The Transformers: The Movie/dubs

The Transformers: The Movie has been translated and dubbed into many languages, each with its own set of quirks and oddities.

Brazil

The Movie was released in Brazilian theaters almost simultaneously with the launch of the series on television. It was later released on home video on the late '80s, but on a very small scale, which made it very hard to find in video stores. The movie was aired on television just once and received a new dub for this.

The most probable reason for this is that the home video version was based on the one released in the United States and the television one was based on the European release, as it had the Star Wars-type text in the beginning and the narrator at the end stating that Optimus would return. Which dubbing is the best is a regular debate topic among Brazilian fans.

These dubs are different not only in the choice of some voice actors, but in the translation. Brazilian fans usually debate about which dub is the best, but as with many things in franchise, this is simply a matter of taste. After all, both dubs have their share of problems—though neither of them allowed Spike to swear.

Home video dub

The home video was released a few years before The Movie was shown on television, but a few years after the television series had stopped being broadcast on Brazilian networks. Because of this, it was the only way the fans could have a little taste of the franchise for years.

In this dubbing, all of the pre-Movie main characters are dubbed by the same voice actors who played them on the television series. Megatron does not receive a new voice when he is transformed into Galvatron.

This dubbing is the most localized of the two translations but is also the most "childish". For example, when Hot Rod and Kup are running toward Autobot City and see the Insecticons, Kup states, "The Insecticons are in the way," and Hot Rod replies, "Wrong, they're on their way to the hole!", something that made no sense at all and the translator probably thought would be fun for the kids watching The Movie.

When Kup and Wreck Gar are conversing, both make references to Brazilian television series. Kup says "plim-plim", which is a reference to a vignette program on Rede Globo, the Brazilian network that aired The Transformers during the '80s.

Instead of casting a deep-voiced actor for Unicron, they heavily distorted Unicron's voice, making him sound menacing but almost unintelligible. The same thing was done to the Quintessons and their servants. A similar situation occurred with Blurr; since the voice actor who played Blurr could not talk as fast as John Moschitta, his voice was also distorted to make it sound faster. It worked, but it also made him difficult to understand.

Finally, the "mechanization" of the voice actors playing the robots was not the same as used in the television series; they sound more like characters talking through a radio.

Wheelie does not rhyme.

Television dub

The Movie was broadcast only once on Rede Globo during a special week dedicated to children. Most of the pre-Movie characters retained the same voices they had on the home video release, but all of the new Transformers got new voice actors, including Galvatron. The dubbing also lost the "localization" the home video release received; many lines were more faithful translations, while others lost all sense to Brazilian audiences.

The characters possess the same "robotic" distortion on their voices that they had in the television series; no kind of heavy modulation was used. An actor with a deep voice was cast as Unicron, and no distortion was used for the character, which made it possible for the fans to understand his dialogue. On the other hand, no distortion was used on Blurr, so the actor was forced to try to emulate John Moschitta's impossibly fast speaking, with debatable results.

One notable dubbing error occurs when Hot Rod opens the Matrix at the end of The Movie: The line "Light our darkest hour" is delivered by Optimus Prime's voice actor instead of Hot Rod's. Brazilian fans who'd only watched the television version debated that at this moment, Optimus's spirit was speaking through Rodimus, approving of him becoming leader while imbuing him with his courage. Of course, all this debate ceased when The Movie was released on DVD on the United States, which made it more accessible to Brazilian fans.

Wheelie rhymes.

Denmark

The first time the movie was shown was on Danish national television broadcaster DR in the fall of 2009. While there had been dubbed episodes of the original television show made in the 1980s for home video and later TV airings, the movie was not dubbed at that point. Rather a completely new cast was used for the movie, possibly made for this specific airing. The dubbed movie was re-broadcast 2 years later on a sub-station of DR.

The dubbing had a larger cast of voice actors than the late-80s dub of the TV series with one or two actors returning to the franchise after 25 years. However, some lines were omitted by mistake (a few characters could be seen moving their lips visibly but without any sound being heard) while others appeared at completely random times (a line uttered by Galvatron missing earlier in the movie "appearing" towards the end in a completely unrelated scene possibly due to a bad time code in the dubbing software).

This version was based on the UK print of the movie and has yet to see a public release on any kind of media.

France/Quebec

For French-speaking audiences, who had thus far been given two separate dubs of the TV series (one done in France and one done in Quebec, a very common occurrence), a single dub was made for all French releases of the film. This release used a brand-new voice actor team rather than using either dub team from the series. Whereas the old dubs used the French names from the toy packages, the movie used all of the characters' English names. Two characters were given gender changes for this dub; Starscream and Shrapnel both become females. One notable change to the dialog occurs when Starscream asks "Megatron? Is that you?" Galvatron's original answer, "Here's a hint!", is now much more direct: "Yes, but stronger than before!" ("Oui, mais plus fort qu'avant!" [obliterates her]) Another Megatron-related change is that he retains his "original" voice once he becomes Galvatron (unlike the original dub).

Germany

Germany also got two different dubs over the years:

As the movie had never been shown in German theaters, the first dub, titled Transformers: Der Kampf um Cybertron (Transformers: The Battle for Cybertron), was made in 1994 for airing on the German TV station RTL, to serve as a "pilot" for the Generation 2 cartoon series which would be subsequently broadcast. (One might argue that the initial omission of the movie from the original cartoon's German airing schedule resulted in an information gap regarding the shift from the season 2 setting to the season 3 setting; but then again, the cartoon started with episodes from season 3 in Germany, and only six episodes from the first two seasons were ever aired during the entire original "Generation 1" run of the show, so it's not like context problems weren't already all over the place.)

Even though the dub was made only five years after the dub of the Generation 1 cartoon had started on German TV, only a few of the German voice actors returned, most of them not even in the same roles they had played before. Optimus Prime, for example, was now dubbed by Thomas Rau, who had originally voiced Rodimus Prime, Blaster and Scourge in the cartoon itself. As in the dub of the cartoon before, all the characters retained their English names... with the exception of Devastator, whose name was translated as "Der Vernichter" for reasons unknown (he was "Devastator" in the dub of the cartoon itself). This version of the movie was only shown twice (not counting late-night reruns following those airings), on its TV premiere in April 1994 and one year later, in May of 1995. It was never released on VHS either. (Contrary to a widespread rumor, the German TV edition of the movie was not edited to omit Starscream's death scene.)

In 2003, the movie, this time simply titled Transformers, was finally released on DVD in Germany, by a little-known, low-budget label. Since the TV edition of the movie had been used as a "pilot" for the G2 cartoon, and it had been archived under the title "Der Kampf um Cybertron", the dubbing masters were not located until more than a year later, so the DVD company assigned an entirely new dub... which makes the Omni Productions dub and the Voicebox dub of Energon look like masterpieces. Numerous translation errors resulted from the apparent lack of an original script, thus requiring the dubbers to translate simply from listening to the original audio; coupled with a lack of experience with the source material and a lack of professional knowledge in the English (and German) language in general, resulting in look-it-up-in-a-dictionary-use-first-suggestion translations, sentences that make no sense whatsoever at all in context, and generally stilted and unnatural-sounding dialogue.

In addition, none of the voice actors sounded like they were particularly experienced in the field of dubbing, especially since none of their voices were recognizable from other productions. (It's not like the original TV dub was exactly a masterpiece, but there were some genuine gems, such as Bernd Simon's rendition of Starscream, or the Junkions' dialogue; and major technical and translation errors were by far fewer than the rampant across-the-board error-fest that was the DVD dub.)

The DVD is also notorious for its packaging, which does its best to obscure what exactly it contains (i.e. a feature-length animated movie). The front cover uses the cover artwork of the old Panini Generation 1 sticker album, while the back cover depicts stills from "The Golden Lagoon", "The Return of Optimus Prime, Part 1" and "The Autobot Run", coupled with an (incorrect) summary of the general setting of the first two seasons of the Generation 1 cartoon, with the term "Transformers" translated into German for whatever reason. A second edition of this DVD was released in 2006, this time featuring artwork of Armada Optimus Prime on the front cover, with Earth (from the 2007 movie's promo poster) as the background, plus the 1984 back-of-the-box artwork rotated by 270 degrees as an overlay, and the "Transformers" title logo from the 2007 movie. The back cover depicts a screencap from the Armada video game, Don Figueroa's "All Optimus" poster and the 1984 back-of-the-box battle scene, plus the same sleeve text as featured on the 2003 release of the DVD, with none of the errors fixed.

Hungary

The film was first dubbed into Hungarian by Mahir Studios for the Televideo company's 1992 VHS release; the second dub was commissioned by Mirax and recorded by Masterfilm Digital for a DVD release in 2004. Both versions include the scrolling text and other European edits; the Mirax one even has the "gong man". Issues they both have in common include small dubbing casts, inconsistent voices and translation errors. Neither dub used the name translations popularized by the Hungarian release of the G1 comics.

Televideo

The film's title was translated as Alakváltók (Shape-shifters), a rare instance of a name or expression matching up with the Marvel comic's terminology. The dub has a total of five voice actors (four men for random characters, one actress for Arcee, Daniel and most of Wheelie's lines), and is notorious for the dialogue almost never matching the lip movements and characters changing their voice on the fly. Certain lines are even missing or spoken at the wrong time (most notably Megatron's "Die, Autobots!" shout), and at times lines belonging to different characters were combined into one. Translation errors and flubbed line-reads also abound; Megatron berates Soundwave for jamming the Autobots' transmission instead of ordering him to do so, and Wreck-Gar calls Hot Rod Unicron at one point. But mistakes aside, the translation is surprisingly witty – Blurr's cheesy tongue-twister about shooting Decepticons is especially famous among older fans. In fact, the translator seems to have had a fondness for rhyming, as apart from Wheelie, the Dinobots, the Junkions and Blurr also deliver parts of their dialogue in verse. The problem is that the lines are also drastically compressed, leading to many awkward moments of characters silently mouthing unspoken words.

There are numerous name changes, the most bizarre of which is the Decepticons being referred to as "Varangyok" ("Toads"). This may be a tribute to the '60s German sci-fi TV series Raumpatrouille – Die phantastischen Abenteuer des Raumschiffs Orion (Space patrol – The Fantastic Adventures of the Spaceship Orion). In this series, the main enemy alien race is called "Frogs", but they were named Toads in the Hungarian translation. Other strange name changes include Peca ("Fisher" or "Fishing Rod") for Hot Rod, Zsaru ("Cop") for Kup, RC for Arcee or "IQ Jack" for the Ick-Yak, all obvious misinterpretations of their original names. Curiously, one originally nameless characters gets a name: during the Decepticons' reformation scene, Unicron claims that there's only one Sweep, naming him "Karmos" (roughly, "Claws"). However, the Insecticons' nonsensical name ("Rovarángok") is harder to decipher. It can only be assumed that the translator intended it to be "Rovarangyok" ("Insectoads", a playful pun consistent with the Decepticon-Toad theme), and the voice actor has simply misread it.

One point in the dub's favor is that it at least attempted to retain the spirit of the Junkions' speech. For example, when putting Ultra Magnus back together, they shout "Aye-Tee-Tee!", a reference to old Hungarian ITT Inc. product commercials that were the subject of numerous jokes in the early '90s.

Mirax

The second dub has a reputation for including more profanities than the original version of the film. Although Spike's "Oh, shit!" line was cut, Ironhide, Galvatron and the Dinobots say terms akin to "asshole" (from Grimlock to Blurr), "bastards" (Galvatron to the Autobots), "stupid", "brainless, numbskull jackass" (Slag to Grimlock), "sons of bitches" (this one even twice, in place of the original's "Decepti-chops" and "Decepti-creeps"), and "chickenshit" (from Galvatron, regarding Hot Rod). Other oddities are Wheelie only rhyming half the time, Blaster's extremely high-pitched transmission to Optimus Prime (either an audio editing error or a very strange creative choice), and Soundwave and Unicron at first talking in a seg-men-ted, ro-bo-tic man-ner. Numerous grunts and screams were also inserted where there were originally none, even the Sharkticons can be heard yelling a lot.

This dub also uses a mix of untranslated or incorrectly translated names, and character voices – this time supplied by twelve actors – occasionally change from one sentence to the next. Erroneous names include Unicornis (Unicron), Prowl (Blurr), Mega-robot (Devastator, though he is also called "Devastator the Mega-robot" in one line), Constructors (Constructicons), Deceptors (Decepticons, but only said once), Astro (Astrotrain, again only for one line), Gettison (unknown; derived and misinterpreted from the line "Jettison some weight."), Eject (this refers to no one, it was mistranslated from Soundwave's "Eject" call), and the Ick-Yak becomes a "Mega-Missort". Wheelie's name is omitted. Wreck-Gar's dialogue also lacks any sort of creativity, consisting instead of random nonsense and straight-faced reactions to what's happening on screen. These and a multitude of other errors suggest that the translator had no script to work from and had to rely solely on her hearing.

A major blooper also occurs during the attack on the Autobot shuttle: Ironhide speaks his final words in Starscream's voice ("Please, have mercy!"), and curiously, the translation of Megatron's "Such heroic nonsense." line corresponds with this sudden change of personality, as he responds with "Death to all traitors." before blasting him. Now this is foreshadowing.

The DVD case has G.I. Joe pictures printed on the back side, as well as on the DVD itself. Spiffy. On a positive note, the summary on the back of the case is actually competently written, even if the references to the cartoon series (which wasn't released in the country) and to the movie's place in its timeline are worded a bit confusingly, and unlike the dub, it renders Unicron's name correctly. Masterfilm Digital would later localize Armada (episodes 1-26 of which were likewise commissioned by Mirax), sadly still maintaining some of the general incompetence displayed by their handling of this movie.

Italy

There are two Italian dubs: the original one and a 2007 redub made when the live movie arrived in cinemas.

Original dub

This dub uses the original names for the new characters, except for Wheelie, named here "Saetta" (which was already Wheeljack's Italian name, curiously). Lots of lines are completely different from the original script: Devastator's "Prepare for extermination!" became "I'll destroy you, Transformers!", Grimlock's "Me Grimlock like challenge!" is replaced with "We Dinobots ready for great battle!" Optimus's line "Soon I shall be all one with the Matrix" turns into "The most important thing now is the passage of the Matrix" and "Arise, Rodimus Prime" was changed to "Now rise up, Hot Rod!"

2007 redub

The redub uses the Italian names for everyone except Ravage, Laserbeak, Ratbat and Rodimus Prime (Hot Rod, although, is called "Folgore"). "Soundwave superior, Constructicons inferior" becomes "The Soundwave is superior, the Constructicon is inferior!" (no, seriously.)

There are many mispronounciations: Constructicons is pronounced "Con-STROOK-ticons", Laserbeak is named "Laserback" and Junk is called "Yoonk".

Blurr's speech is fast, and for some reason he also speaks in rhymes, probably to make it sound more repetitive.

Another amusing error is in the Junkion's chant of "remove the toughest stains", that is translated as "remove the toughest Slags"... as in "taking away an army of clones of the Dinobot who transforms into a Triceratops", since the actual Italian line is "rimuovere i Tricex più duri" ("Tricex" is Slag's Italian name). What.

The script is more faithful to the original version otherwise. The redub was poorly received by Italian fans.

Japan

Although Transformers: The Movie (トランスフォーマー ザ・ムービー) was advertised during 1987, and was even originally scheduled for a theatrical release in the summer of that year, unknown circumstances resulted in a delay of the Japanese release. It was not released in Japan until August 9th 1989, first through limited charity screenings for UNICEF in Tokyo and Osaka (where a man in a Super Ginrai costume greeted guests), followed immediately by a LaserDisc and VHS release. According to one attendee of the charity screening in Tokyo, some tickets to the event were offered to S.T.A.R.S. members via lottery, the version screened was in English with Japanese subtitles, and Tessho Genda (Japanese voice of Optimus Prime) was present to speak with fans; according to a different fan, leftover mail-away Landers from Masterforce were available as point-of-sale items at the screening. Footage taken during the charity screenings was included in the straight-to-video promotional film, "Transformers Theatrical Version!! Video Finally Here" (トランスフォーマー劇場公開バージョン!!ビデオついに登場).

Unfortunately, the film's delay would later cause some continuity problems in future Japanese-penned Transformers fiction, as characters killed in the movie (notably Prowl and Wheeljack) appear in later series The Headmasters and Victory respectively (though these would be addressed years later).

Despite not being released in Japan in 1987 as intended, the events of the movie were summarized in TV Magazine with accompanying artwork by Ban Magami and Studio OX so that children tuning into Transformers 2010 would not be lost. The events of the movie would regularly be referred to as the "Unicron War", gaining something of a mysterious and legendary quality, as their events were constantly referred to but never seen.

Although Transformers: The Movie was dubbed several years after Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers and Transformers 2010 had ended, the majority of cast members from those series returned to reprise their roles.

The Japanese dub is notable for adding a lot of lines and voice effects to moments which had been silent in the English version, including the following:

• The shuttle attack scene originally doesn't have much talking during combat, but the Japanese dub adds numerous lines to many characters on both sides of the fight. For example, after killing Brawn, Starscream cheerfully asks who's next while waving Megatron around.
• During Optimus Prime's attack on the Decepticons and his fight with Megatron, every Decepticon Prime shoots can be heard screaming in pain, while his battle with Megatron has numerous grunts and curses added in.

File:TFTMMagnusJapCaption01.jpg

"Hang on, there's something on the screen down here. Let me get that..."

Some of the additions were quite goofy (e.g., Blitzwing begs Prime not to run him over before getting out of the way) but some were actually quite disturbing. For example, when Starscream is killed by Galvatron, he gives off a long, tortured scream. In addition, the destruction of Lithone is made more horrifying by the sounds of the natives dying (some of them even being cut off mid-scream).

There are also a few slight dialogue alterations, such as Megatron specifically ordering the Insecticons to breach the Autobot defenses, to which Shrapnel and Kickback respond in unison with a high-pitched "Yessss siirrr!" Soundwave's famous "Soundwave superior, Constructicons inferior," is modified into "Soundwave is intelligent, the Constructicons are just idiots!"

The only other alteration of note in regards to the Japanese version is that whenever a character appears on screen for the first time, their name and function appears with them (written in Japanese, of course).

Latin America

The Latin American Spanish dub was done in Los Angeles and is notable because it kept all the voice actors from the cartoon and the new characters remained with the same voices for the remainder of the show. Every character is referred to by their original English name, since none of the characters' names were translated when the cartoon was dubbed into Spanish (except Ravage, who was called "Destructor" on the cartoon, but kept his English name on the movie).

Features the Star Wars-type text in the beginning and the narrator at the end stating that Optimus Prime will return.

Though it is one of the most popular dubs of the movie, it has only been released domestically on home video once and is very difficult to find nowadays. In addition, it hasn't been shown on TV since the early Nineties. Despite this, the dub has been included in many international releases of the movie.

This dub removes all swearing and makes Optimus Prime's death scene even more traumatic by having Daniel actually crying when Optimus flatlines.

Galvatron sounds exactly like Megatron and Wheelie occasionally rhymes because his dialogue was literally translated.

Poland

In Poland, the movie was never professionally dubbed. In the only official (and cult classic) release on VHS in 1992, all the dialogue was read by a single voice-over actor, while the original sound was left intact and could be heard in the background. To this day, that characteristic form of "narrating" is a very popular solution in Poland when it comes to translating movies for TV or DVDs. Thanks to this method, you can both understand the story and hear all the original voices. In the case of The Transformers: The Movie it also forced translators to leave (almost) all the original names intact. (Yay!)

Spain

In Spain, the movie was aried once in Latin American on the channel Antena 3. However, when the Generation 1 DVDs were published by the company Selecta Visión, they included both the Latin American dub and a new Spanish one (Castilian) that recycled the first's translations, but adding some errors in the character's names. It was aired for the first and only time in Castilian the year 2008 in Local Media TV, but the audio quality wasn't very good, probably due to emission problems.