I’m rewatching Spirited Away with English subs I grabbed off opensubtitles.org and I had already been confused by some phantom lines that didn’t correspond to any spoken dialogue but this scene made it obvious what was happening- there’s extra lines added in places where the characters are facing away from the camera michael-laugh

Either the subtitler was hallucinating or these originate from the dub. I grew up watching a VHS tape chomsky-yes-honey in Japanese with Finnish subtitles and I don’t recall this scene having dialogue

  • doublepepperoni [none/use name]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
    7·
    2 months ago

    when she first sees the bathhouse, in Japan nobody would need it spelled out, but in the west it does so in the dub she says “it’s a bathhouse.”

    Oh yes, I think that was one of those phantom lines I saw. When Rin and Chihiro see the big radish guy they give Rin a line where she spells out that it is a radish spirit. Shortly after that, when Rin distracts one of the frog guys with the grilled newt, the dub added a whole back and forth between him and Rin while it shows Chihiro squeezing into the elevator with the radish man where in the Japanese version the frog employee just makes noises

    The differences were sort of fun and interesting to notice but after this scene I ended up just getting a new sub file that was based on the Japanese script. I might go back and check how they handled some of the later scenes and revelations