Ask John: Why Don’t Some Dubs Provide Detailed Credits?

Question:
Could you tell me why, during the credits, they never tell you which characters the English voice actors voice? They give you the names of the actors but never which characters they portray. Also while I am on the subject of English voice actors, why do so many use more than one name? I can understand if they want to make up a “pen name” to hide their real name, but why more than one?

Answer:
Since I’m not a voice actor and I’m not involved in the field, I don’t know all the details, so to a large degree I can only speculate. Especially in the early days of English language anime dubbing, a dub was seen as just a way to make an anime release sell better to mainstream consumers that refused to watch Japanese animation in Japanese. Since dubs weren’t really taken seriously as a high quality English adaptation, credits often weren’t cited in detail. Furthermore, in some cases prospective actors that use voice dubbing as a stepping stone into cinematic acting don’t want to be associated with doing voice over work out of fear that they’ll be typecast as only a voice actor instead of as a “real” actor who performs in front of a camera. To avoid being typecast, some voice actors will work under a pen name or pseudonym.

False names are also sometimes used to disguise an actor’s true identity for other reasons. AD Vision CEO Matt Greenfield has had voice roles in numerous AD Vision dubs under the names “Brian Granveildt” and “Brian Granveldt,” possibly to disguise the fact that the company chairman was also doubling as a voice over actor for the company’s translations. The second and better known reason for voice actors sometimes using alternate names is to work around contractual stipulations. For examples, members of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) cannot work on non-union sanctioned projects. But if an actor uses a false name, SAG may never find out about occasional jobs taken outside of SAG regulations. And multiple different pseudonyms may come in handy for a single actor working on projects with multiple studios, especially if the actor is contracted with a single studio or affiliated with a particular studio.

Finally, “Dessa” may have written in with the most likely and logical explanation for why English dubs sometimes list voice actors collectively rather than per role. Individual credits may incur specific royalties and increased pay for certain voice actors. Listing all of the voice-over actors collectively may allow production companies to pay the actors all flat fees.