DBZ DVD Subtitle Comments

Steven “Daimao” Simmons, the translator for the new Funimation Dragonball Z DVDs, has posted his reactions and commentary on the subtitles on the new Ginyu saga DVDs. In summary, the names in the subtitles on the first two DVDs match the English dubbed names, and the Japanese honorables were left out. For example, “Kuririn” is spelled “Krillen,” Goku is referred to as “Goku” instead of “Son-kun” (as Bulma calls him), and suffixes like “-san” and “-chan” were taken out.

Funimation executives initially disallowed swearing in the subtitles, then relented part-way through production.

Hyphens and quotation marks did not make it into the subtitles, making for some occasionally difficult to decipher grammar, and the timing on the subs is occasionally off.

The songs were not subtitled on the first two discs, but will be on upcoming discs. The pre-title previous episode re-cap footage was deleted from the episodes on the two current DVDs, but will be re-instated on upcoming discs. The next episode previews, unfortunately, will not appear on the discs, at least, not in subtitled format because the Japanese masters from Toei include only the video and sound effects track with no dialogue track.

The good news is that all of these discrepancies and changes will be “corrected” and revised on future discs, hopefully resulting in some of the most accurate, most Japanese-faithful anime DVDs released in the US so far.

For more information, please see Steven Simmons’ comments on Toriyama.org.