41730


In every single anime I've watched that features a native English speaking
character (usually American or British), they usually say a few lines in
(heavy) Japanese-accented English before switching to full-on Japanese.

Why don't they hire a native speaker for those few lines? Or even hire a
native English speaker to voice act American / British characters. I'm sure
there are quite a lot of English-speakers in Japan with excellent Japanese
pronunciation such that it wouldn't bother the anime's main target audience:
Japanese people.


CC BY-SA 3.0
2017-08-05T12:04:17.727
41721
2018-01-06T05:36:27.453
question
anime-production voice-acting
Why don't anime studios hire native English speakers?


In my opinion, and by what I've heard, seiyuu's credit is pretty much too
cheap. It takes too much cost to make a good animation but the return value is
not so much. Therefore, I think they don't want to have a native English
seiyuu unless that guy does the job because of anime passion.


CC BY-SA 3.0
2017-08-05T14:56:19.453
41724
2017-08-20T07:16:18.187
2017-08-20T07:16:18.187
8486
35000
41721
answer


From time to time non-native Japanese speakers are employed as voice actors in
Japan, but it's very unusual. A more ambitious anime production might use
native speakers of other languages to voice minor roles whose only lines are
not in Japanese. It's even rarer for a recurring or major character whose
lines are mostly in Japanese to be voiced by someone whose not native speaker,
even though the character is supposed to be a foreigner.

I think there are two main reasons for this, both from a "supply" and "demand"
side of things. The first the Japanese public don't appear to be used to
hearing their native language spoken in foreign accents as people in the
United States and other western countries are. It not something they see in
movies and TV shows, and rarely in their daily lives. Even a slight to
moderate foreign accent, as you would expect from a foreigner in Japan, would
be off-putting and risk being incomprehensible in parts.

The second is that while there are unquestionably large numbers of native
speakers of foreign languages in Japan, very few would be willing to work for
the low wages voice actors get in Japan. There is an endless supply of native
Japanese wannabe voice actors, with over 100 voice acting schools to train
them, all desperate to get jobs in the industry. By comparison, the supply of
would be foreign voice actors is all but non-existent. I know a number of
people who moved to Japan, got jobs and became fluent in Japanese but they'd
all be taking massive pay cuts to work as voice actors. In most cases hiring a
native speaker of a foreign language would be much harder and probably more
expensive than hiring someone born in Japan would be.

There's a slight hope that things might change. The currently airing anime
series Sakura Quest has handled foreigners and foreign accents better than any
anime I've seen (which admittedly isn't saying much). Their's a recurring
character from a foreign country that speaks Japanese with a foreign accent
voiced by an apparent foreigner (Vinary Murthy). In a couple of episodes there
were Spanish tourists who were apparently voiced by native Spanish speakers as
they spoke convincing Spanish and terrible Japanese. But I don't know if this
is really a trend and I can't see the expectation of Japanese viewers that
foreign characters speak fluent and accentless Japanese being changed so
easily.


CC BY-SA 3.0
2017-08-05T21:49:13.237
41730
2017-08-05T21:49:13.237
7861
41721
answer