Full transcript of “How Pokémon Is Dubbed From Japanese To English | Vanity Fair”. Click a timestamp to open the video at that moment. Need another video? Use the YouTube transcript generator.
0:00 I'm Ash Ketchum I came from Pallet Town in the Kanto region and this is my good buddy Pikachu nice to meet you hi I'm Sara nada Tony I'm a voice actor you probably know me best as Ash Ketchum on Pokemon I'm also taking a kitchen and start after and misdreavus today I'm gonna be showing you my process for dubbing Pokemon into English Pokemon is a show that's 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 every session with my director telling me all about the episode the turnaround time for these shows is extreme so sometimes we are working with
0:45 scripts that were finished the night before I never get to see the script ahead of time it's always a cold read hi I'm Lisa the voice director and ashed today you're gonna be running down the beach yes some beach time my favorite I recorded a booth by myself so I very rarely get to hear the other actors performances my director is the dungeon master she knows how everything is gonna sound she can predict all of their performances and she knows exactly how to direct me to get exactly what she wants next we watch the scene in Japanese let's take a look [Music]
1:37 so a lot of stuff is 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 this in Japanese is the mouth flap where he moves his mouth where he opens his mouth really wide where he has like that Oh like the clenched kind of teeth thing and that'll indicate to me where to put all the words on the page so first we're gonna do a whole run of the scene and then we're gonna go back and pick up all the parts where I messed up we are online 40502 3504 it's gonna be on there you won't beat me you are about to meet Linton for the first time so this is where you're gonna you're gonna keep running through over there as you saw in the scene soon as you get there you're
2:23 gonna step on his tail and then you'll go into sort of like the comic tumbles after that so awesome let's give it a whirl there are three beeps that Cumaean I come in on the fourth beep so Sara I'm gonna give you three beeps for the first Q and then one beep for the following you won't baby oh sorry so basically my eyes if you notice are darting back and forth from the page to the screen to make sure that I have the line right and that I have the flap right at the same time so while I'm matching the flap and getting all the words out I have to match the emotion that's happening on-screen more so than the original performance so I'm looking at the
3:10 animation and figuring out how to emot-- based on that so 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 in a really crazy scene and the background changes that I know I have to get much bigger so now that we've done one take of this long pass my director is gonna give me some notes and she'll have a lot of them let's give that another pass the line that you're I know it's I know it's a long set for you to sort of take on there is gonna be sorry as soon as you turn around and go on that so when you ramp yourself up after Pikachu get up a little bit you can even get in a little bit more with that so that you're sort of like pretty intense when by the time you actually step on Linton's tail so the sari is on screen the sari is on screen the turn around sorry yeah that turn around right there that you're
3:55 seeing that's you having the reaction into the sari okay so while this happens our engineer moves the three beeps over to the spot where I need to punch in the oh sorry cool so we're looking at line 50 you got an open shock react and then a sari so you're gonna do the turn and then the double flap sorry sometimes I have to deliver a line in a way that doesn't feel natural to me sometimes I have to go really really slow or really really fast sometimes a line will be really urgent but there's not enough mouth movement for me to say something
4:41 really really fast and that can be a problem blue water fluffy white clouds and delicious pineapple juice I messed it up I was too early so I messed it up I was too early and I messed up the line it's not why it's not fluffy white clouds it's white fluffy clouds I'm bad at this let's do it again so long before the script ever even gets to me an adapter has to take the Japanese translation and make it make sense in English and make it also fit into the mouth flaps that's how we get this the timing of my performance is really important because first of all you don't want to hear somebody talking when their mouth isn't moving secondly and this is the adapters job he has to
5:26 make sure that everything he gets out of the translation makes sense in English and fits into the mouth flap so if a character has a big wide-open mouth halfway through the sentence he has to justify that he has to write a script that justifies that blue water white fluffy cloud and delicious pineapple juice hmm it's so refreshing yeah all right great that's great I play many characters on this show usually I do them one at a time but for the purposes of this demonstration I'm gonna do them together
6:13 ready for it I guess hey mom I'm back hope you had fun ash sure did we were diving with a Sharpedo saw lots of Pokemon I've never seen before yeah that was great we're just gonna stretch out one of the ones in the middle over there you give us enough time so that we can do it perfectly so that's perfect so sometimes my performance might be a little bit short and they can digitally lengthen it so that it fits the mouth flap perfectly sure did we were diving with a sharpie no so lots of Pokemon I've never seen before yeah sure did we went diving with a sharpie No so lots of Pokemon I've never seen before yeah all right that looks great coming to you that
6:58 sounds like fun we have my me to thank for winning the tickets for our vacation thanks very much my me that's short so sometimes the line in the script comes up a little bit 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've got why don't we add in have my me to thank for winning the tickets for our Lola vacation okay and how about that does sound like fun rather than that sounds like fun great awesome coming to you that does sound like fun we have my knee to thank for winning the tickets for our aloha vacation thanks very much by me great that works all right let's see the completed scene
7:45 [Music] you won't baby oh sorry oh man blue water white fluffy clouds and delicious pineapple juice hmm it's so refreshing hey mom I'm back hope you had fun ash sure did we were diving with a sharpie No so lots of Pokemon I've never seen
8:32 before yeah that does sound like fun we have my knee to thank for winning the tickets for our Aloha vacation thanks very much my me and that's how I dub Pokemon so because the English dub is so widespread I'm getting emails from people in India and Bangladesh and Russia and Japan and Brazil thanking me for helping them learn English it's amazing it's really an important thing that helps bridge cultures in 1931 a French actors union told its membership you cannot dub because it is beneath you and it is offensive to the original actor I disagree
