A fan term for a work, usually but not always anime, which is available in its original language with subtitles, but where the subtitles are a direct transcription of the dub. The subtitles may not be timed correctly for the original language track; they may also have changes that are normally only present in dubs (subtitles during silence are one of the big signs of a dubtitle), and dialogue rewritten for the dub to match the lip flaps. Dubs and dubtitle tracks may often be less literal than subtitles even when that's not a necessity.
Sometimes dubtitles happen when there's no subtitle track at all except for Closed Captioning for the hearing-impaired. In this case not only do the subtitles go with the dub, but they may also include transcriptions of sound effects that would never be used when subtitle tracks are meant as translations. Some releases will have both subtitles and a dub transcript with sound effects as separate tracks, like Funimation's Gunslinger Girl and early Dragon Ball Z and YuYu Hakusho releases, or Arrow Video's Gamera and Sartana complete series box sets (the former of which has separate dub transcripts for each of the Dueling Dubs).
This is common in video games, such as Dead or Alive, .hack and all of the more recent games released by Nippon Ichi or Atlus, but it's only recently that video games have included original language tracks at all, and even if a game does include two translations of the audio, text-heavy video games generally would have no reason to include two translations of the text as well.
All examples are from the USA unless otherwise indicated.
Examples:
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Anime
- The uncut Yu-Gi-Oh! and Shaman King releases were notorious for this. Shaman King was a partial dubtitle, using the dub script with Japanese names inserted.
- Quite a few Hentai.
- Pilot Candidate.
- This used to be common in the UK due to mandatory ratings and the requirement that a non-identical subtitle track be rated separately:
- The Disney DVD and Blu-ray releases of Kiki's Delivery Service, as well as their subtitled Japanese VHS version, have a dubtitle track based on the old Streamline dub, because the Japanese sent over a transcript of the Streamline track as a "translation". The Blu-ray discs of The Cat Returns, Castle in the Sky and Princess Mononoke also have subtitles which are transcripts of Disney's own dubs. (The original DVDs of Mononoke and Castle in the Sky had more accurately translated, if poorly-synced for the latter, subtitles.) Castle in the Sky and Princess Mononoke had their subtitles corrected for the Amazon-exclusive boxset The Collected Works of Hayao Miyazaki; the GKIDS/Shout! Factory re-releases of non-Kiki Studio Ghibli films also avoid using dubtitles.
- Of course any anime DVD release that contains no Japanese track, but still has English subtitles are guaranteed to be "dubtitled". Examples being Warner Home Video's releases of the early Pokémon movies and Yu Gi Oh The Movie. The discs also contained French and Spanish audio, but this made no difference, and those respective languages' subtitles were also dubtitles.
- The Japanese DVDs and Blu-rays of the first three Pokémon movies include an English audio and subtitle track, which is the only official way to watch them in Japanese with English subtitles.
- Moldiver, though some episodes of the old laserdisc version did have true subtitles.
- The Ghost Sweeper Mikami movie used an early version dub script.
- So did Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam.
- A subsequent re-release fixed this, though.
- Blood+ for the first half. Supposedly this is fixed for the second half.
- Cyborg 009 TV series (what little of it was actually released on disc).
- Air Master: The first two disks also had the version where transcriptions of sound effects were included.
- Wrath Of The Ninja (but the later Yotoden release, which had separate OAVs as well as the movie, is okay).
- Tekken: The Motion Picture
- Tenchi Muyo! TV series (Tenchi Universe), though the amount of pure dubtitling varied from episode to episode. The OVAs also suffered from this practice in some of the earlier laser disc releases, but it was not consistent. Unfortunately, all of this was carried over to Funimation's re-releases on DVD and Blu-ray.
- Virus
- Appleseed Ex Machina
- Angel Sanctuary (curiously, the subtitle timing doesn't line up with the English audio, even though almost all of the words do)
- The second Ghost in the Shell (1995) movie (Innocence)'s sub-only DVD release from DreamWorks SKG was dubtitled, despite containing no dub. The subtitles read like closed captions (complete with sound effects) and the translation was off. DreamWorks did attempt to fix the subtitles in a later print, but the film would not see a proper US release until they sublicensed the film to Bandai a few years later.
- Tactics
- Just about everything released by the short-lived company Illumitoon, including Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo and Beet the Vandel Buster. Some of these had sound effect transcriptions as well. Illumitoon offered replacements for the first Bobobo disc, but these were DVD-R "burn on demand" discs instead of the proper DVDs of the actual release.
- Bobobo got screwed over again years later when the DVD rights were rescued by S'More Entertainment, who proceeded to release the show in two billingual DVD boxsets... with no subtitles at all. However, they did come with a downloadable/printable script for a viewer to follow along with. Despite this, the package pointed out that there WERE subtitles. The company's excuse was basically that Toei approved the package, and that fans had no right to complain.
- Thankfully, this was finally averted with Discotek’s SD-BD release of Bobobo.
- Some fans assume that certain releases are dubtitled; however, these assumptions are generally based on pirated DVD-rips that only include dubtitles where the original DVD had separate, proper subtitle tracks as well. This has happened with Blue Gender, Fruits Basket, and Spiral, among others. Or worse, they propagate a myth that all official releases are dubtitled, as justification for viewing anime by alternate methods.
- Saikano, at least the OVA, was partially dubtitled. Sometimes the subtitles differed considerably from the dub, but at other times they matched the dub perfectly. Especially noticeable in some sections where the dub dialogue was a radical departure from the original Japanese.
- Dubtitles were used in the final episode of Angel Cop in order to downplay/erase the twist that the US was taken over by a Zionist conspiracy who wanted to take over Japan and turn it into a nuclear waste dump, since it wouldn't fly at all in the Western part of the world. Discotek's release of the OVA contains both the original dubtitles by Manga Entertainment, and an uncensored retranslation with the offensive plot point intact, complete with explicit Content Warnings about the twist.
- The UK Anime Legends box set of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann has TWO dubtitle tracks (English and French) leading to major differences between what the subtitles say and what is actually being said on the Japanese audio track, and because of the timing differences between the foreign and the original audio tracks, subtitles appear approximately 5 seconds before anything is actually said and disappear mid sentence when using the original audio track.
- Averted, to some extent, with the US release, in that the closed captioning is actually based off of the correct subtitle track, rather than the dub it's captioning.
- Digimon Adventure 02 and Digimon Tamers' official online subs have this, though it's certainly not the only reason why fans of the original Japanese version steer clear of them.
- Averted on the series proper with Toei's subs of Dragon Ball Super, but the subtitles for the first opening (Chozetsu Dynamic) use the lyrics of the official Engrish cover.
- Mobile Suit Gundam 00 is widely considered one of the best dubbed shows in the franchise, due to how the English version changes the wording just enough to make the dialogue make sense, without changing what is actually being said. For the final battle in Season 1, between Graham and Setsuna, the subtitles in Japanese were retroactively changed to be a transcript of the dialogue in the English version, which is arguably more cohesive than the original Japanese.
- Ghost Stories has a subtitled version based on the infamous Gag Dub.
Film
- The Mamoru Oshii film Avalon (2001).
- Heart Of The Dragon (FOX version, unconfirmed)
- Godzilla vs. Megaguirus.
- Godzilla, Mothra, King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack!. The Hong Kong version has actual subtitles (better than the Western ones, for once.)
- Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla 2.
- Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S.. Sony fails when it comes to Godzilla DVDs.
- Battle in Outer Space, also a Toho special effects movie from Sony (though not featuring Godzilla). Oddly, this is released with two other genre movies which are not dubtitled.
- The Winstar and Dragon Dynasty releases of Hard Boiled. Reports vary whether the Criterion edition has real subtitles, but generally the consensus is no.
- Legend of Drunken Master (Drunken Master II), unconfirmed.
- The City of Lost Children. Notable in that a couple lines are even Mondegreens of the English dub by the subtitling company. The French subtitles— y'know, the original language?— were back-translated from the English dub.
- Fist of Legend is partly dubtitled in the US Dragon Dynasty release (particularly during the ending). Some other versions didn't even have original language audio at all.
- District B13
Video Games
- Every game that has dual language option will usually only have subtitles for the English dubbing.
- Like a Dragon: Despite the series keeping its Japanese voice acting for overseas releases after the first Yakuza game, the sequels have subtitles that were translated in a way that were written with a dub in mind. Specifically, the character of Shintaro Kazama (Kazuma Kiryu's adoptive father) in the first game had his family name changed to Fuma, since the localization staff thought that Kazama and Kazuma sounded too similar. This change was carried over to Yakuza 2 and 3, where Kazama was still referred to as "Fuma" on the subtitles, even though the characters are clearly calling him Kazama. Yakuza 4 changed Fuma's name back to Kazama as part of its Translation Correction, and from 0 onwards, Majima refers to Kiryu as "Kiryu-Chan" instead of the americanized "Kazzy".
- Judgment is an aversion, as it is one of the few instances with separate subtitle tracks for the original Japanese voices and English dub. This was specifically requested by localization producer Scott Strichart, as explained here
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- Lost Judgment, Judgment's sequel, maintains this, though according to Scott Strichart, the script and flow of the dub lines might sound less natural than Yakuza: Like a Dragon due to its simulataneous worldwide release.
- Lost Judgment, Judgment's sequel, maintains this, though according to Scott Strichart
- Following the success of Judgment mentioned above, Ryu ga Gotoku Studio approved dual subtitles for Yakuza: Like a Dragon and seems to be on track to avert this trope for all of its future games with an English dub.
- Judgment is an aversion, as it is one of the few instances with separate subtitle tracks for the original Japanese voices and English dub. This was specifically requested by localization producer Scott Strichart, as explained here
- Metal Gear Solid V is the first game in the series to offer English subtitles for the Japanese versions, but the subtitles are taken straight from the English version of the game. This is particularly notable during the Mother Base destruction sequence, where Snake has additional lines in the Japanese version while he's in the chopper that were left untranslated. The same applies to Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance in reverse. The English voiced versions all have support for Japanese text, but the subtitled dialogue is clearly taken from the Japanese voice track, as some of the jokes and such differ between the two versions.
- Ni no Kuni makes this obvious from the get-go, since one of the first characters you meet is clearly called "Mark" in the Japanese audio but referred to as Philip in text.
- Persona Q2: New Cinema Labyrinth is the first game in the series to not be dubbed in any capacity, but the game's subtitles are still written as if the game was dubbed to keep it consistent with previous titles. This leads to things like Mitsuru's English interjections subtitled as her speaking French, voice actors referring to Futaba as "Navi" while the subtitles read "Oracle", and some characters referring to each other with Last-Name Basis in the audio while using first names in the subtitles.
- There are also two precedents before Q2: Tokyo Mirage Sessions ♯FE and Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey Redux, both of them which are games with no English voice over and subtitles only.
- Sonic Adventure and its sequel both use dubtitles when the voice acting is set in Japanese with English subtitles, since most of the dialogue was rewritten for the English script and don't match up with what is actually being said in Japanese. This is especially notable in the way Dr. Robotnik is referred by himself and other characters. In the Japanese version, the character is always addressed as "Dr. Eggman" (even by himself) and is never actually called "Robotnik" by anyone, whereas in the English dub "Eggman" is a derisive nickname given to him by Sonic and Tails that's he not fond of.
- In the Street Fighter series, the characters of M. Bison, Balrog, and Vega had their names switched for the overseas versions of the games. This became a bit too obvious in Street Fighter IV, which gives players an option between a Japanese or an English voice track. The subtitles are based on the English dub, which means that they use the overseas names of the characters, even if the voice acting is set to Japanese (i.e. the subtitles will display "Lord Bison" when a character is clearly saying "Vega-sama"). Notably, Street Fighter IV is the first game in the franchise to publicly acknowledge the name switching, with characters being credited by both, their Japanese and American names (i.e. "Vega (JPN)/M. Bison (ENG)").
- Tales of Hearts R has no English dub, yet the way the dialogue was translated strongly suggests it was written with one in mind, with paragraph-long lines for single words in dialogue and some adaptations that show quite a lot of...poetic licensenote
- Valkyria Chronicles didn't always pay attention to how the dubtitling could affect the Japanese track, leading to some cheesiness when the script and the Japanese audio really didn't match. Notably, a scene in which Welkin, in the Japanese audio says only "Faldio," the English script underneath reads "I don't know what to tell you, Faldio."
- In one of the last cutscenes, Alicia says "Welkin..." in the Japanese audio. What did the dubtitles say? "Thank you..." although she didn't thank Welkin anytime before or after that line in the Japanese audio.
Western Animation
- The Adventures of Tintin, the box set of the '90s TV series has this for the English subs on the French.
- The DVD of Asterix Conquers America contains the English and French versions, but the subtitles are for the English version.
- A strange variation with the French Blu-ray release of Ballerina. The French subtitles do not match with the original French audio, but is instead a Recursive Translation from the English dub. Even though the French Blu-ray release does not include an English dub audio option.
- Some Brazilian DVDs of the Disney Animated Canon have subtitles translating everything from the original. Others incorporate some of the changes found in the dub, particularly the song lyrics.
- A truly egregious case for Miraculous Ladybug on Netflix, as not only are the English subtitles based on the English dub even if using the original French audio, so are the French subtitles. This is extremely obvious, as neither set of subtitles cover lines that were cut from the English dub, though the French ones do still use the original Papillon instead of the French for Hawk Moth.
- On US Netflix, LoliRock's French subtitles are a translation of the English dub, rather than being based on the French dub. This is especially noticeable during the songs, since the lyrics are often differ in the English and French dubs, and the subtitles just translate the English version back into French.
