened to be dubbed (terribly I might add). Subtitling is mostly viewed n America as a venue for fanatics.

Of course where are you going to find a larger group of fanatics, than with the following of Japanese animation? This puts anime in a bind. It isn't popular enough to be considered mainstream, yet it's too popular to be ignored. As most American viewers dislike subtitles, most American anime distributors have taken to dubbing most titles, despite the additional effort and cost required to produce them. Anime fans are an odd bunch however, and many insist on the purity of subtitles, some to the point of vehemently opposing dubs.

The main argument against subtitles, is that a person loses focus while reading. As someone with a preference for subtitles, I'll admit that even I sometimes miss some action because I was reading subtitles (rare, but it happens), but I've found I can become just as distracted by irritating dubbing. Another argument is "it would be wrong to cover up beautiful artwork with subtitles". Isn't it also wrong that an extremely talented voice actor in Japan, who is practically worshiped and meticulously chosen for a part, could have their talents replaced with a third rate English voice actor, with bad direction?

Even subtitle supporters have to admit that dubbing has it's place in introducing people to anime, if nothing else. For some, dubbing is the only way they'll ever get into anime. In the current market there is enough dubbed content, and the quality of dubs is good enough, that a person can get by watching only dubbed anime, but quite often anime fans do eventually run into a situation where there is no dub available yet (or perhaps never will be). This is how I got into subtitles, because I wanted to see a title but the rental store only had the subtitled version (VHS in those days). I remember watching and finding it a bit hard to follow at first, but within a minute or two I got fairly good at keeping track of the action on the screen and reading the subtitles. The largest surprise to me was how much I enjoyed the film, which I mainly credit to subtitles. Listening to the characters speak, and reading the meaning on the screen, is the same as the character saying it in English to me. I found this to be much more appealing than listening to a poorly acted dubbed version which was typical at the time. Soon I found myself seeking out the subtitled films instead of the dubbed.

Intentionally changing, or omitting parts of the dialog has always been a big problem for dubs, but isn't exclusively a dub problem either. In any dub, a string of words needs to be generally matched to mouth movements, but languages don't always line up with how many words it takes to voice a concept. If there are a lot of movements, then "filler" words and sounds can be used, but in some extreme cases entire points of conversation have to be dropped in a dub.

You can't dub culture

You can dub words, but you can't necessarily graft in a cultural context. Subtitles have a slight advantage here. If the context is simple enough to explain, simply adding small notes with the subtitles is often enough to understand the idea. Coined phrases, and culturally related jokes can be either translated or explained in subtitles. Dubbing tends to either ignore this entirely, or substitute an equivalent joke. Fan subs have traditionally been most uncompromising with staying true to the intent. Even if we don't get the joke.

A similar problem with translations, is with familiarity. In Japan people usually refer to each other by their family (last) names, but one significant indication of closeness is using given (first) names to address each other. This is an easy way to tell how close two people are as soon as they start speaking to each other, but can also show a subtle shift in character attitudes when people start using first names, such as in newly formed friendships and romances. Politeness is a whole can of worms which causes many problems, because the Japanese language has an entire structure built around how polite the tone of words used is understood. This means a sentence can have the same literal meaning, but drastically different interpretation depending upon politeness. In English we can only use intentionally rude phrases or swear words to try to approximate that, but this is up to the discretion of the translator, and opinions often vary at how close they are to the intended meaning. Again both subs and dubs can struggle with this but subtitles can give us the option of on screen notes, or being able to hear such things with a vague understanding of the language - even if not understanding the language itself.

More recently I discovered another unintentional side effect of watching subtitles. One of my favorite titles I had whatched subtitled for years. On a whim I decided to watch the climax of the series dubbed, and found I didn't enjoy it much. Not because it was badly acted, but because the end dialog sounded really cheesy. It's easy to pin the blame on a bad script, but as I thought about what was being said I realized that no matter how it was translated, it would ALWAYS sound cheesy in English. As I'm not familiar enough with Japanese to know if dialogs are corny or not, I'm willing to accept a much larger spectrum of dialog. Sounding corny is however another form of culture clash, and while a dub can often skirt these problems, sometimes they can't and translations sound a bit silly.

Voice Fatigue

What most Americans experience of a dubbed project is probably a once in a while affair, if they bother ever watching a foreign film at all. Anime however is an industry with a following, and there are a lot of titles funneled through a small number of animation distributors / dubbing studios in America. This leads to relatively a small cast of voice actors being used for a large number of titles and can lead to "voice actor fatigue". By this I mean that a person can get tired of hearing the same voice in many titles. Worse still, we may associate a voice with a character, and having them reused can cause baggage with an unrelated series. Having a distinct voice is good in a large cast, but a curse in being able to easily identify a person through multiple titles - even if that voice actor does a good job.

Historical Note

You might be surprised at how polarized the two camps supporting dubs and subs once was. During the reign of VHS tapes, you had to choose one or the other. Adding fuel to the fire was a situation that was the worst of both worlds. On one side you had an anime industry which did a very poor job at dubbing and released them much later. Yet subtitled versions were priced higher, despite taking far less effort to produce. This caused some pretty heated arguments among anime fans until the DVD came along and manage to bring salvation to anime fandom in America. Not surprisingly, the anime industry dropped VHS quickly, and was one of the first segments in the home video market to adopt DVD.

Final Words

When I first became an anime fan, importing a title and dubbing it was in its infancy, and the results were generally terrible. Many years later, I've found some studios can do such a good job with a dub that I'm fine watching them that way. These days I watch whatever has the best cast. To me that means either someone in the English cast is really good, or someone in the Japanese cast is really bad (often an extremely squeaky Japanese girl). If I'm indifferent both ways, I just watch whatever depending on my mood or if I haven't heard the other version yet. All things being the equal, I still prefer subtitles though, because I've always thought of the voices matching the intent of the original creators. That philosophy has carried over to how I watch all foreign cinema, not just anime. I still hope that some day I'll be able to watch anime raw, but until then I'll always have subtitles as a crutch.

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Example Voice Performances

When talking about subtitles verses dubbing, the argument isn't really about reading text verses listening to voices, it's about the preference of voice acting. Instead of just vaguely referring to voices, I decided to provide some examples I found memorable. I also put some in some small samples, but obviously you'd need to watch the entire title dubbed or subtitled to understand the context.