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Ever wondered what the difference between a voice dub and a voice match is? Voice actress Kari Wahlgren breaks it down for you
Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man's Kari Wahlgren explains the various forces impacting a voice role performance
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Voice acting is wizardry, as far as I'm concerned. It's fascinating to go through the careers of voice actors like Kari Wahlgren and see just how many different types of characters they’ve played. In the case of Wahlgren, Emma Frost AND Aunt May? The range!
Wahlgren has also voiced anime characters in various English-language dubs. In the latest episode of our video interview series, Popversations, our video producer, Ashley Victoria Robinson, asked Wahlgren what the difference between a voice dub and a voice match is. Wahlgren provided the following explanation.
“With anime [dubs], you already have the picture created. It’s already been released in Japan or some place like that, so you can see the character’s mouth moving, you can see their facial expression, you get to hear the beautiful musical score in your headphones, and you have to sync each line up to that preexisting picture… So you’re kind of locked into a lot of the timing of what’s already been created. If we’re doing something like Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, we record the lines first, and then they animate to us.”
So there you have it. With a voice dub, it’s clear that it involves its own additional sense of “translation,” not just from translating the original Japanese script into English, but then finding English phrases that contain roughly the same amount of syllables as the original Japanese dialogue. In that sense, dubs are their own art forms.
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