Comments on: Star Wars quotes… in Japanese!

By: JayWicky

JayWicky — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 13:02:36 +0000

While searching for something else entirely on wikipedia, as it often happens, I found that there seems to be several different Japanese dubs for the Star Wars movies. As a for instance, Koichi Yamadera’s wiki page states that he dubbed Han Solo in the “TV Asahi edition” of The Empire Strikes Back. While it is mentioned on Ken’yu Horiuchi’s page that he was the voice artist for Han Solo on the “Nippon TV edition” of Episode IV. That led me to try a Google search on “Star Wars Japanese dubs” and I stumbled upon your blog. Maybe the reason why the subtitle versions are more often quoted than the dubs is that there are too many different dubs to keep track of ?

By: ジェニファー

ジェニファー — Fri, 28 May 2010 23:47:53 +0000

ありがとございました！
Barely-know-katakana Japanese for fun student. My boyfriend asked me, when I was proudly showing him this site: “What’s Wookie?” Couldn’t figure it out with kotoba, and I was certainly expecting ヲキ　or something to that effect.
So, if you would be so kind, what’s Wookie?
ありがとございました

By: Frank

Frank — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 22:15:45 +0000

It’s interesting that　Yoda is based on an old Japanese character, yet he doesn’t accept the idea of trying one’s best. がんばって is after all one of the most common Japanese sentences ever spoken.

By: Lloyd Vincent

Lloyd Vincent — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 03:24:30 +0000

Glad everyone seems to be enjoying the post!

Recently I realized that ある in its informal negative form typically becomes just ない, so although あらん “sounds” like something we hear often (probably because so many other verbs end that way), あらん itself is actually very rare.

@Justin: I live in Japan so I just rented mine from a local video store. I don’t know anything about streaming or downloading it.

By: Matt

Matt — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 04:49:21 +0000

This is great! Excuse me while I squirrel these away in my brain for future retrieval. (I didn’t know あらん could be used like that – learn something new every day, I suppose!)

By: Justin

Justin — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 22:40:58 +0000

Hey where can I find the Star Wars Trilogy (original) as a Japanese dub? Any websites have it to stream or download? Or do I just have to use Amazon Japan or something?

By: Brett

Brett — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 18:19:57 +0000

It’s great how digging a little further through something you (should) know well enough in English uncovers some real gems. I particularly like your explanation of May the Force be with you, and it’s the quirky Japanese that sounds better for sure.

By: Zann

Zann — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 21:28:55 +0000

“Yoda Speek” sounds to many Americans like some kind of Asian accent. It makes sense to me that Yoda would speek Japanese well, and other characters would not.

By: Lloyd Vincent

Lloyd Vincent — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 04:17:36 +0000

@Joe : Glad you liked it!

@Atmusku:

English: It’s a trap!
Japanese sub: これは罠だ (kore wa wana da)
Japanese dub: 罠にはまった (wana ni hamatta = “we got caught in a trap”)

By: Joe

Joe — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 20:37:53 +0000

Great article and explanation! I picked a few sentences out to study.