

"The Moomins" is a series of books for children made in the 1940s and onward
by a Finnish-Swedish female.

In 1990, they released a successful animated TV series called "Moomin" based
closely on these characters and the setting, with the production taking place
in Japan, giving it a very special "anime"-ish style. The original author
closely oversaw this production, unlike past (semi-unlicensed) attempts.

The "Swedish" dub of this series, which I grew up with, is actually in
"Finnish-Swedish". That is, it's the Swedish dialect/variation spoken in the
Swedish parts of Finland. (Sweden and Finland used to be the same country in
the past.) They use a lot of distinct words, phrases, etc., which would not be
used in Sweden by Swedes, but are unique to Finnish-Swedish people.

The Moomins live right by the coast, which coincidentally is where most (or
nearly all) Finnish-Swedish people live in Finland.

So, given these facts and the author herself being Finnish-Swedish, I find it
very strange that the dub to English (and apparently other languages) don't
even seem to _attempt_ to preserve this at all. Instead, the English voice
actors use very distinct British accents, which sounds utterly absurd to me.

A huge part of the charm of this series is the fact that they speak the way
they do. The English dub doesn't sound like they had any understanding at all
about the setting or context of these creatures, but simply just pretend as if
they are English-speaking hippos in an entirely fictional location.

This series is apparently far more popular than I ever knew before, and that
makes me especially sad that all these kids didn't at least get a hint that
they are from Finland. It's like having a show about Mexico where the family
speaks perfect English instead of at least having a Mexican/Spanish accent. It
just seems _wrong_!

What could explain that they didn't try to have the characters speak in a
manner which resembles the original voices? I'm not talking about using bad
English; just that it seems like they didn't even listen to the
Finnish/Finnish-Swedish original voices before dubbing it.

I guess one might argue that Japanese is the "original" language since it was
technically produced in Japan, but as far as I understand it, Japanese was
just one of 100 different languages it was dubbed to.

I should probably stop looking up dubs of cartoons from my childhood. It
always just depresses me to hear how butchered they sound in English or any
other language...


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2020-09-26T19:03:38.497
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2020-09-26T19:03:38.497
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question
anime-production anime-history japan
Why did they not have the English voice actors use a Finnish or Finnish-Swedish accent for "Moomin"?