Ask John: Is the Lucky Star Dub Intentionally Japanese-esque?

Question:
Have you seen the Lucky Star dub? It’s very interesting since the translated script retained many Japanese honorifics (i.e. Kona-chan), obviously in English. The way r’s were pronounced was also fascinating, as Kuroi-sensei would often be referred to in a Japanese pronunciation, but would also be called to in an English pronunciation (“Kerr-oy”). Was this some kind of marketing strategy pandering to a growing lingophile audience? What does this say about the American anime community?

Answer:
Unfortunately I haven’t sampled any of the English dub for Lucky Star and I don’t know anything about the decisions that affected its production. Because I have been personally involved in the production of English dubs for anime before I do know that sometimes distributors or dubbing studios consciously strive for faithfulness to the original Japanese production. In my own experience this has been done in order to respect the original work and recreate a faithful adaptation of the original work rather than as an attempt to “pander to a lingophile audience.” As I mentioned, I don’t know what rationale motivated decisions affecting the English dub of Lucky Star, but I have to presume that dubbing decisions were not consciously or specifically made to appeal to a small audience of viewers that prefer English dubbing with original Japanese inflection and forms of social address. After all, the purpose of English dubbing is to make foreign film more accessible and appealing to English speaking audiences. It’s one thing to produce a dub that acknowledges the original Japanese script it’s based on, but quite another to produce a commercial dub that potentially alienates the largest percentage of its intended audience.