Tom Cheng (tkcheng@ENGINEERING.UIOWA.EDU)
Tue, 23 Feb 1999 00:48:04 -0600
X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL25] Message-ID: <199902230648.AAA02908@l-ecn000.icaen.uiowa.edu> Date: Tue, 23 Feb 1999 00:48:04 -0600 From: Tom Cheng <tkcheng@ENGINEERING.UIOWA.EDU> Subject: Re: Sakura Wars english sound samples!
> One thing I don't get is why people automatically assumes that foreigners will carry over
> accents from their native language when speaking a second language, or have to make a
> character speak with an accent in order to depict them being foreigners. I, for one, am
> Chinese but do not speak english with a "chinese accent", instead I have a very heavy
> Australian accent even though I have only lived here for a moderate period of time, even
> British people I've speak to can just pick it up and say "You're from Australia aren't
> you?". I also have a lot of Chinese/Taiwanese/Korean friends which don't have accents when
> speaking english. Why couldn't they just let the VAs speak normally, and have them speak
> another language in some scene, just like in the original version, instead of having them
> spending most of their concentration in making the accent than to trying to convay the
> right emotions?
A lot of it depends on time spent in country, and whether or not you were born in the
country. I am ABC, born in freaking Illinois and living in Iowa. I lived in a white
neighborhood and went to mostly white schools my whole life. Of course i'm going to
talk like a midwesterner.
> that heavy one as being depicted in the dub. While Kohran practically grew up in Japan, no
> way she's gonna carry over her "chinese" accent when speaking another language.
You are correct. I guess it's another American stereotype that people from foreign
countries all talk funny. Especially those Australians. (Just kidding).
> Eva is passable? HA!
> I just had the "previlage" to watch this on TV a month and a half ago (FYI, Eva is being
> aired on a Australian TV station starting from January), let's just say that I gave up
> watching after the third airing ;)
It's passable in the fact if you showed it to people who were not huge anime fans they
would not balk at the voice acting or fake accents (which there are none). Me being a
rabid purist of course I think only a moron would take the dub over Hayashibara,
Kotono, and Ogata.
-- Tom Cheng University of Iowa College of Engineering tkcheng@icaen.uiowa.edu http://www.icaen.uiowa.edu/~tkcheng