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As long as it isn't completely incompetent, I prefer english dubs to Japanese subs of anime
(lemmy.world)
I like to actually concentrate on the animation rather than splitting my attention between it and text. Since I don't speak Japanese I get absolutely nothing out of the Japanese audio voices such as the importance of inflictions in dialog. I'd rather hear a language I understand so that I can understand performances. I'll only chose a sub if the english dub is outstandingly bad, but in most cases I find the dubs perfectly fine.
I think that while some non-Japanese speakers genuinely prefer the Japanese audio, I suspect there is a large group who only claim to prefer it for performative reasons or people who stay quiet because they know if they voice an opinion preferring dubs they'll get dogpiled by the rest of the fandom.
I don’t watch anime, but I do prefer subs when watching foreign language media (which is a huge percentage as a Dutchman).
For English of course I don’t need translation, and not for German either. But for languages I don’t know, I just like hearing those other languages and the voices of the actual people talking, not some (often janky) Dutch dub. In Dutch you don’t generally have a choice anyway, though. Dubs are really only made for children who can’t read yet.
But I’d like to add that the quality of subtitles, particularly how they are timed, is very important. If the subtitles are just sentence by spoken sentence, they are essentially useless as you will have to keep reading to understand what’s being said. Proper subtitles also go somewhat ‘into the future’, so after quickly reading the subtitles, you know what will be said and can listen to the actual actors.