JAST USA is doubling down... on SoniComi?

[Darklord Rooke]

English dubbing allows the nuances not portrayed by the text but portrayed by the voice acting to be translated into a form understandable by the English audience. At the moment some text narration is not needed partly because of the voice acting. Keeping that Japanese only will mean some of those nuances will always be lost on the majority of the English audience. Providing an option for an English dub is merely completing the translation process, a process started but not completed with the translation of the text.

So providing an option for English dubs is a good thing, although it may not be the preferred option for those who already know Japanese.

Personally I still view voice acting in general as a waste of money. Adding textual narration for voices and eliminating voice acting all together would save Japanese developers a veritable warehouse of cash.

[sanahtlig]

37 minutes ago, DharmaFreedom said:

I'm also not a fan of jessica nigri because she oversexualizes  characters

Sonico is a pretty sexualized character though.  Nigri's "style" is pretty much perfect for this game (even though whatever visual style she might have is completely irrelevant since all she'll be doing is voicing a character).

[ittaku]

2 hours ago, Decay said:

Sorry, but JAST is in no way obligated to work on the kind of projects you'd like and to be honest I'm getting sick of your extreme selfishness.

And you are completely clueless if you don't see how this is a savvy move on JAST's part.

The same person was arguing there was no point in companies doing official localisations of works that already had a fan translation...

[BookwormOtaku]

Well, I watched the dub of the anime and liked it (thought NIgiri did a pretty good job as Sonico) so I'll definitely be giving the dub for the VN a chance. Don't know if any of the other characters in the anime are in the game but if they are maybe Monica Rial and Luci Christian will reprise their roles too.

[Chuee]

3 hours ago, Rooke said:

English dubbing allows the nuances not portrayed by the text but portrayed by the voice acting to be translated into a form understandable by the English audience.

The ways in which people convey emotion when they speak doesn't change between languages.

[Darklord Rooke]

14 minutes ago, Chuee said:

The ways in which people convey emotion when they speak doesn't change between languages.

It does. I'm going to take an extreme example because it's easiest to see potential differences that way. Tonal languages change meanings between words by sometimes changing the tone of that word, non-tonal languages do not. So the changing of tone in a word in a non-tonal language could express emotion, whereas changing it in a tonal language could change the meaning.

Personally, I rarely listen to any voice acting so none of this comes across to me  In my defence, it's too slow. I'm finished a sentence a while before they say it xD

[Darklord Rooke]

For example, while watching Cantonese movies I'm often lost at which tones are expressive and which tones change the meaning. Luckily the body language helps, but body language is minimal in VNs. 

[Darklord Rooke]

A lesser known piece of information – normally in English, people will end their sentences with a higher tone when asking a question, seeking verification, that sort of thing. Unless you go to some parts of Australia, where every sentence is ended with a higher tone. We must just like confusing everybody or something:

Quote

Does speaking like an Aussie make you sound insecure?

Australians have long known the value of adding an upward inflection to the ends of our sentences. It makes everything sound a bit like a question, doesn't it?

The "high-rising terminal" (or the Australian Question Intonation, if you want to get all racial about it) is getting abad rap in Britain, though: 85% of managers surveyed by UK firm Pearson found the trait "a clear indicator of a person's insecurity or emotional weakness".

But far from indicating insecurity, some studies suggest that the AQI is often used by powerful people when speaking to their subordinates (thereby explaining why Australians use it when talking to Britons). The theory is that it's much more acceptable for a boss to ask an employee whether they understand something than vice versa. Linguists also believe the high-rising can serve other purposes. A rising intonation at the end of a statement (giving directions, for example) implicitly asks the listener to confirm that they understand what they've been told. Alternatively, it can be used to stop an anticipated interruption.

And note this isn't even between languages, just different versions of English.

[Fred the Barber]

On 6/12/2016 at 2:39 AM, Rooke said:

A lesser known piece of information – normally in English, people will end their sentences with a higher tone when asking a question, seeking verification, that sort of thing. Unless you go to some parts of Australia, where every sentence is ended with a higher tone. We must just like confusing everybody or something:

Amusingly, and contrary to the specifics of this argument, Japanese uses rising intonation at the end of a sentence for questions as well.

However, I agree with your general claim that the way the languages express emotion is somewhat different (one thing I've personally noticed: English tendency to use clipped sounds when exasperated, vs. Japanese tendency to use elongated sounds when exasperated), and I'll offer what I believe to be an additional, stronger argument, since it applies even when the techniques are the same:

Assuming the audience doesn't know much Japanese at all (which I think is a fair assumption for the argument), even if you assume the audience can understand the emotions being applied using various tones and emphases, they won't understand the specific words to which those tones and emphases are applied. So in all likelihood, they'll often misunderstand which word it's applied to, and therefore not actually grasp the meaning.

[xelloss]

5 hours ago, Rooke said:

It does. I'm going to take an extreme example because it's easiest to see potential differences that way. Tonal languages change meanings between words by sometimes changing the tone of that word, non-tonal languages do not. So the changing of tone in a word in a non-tonal language could express emotion, whereas changing it in a tonal language could change the meaning.

Personally, I rarely listen to any voice acting so none of this comes across to me  In my defence, it's too slow. I'm finished a sentence a while before they say it xD

No i don't think it does. Not if you talk about emotion.

Even if some languages have some particularities like the one above (chinese which is a tonal language), there is a big difference between that and intonation conveying emotion. Basically in chinese tone can be either high, middle, low and such, but it's not something that affect the way emotions will be expressed. If someone is sad, happy or angry, it will still be easily percepted because those one aren't really related about these tones but subtles changes in the voice like trembling, variation of volume, speaking flow and type of "intonation (not related to tone). Some emotions are perceptible in any language even if the interlocutors can't understand directly what is said, they can for sure know if the person is afraid, angry, or happy by juding how the voice is.

I think some intonations and accents can indeed modify the perception one can have of a person: eg. make him sound like he is from the countryside, arrogant or such, but these ones are not solely about emotion. More a matter of perception influenced by things like stereotypes, conciscous or inconscicous conceptions, own speaker language and such.

 

[dullian]

I'm so glad I will play Sonicomi in original Japanese