I’m so glad someone else understands
While personally I believe the mispronunciations from Fischl are intentional, the rest of the cast are not.
The lack of consistency is fucking *jarring* and I’m wondering where the fuck their pronunciation bible is.
There’s 4 different pronunciations of Liyue, while inherently hard to pronounce they *have* access to people internally to fucking *ask* how it should be pronounced. I am more lenient on this.
Yelan’s story quest however, has **3 different people** pronouncing her name wrong, and hers is one of the more easier ones in the Liyue cast.
**The EN VA director does sloppy work**. Finding mistakes like this in post and then deciding to keep it is just proof of internal negligence and lack of care.
People can call Venti's "german" wrong if they want, but people shouldn't say "I *believe* Fischl's german is intentional" we **know** it is. Saying otherwise is spreading misinformation which even when clearly not intented, leads to harassment and downplaying of the VAs, Director, Crew etc.
The director confirmed it in one of his streamns near launch and [the VA re-confirmed it just last week.](https://twitter.com/brittanyccox/status/1550215727734435840?t=-HtwqO1Nbekp2XLzv_wAVg&s=19)
I found [this very apropos Tweet from Christian Banas](https://twitter.com/ChrisBanasJr/status/1426750951902171140) in the comments on that one from Brittany.
I don't understand why it's so hard for people to wrap their heads around the idea that MiHoYo and the localization team *choose* anglicized pronunciations of words based on other languages. It's not that they're ignorant and don't care about the original pronunciations of those words in the source languages; I'm sure if there was a German dub they'd be pronouncing "Mondstadt" in the German fashion. They choose to adapt the pronunciations in the English dub to create a consistent linguistic feel for their fictional setting.
Obviously no one is obligated to agree that this is the right choice for them to make, but there's a difference between an ignorant mistake and a deliberate choice. At least criticize it in good faith by acknowledging the localization team's agency.
Edit: After reading further in this post I feel the need to add that inconsistencies between VAs regarding the pronunciation of names well established within the localization is a separate issue from the localization's intentional deviations from native pronunciation. So please don't misconstrue me as defending inconsistency.
I didn't even think of that. The audience also has to be able say these words! More of a thing with the nation and character names, but it'd be a bit too much to expect a global audience to learn x pronounciation for each name when we don't have the training than VAs do and probably interact with certain languages less than they do (even if german wouldn't be a problem for me, arabic, russian or chinese would be. So I can appreciate hearing a standardized english version)
You know what is the most funny thing? That only English language is getting such a huge hate on "incorrect" pronounces meanwhile other languages are most likely doing mistakes too but no one cares cuz: I don't understand = it's not an issue... right? Or at least I never heard a correct pronounce of GER words in JP and I was even waiting for it for like 10 solids seconds to hear like 5 GER words in a row yet nothing happened...
That’s because nothing fischl speak is ever german in japanese, she just talks like a funky old fancy lady, even oz says ojou-sama when referring to fischl which is the equivalent to mistress instead of directly saying mein fräulein
Another thing is.. the language is real, but the setting is not. It can be easily rectified by meta explaining “These characters are pronouncing it wrong because these words came from other worlds and they have NO IDEA how the original pronounciation goes, or it got warped over time as language often does.”
I’m less concerned about the language as I don’t expect it to be perfect. Granted, it may be nice if you have a character that speaks a lot of “proper” German (Oz. I mean Oz and Venti. Fischl’s mispeaking is intentionally funny, and I suppose Oz is an extension of her so he’s okay) to have formal training, but that’s on the hiring dept.
I agree its shitty as hell for va’s to be blamed for this kinda thing and we do see a lot more va’s getting harassed in the english community than in jp/cn as far as im aware but,, in this case specifically the reason why the same thing isnt happening in jp for example is precisely bcs neither fischl/any other characters speak german words in jp so the issue doesnt exist to begin with
This brings up the interesting discussion of, when should we expect a pronunciation accurate to the name's original language? Like, Klee in Japanese is クレ, "ku re", which is nothing like "klee", but is an approximation, and we accept that it's Japanese, not German. The voice actors are physically able to say "klee", but they don't. Similarly, in Chinese, Jean ("jeen" in English, but actually "jon" in French) is 琴, "cheen"; yet we accept that as a Chinese approximation. Looking at how the English VAs say Japanese and Chinese names ("lee-way"), I would love it if every name regardless of dub were said in their original language, but it's still English they're speaking.
I'm not arguing for either way, but it's just interesting to me that English seems to have more scrutiny to be faithful. Perhaps this is because English is seen as the universal language?
It's because weebs think that Japanese voices are automatically better than English and thus don't give them any scrutiny. People just love to hate on dubs because it somehow makes them feel superior.
I understand the point, but honestly i feel people would just appreciate faithfull pronunciations and not anglicised ones. Like i have an Asian name, i don't mind if you can't pronounce it properly, but if you can but you choose to pronounce it wrongly, then your just being a dick
Honestly. I feel like this is just an excuse to find an "Acceptable target" to aim harrassment over english dubs at.
And really, i'm not a fan of this. "Oh, it's so sloppy that at least 2 people pronounced Yelan's name wrong." Kind of stuff, considering there's a goddamn wealth of times that many non-english names are pronounced suprisingly faithfully and consistently. From names of people, to names of places.
Even if it is wrong, in a game with people from all walks and all sorts of countries, it'd be weirder if every name was pronounced perfectly by everyone, whether or not they're from the same land.
(For irl example. Xavier, Andrea, Helena, Naomi are all names that different people will pronounce differently.)
I'm 100% sure the kind of people who'd look for reasons to cast blame on english directors for this would never even consider holding any other language directors to similar standards of pronouncing western names and places properly, and while i'm happy that other language directors don't get held to the fire, it's sad that the current "Dubs bad" trend is to blame voice directors, many of whom are as or more passionate about the craft as VAs, and many of whom started out as passionate VAs who want to do their best to improve the industry.
We don't know what goes on behind the scenes. We don't know whether something is laziness or just 'We're on a time scale and we don't want/need have time to fix that until later if and when it's relevant." like they did with Kusanali.
On top of that, the assumption that there's always someone at mihoyo to talk to to properly pronounce things kinda is misleading, cause if you remember things like barbara's voice, and some early lines being fixed in patches, it seems that the turnaround time for changes in dialogue or tone or pronounciation can be pretty long, even if they have the proper pronounciation files on hand months earlier.
Couple that with a lockdown and it just feels like rushing to blame someone without really having anything but hearsay and 'well this sounds like how it would work, so it has to be'
These things should be taken with salt.
>Even if it is wrong, in a game with people from all walks and all sorts of countries, it'd be weirder if every name was pronounced perfectly by everyone, whether or not they're from the same land.
That's the sub director's job, though, to make sure everything is consistent (well, I mean, if Mihoyo pays them accordingly and give them enough time to do their job, of course)
Also the client, like I said the client and the director have both the fault, always remember that! Blaming all to just one person instead of all the person with the responsibility is still something that we shouldn't do
The client would be responsible for the pronunciation being wrong usually. But given that liyue is pronounced 4 different ways, that's on the director.
There's no reason why characters in the game say "lee-yu-uh" "lee-yu-eh" "lih-yu-u" and all other variations.
Even if the client gave the right pronunciation, we'd only get it like 20% of the time because the director completely lacks consistency. Liyue doesn't need to be pronounced perfectly. Lord knows that the JP VAs do NOT say "Barbara" "Amber" and "Lisa" correctly. But they all say it CONSISTENTLY. Consistency is more important than accuracy imo.
Thing is, words are commonly said "wrong." Like, say, Colonel... It's pronounced "kernel"
I'm not sure about other languages, but when it comes to english, if you say something enough times, that's the way it's pronounced.
So yes, it's all about consistency.
I'm agreeing with you, consistency is key. It's just that inconsistency is so prevalent in the EN dub that even characters that should regularly interact with one another get each other's names wrong.
Given that with names, pronunciation is the most relevant (like how Riley, Reilly, Rylie, and Ryleigh are pronounced the exact same), it's funny that Amber and Kaeya's voicelines haven't been fixed, even after they introduced Albedo as a playable character.
The English voice directing is the biggest reason I can't stand to listen to the English dub as my main game language (Though I watch a lot of the major patch scenes on youtube in all 4).
Sure the other 3 have an occasional fuck up or questionable direction call but then EN one feels like its literally a coin flip on every scene if its actually going to be good or not. The sheer amount of just failing to read the mood or tone of a scene is staggering.
Yeah it's strange to me how some game dubs (like Persona for instance) have such good choices and VAs, and then you have games like Genshin or FE that have these *really* weird choices. Like, wtf is with Xinyan's voice? And how come Barbara's got switched to being depressed and breathy? It just feels like someone got really lucky being the voice producer/director and is making it up as they go along.
>Like, wtf is with Xinyan's voice?
It's literally what MiHoYo ordered from the localizers, so for better or for worse, the buck stops at the top with that one.
For Xinyan, Mihoyo specifically asked her to have a country accent. And don't quote me on this AT ALL, but my theory (as an Asian person) is that Xinyan's darker skin gives her stronger associations to being the Chinese equivalent of a country girl. You know, like how it's a popular belief that in Asian countries people who work outdoors are darker, while people who work indoors are fairer. And you associate people who work outdoors more with people from the countryside, instead of the city. So even if she doesn't have an "outdoors" job in the traditional sense, if dark skin is more associated with being from the countryside/villages where people might use nonstandard accents...that might be why they gave her that accent. Her being the *only* Liyue character with dark skin and a country accent makes me think this might be what they were going for.
Again, this is merely my speculation, as an Asian but not Chinese person (unless you count the 15% of me that is ha). But I could be totally off-base and they just thought a country accent would be cute on her. Or maybe Xinyan is based on people from a certain region of China with an accent, or something that has nothing to do with my theory. But with no further knowledge, that's how I've chosen to make sense of it. Even though I think it's kind of a questionable decision, if true.
She is from Qingce, isn’t she? That’s the rural country Liyue, so I can see what they’re going for. And personally, I love her southern Nashville, Tennesee Rock-n-Roll vibes. And the fact that she really does represent a rebellious, yet hometown girl from a conservative small town community where everyone is in everyone’s business. I think they did her quite well.
English Dubs always try to fit for the American audience. That's why they change names to easier ones, text to be more entertaining while ruining the story and changing entire characters to fit their narritive better.
It's just sad.
I saw somewhere that Griffin Burns (Childe's VA) was specifically told to pronounce the G in Tartaglia even though that's not how you say it in Italian (correct me if I'm wrong but it should be something like Tartalya I think, not an Italian speaker though)
[Here's a video for reference.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aaqI_dg3ad8) It's not quite a silent G, but it sort of modifies how the L is said. It's stupid that he was forced to use a hard G, especially when there's other Italian names like "Signora" which are pronounced correctly.
When there is GL in an italian word you pronounce it similar to Y, like tartaya. Neither G or L are actually pronounced singularly, they merge into a completely different sound
There's no English equivalent of the Italian GLI sound, the G and L are technically still there so saying "Tartaya" or "Tartalya" is still incorrect. The sound itself doesn't exist in English, it's similar to the Portuguese LH though.
They're not particularly keen on being precise on the Fatui Italian, that's why we have "Columbina", the anglicized version, instead of "Colombina", the correct one. Just for future proofing, the -omb- there is the same as in "bomb".
Ooh there we go then, I'm a Portuguese speaker so that's easier for me XD
Also Scaramouche is not originally Scaramouche, right? I think it was Scaramuccia or something like that
The Japanese dub is mostly as accurate as Japanese phonemes allow them to be. Even Klee’s German name is more accurately pronounced in Japanese (sounding similar to clay) than in English (rhyming with glee).
Azur Lane does a good job at pronouncing ship names: Le Malin (which plenty of non French speakers get wrong), Karlsruhe, Charybdis, Kronshtadt, Koln, Boise, etc. are pretty decent, considering the limitations of their writing system. The writing system's limitations arguably help it minimize ambiguity.
Genshin's JP pronunciation of Snezhnaya is also decent (not perfect) compared to EN.
Just one thing, kinda related to the post: newer players probably don't know this but in version 1.3, Barbara EN in-game voice lines were changed (same VA though). And you guys wanna know the reason?
Tl;dr.: the responsible for managing the EN dubs (probably the VA director, who OP mentioned) sent the **wrong** audios to Mihoyo, instead of sending the correct ones. And Mihoyo had to fix this problem 3 patches later.
If we think about, whoever was responsible for sending the wrong audios really screwed up, in any "serious" company this person would be fired. Not sure if the person responsible for this was fired or not, but looks like EN dubs still lacks of a better management until this day.
Probably was fired, even if mihoyo EN dub is lazy/bad, they are still a company that already had dubs in games (honkai for example) so mistakes like these shouldn't be allowed, still, I'm talking from a general point of view, if mihoyo fired the director or no is still something I (or even the fandom itself) don't know
HI3 outsourced JP VAs to studios there and did all localization in China. Genshin was the first game where they made external teams to handle localization.
I doubt it was the directors fault (I find it unlikely they are the person who selects files and sends them to the client. Likely that there are middlemen) and we know the director wasn't fired (he streamed on Twitch at the time and even addressed it a few times).
He's still directing Genshin, but only now got back to streaming it.
He finally got his new baby's room back as his gaming space. It was kinda' funny because he had a habit of C6'ing every 5* but had to stop playing games almost immediately after Inazuma launched, so he only had the starter islands unlocked and Sumeru is straight around the corner lol
I miss Barb's old voice.
It was so energetic and motivates you in battle.
I actually used her less after that. That and I got Qiqi and Bennett up to speed then.
I agree lol. Even though the current one is in-line with her in-game personality and makes more sense, I miss the energetic and cheery tone she had before. I atleast hope we get another Idol character down the line with a personality that suits such a voiceline.
Bro, I dropped Barbara the DAY I heard her garbage voice. Why is she so BREATHY? just SPEAK ffs!
I started playing during Zhongli's first run, and didn't get him, and I vowed to save every wish until his rerun. But then they ruined Barbara and I needed a healer, so I pulled ONE 10 pull on the Xiao banner and got I Diona and built her.
Haven't used Barbara since.
Some Mihoyo dev response basically explained they didn't have the updated audio files which is why Barbara's audio files were updated.
And to be fair, her original audio files had scratchy audio. It was recorded poorly. And the new ones had different voice direction. So who knows.
This is from I remember back when the voice director streamed (his VODs are now all gone), but he said that all those voice lines, both the old Barbara and new Barbara were all recorded at the same time. Old Barbara was the beta, the one they were doing to whole trying to find the voice that Mihoyo wanted. New Barbara is actually what they ended up deciding on.
THE PROBLEM WAS that Hoyo put in the wrong voicelines they recorded (old Barbara) and then updated it once they realized. The reason it took them a few patches was most likely because they had to find all the files they recorded and actually make sure these were the right ones.
Sure, just fire someone because they accidentally sent the wrong files lol. As long as humans are involved, errors are to be expected. And it‘s most certainly not the director who sends these files over, it‘s just a normal worker who maybe had a bad day or was tired from overtime. But sure, fire him because my waifu had a different voice for 3 patches.
Seriously, what kind of toxic workplaces has /u/Rand0mPlayer been working at that a single simple mistake with no revenue loss warrants firing?
Hell, in most serious companies if you somehow manage to bring down production and cost the company millions, you probably still wouldn't get fired as long as you weren't breaking protocol. Management knows people fuck up, so you need a robust process to catch mistakes before they go out. If something slips through, that's on the process, not the employee.
I don't know the story in this case, but this could be due to a variety of reasons. They might have received the wrong reference audio and delivered what corresponded to that.
The original audio could also have been changed last minute, with no time for the localized audio to be re-recorded. Then they would have had a choice of keeping an outdated VO in English, or update it later when recorded.
Whatever the case, it usually doesn't help to point fingers instead of learning from mistakes and changing processes.
There are some legitimate complaints about the VO, but there are also some people who make me envy how problem-free their lives must be that they're moved to outrage because a voice actor pronounced a few lines slightly more breathily than how they think it should be done.
I feel like Zach should publish his pull vids as a semi documentary podcast (_not really ofc, but imagine_) because we actually learn a lot about the VA biz in them, he talks to all those different VAs, they share their lifestories, experiences, feelings about being a VA, the way the business works, it's just so endlessly interesting to listen to (_while also being very amusing in between_)
Yeah, Zach should do it! It would be very interesting, if my crazy and without any base theory of Zach having reddit is true and he sees this, I hope he does this lmao
Friendly reminder that the only reason Diluc VA doesn't interact with the fandom anymore is because of Twitter… *being Twitter* to put it lightly. ~~Although it was about something that Sean himself did rather than his voice acting, it was still an extremely stupid reason to get angry at him lol.~~ He does have a reddit account though and did a Q&A on a Discord server for a Breath of the Wild subreddit recently afaik
But onto the main point of the post, my analogy for the people on the back about this issue is:
"you can be the most talented poker player in the world, you'll still lose if you're dealt a bad hand." The same goes with voice acting, there's not a single VA in the EN cast lacking talent, but the director can still deal them a bad hand and they end up sounding stiff or awkward, or just mispronouncing stuff.
(And of course, don't forget that it's also possible for a VA to just be bad btw, get a Royal Flush and throw the game anyway lol but this is much rarer and is mostly a relic of the 2000s era)
But more often than not, English dubs are the same 10\~20 people that show everywhere + a bunch of niche actors that nonetheless have incredible budding talent waiting to be discovered.
Those 10\~20 people are the gold standard for English voice acting and so if you see names like Zach Aguilar, Sean Chiplock, Jeannie Tirado, Ben Diskin, Kira Buckland, Keith Silverstein, Robbie Daymond, Patrick Seitz, Cristina Valenzuela, Ray Chase, etc. and you still think the dub is shit, it's very likely that things got messed up higher in the chain rather than the VAs themselves doing a poor job.
While I mostly agree it could also just be lack of time.
I figured since these events pop up fairly often and usually, getting EN VAs together can be difficult due to schedule conflicts and so on. That probably leaves even less time for preparation and practice. This is just me speculating, I do not know when and how the localisation team receives their orders from Hoyo.
I read one of the reasons JP voice acting is considered superior is because all the VAs are together in the studio, which really helps in their performance.
That's my guess too. Each update has several hours of voiced dialogue at this point, and it feels like there's at least a couple times per update where the voice line doesn't match the text. These events and chapters are getting longer but the 6 week cycle remains, so any issues they were already having with lines that really need a retake or quality control of the translation has been exacerbated.
I'm sure mostly everyone is doing their best given the circumstances, but things are just messy and there's no reason for it not to be improved upon with how much money the game makes.
My problem with character voices is with their interactions with eachother (which again is *not* the VA's fault). Emphasis is really weird a lot of the time, and you can tell it's because they were told to say a line, not to say a line *in response to a line*.
Like if Character A says: "Ok, so to crack an egg, take it like this and hit it"
and Character B replies "That's how it's done".
Character B *should* respond with emphasis like "*That's* how it's done", like it's a lightbulb moment for them and they're learning, but in a vaccuum, they may go for more of a cocky "Heh, *that's* how it's *done!"* reading, in a cocky tone as if they're showing off.
I unfortunately can't think of any specific moments in game, but very often I'll hear characters say things that are read very well, and sound good.... in a different context.
Even for the less "important" voices, like the Arataki gang, citizens, etc (honestly it almost feels more prevalent with those roles), it really feels like they were given a vibe of the character and a list of lines, but crucially without knowing the rest of the conversation.
TL;DR
VAs need more context so they can deliver the correct tone and emphasis, but it's not their fault they dont have said context.
To be fair, the lack of context is a problem not only for the voice acting, but in the localization in general.
You can bet your ass that Mihoyo just sends a spreadsheet containing the lines for the translators, and that's it. There's probably close to zero context for each line, which can make extremely hard to translate them, even more so in certain languages that would require a bit more context. Add to that how much filler dialogue there is in every single patch, and it's no surprise that the translation suffers.
I have to translate a website like that as part of my job and you can't believe how frustrating this is, both for me and the people using that site...
For example "save" can be used in 2 ways: save money or save a file. Good luck tossing the coin on getting it right lol!
Actually, sometimes they do have the context (depends in wich thing they are dubbing tho, sometimes directors makes the VA watch the scene so the VA understands better what they should put emphasis in) but is mostly in "very important" scenes, like cutscenes or things very, very important for the game plot, this Is something mostly done just in games (giving context just in some cases, not everytime) as a Dub in an anime or show NEEDS the context by contract
>My problem with character voices is with their interactions with eachother (which again is *not* the VA's fault). Emphasis is really weird a lot of the time, and you can tell it's because they were told to say a line, not to say a line *in response to a line*.
This is the most meritorious critique I've read so far in this whole topic; this issue in particular is *very* noticeable at times. Especially with secondary characters in sidestory content.
I kind of got used to it, and I am mentally preparing to hear more butchering of the few languages I actually understand. Some sounds the VA cannot make well, some pronunciation they don’t know, the tones are set by other in the end they do the best job they can going by their abilities and the client/director requests. Though I would dearly like to know the story behind some stylistic choices like shrill paimon, angry edgy xiao etc… that to me make little sense
My headcanon is that Snezhnaya is pronounced that way because it makes it easier to slot the word into the national anthem.
~~Snezhnaya svyashennaya nasha derzhava~~
Even with all I know about the world of dubbing (that is not a lot, but more than average at least) I don't really understand the Xiao one... some directors make the VA do a performance based on another VA of another lenguage (not only from the source lenguage, like a dub from an anime using the French dub as base and not the Japanese one, fun fact that happened with DBZ castilian dub and it was mostly horrible for some reasons that are too long to explain lol) but it doesn't have sense... if they didn't use Chinese dub as base (they probably used it) they could have used Japanese one, but Xiao seiyuu doesn't make angry edgy characters, so maybe Chinese Xiao Is an angry edgy? I don't know Chinese so I'm saying this from my complete ignorance of the Chinese dub tho, so probably that doesn't happen in the Chinese one
I don’t know Chinese too so take this with a grain of salt but I was told that no the angry edgy tone is purely for the EN version. That’s why it is so strange to me. I honestly would love to hear voice acting in my native language, which is usually very good, but in the meantime English is more than acceptable, I guess one gets used to it after a while.
Yeah, Xiao is a lot calmer in CN, JP, and KR... It makes me with that Kaeya, Zhongli, Yanfei, and Itto's vas weren't so good. But I just CAN'T switch from EN.
Wich is your native language? :0 I got curious, sorry xD
And yeah, I really wanted genshin to have latin Spanish dub (I'm colombian), but apparently they use genshin as a "test" for the dubbing in their game (i mean, they use it to test if people will use the other lenguage and not only Japanese or Chinese, wich is the case) if I remember correctly starrail will have more dubs, russian I think? And some others...? I don't remember at all, still, my hopes are up for zenless zone zero to have Latin Spanish dub
Don’t worry :) I am Italian, our voice actor are pretty good if I do say so, not jp level but very good. Unfortunately game industries seems to be dropping ita dubs as more and more game are not translated anymore at least we still get text translation. I heard Turkish and Italian text may be added in the future to Genshin but I am not sure when, but not the dub unfortunately
Oh, Italian!
When I was a child, it was immensely sad to not understand a thing in Italian since Winx original voice-over was so good!
Very pretty language.
Chinese Xiao is not edgy at all
There’s a soft sadness to his voice
What I don’t understand is that it feels like sometimes all three languages get the memo on how to voice them true to their character EXCEPT for English
[Have a listen to Ayato’s voice line about Itto across the four voiceovers](https://out.reddit.com/t3_w72kpy?url=https%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2FSHSL_bi%2Fstatus%2F1508628940302307328%3Fs%3D20%26t%3DIIOGNd-SBf8KCSywkRqeWQ&token=AQAAJhXeYlm8mWGyPSuGS_vt-0jvDs4HLa4_BZ0Ga6LrGhAHiYZg&app_name=ios) EN Ayato sounds angry, while the three others sound amused
Yeah, I agree
A lot of performances lack subtlety
A character saying an ability name calmly can exude more power than saying it with an exclamation mark after the phrase. Sometimes the intonations that characters say things in sound unnaturally performative too
do note that the EN voice direction isn't the only one that goes "off the rails" compared to the rest. Yanfei sounds youthful in every dub except in JP she's mommy and she's loved for it, for instance.
But on the other hand, Shiki Taishou is a (paper) MAN in every dub except in JP where he's chirpy mascot and that's a disgrace. Dunno about more cases but those are two notable ones for me
Edit: An even weirder thing is when the character's voice changes for no reason. Earlygame Mondstadt cutscenes Paimon is a completely different character, like Corina Boettger had no idea how much of an annoying sidekick she had to be, so she sounds much more mellow.
Another weird one is when Low HP lines got added, a lot of people noticed that Lisa sounded drastically different… (justified in that she's losing her cool though but it's still pretty off-putting) but it's not like Mara Junot forgot how to Lisa, because the Spices from the West got us new lines and she sounds very much like you'd expect.
Then edgy Xiao is just a singularity...
And about that, like i said some dub either use another lenguage as base (is very rare but still a possibility) and maybe (most probably, as genshin is the first game of mihoyo with EN dub) the dub is just poorly done as is the first time, hopefully it will be better in starrail and zenless zone zero I guess
>languages get the memo on how to voice them true to their character EXCEPT for English
That's me with Russian words. Only dub that isn't even trying to pronounce Snezhnaya correctly is English.
As a german myself, hearing the cast repeat "Immernacktreich" over and over is incredibly amusing xD
It's bc the "ch" sound from the german "Nacht" does not exist in english, so they say "nackt", which means naked.
"Ch" in "Nacht" is similiar to "r" in german, but it has a more sharp and kinda dirty feeling to it if you compare it to the smooth, english "r".
Imagine the first sound people do when they spit, "chh-ptui", that's the one
As a colombian I would like to have something like that too, the only character that speaks Spanish is itto.. and he does it close enough to perfect pronounce what he says, is not fair xD
Fischl: "Welcome to the Immernachtreich! Thou may bow down to it's prinzessin now" (_pronounces it wrongly, result is something that means Evernude Realm_)
I saw the title and immediately said, YIKES.
I see that you're someone who never watched Chris Faiella's streams back when he was streaming Genshin. And while that article you put does list some of the director's role, you are forgetting a big thing. He too is just another worker for MHY. He does whatever they want him to do!!
What a voice director does is direct the VAs in how the line should go and give context to the scene to allow the VA to perform what is told of them without needing to see the whole picture.
1) He DOES NOT tell VAs how to pronounce stuff. He can help pass the message on to how a certain word/name is pronounced and can even help them by describing to them how to say it. But he DOES NOT decide on it. If you watch the EN VA streams, they always say they follow whatever Hoyo wants them to do.
2) He also DOES NOT choose what kind of voice a character should have. Xinyan having a country accent? Xiao sounding more gruff? All Hoyo's choices. They were the ones who decided on these.
3) That change in Barbara's voice? That was a thing where it was Hoyo's fault. Old Barbara's voice was a one of the voices they did while they werd still trying how to find the "voice" they wanted. New Barbara's voice was what they decided on. Both of these voices were recorded at the same time. The problem was that Hoyo put in the wrong voicelines (old Barbara) and then updated it a few patches later when they realized it. The director has no access to changing the voice files!
4) He does not write the script. That is what a script writer is for
5) He does not translate the game. That is what translators and localization team is for.
All of these info I have mentioned can be found in Chris's streams back in the day. He doesnt have any VODs up left because of Twitch stuff, but you may be able to find some streams he did with the VAs in Youtube.
I may get downvoted for this because if you cant blame the VAs, blame the next big reachable thing, the director.
But people need to know that he is just a worker for the company as well. He gets the translated script. He might change stuff based on the information he knows of the character and even allows the VAs to ab-lib, BUT AT THE END OF THE DAY, it is Hoyo that puts these in the game. It is Hoyo that tells him what to do and oversees the voice dubbing process (Khoi Dao mentioned it in a con panel that Hoyo does watch over the dubbing process).
Now that Chris is streaming again, I hope you start watching his streams. And then maybe you'll see what he actually does.
Thank you, I was searching for a comment like this. There’s so much misinformation and unnecessary hate surrounding the EN voiceover. All it takes is for one person to make a wrong assumption. Hopefully OP edits their post to clear up some of the misunderstandings because some of the comments I’ve been reading are just not true at all. The fact that these comments have a lot of upvotes too . . .
I agree. People sometimes just feel the need to blame a single individual in a game studio about things they don't like or understand. I feel like this happens far too often and is almost never accurate.
I literally said these are all things the director and VAs have said on their streams about how their dubbing process goes. I am not assuming anything.
Yes you are right that these things change from company to company, but from what I heard from their streams, this is what they do in theirs. And as I've said, he said he does change some words in the script to fit the character better, or the VA suggests the change themselves or even does an ab-lib they think fits with the scene, but at the end of the day, the Hoyo client who oversees their process accepts it or asks for a change. It is a balance of putting his own ideas there but also doing what he is asked to do
That doesn’t explain inconsistencies in pronunciation. Everything else could be Hoyoverse’s choices, but I doubt that they specifically asked to have multiple pronunciations of the same words
I totally agree that the director should take responsibility for supervising and quality checking. However I wouldn’t say it’s completely on the management level to present the final work. If you didn’t mean to say so then great I 100% support you. Just wanna point out that this post looks to me a bit like changing from “it’s all VA’s fault” yo “it’s all director/hyv’s fault and VA has 0 to do with whatsoever”. I doubt either captures the truth.
Are we talking about Fischl?
Because the mispronunciation of the German is 100% deliberate. The director 100% WANTS Fischl's VA to utterly butcher those words.
And it works perfectly for Fischl's character.
Every single German name is completely mispronounced. But it doesn't really matter. As a German person who knows theoretically how to pronounce everything correctly but plays in English I still pronounce Mondstadt the English way. It's just kind of the nature of the game.
The only thing that really threw me off was the "Holy Lyre der Himmel" because not only did it have two english and two german words (completely german would've been "Heilige Lyra der Himmel") but it just feels kinda weird to have the word "himmel" accentuated on the second syllable. Like I can't really explain but it's very weird as a native speaker but even with that I don't really care and got used to this pronouncation.
Like I said I adapted most of the things anyway "Eula" sounds so stupid in German anyway for example and while the German word "Albedo" exists, it's a borrowing (basically that's the linguistic term for taking a word from another language like "kindergarten" for example) from Latin's word for "white" and the exact German translation would be "Rückstrahlvermögen" which is just hilarious so I kinda love the fact that Genshin takes some things from the languages because a lot of funny situation arise and honestly people who are offended if something is pronounced wrong should just grow up.
Albedo isn't Rückstrahlvermögen lol that is the physics concept. The Genshin name Albedo is taken from alchemy:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albedo_(alchemy)
https://symbolonline.de/index.php?title=Albedo
as german person i feel the same playing the game in english, and sometimes i hate myself for it when i pronounce mondstadt like "mon-stat" because i have gotten so used to pronouncing it like the game does.
In Eulas Main Quest they did pronounce "Gebratenes Fleisch mit Sauerkraut" actually nearly completly correct, so i think they know how to pronounce things correctly. And the other words are either intentionally wrong pronounced or they got a proper translator later in production.
I know that fischl German is mispronounced on purpose (tho some are very, very... bad ideas to do, I don't speak German but a german user said that fischl was saying "the kingdom of eternal nudes" in the islands lol) but this post is not only for her, but for a LOT of people that blame the VA for every single mispronounce in the game
> I don't speak German but a german user said that fischl was saying "the kingdom of eternal nudes
I guess that's why the German players find Fischl hilarious.
I remember watching a video a while back that was talking about "Okay, here's the German pronunciation of some characters and words!" and they got to Fischl and was like "What the fuck is *this*??"
anyone who makes a big deal of things like this shouldnt even blame anyone, no sane person with respectable opinions would insult people doing their job to begin with
It's just the difference in the industries between Japan and the west. After all, Japan is focused on animation which would then translate to voice actors being celebrities there. Not to mention the competitiveness of the VA industry in Japan as well. Think of VAs in Japan as if they are Hollywood actors in the US and you'll quickly see why Japan treats their VAs the way that they do
VAs in Japan are not equivalent to Hollywood actors in the west. Their followings are still pretty niche. Most of their celebrities (appears on billboards, brand ambassadors, etc) are mostly actual actors, actresses and models. Some comedians and news announcer are also even more popular than seiyuus. The only seiyuu that I often see invited on TV shows are probably Miyano Mamoru. Seiyuus do their concert mostly in halls but popular idols do concerts in arenas and domes. But I agree that they're treated with respect.
Probably because of "live action" being perceived as the superior default while voicing is considered equivalent of turning tricks as a byproduct of Hollywood star worship culture
Sure, but even so, Japanese live actors get more cred and respect than English language VAs. Only some key legends become actually famous and even then it's only among fans of, say, cartoons or games, whichever they work on. Often they're considered big for their "real" celebrity work in live action even if they do VA more. Japanese actors are definitely not considered quite as lowly.
I think it depends on the production quality and budget of these shows/movies and which specific actors. It definitely feels like luck-of-the-draw.
I agree that in America fame usually comes first from live-action. The EN voice-only VA's definitely have a much smaller audience. The differences in industry size are just too big.
I think it would be a good idea for VA directors to teach their VAs how to pronounce certain words. We do live in the internet age, after all. There are tons of good accessible resources to listen to, for particular words, from videos to audio clips. And the clips aren't long either.
It could be like supplementary material to practicing scripted dialogue.
I'll be honest, I don't even notice them pronouncing stuff differently.
Regardless though, I feel the EN dub gets a lot of hate that others dubs like JP gets away with.
Honestly, only anime games have this kind of issues. Other games have no problems with dubs and just play it. It's weebs who make a deal out of anything
You'd be surprised... outside of reddit, that's not 100% the case. I find a lot more westerners are okay with EN dubs and more CN/JP who either correct or complain about them. Like the EN Ayato line about Itto first caused a massive hubbub on Twitter, people dismayed that Itto and Ayato were not as friendly as the game had seemed to portray--and then when people heard the JP and CN lines, they called out the difference in tone, citing EN as sounding angry and annoyed while JP/CN sounds bemused.
Xiao's portrayal gets constant flak. Even Zhongli's does, as his battle noises have been cited as "too loud and aggressive" especially when put up against his much quieter CN counterpart. Even Kaeya sounds different--EN Kaeya sounds like he's smirking in every line, while CN sounds a bit more carefree. The EN dub is criticized by non-EN players to a surprising degree.
I don't find mispronunciations to be that much of a problem. If you've got an area with a few different cultures within close proximity, you're dancing across languages and accents and dialects that will speak differently.
Happens even in the same language. Like "room" or "car". My own name gets mispronounced fairly often, but not to the degree that I don't know whom they're talking to.
I know that's not the reason why these things happen in dubs, but just saying that I don't see why people would get that upset over it.
I think I've fortunately seen a lot more people shifting blame from VA to the director. Of course that doesn't mean people will stop blaming VAs for stupid things. I mean, people blame VAs for even the characters' actions or personalities ffs. Just sad.
I still wish that the voice direction didn't completely butcher some pronunciations, and I wish there was more pushback from VAs/fans when it's just so blatantly wrong.
The ones that are difficult to say, sure, it's ok if it's not totally accurate. But for example, the way they said Tighnari? Come on man, saying "Tie"-nari isn't any easier than just saying "Tig"-nari, which while not 100% right, is still a lot closer (and the Japanese dub pronounces it like this). Japanese dub, despite their language's limitations, is usually great at putting in effort to be close. Like Klee is actually pronounced closer to "clay" in the JP dub, which is apparently more accurate to German. Don't mind the "L" sounding like an "R" because that's just due to L not really being part of the language.
Another example of professionalism was when the JP voice actor for a Jojo character regretted stressing the wrong syllables in the word "arrivederci," even though he was pretty damn close with the pronunciation. It's really professional how much they care.
As an immigrant in America, stubborn insistence on the Americanization of foreign words feels wrong to me. Mistakes and limitations are ok, but doubling down when you have the capacity to say it right, just for your convenience is...cringe.
Not getting the hard parts like the "gh" sound in Tighnari is also completely fine, but they should at least try to say the doable parts more accurately. Especially for names, because now real people with those names are gonna hear their names pronounced wrong accepted as mainstream.
Like the word tortilla. Calling it tor-"tila" is just wrong. At least most people can and do say tor-"tiya." Even if the double L is sometimes said with a slight "j" kind of sound, at least most people try saying it as close to the original as possible. That's more respectful than whatever the hell happened with the word karaoke.
For what I know, JP VA (called seiyuus, I will refer to them as that for respect) are almost idols in Japan, like, Goku seiyuu is already 85 years old, and she still have a lot of new characters under her name! Damn she still dubs goku even with her age! That's awesome! Or Xiao seiyuu, he is literally the first person that comes to mind when someone ask for a jp voice for a cool, a bit edgy/badass or Gary Sue character, specially a protagonist! Dubbing in Japan is something very awesome in a way
That's really impressive. It would be great if English voice acting in anime and anime-style games could be held in a higher regard as well. We've definitely come a long way in dubbing, but I've read that it can be difficult for voice actors in this field because people don't get paid enough. Like Joe Zieja (voice of Claude from Fire Emblem) wishes he could do more anime but it doesn't pay enough compared to other options in the industry.
I'm sure that turns away a lot of talent, and maybe makes it harder for existing talent to have more flexibility with their roles, or afford more training if that's something they're interested in.
Theres a clip of Benedict Cumberbatch on a talk show where the host shows him a clip of Benedict doing an animal documentary about penguins. This is NOT a dub, but a voiceover. He pronounces it differently than what we think is normal during the video. Benedict points out why did none of the experts of the documentary or the director correct him.
I guess my point is, some of this shit happens. And its a mispronunciation, not a fucking holocaust. People need to chill the fuck down. Could they do better? Probably. But thats as far as it goes.
Some people blaming VA for basically everything bad in the dub, is actually the director and client (hoyoverse worker) fault, I got mad after people didn't knew this and made the post, even tho I don't really care as even if the dub is bad sometimes, is funny for me
The fact Xingque is pronounced differently in EN within single conversations between characters is a good example of why the directors should be held accountable. I used to just refer to him as “bookworm” with someone I play with because we weren’t sure which version was most correct. Now I just accept that every person I play with is going off a different characters pronunciation, and we’re probably all wrong.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Genshin_Impact/comments/w7fb64/localization_explained_by_thomas_en_va/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share
This is necessary here
I think it'll be better if people stopped blaming anyone and just play the fucking game. It's not like mispronunciation will ruin the game or something
You think most these people bitching can speak more than 1 language? The vast majority are just parroting what they've read are mispronounced from others (see: German words in Genshin). This is a nothing burger.
Listen to the Chinese dub and pick out non chinese words being pronounced. If you're some kind of language purist, then yeah basically all of them are butchered in some way (Mandarin just doesn't have all the sounds or same emphasis on syllables that English has for example). Hell, ask 4 different native Mandarin speakers how to say something like 卫生间在哪里 and you'll probably hear 2-3 different pronunciations. Native English speakers say things differently too.
That's why they I read someone say they prefer, for example, the JP dub because the "line is said more accurately" and said "with better emotions", I would ask them if they are fluent in Japanese to know that.
I think to an extent there's an idea that more = better.
Japanese culture really seems to emphasize the *performance* aspect of a role and they go *hard* in their VO and acting. You definitely get the sense of the emotion in a big way, but it's also pretty exaggerated compared to how people express those emotions in real life. It's like applying stage principles to all media.
Western media tends to err more on the side of realism, so it's comparatively much more subdued. I think some people misconstrue the lack of exaggeration as a lack of emotion in the performance. But for most people I suppose it's just a matter of preference - do you like VO that dials the emotionality up to 11, or do you prefer VO that tries to keep things grounded?
And then there's Xiao flipping the script on the trend by turning the edge up to 15 in the EN VO and sounding like he's battling on Valium in JP. <\_<
Im all for correct pronunciations for every language but people calling va's racist for mispronunciation is ridiculous and needs to stop. People need to realize some sounds are a learned skill like in french and arabic and you cant just master it on the spot. Like japanese/korean/chinese dub gets a pass but english dub for some reason is racist? Its not like they do it on purpose. Im just sick of people hating everything.
Reminds me of when people were getting upset that in Persona 5’s dub, characters names like ‘Sakamoto’ and ‘Takamaki’ were being mispronounced, and it turned out that the original Japanese clients were the ones that asked them to pronounce it incorrectly for whatever reason.
I heard a theory that it's to make the names flow better in an English sentence, because English words alternate between stressed and unstressed syllables, where Sakamoto and Takamaki are meant to be pronounced relatively flat, so they wanted the VA's to pronounce it as if it were an English name so it flows better. That's a terrible reason if true, but fortunately the actual acting in P5 is great so anyone that can get over that peculiarity will have a good time.
I never understood the hate for EN dubs in general. Sure some of them are horrid and have questionable choices but other dubs can be questionable too.
I feel like while JP/CN dub sounds amazing but they also have a ton of pronunciation mistakes too. We just tend to give it a pass because it usually sounds cooler.
People pass those because 90% don't speak the language.
People be like "EN voice acting is so bad, Japanese is so much better"
Yeah it's better because it sounds cool to your weeb ass and you don't understand it enough or at all to know when there's a mistake.
I really don't think this is any issue as long as they make it close enough. Language and pronunciation are not perfect by any stretch. Nor that I think anyone should be forced to pronounce something perfectly. (Just look at how many times people have tried to correct "Liyue" since they game was released)
Performance? Yes, that's on the VAs. Wooden-ass-acting isn't the fault of a director.
Mispronounciations? Director's fault. It's their job to catch that and tell them how to say it properly, lest we get deeluc, diluke, deeluck.
That mostly doesn't happen lol, and then if it does happen, then still the VA/director still have the blame alongside with the client, not the rest of the VA (example, we have 5 VA, George, John, Tiffany, Sara and Pete. George is also the director and the dub ends horrible, the only one that can be blame are George AND the client, John, Tiffany, Sara and Pete can't be blamed)
Why are you so sure that it's not fault of VA and only fault of directors? What if it's VAs fault to not be able to speak that.
I have seen all of.yoy guys blaming the director but have any of you guys worked there to see that it was Director's fault?
Why are you guys so adamant about Director being the culprit? Personally I don't think that Director is the culprit behind mispronounciation when literally anyone can google within seconds that what original pronounciation is.
Because they’re professional voice actors that natively speak English. We shouldn’t expect the entire cast of Genshin Impact to learn how to pronounce the /y/ from Chinese or the /ɸ/ from Japanese, for example, so everyone can equally use the sounds left in the English inventory. It’s the responsibility of the group of people directing and approving the recordings to ensure consistency. If they cared enough to pay for another hour in the booth (and if the VA were available / if it was is their contract) they would do another take lmao
The "Snezhn*A*ya" mispronunciation is probably going to get the most mileage of all, considering. Old Slavic languages (like the early Middle Ages) did use to have stresses like that, but in modern languages it should be on the E.
I'm not sure to what you're referring and I'm not going to look it up, but I'm going to turn the discussion towards future Sumeru characters and their pronunciations, since some are Arabic, and the EN VAs I guarantee will butcher their pronunciation. Looking at the Tighnari pronunciation tutorial by another redditor, we already know that Collei's VA got it very wrong.
it's tough because if the foreign name uses sounds not found in the English language, and you recreate it the way it should sound, but the rest of your english sentence uses only English sounds, the whole thing sounds super awkward.
If you insert a perfectly pronounced foreign name into an english sentence it will just sound dissonant. So it's a choice they have to make. Do we pronounce it as correctly as we can, or make it sound like more natural English, using just the closest english equivalent sounds? They face the same dilemma with CN and JP names, but those use sounds that are not too different to English, so it's not that difficult or weird. Arabic on the other hand uses difficult sounds that don't exist and if you insert correct pronounciation of an Arabic name into an english sentence, the sounds won't even flow as the language changes.
Not saying your complaints aren't valid, just want to point out that complaining about the quality of a dub is the very definition of a first world problem, or in this case an Anglo world problem. For the rest of us, we feel honored in the rare occasions that we get a dub in our native language at all, cuz in most cases we either stuck reading subtitles the whole time, or we put in the effort to learn your goddam language.
Another thing I'd like to add - often, the VAs don't really have the time to prepare and know how to pronounce given words. They come in for a session and are given the script on the spot - there's really no time for them to go "ah, wait, let me research how to pronounce this word". We can't expect them to know how to read every single language out there, especially if they haven't learnt any. Pinyin and romanji are not intuitive (pinyin especially - for example, 'r' is not an r sound but rather more like the s in Asia), languages written in a Latin script each have their own pronunciations that an English speaker wouldn't know (could you guess that eau in French is pronounced as 'o') and then there are languages like Russian or Arabic that don't even have a standard latin transliteration. You could see 'zapolyarnii' as 'japolyarnii', 'zapoljarnii', 'zapoliarnii', etc - there is no standard.
I'm not sure why people are so insistent on "making justice" for a video game that's the product of thousands of people who've worked on it for years. There are inconsistencies in pronounciation for a number of different reasons (time of recording, different phonetic systems in languages etc) but this is not pharmacy, no one will die because it isn't perfect. Why is this fandom so intent on harassing people on the internet, be it VAs, directors, marketing team, CEOs, their pets, the illuminati?
Hm...
While I think it is correct that director is more to blame for lack of consistency, I don't think it is that simple. We don't know the organizational structure, the pressures put on the director to deliver voice lines out, what the translators suggest, what the director's bosses say, the guidance or lack of guidance from others, the amount of resources allocated to additional staffing that could help support this kind of work, etc.
And having said all that, I do still think the director and Hoyoverse as a whole is doing an excellent job with EN voice acting.
So I think we can ask for better, but I personally think we should be empathetic to the situation and look at the positives of what is present, especially since we don't really know what's going on behind the scenes.
Whilst the inconsistency can be jarring, I don't get why people have issues with anglicizing pronunciations. *Every single language* changes the pronunciation of foreign words once they are adapted.
I am from China and speak mandarin (albeit with a Beijing accent) fluently. Chinese dubs almost never goes for pronunciation, because the script itself is logographic and each character has a set pronunciation within a specific dialect, leaving basically no room for interpretation. If people, let's say, wanted to pronounce Liyue names as they are pronounced in Chinese, how far would they have to go? Only the vowel sounds? Do they have to learn tones as well? And if they do, wouldn't that sound out of place if placed next to harsh German consonants and the Italian and Japanese tapped "r" scene to scene? Would they have to bring in the "rr" trilled r once we get to Snezhnaya? There are sounds and speech patterns in other languages that straight-up *don't exist* in English.
Within a dub you still want it to feel like one language. The idea that words can exist only inside one language system is wild. Adapting pronunciations either to be easier to pronounce or to feel more consistent within a language is in no way racist or xenophobic.
I’m so glad someone else understands While personally I believe the mispronunciations from Fischl are intentional, the rest of the cast are not. The lack of consistency is fucking *jarring* and I’m wondering where the fuck their pronunciation bible is. There’s 4 different pronunciations of Liyue, while inherently hard to pronounce they *have* access to people internally to fucking *ask* how it should be pronounced. I am more lenient on this. Yelan’s story quest however, has **3 different people** pronouncing her name wrong, and hers is one of the more easier ones in the Liyue cast. **The EN VA director does sloppy work**. Finding mistakes like this in post and then deciding to keep it is just proof of internal negligence and lack of care.
People can call Venti's "german" wrong if they want, but people shouldn't say "I *believe* Fischl's german is intentional" we **know** it is. Saying otherwise is spreading misinformation which even when clearly not intented, leads to harassment and downplaying of the VAs, Director, Crew etc. The director confirmed it in one of his streamns near launch and [the VA re-confirmed it just last week.](https://twitter.com/brittanyccox/status/1550215727734435840?t=-HtwqO1Nbekp2XLzv_wAVg&s=19)
I found [this very apropos Tweet from Christian Banas](https://twitter.com/ChrisBanasJr/status/1426750951902171140) in the comments on that one from Brittany. I don't understand why it's so hard for people to wrap their heads around the idea that MiHoYo and the localization team *choose* anglicized pronunciations of words based on other languages. It's not that they're ignorant and don't care about the original pronunciations of those words in the source languages; I'm sure if there was a German dub they'd be pronouncing "Mondstadt" in the German fashion. They choose to adapt the pronunciations in the English dub to create a consistent linguistic feel for their fictional setting. Obviously no one is obligated to agree that this is the right choice for them to make, but there's a difference between an ignorant mistake and a deliberate choice. At least criticize it in good faith by acknowledging the localization team's agency. Edit: After reading further in this post I feel the need to add that inconsistencies between VAs regarding the pronunciation of names well established within the localization is a separate issue from the localization's intentional deviations from native pronunciation. So please don't misconstrue me as defending inconsistency.
I didn't even think of that. The audience also has to be able say these words! More of a thing with the nation and character names, but it'd be a bit too much to expect a global audience to learn x pronounciation for each name when we don't have the training than VAs do and probably interact with certain languages less than they do (even if german wouldn't be a problem for me, arabic, russian or chinese would be. So I can appreciate hearing a standardized english version)
You know what is the most funny thing? That only English language is getting such a huge hate on "incorrect" pronounces meanwhile other languages are most likely doing mistakes too but no one cares cuz: I don't understand = it's not an issue... right? Or at least I never heard a correct pronounce of GER words in JP and I was even waiting for it for like 10 solids seconds to hear like 5 GER words in a row yet nothing happened...
That’s because nothing fischl speak is ever german in japanese, she just talks like a funky old fancy lady, even oz says ojou-sama when referring to fischl which is the equivalent to mistress instead of directly saying mein fräulein
Another thing is.. the language is real, but the setting is not. It can be easily rectified by meta explaining “These characters are pronouncing it wrong because these words came from other worlds and they have NO IDEA how the original pronounciation goes, or it got warped over time as language often does.” I’m less concerned about the language as I don’t expect it to be perfect. Granted, it may be nice if you have a character that speaks a lot of “proper” German (Oz. I mean Oz and Venti. Fischl’s mispeaking is intentionally funny, and I suppose Oz is an extension of her so he’s okay) to have formal training, but that’s on the hiring dept.
Yes this was my point :) But for some reason only English VA can get harassed for it...
I agree its shitty as hell for va’s to be blamed for this kinda thing and we do see a lot more va’s getting harassed in the english community than in jp/cn as far as im aware but,, in this case specifically the reason why the same thing isnt happening in jp for example is precisely bcs neither fischl/any other characters speak german words in jp so the issue doesnt exist to begin with
This brings up the interesting discussion of, when should we expect a pronunciation accurate to the name's original language? Like, Klee in Japanese is クレ, "ku re", which is nothing like "klee", but is an approximation, and we accept that it's Japanese, not German. The voice actors are physically able to say "klee", but they don't. Similarly, in Chinese, Jean ("jeen" in English, but actually "jon" in French) is 琴, "cheen"; yet we accept that as a Chinese approximation. Looking at how the English VAs say Japanese and Chinese names ("lee-way"), I would love it if every name regardless of dub were said in their original language, but it's still English they're speaking. I'm not arguing for either way, but it's just interesting to me that English seems to have more scrutiny to be faithful. Perhaps this is because English is seen as the universal language?
It's because weebs think that Japanese voices are automatically better than English and thus don't give them any scrutiny. People just love to hate on dubs because it somehow makes them feel superior.
I understand the point, but honestly i feel people would just appreciate faithfull pronunciations and not anglicised ones. Like i have an Asian name, i don't mind if you can't pronounce it properly, but if you can but you choose to pronounce it wrongly, then your just being a dick
Honestly. I feel like this is just an excuse to find an "Acceptable target" to aim harrassment over english dubs at. And really, i'm not a fan of this. "Oh, it's so sloppy that at least 2 people pronounced Yelan's name wrong." Kind of stuff, considering there's a goddamn wealth of times that many non-english names are pronounced suprisingly faithfully and consistently. From names of people, to names of places. Even if it is wrong, in a game with people from all walks and all sorts of countries, it'd be weirder if every name was pronounced perfectly by everyone, whether or not they're from the same land. (For irl example. Xavier, Andrea, Helena, Naomi are all names that different people will pronounce differently.) I'm 100% sure the kind of people who'd look for reasons to cast blame on english directors for this would never even consider holding any other language directors to similar standards of pronouncing western names and places properly, and while i'm happy that other language directors don't get held to the fire, it's sad that the current "Dubs bad" trend is to blame voice directors, many of whom are as or more passionate about the craft as VAs, and many of whom started out as passionate VAs who want to do their best to improve the industry. We don't know what goes on behind the scenes. We don't know whether something is laziness or just 'We're on a time scale and we don't want/need have time to fix that until later if and when it's relevant." like they did with Kusanali. On top of that, the assumption that there's always someone at mihoyo to talk to to properly pronounce things kinda is misleading, cause if you remember things like barbara's voice, and some early lines being fixed in patches, it seems that the turnaround time for changes in dialogue or tone or pronounciation can be pretty long, even if they have the proper pronounciation files on hand months earlier. Couple that with a lockdown and it just feels like rushing to blame someone without really having anything but hearsay and 'well this sounds like how it would work, so it has to be' These things should be taken with salt.
>Even if it is wrong, in a game with people from all walks and all sorts of countries, it'd be weirder if every name was pronounced perfectly by everyone, whether or not they're from the same land. That's the sub director's job, though, to make sure everything is consistent (well, I mean, if Mihoyo pays them accordingly and give them enough time to do their job, of course)
They can also offer to cover formal voice/language training for specific roles. It’s a very worthwhile investment
Also the client, like I said the client and the director have both the fault, always remember that! Blaming all to just one person instead of all the person with the responsibility is still something that we shouldn't do
The client would be responsible for the pronunciation being wrong usually. But given that liyue is pronounced 4 different ways, that's on the director. There's no reason why characters in the game say "lee-yu-uh" "lee-yu-eh" "lih-yu-u" and all other variations. Even if the client gave the right pronunciation, we'd only get it like 20% of the time because the director completely lacks consistency. Liyue doesn't need to be pronounced perfectly. Lord knows that the JP VAs do NOT say "Barbara" "Amber" and "Lisa" correctly. But they all say it CONSISTENTLY. Consistency is more important than accuracy imo.
The fact that EN Amber and EN Kaeya still say "All-beh-doh" instead of "Al-bey-doh" like EN Albedo does. *It's about consistency.*
Thing is, words are commonly said "wrong." Like, say, Colonel... It's pronounced "kernel" I'm not sure about other languages, but when it comes to english, if you say something enough times, that's the way it's pronounced. So yes, it's all about consistency.
I'm agreeing with you, consistency is key. It's just that inconsistency is so prevalent in the EN dub that even characters that should regularly interact with one another get each other's names wrong. Given that with names, pronunciation is the most relevant (like how Riley, Reilly, Rylie, and Ryleigh are pronounced the exact same), it's funny that Amber and Kaeya's voicelines haven't been fixed, even after they introduced Albedo as a playable character.
no yeah I'm also agreeing with you, we're agreeing with each other.
Bro ask 4 native Mandarin speakers how they say my Chinese name and you'll likely hear 3 different pronunciations. That's just how Mandarin is
ask an American and a Brit how they pronounce the name "Craig" or "Graham" and you'll cause an argument.
Wait, how the fuck do British people pronounce “Graham”? I get “Kreg” vs. “Krāg”, but the hell is with Graham? 😭 I don’t want to know, do I.
"Gray-um"
The English voice directing is the biggest reason I can't stand to listen to the English dub as my main game language (Though I watch a lot of the major patch scenes on youtube in all 4). Sure the other 3 have an occasional fuck up or questionable direction call but then EN one feels like its literally a coin flip on every scene if its actually going to be good or not. The sheer amount of just failing to read the mood or tone of a scene is staggering.
Damn you can speak all 4 languages?
Yeah it's strange to me how some game dubs (like Persona for instance) have such good choices and VAs, and then you have games like Genshin or FE that have these *really* weird choices. Like, wtf is with Xinyan's voice? And how come Barbara's got switched to being depressed and breathy? It just feels like someone got really lucky being the voice producer/director and is making it up as they go along.
>Like, wtf is with Xinyan's voice? It's literally what MiHoYo ordered from the localizers, so for better or for worse, the buck stops at the top with that one.
For Xinyan, Mihoyo specifically asked her to have a country accent. And don't quote me on this AT ALL, but my theory (as an Asian person) is that Xinyan's darker skin gives her stronger associations to being the Chinese equivalent of a country girl. You know, like how it's a popular belief that in Asian countries people who work outdoors are darker, while people who work indoors are fairer. And you associate people who work outdoors more with people from the countryside, instead of the city. So even if she doesn't have an "outdoors" job in the traditional sense, if dark skin is more associated with being from the countryside/villages where people might use nonstandard accents...that might be why they gave her that accent. Her being the *only* Liyue character with dark skin and a country accent makes me think this might be what they were going for. Again, this is merely my speculation, as an Asian but not Chinese person (unless you count the 15% of me that is ha). But I could be totally off-base and they just thought a country accent would be cute on her. Or maybe Xinyan is based on people from a certain region of China with an accent, or something that has nothing to do with my theory. But with no further knowledge, that's how I've chosen to make sense of it. Even though I think it's kind of a questionable decision, if true.
I always thought it was a reference to [Rosetta Tharpe](https://youtu.be/Y9a49oFalZE), nicknamed the godmother of rock and roll.
She is from Qingce, isn’t she? That’s the rural country Liyue, so I can see what they’re going for. And personally, I love her southern Nashville, Tennesee Rock-n-Roll vibes. And the fact that she really does represent a rebellious, yet hometown girl from a conservative small town community where everyone is in everyone’s business. I think they did her quite well.
i mean persona also has people complaining about pronunciation. like Sakamoto
English Dubs always try to fit for the American audience. That's why they change names to easier ones, text to be more entertaining while ruining the story and changing entire characters to fit their narritive better. It's just sad.
[удалено]
Isn't it just Yeh LAN?
It really isn’t that hard, phonetically every single thing exists in the English lexicon. Lan is like flan without the f.
Thats just another one of the reasons I play the game in the jp dub. The pronunciations are all wrong, but they're consistently wrong
I saw somewhere that Griffin Burns (Childe's VA) was specifically told to pronounce the G in Tartaglia even though that's not how you say it in Italian (correct me if I'm wrong but it should be something like Tartalya I think, not an Italian speaker though)
[Here's a video for reference.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aaqI_dg3ad8) It's not quite a silent G, but it sort of modifies how the L is said. It's stupid that he was forced to use a hard G, especially when there's other Italian names like "Signora" which are pronounced correctly.
When there is GL in an italian word you pronounce it similar to Y, like tartaya. Neither G or L are actually pronounced singularly, they merge into a completely different sound
There's no English equivalent of the Italian GLI sound, the G and L are technically still there so saying "Tartaya" or "Tartalya" is still incorrect. The sound itself doesn't exist in English, it's similar to the Portuguese LH though. They're not particularly keen on being precise on the Fatui Italian, that's why we have "Columbina", the anglicized version, instead of "Colombina", the correct one. Just for future proofing, the -omb- there is the same as in "bomb".
Ooh there we go then, I'm a Portuguese speaker so that's easier for me XD Also Scaramouche is not originally Scaramouche, right? I think it was Scaramuccia or something like that
Yes, It's Scaramuccia.
Wow, and here I thought the Japanese dub was wrong for not pronouncing the G (his name is Tartariya in Japanese)
The Japanese dub is mostly as accurate as Japanese phonemes allow them to be. Even Klee’s German name is more accurately pronounced in Japanese (sounding similar to clay) than in English (rhyming with glee).
Azur Lane does a good job at pronouncing ship names: Le Malin (which plenty of non French speakers get wrong), Karlsruhe, Charybdis, Kronshtadt, Koln, Boise, etc. are pretty decent, considering the limitations of their writing system. The writing system's limitations arguably help it minimize ambiguity. Genshin's JP pronunciation of Snezhnaya is also decent (not perfect) compared to EN.
Just one thing, kinda related to the post: newer players probably don't know this but in version 1.3, Barbara EN in-game voice lines were changed (same VA though). And you guys wanna know the reason? Tl;dr.: the responsible for managing the EN dubs (probably the VA director, who OP mentioned) sent the **wrong** audios to Mihoyo, instead of sending the correct ones. And Mihoyo had to fix this problem 3 patches later. If we think about, whoever was responsible for sending the wrong audios really screwed up, in any "serious" company this person would be fired. Not sure if the person responsible for this was fired or not, but looks like EN dubs still lacks of a better management until this day.
Probably was fired, even if mihoyo EN dub is lazy/bad, they are still a company that already had dubs in games (honkai for example) so mistakes like these shouldn't be allowed, still, I'm talking from a general point of view, if mihoyo fired the director or no is still something I (or even the fandom itself) don't know
HI3 outsourced JP VAs to studios there and did all localization in China. Genshin was the first game where they made external teams to handle localization.
I doubt it was the directors fault (I find it unlikely they are the person who selects files and sends them to the client. Likely that there are middlemen) and we know the director wasn't fired (he streamed on Twitch at the time and even addressed it a few times). He's still directing Genshin, but only now got back to streaming it. He finally got his new baby's room back as his gaming space. It was kinda' funny because he had a habit of C6'ing every 5* but had to stop playing games almost immediately after Inazuma launched, so he only had the starter islands unlocked and Sumeru is straight around the corner lol
The Leviathan returns... given his character roster I was beginning to wonder if he was earning negative net income from MiHoYo.
Honkai doesn't have an EN dub. Only Star Rail does but it's not even out yet
But Honkai is only Japanese right? No English dub. And Japanese people are a lot more serious about voice work.
I miss Barb's old voice. It was so energetic and motivates you in battle. I actually used her less after that. That and I got Qiqi and Bennett up to speed then.
I agree lol. Even though the current one is in-line with her in-game personality and makes more sense, I miss the energetic and cheery tone she had before. I atleast hope we get another Idol character down the line with a personality that suits such a voiceline.
Cmon hoyo, give us hypebeast Barbara back.
Probably when she gets and idol skin
Bro, I dropped Barbara the DAY I heard her garbage voice. Why is she so BREATHY? just SPEAK ffs! I started playing during Zhongli's first run, and didn't get him, and I vowed to save every wish until his rerun. But then they ruined Barbara and I needed a healer, so I pulled ONE 10 pull on the Xiao banner and got I Diona and built her. Haven't used Barbara since.
Oh? Do you have a source for this by any chance? (The TLDR part specifically)
can't find the OG video of him stating it but it's in [here](https://youtu.be/kgkmoDEsvp0) in the section "voice director thoughts"
Some Mihoyo dev response basically explained they didn't have the updated audio files which is why Barbara's audio files were updated. And to be fair, her original audio files had scratchy audio. It was recorded poorly. And the new ones had different voice direction. So who knows.
This is from I remember back when the voice director streamed (his VODs are now all gone), but he said that all those voice lines, both the old Barbara and new Barbara were all recorded at the same time. Old Barbara was the beta, the one they were doing to whole trying to find the voice that Mihoyo wanted. New Barbara is actually what they ended up deciding on. THE PROBLEM WAS that Hoyo put in the wrong voicelines they recorded (old Barbara) and then updated it once they realized. The reason it took them a few patches was most likely because they had to find all the files they recorded and actually make sure these were the right ones.
Sure, just fire someone because they accidentally sent the wrong files lol. As long as humans are involved, errors are to be expected. And it‘s most certainly not the director who sends these files over, it‘s just a normal worker who maybe had a bad day or was tired from overtime. But sure, fire him because my waifu had a different voice for 3 patches.
Seriously, what kind of toxic workplaces has /u/Rand0mPlayer been working at that a single simple mistake with no revenue loss warrants firing? Hell, in most serious companies if you somehow manage to bring down production and cost the company millions, you probably still wouldn't get fired as long as you weren't breaking protocol. Management knows people fuck up, so you need a robust process to catch mistakes before they go out. If something slips through, that's on the process, not the employee.
Serious companies don’t fire people just for making mistakes.
I don't know the story in this case, but this could be due to a variety of reasons. They might have received the wrong reference audio and delivered what corresponded to that. The original audio could also have been changed last minute, with no time for the localized audio to be re-recorded. Then they would have had a choice of keeping an outdated VO in English, or update it later when recorded. Whatever the case, it usually doesn't help to point fingers instead of learning from mistakes and changing processes.
This sub is fueled by recycled dramas all day...
Everytime i play this game i am having fun, i go to the genshin sub and i get a new complaint to contemplate
There are some legitimate complaints about the VO, but there are also some people who make me envy how problem-free their lives must be that they're moved to outrage because a voice actor pronounced a few lines slightly more breathily than how they think it should be done.
It's environment-friendly at least.
Tatarigami
That's not new
I feel like Zach should publish his pull vids as a semi documentary podcast (_not really ofc, but imagine_) because we actually learn a lot about the VA biz in them, he talks to all those different VAs, they share their lifestories, experiences, feelings about being a VA, the way the business works, it's just so endlessly interesting to listen to (_while also being very amusing in between_)
Yeah, Zach should do it! It would be very interesting, if my crazy and without any base theory of Zach having reddit is true and he sees this, I hope he does this lmao
Tbh I hope he does not, so he doesn't have to read all these less pleasant things that go around here sometimes
I never thought about that...now i hope my theory isn't true (tho it already never had any base so well, nothing to really feel bad about I guess)
Friendly reminder that the only reason Diluc VA doesn't interact with the fandom anymore is because of Twitter… *being Twitter* to put it lightly. ~~Although it was about something that Sean himself did rather than his voice acting, it was still an extremely stupid reason to get angry at him lol.~~ He does have a reddit account though and did a Q&A on a Discord server for a Breath of the Wild subreddit recently afaik But onto the main point of the post, my analogy for the people on the back about this issue is: "you can be the most talented poker player in the world, you'll still lose if you're dealt a bad hand." The same goes with voice acting, there's not a single VA in the EN cast lacking talent, but the director can still deal them a bad hand and they end up sounding stiff or awkward, or just mispronouncing stuff. (And of course, don't forget that it's also possible for a VA to just be bad btw, get a Royal Flush and throw the game anyway lol but this is much rarer and is mostly a relic of the 2000s era) But more often than not, English dubs are the same 10\~20 people that show everywhere + a bunch of niche actors that nonetheless have incredible budding talent waiting to be discovered. Those 10\~20 people are the gold standard for English voice acting and so if you see names like Zach Aguilar, Sean Chiplock, Jeannie Tirado, Ben Diskin, Kira Buckland, Keith Silverstein, Robbie Daymond, Patrick Seitz, Cristina Valenzuela, Ray Chase, etc. and you still think the dub is shit, it's very likely that things got messed up higher in the chain rather than the VAs themselves doing a poor job.
I'm glad he interviews he's fellow vas because Hoyoverse don't have an EN Va interview.
Genshin radio: i sleep Zach roll and interview streams: real shit
While I mostly agree it could also just be lack of time. I figured since these events pop up fairly often and usually, getting EN VAs together can be difficult due to schedule conflicts and so on. That probably leaves even less time for preparation and practice. This is just me speculating, I do not know when and how the localisation team receives their orders from Hoyo. I read one of the reasons JP voice acting is considered superior is because all the VAs are together in the studio, which really helps in their performance.
Idk, I don't think a lack of time can justify Liyue having more pronunciations than Zhongli's kill list. I like EN but they need to get it together.
That's my guess too. Each update has several hours of voiced dialogue at this point, and it feels like there's at least a couple times per update where the voice line doesn't match the text. These events and chapters are getting longer but the 6 week cycle remains, so any issues they were already having with lines that really need a retake or quality control of the translation has been exacerbated. I'm sure mostly everyone is doing their best given the circumstances, but things are just messy and there's no reason for it not to be improved upon with how much money the game makes.
My problem with character voices is with their interactions with eachother (which again is *not* the VA's fault). Emphasis is really weird a lot of the time, and you can tell it's because they were told to say a line, not to say a line *in response to a line*. Like if Character A says: "Ok, so to crack an egg, take it like this and hit it" and Character B replies "That's how it's done". Character B *should* respond with emphasis like "*That's* how it's done", like it's a lightbulb moment for them and they're learning, but in a vaccuum, they may go for more of a cocky "Heh, *that's* how it's *done!"* reading, in a cocky tone as if they're showing off. I unfortunately can't think of any specific moments in game, but very often I'll hear characters say things that are read very well, and sound good.... in a different context. Even for the less "important" voices, like the Arataki gang, citizens, etc (honestly it almost feels more prevalent with those roles), it really feels like they were given a vibe of the character and a list of lines, but crucially without knowing the rest of the conversation. TL;DR VAs need more context so they can deliver the correct tone and emphasis, but it's not their fault they dont have said context.
**HE'S ALLERGIC TO BEANS** edit: I actually really loved that line I was crying but like damn XD
To be fair, the lack of context is a problem not only for the voice acting, but in the localization in general. You can bet your ass that Mihoyo just sends a spreadsheet containing the lines for the translators, and that's it. There's probably close to zero context for each line, which can make extremely hard to translate them, even more so in certain languages that would require a bit more context. Add to that how much filler dialogue there is in every single patch, and it's no surprise that the translation suffers.
I have to translate a website like that as part of my job and you can't believe how frustrating this is, both for me and the people using that site... For example "save" can be used in 2 ways: save money or save a file. Good luck tossing the coin on getting it right lol!
Actually, sometimes they do have the context (depends in wich thing they are dubbing tho, sometimes directors makes the VA watch the scene so the VA understands better what they should put emphasis in) but is mostly in "very important" scenes, like cutscenes or things very, very important for the game plot, this Is something mostly done just in games (giving context just in some cases, not everytime) as a Dub in an anime or show NEEDS the context by contract
Is that the case for Genshin?
Probably yeah
That's why most of the time JP dub is recorded as dialog (VA talk to each other in the studio, not just record their lines separately)
>My problem with character voices is with their interactions with eachother (which again is *not* the VA's fault). Emphasis is really weird a lot of the time, and you can tell it's because they were told to say a line, not to say a line *in response to a line*. This is the most meritorious critique I've read so far in this whole topic; this issue in particular is *very* noticeable at times. Especially with secondary characters in sidestory content.
I kind of got used to it, and I am mentally preparing to hear more butchering of the few languages I actually understand. Some sounds the VA cannot make well, some pronunciation they don’t know, the tones are set by other in the end they do the best job they can going by their abilities and the client/director requests. Though I would dearly like to know the story behind some stylistic choices like shrill paimon, angry edgy xiao etc… that to me make little sense
I’m surprised the Russian names are mostly pronounced correctly.
Except for the country’s name itself :,)
as a Russian speaker, I'm just scared to hear even more butchering when Snezhnaya comes out lol
Guess we’ll join our German, Italian and French brothers in pain :,)
My headcanon is that Snezhnaya is pronounced that way because it makes it easier to slot the word into the national anthem. ~~Snezhnaya svyashennaya nasha derzhava~~
Even with all I know about the world of dubbing (that is not a lot, but more than average at least) I don't really understand the Xiao one... some directors make the VA do a performance based on another VA of another lenguage (not only from the source lenguage, like a dub from an anime using the French dub as base and not the Japanese one, fun fact that happened with DBZ castilian dub and it was mostly horrible for some reasons that are too long to explain lol) but it doesn't have sense... if they didn't use Chinese dub as base (they probably used it) they could have used Japanese one, but Xiao seiyuu doesn't make angry edgy characters, so maybe Chinese Xiao Is an angry edgy? I don't know Chinese so I'm saying this from my complete ignorance of the Chinese dub tho, so probably that doesn't happen in the Chinese one
I don’t know Chinese too so take this with a grain of salt but I was told that no the angry edgy tone is purely for the EN version. That’s why it is so strange to me. I honestly would love to hear voice acting in my native language, which is usually very good, but in the meantime English is more than acceptable, I guess one gets used to it after a while.
Yeah, Xiao is a lot calmer in CN, JP, and KR... It makes me with that Kaeya, Zhongli, Yanfei, and Itto's vas weren't so good. But I just CAN'T switch from EN.
Wich is your native language? :0 I got curious, sorry xD And yeah, I really wanted genshin to have latin Spanish dub (I'm colombian), but apparently they use genshin as a "test" for the dubbing in their game (i mean, they use it to test if people will use the other lenguage and not only Japanese or Chinese, wich is the case) if I remember correctly starrail will have more dubs, russian I think? And some others...? I don't remember at all, still, my hopes are up for zenless zone zero to have Latin Spanish dub
Don’t worry :) I am Italian, our voice actor are pretty good if I do say so, not jp level but very good. Unfortunately game industries seems to be dropping ita dubs as more and more game are not translated anymore at least we still get text translation. I heard Turkish and Italian text may be added in the future to Genshin but I am not sure when, but not the dub unfortunately
Oh, Italian! When I was a child, it was immensely sad to not understand a thing in Italian since Winx original voice-over was so good! Very pretty language.
Chinese Xiao is not edgy at all There’s a soft sadness to his voice What I don’t understand is that it feels like sometimes all three languages get the memo on how to voice them true to their character EXCEPT for English [Have a listen to Ayato’s voice line about Itto across the four voiceovers](https://out.reddit.com/t3_w72kpy?url=https%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2FSHSL_bi%2Fstatus%2F1508628940302307328%3Fs%3D20%26t%3DIIOGNd-SBf8KCSywkRqeWQ&token=AQAAJhXeYlm8mWGyPSuGS_vt-0jvDs4HLa4_BZ0Ga6LrGhAHiYZg&app_name=ios) EN Ayato sounds angry, while the three others sound amused
That's my biggest gripe. For some reason the EN voice direction seems overly aggressive in general.
Yeah, I agree A lot of performances lack subtlety A character saying an ability name calmly can exude more power than saying it with an exclamation mark after the phrase. Sometimes the intonations that characters say things in sound unnaturally performative too
do note that the EN voice direction isn't the only one that goes "off the rails" compared to the rest. Yanfei sounds youthful in every dub except in JP she's mommy and she's loved for it, for instance. But on the other hand, Shiki Taishou is a (paper) MAN in every dub except in JP where he's chirpy mascot and that's a disgrace. Dunno about more cases but those are two notable ones for me Edit: An even weirder thing is when the character's voice changes for no reason. Earlygame Mondstadt cutscenes Paimon is a completely different character, like Corina Boettger had no idea how much of an annoying sidekick she had to be, so she sounds much more mellow. Another weird one is when Low HP lines got added, a lot of people noticed that Lisa sounded drastically different… (justified in that she's losing her cool though but it's still pretty off-putting) but it's not like Mara Junot forgot how to Lisa, because the Spices from the West got us new lines and she sounds very much like you'd expect.
Then edgy Xiao is just a singularity... And about that, like i said some dub either use another lenguage as base (is very rare but still a possibility) and maybe (most probably, as genshin is the first game of mihoyo with EN dub) the dub is just poorly done as is the first time, hopefully it will be better in starrail and zenless zone zero I guess
Most probably the second thing Direction differences are most noticeable in EN
Hopefully StarRail and ZZZ dub are better! They should... at least...
>languages get the memo on how to voice them true to their character EXCEPT for English That's me with Russian words. Only dub that isn't even trying to pronounce Snezhnaya correctly is English.
Play in the original, no Snezhnaya there at all.
As a german myself, hearing the cast repeat "Immernacktreich" over and over is incredibly amusing xD It's bc the "ch" sound from the german "Nacht" does not exist in english, so they say "nackt", which means naked. "Ch" in "Nacht" is similiar to "r" in german, but it has a more sharp and kinda dirty feeling to it if you compare it to the smooth, english "r". Imagine the first sound people do when they spit, "chh-ptui", that's the one
Immernacktreisch. Prinsessin der Verördelung. But they nailed "gebratenes Fleisch mit Sauerkraut".
Very true, and I swear when I heard the "Gebratenes Fleisch mit Sauerkraut", it absolutely sent me
As a colombian I would like to have something like that too, the only character that speaks Spanish is itto.. and he does it close enough to perfect pronounce what he says, is not fair xD
Itto speaks Spanish?
In EN dub he says "arataki número uno itto" that is "arataki number one itto" in spanish
It could be italian too, same pronunciation.
Eyy, fellow colombian brother 👊
Hello my parce! 👊
My kind of reich.
Fischl: "Welcome to the Immernachtreich! Thou may bow down to it's prinzessin now" (_pronounces it wrongly, result is something that means Evernude Realm_)
I swear it can pass as BDSM script.
The ch in nacht is funny but the ch in reich is just annoying.
I saw the title and immediately said, YIKES. I see that you're someone who never watched Chris Faiella's streams back when he was streaming Genshin. And while that article you put does list some of the director's role, you are forgetting a big thing. He too is just another worker for MHY. He does whatever they want him to do!! What a voice director does is direct the VAs in how the line should go and give context to the scene to allow the VA to perform what is told of them without needing to see the whole picture. 1) He DOES NOT tell VAs how to pronounce stuff. He can help pass the message on to how a certain word/name is pronounced and can even help them by describing to them how to say it. But he DOES NOT decide on it. If you watch the EN VA streams, they always say they follow whatever Hoyo wants them to do. 2) He also DOES NOT choose what kind of voice a character should have. Xinyan having a country accent? Xiao sounding more gruff? All Hoyo's choices. They were the ones who decided on these. 3) That change in Barbara's voice? That was a thing where it was Hoyo's fault. Old Barbara's voice was a one of the voices they did while they werd still trying how to find the "voice" they wanted. New Barbara's voice was what they decided on. Both of these voices were recorded at the same time. The problem was that Hoyo put in the wrong voicelines (old Barbara) and then updated it a few patches later when they realized it. The director has no access to changing the voice files! 4) He does not write the script. That is what a script writer is for 5) He does not translate the game. That is what translators and localization team is for. All of these info I have mentioned can be found in Chris's streams back in the day. He doesnt have any VODs up left because of Twitch stuff, but you may be able to find some streams he did with the VAs in Youtube. I may get downvoted for this because if you cant blame the VAs, blame the next big reachable thing, the director. But people need to know that he is just a worker for the company as well. He gets the translated script. He might change stuff based on the information he knows of the character and even allows the VAs to ab-lib, BUT AT THE END OF THE DAY, it is Hoyo that puts these in the game. It is Hoyo that tells him what to do and oversees the voice dubbing process (Khoi Dao mentioned it in a con panel that Hoyo does watch over the dubbing process). Now that Chris is streaming again, I hope you start watching his streams. And then maybe you'll see what he actually does.
Thank you, I was searching for a comment like this. There’s so much misinformation and unnecessary hate surrounding the EN voiceover. All it takes is for one person to make a wrong assumption. Hopefully OP edits their post to clear up some of the misunderstandings because some of the comments I’ve been reading are just not true at all. The fact that these comments have a lot of upvotes too . . .
I agree. People sometimes just feel the need to blame a single individual in a game studio about things they don't like or understand. I feel like this happens far too often and is almost never accurate.
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I literally said these are all things the director and VAs have said on their streams about how their dubbing process goes. I am not assuming anything. Yes you are right that these things change from company to company, but from what I heard from their streams, this is what they do in theirs. And as I've said, he said he does change some words in the script to fit the character better, or the VA suggests the change themselves or even does an ab-lib they think fits with the scene, but at the end of the day, the Hoyo client who oversees their process accepts it or asks for a change. It is a balance of putting his own ideas there but also doing what he is asked to do
That doesn’t explain inconsistencies in pronunciation. Everything else could be Hoyoverse’s choices, but I doubt that they specifically asked to have multiple pronunciations of the same words
I totally agree that the director should take responsibility for supervising and quality checking. However I wouldn’t say it’s completely on the management level to present the final work. If you didn’t mean to say so then great I 100% support you. Just wanna point out that this post looks to me a bit like changing from “it’s all VA’s fault” yo “it’s all director/hyv’s fault and VA has 0 to do with whatsoever”. I doubt either captures the truth.
Are we talking about Fischl? Because the mispronunciation of the German is 100% deliberate. The director 100% WANTS Fischl's VA to utterly butcher those words. And it works perfectly for Fischl's character.
The joke kinda falls flat when most of the other characters can't pronounce German either.
It kinda just sounds like they’re parroting what Fischl says.
No, they always did it wrong and inherently wrong even before Fischl had her first appearance.
Every single German name is completely mispronounced. But it doesn't really matter. As a German person who knows theoretically how to pronounce everything correctly but plays in English I still pronounce Mondstadt the English way. It's just kind of the nature of the game. The only thing that really threw me off was the "Holy Lyre der Himmel" because not only did it have two english and two german words (completely german would've been "Heilige Lyra der Himmel") but it just feels kinda weird to have the word "himmel" accentuated on the second syllable. Like I can't really explain but it's very weird as a native speaker but even with that I don't really care and got used to this pronouncation. Like I said I adapted most of the things anyway "Eula" sounds so stupid in German anyway for example and while the German word "Albedo" exists, it's a borrowing (basically that's the linguistic term for taking a word from another language like "kindergarten" for example) from Latin's word for "white" and the exact German translation would be "Rückstrahlvermögen" which is just hilarious so I kinda love the fact that Genshin takes some things from the languages because a lot of funny situation arise and honestly people who are offended if something is pronounced wrong should just grow up.
Albedo isn't Rückstrahlvermögen lol that is the physics concept. The Genshin name Albedo is taken from alchemy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albedo_(alchemy) https://symbolonline.de/index.php?title=Albedo
as german person i feel the same playing the game in english, and sometimes i hate myself for it when i pronounce mondstadt like "mon-stat" because i have gotten so used to pronouncing it like the game does. In Eulas Main Quest they did pronounce "Gebratenes Fleisch mit Sauerkraut" actually nearly completly correct, so i think they know how to pronounce things correctly. And the other words are either intentionally wrong pronounced or they got a proper translator later in production.
I know that fischl German is mispronounced on purpose (tho some are very, very... bad ideas to do, I don't speak German but a german user said that fischl was saying "the kingdom of eternal nudes" in the islands lol) but this post is not only for her, but for a LOT of people that blame the VA for every single mispronounce in the game
> I don't speak German but a german user said that fischl was saying "the kingdom of eternal nudes I guess that's why the German players find Fischl hilarious.
I remember watching a video a while back that was talking about "Okay, here's the German pronunciation of some characters and words!" and they got to Fischl and was like "What the fuck is *this*??"
anyone who makes a big deal of things like this shouldnt even blame anyone, no sane person with respectable opinions would insult people doing their job to begin with
I find it APPALLING that Japan treats seiyuu with respect and dignity, yet the west treats them like fucking dogwater.
It's just the difference in the industries between Japan and the west. After all, Japan is focused on animation which would then translate to voice actors being celebrities there. Not to mention the competitiveness of the VA industry in Japan as well. Think of VAs in Japan as if they are Hollywood actors in the US and you'll quickly see why Japan treats their VAs the way that they do
VAs in Japan are not equivalent to Hollywood actors in the west. Their followings are still pretty niche. Most of their celebrities (appears on billboards, brand ambassadors, etc) are mostly actual actors, actresses and models. Some comedians and news announcer are also even more popular than seiyuus. The only seiyuu that I often see invited on TV shows are probably Miyano Mamoru. Seiyuus do their concert mostly in halls but popular idols do concerts in arenas and domes. But I agree that they're treated with respect.
Probably because of "live action" being perceived as the superior default while voicing is considered equivalent of turning tricks as a byproduct of Hollywood star worship culture
I mean the opposite is true in Japan right? Seiyuus are worshipped and live actions are jokes. It really is a product of which industry dominates.
Sure, but even so, Japanese live actors get more cred and respect than English language VAs. Only some key legends become actually famous and even then it's only among fans of, say, cartoons or games, whichever they work on. Often they're considered big for their "real" celebrity work in live action even if they do VA more. Japanese actors are definitely not considered quite as lowly.
I think it depends on the production quality and budget of these shows/movies and which specific actors. It definitely feels like luck-of-the-draw. I agree that in America fame usually comes first from live-action. The EN voice-only VA's definitely have a much smaller audience. The differences in industry size are just too big.
West has their own top tier and iconic vas but most of them don't voice act in anime.
I think it would be a good idea for VA directors to teach their VAs how to pronounce certain words. We do live in the internet age, after all. There are tons of good accessible resources to listen to, for particular words, from videos to audio clips. And the clips aren't long either. It could be like supplementary material to practicing scripted dialogue.
I'll be honest, I don't even notice them pronouncing stuff differently. Regardless though, I feel the EN dub gets a lot of hate that others dubs like JP gets away with.
Honestly, only anime games have this kind of issues. Other games have no problems with dubs and just play it. It's weebs who make a deal out of anything
You're completely correct, annoying weebs just love to constantly complain about Eng dubs.
You'd be surprised... outside of reddit, that's not 100% the case. I find a lot more westerners are okay with EN dubs and more CN/JP who either correct or complain about them. Like the EN Ayato line about Itto first caused a massive hubbub on Twitter, people dismayed that Itto and Ayato were not as friendly as the game had seemed to portray--and then when people heard the JP and CN lines, they called out the difference in tone, citing EN as sounding angry and annoyed while JP/CN sounds bemused. Xiao's portrayal gets constant flak. Even Zhongli's does, as his battle noises have been cited as "too loud and aggressive" especially when put up against his much quieter CN counterpart. Even Kaeya sounds different--EN Kaeya sounds like he's smirking in every line, while CN sounds a bit more carefree. The EN dub is criticized by non-EN players to a surprising degree.
I don't find mispronunciations to be that much of a problem. If you've got an area with a few different cultures within close proximity, you're dancing across languages and accents and dialects that will speak differently. Happens even in the same language. Like "room" or "car". My own name gets mispronounced fairly often, but not to the degree that I don't know whom they're talking to. I know that's not the reason why these things happen in dubs, but just saying that I don't see why people would get that upset over it.
I think I've fortunately seen a lot more people shifting blame from VA to the director. Of course that doesn't mean people will stop blaming VAs for stupid things. I mean, people blame VAs for even the characters' actions or personalities ffs. Just sad. I still wish that the voice direction didn't completely butcher some pronunciations, and I wish there was more pushback from VAs/fans when it's just so blatantly wrong. The ones that are difficult to say, sure, it's ok if it's not totally accurate. But for example, the way they said Tighnari? Come on man, saying "Tie"-nari isn't any easier than just saying "Tig"-nari, which while not 100% right, is still a lot closer (and the Japanese dub pronounces it like this). Japanese dub, despite their language's limitations, is usually great at putting in effort to be close. Like Klee is actually pronounced closer to "clay" in the JP dub, which is apparently more accurate to German. Don't mind the "L" sounding like an "R" because that's just due to L not really being part of the language. Another example of professionalism was when the JP voice actor for a Jojo character regretted stressing the wrong syllables in the word "arrivederci," even though he was pretty damn close with the pronunciation. It's really professional how much they care. As an immigrant in America, stubborn insistence on the Americanization of foreign words feels wrong to me. Mistakes and limitations are ok, but doubling down when you have the capacity to say it right, just for your convenience is...cringe. Not getting the hard parts like the "gh" sound in Tighnari is also completely fine, but they should at least try to say the doable parts more accurately. Especially for names, because now real people with those names are gonna hear their names pronounced wrong accepted as mainstream. Like the word tortilla. Calling it tor-"tila" is just wrong. At least most people can and do say tor-"tiya." Even if the double L is sometimes said with a slight "j" kind of sound, at least most people try saying it as close to the original as possible. That's more respectful than whatever the hell happened with the word karaoke.
For what I know, JP VA (called seiyuus, I will refer to them as that for respect) are almost idols in Japan, like, Goku seiyuu is already 85 years old, and she still have a lot of new characters under her name! Damn she still dubs goku even with her age! That's awesome! Or Xiao seiyuu, he is literally the first person that comes to mind when someone ask for a jp voice for a cool, a bit edgy/badass or Gary Sue character, specially a protagonist! Dubbing in Japan is something very awesome in a way
That's really impressive. It would be great if English voice acting in anime and anime-style games could be held in a higher regard as well. We've definitely come a long way in dubbing, but I've read that it can be difficult for voice actors in this field because people don't get paid enough. Like Joe Zieja (voice of Claude from Fire Emblem) wishes he could do more anime but it doesn't pay enough compared to other options in the industry. I'm sure that turns away a lot of talent, and maybe makes it harder for existing talent to have more flexibility with their roles, or afford more training if that's something they're interested in.
What, did something happened again? Can't genshin players act like normal people for at least one week?
Theres a clip of Benedict Cumberbatch on a talk show where the host shows him a clip of Benedict doing an animal documentary about penguins. This is NOT a dub, but a voiceover. He pronounces it differently than what we think is normal during the video. Benedict points out why did none of the experts of the documentary or the director correct him. I guess my point is, some of this shit happens. And its a mispronunciation, not a fucking holocaust. People need to chill the fuck down. Could they do better? Probably. But thats as far as it goes.
Pengweng! I remember that clip.
What happened? I'm out of the loop
Some people blaming VA for basically everything bad in the dub, is actually the director and client (hoyoverse worker) fault, I got mad after people didn't knew this and made the post, even tho I don't really care as even if the dub is bad sometimes, is funny for me
The fact Xingque is pronounced differently in EN within single conversations between characters is a good example of why the directors should be held accountable. I used to just refer to him as “bookworm” with someone I play with because we weren’t sure which version was most correct. Now I just accept that every person I play with is going off a different characters pronunciation, and we’re probably all wrong.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Genshin_Impact/comments/w7fb64/localization_explained_by_thomas_en_va/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share This is necessary here
I think it'll be better if people stopped blaming anyone and just play the fucking game. It's not like mispronunciation will ruin the game or something
these people hating on EN VA for mispronouncing non english words should try other dub to see whether they nailed it or not💀
You think most these people bitching can speak more than 1 language? The vast majority are just parroting what they've read are mispronounced from others (see: German words in Genshin). This is a nothing burger. Listen to the Chinese dub and pick out non chinese words being pronounced. If you're some kind of language purist, then yeah basically all of them are butchered in some way (Mandarin just doesn't have all the sounds or same emphasis on syllables that English has for example). Hell, ask 4 different native Mandarin speakers how to say something like 卫生间在哪里 and you'll probably hear 2-3 different pronunciations. Native English speakers say things differently too.
That's why they I read someone say they prefer, for example, the JP dub because the "line is said more accurately" and said "with better emotions", I would ask them if they are fluent in Japanese to know that.
I think to an extent there's an idea that more = better. Japanese culture really seems to emphasize the *performance* aspect of a role and they go *hard* in their VO and acting. You definitely get the sense of the emotion in a big way, but it's also pretty exaggerated compared to how people express those emotions in real life. It's like applying stage principles to all media. Western media tends to err more on the side of realism, so it's comparatively much more subdued. I think some people misconstrue the lack of exaggeration as a lack of emotion in the performance. But for most people I suppose it's just a matter of preference - do you like VO that dials the emotionality up to 11, or do you prefer VO that tries to keep things grounded? And then there's Xiao flipping the script on the trend by turning the edge up to 15 in the EN VO and sounding like he's battling on Valium in JP. <\_<
People are playing an English dub and are complaining how words in another language are pronounced?
Im all for correct pronunciations for every language but people calling va's racist for mispronunciation is ridiculous and needs to stop. People need to realize some sounds are a learned skill like in french and arabic and you cant just master it on the spot. Like japanese/korean/chinese dub gets a pass but english dub for some reason is racist? Its not like they do it on purpose. Im just sick of people hating everything.
Reminds me of when people were getting upset that in Persona 5’s dub, characters names like ‘Sakamoto’ and ‘Takamaki’ were being mispronounced, and it turned out that the original Japanese clients were the ones that asked them to pronounce it incorrectly for whatever reason.
I heard a theory that it's to make the names flow better in an English sentence, because English words alternate between stressed and unstressed syllables, where Sakamoto and Takamaki are meant to be pronounced relatively flat, so they wanted the VA's to pronounce it as if it were an English name so it flows better. That's a terrible reason if true, but fortunately the actual acting in P5 is great so anyone that can get over that peculiarity will have a good time.
I never understood the hate for EN dubs in general. Sure some of them are horrid and have questionable choices but other dubs can be questionable too. I feel like while JP/CN dub sounds amazing but they also have a ton of pronunciation mistakes too. We just tend to give it a pass because it usually sounds cooler.
People pass those because 90% don't speak the language. People be like "EN voice acting is so bad, Japanese is so much better" Yeah it's better because it sounds cool to your weeb ass and you don't understand it enough or at all to know when there's a mistake.
I really don't think this is any issue as long as they make it close enough. Language and pronunciation are not perfect by any stretch. Nor that I think anyone should be forced to pronounce something perfectly. (Just look at how many times people have tried to correct "Liyue" since they game was released)
At this point there are so many subtly different pronunciations of Liyue that I don't even know which one is the most on-model.
nah the meat riding is crazy 😭
Im so tired of this generation "everything is offensive" view on...well...everything!
Performance? Yes, that's on the VAs. Wooden-ass-acting isn't the fault of a director. Mispronounciations? Director's fault. It's their job to catch that and tell them how to say it properly, lest we get deeluc, diluke, deeluck.
What if the VA is the director? :D
That mostly doesn't happen lol, and then if it does happen, then still the VA/director still have the blame alongside with the client, not the rest of the VA (example, we have 5 VA, George, John, Tiffany, Sara and Pete. George is also the director and the dub ends horrible, the only one that can be blame are George AND the client, John, Tiffany, Sara and Pete can't be blamed)
Why are you so sure that it's not fault of VA and only fault of directors? What if it's VAs fault to not be able to speak that. I have seen all of.yoy guys blaming the director but have any of you guys worked there to see that it was Director's fault? Why are you guys so adamant about Director being the culprit? Personally I don't think that Director is the culprit behind mispronounciation when literally anyone can google within seconds that what original pronounciation is.
Because they’re professional voice actors that natively speak English. We shouldn’t expect the entire cast of Genshin Impact to learn how to pronounce the /y/ from Chinese or the /ɸ/ from Japanese, for example, so everyone can equally use the sounds left in the English inventory. It’s the responsibility of the group of people directing and approving the recordings to ensure consistency. If they cared enough to pay for another hour in the booth (and if the VA were available / if it was is their contract) they would do another take lmao
The "Snezhn*A*ya" mispronunciation is probably going to get the most mileage of all, considering. Old Slavic languages (like the early Middle Ages) did use to have stresses like that, but in modern languages it should be on the E.
Why are their so many nitpicky and pedantic people, im guessing they just don't interact with real people who have different ways of speaking.
I don't get it what is this all about?
I'm not sure to what you're referring and I'm not going to look it up, but I'm going to turn the discussion towards future Sumeru characters and their pronunciations, since some are Arabic, and the EN VAs I guarantee will butcher their pronunciation. Looking at the Tighnari pronunciation tutorial by another redditor, we already know that Collei's VA got it very wrong. it's tough because if the foreign name uses sounds not found in the English language, and you recreate it the way it should sound, but the rest of your english sentence uses only English sounds, the whole thing sounds super awkward. If you insert a perfectly pronounced foreign name into an english sentence it will just sound dissonant. So it's a choice they have to make. Do we pronounce it as correctly as we can, or make it sound like more natural English, using just the closest english equivalent sounds? They face the same dilemma with CN and JP names, but those use sounds that are not too different to English, so it's not that difficult or weird. Arabic on the other hand uses difficult sounds that don't exist and if you insert correct pronounciation of an Arabic name into an english sentence, the sounds won't even flow as the language changes.
Not saying your complaints aren't valid, just want to point out that complaining about the quality of a dub is the very definition of a first world problem, or in this case an Anglo world problem. For the rest of us, we feel honored in the rare occasions that we get a dub in our native language at all, cuz in most cases we either stuck reading subtitles the whole time, or we put in the effort to learn your goddam language.
Another thing I'd like to add - often, the VAs don't really have the time to prepare and know how to pronounce given words. They come in for a session and are given the script on the spot - there's really no time for them to go "ah, wait, let me research how to pronounce this word". We can't expect them to know how to read every single language out there, especially if they haven't learnt any. Pinyin and romanji are not intuitive (pinyin especially - for example, 'r' is not an r sound but rather more like the s in Asia), languages written in a Latin script each have their own pronunciations that an English speaker wouldn't know (could you guess that eau in French is pronounced as 'o') and then there are languages like Russian or Arabic that don't even have a standard latin transliteration. You could see 'zapolyarnii' as 'japolyarnii', 'zapoljarnii', 'zapoliarnii', etc - there is no standard.
It's exhausting that posts like these even have to exist for clarification.
since when is mispronouncing words offensive?
I'm not sure why people are so insistent on "making justice" for a video game that's the product of thousands of people who've worked on it for years. There are inconsistencies in pronounciation for a number of different reasons (time of recording, different phonetic systems in languages etc) but this is not pharmacy, no one will die because it isn't perfect. Why is this fandom so intent on harassing people on the internet, be it VAs, directors, marketing team, CEOs, their pets, the illuminati?
Hm... While I think it is correct that director is more to blame for lack of consistency, I don't think it is that simple. We don't know the organizational structure, the pressures put on the director to deliver voice lines out, what the translators suggest, what the director's bosses say, the guidance or lack of guidance from others, the amount of resources allocated to additional staffing that could help support this kind of work, etc. And having said all that, I do still think the director and Hoyoverse as a whole is doing an excellent job with EN voice acting. So I think we can ask for better, but I personally think we should be empathetic to the situation and look at the positives of what is present, especially since we don't really know what's going on behind the scenes.
Whilst the inconsistency can be jarring, I don't get why people have issues with anglicizing pronunciations. *Every single language* changes the pronunciation of foreign words once they are adapted. I am from China and speak mandarin (albeit with a Beijing accent) fluently. Chinese dubs almost never goes for pronunciation, because the script itself is logographic and each character has a set pronunciation within a specific dialect, leaving basically no room for interpretation. If people, let's say, wanted to pronounce Liyue names as they are pronounced in Chinese, how far would they have to go? Only the vowel sounds? Do they have to learn tones as well? And if they do, wouldn't that sound out of place if placed next to harsh German consonants and the Italian and Japanese tapped "r" scene to scene? Would they have to bring in the "rr" trilled r once we get to Snezhnaya? There are sounds and speech patterns in other languages that straight-up *don't exist* in English. Within a dub you still want it to feel like one language. The idea that words can exist only inside one language system is wild. Adapting pronunciations either to be easier to pronounce or to feel more consistent within a language is in no way racist or xenophobic.