Table 3.2 shows the questionnaire results. As mentioned in section 3.1, in this study, (1) to (10) are the ten Taiwanese lines while (11) to (20) are their corresponding Japanese counterparts. Following this numbering system, Table 3.2 shows their rankings in how natural, standard and likeable they are according to the participants. Values are rounded off to the 2nd decimal place. The last two rows list the average and standard deviation of each column.
Table 3.2: Results and average of the questionnaire
natural standard likeable natural standard likeable
(1) 1.92 4.31 3.56 (11) 4.65 4.35 4.71
(2) 2.30 4.74 2.37 (12) 4.60 4.53 4.69
(3) 2.05 4.74 2.89 (13) 4.60 4.53 4.42
(4) 2.25 4.84 2.66 (14) 4.60 4.52 4.39
(5) 2.30 4.90 2.30 (15) 4.43 4.61 4.43
(6) 2.11 4.43 1.93 (16) 4.37 4.5 4.5
(7) 1.83 4.71 2.05 (17) 4.60 4.59 4.48
(8) 1.86 4.76 3.61 (18) 4.57 4.47 4.43
(9) 3.12 4.31 4.14 (19) 4.68 4.51 4.45
(10) 3.23 4.68 4.64 (20) 4.52 4.47 4.45
avg. 2.80 4.63 3.80 4.53 4.53 4.37
sd. 0.47 0.20 0.88 0.09 0.07 0.11
In both languages, the dubbing performances are considered rather standard.
However, the lines by Taiwanese dubbing artists are not generally considered natural, while those by the Japanese dubbing artists are. It is worthy to note that individual differences exist nonetheless. (9) and (10), for example, had relatively higher rank on naturalness.
Statistical tests were run to verify the difference in naturalness ranking from the two languages. Each Taiwanese line’s ranking is tested against that of its Japanese counterpart. The value retrieved is nonparametric ordinal data, because no normal distribution is assumed and they are represented by rankings on a questionnaire. A Mann Whitney U test is therefore chosen for the test. Table 3.3 shows z and p-value of the test. As there is a sample size of 100, table of critical value of U was not used on the result.
Table 3.3: Mann Whitney U test on naturalness ranking of each pair of line
(1) (11) (2) (12) (3) (13) (4) (14) (5) (15) (6) (16) (7) (17) (8) (18) (9) (19) (10) (20)
(two-tailed) 0.00E+00 0.00E+00 0.00E+00 0.00E+00 0.00E+00 0.00E+00 0.00E+00 0.00E+00 6.66E-16 0.00E+00
Statistic results show that the naturalness ranking Taiwanese dubbing performance received is significantly lower than that of Japanese dubbing performance. The result is consistent with Ishii et al. (1999) that dubbing performance in Taiwan is mostly rejected as unnatural, and further shows that this seems to be a problem not present in the case of Japanese audience’ reaction on Japanese dubbing. Pairs (9)/(19) and (10)/(20) show slightly larger z but the differences are still significant.
Notice that although (1) to (10) receive lower ranking in both naturalness and fondness, there is no necessarily correlation between the two. The backdrop of this study is Ishii et al. (1999)’s survey, which shows Taiwanese audience’ general rejection of dubbing is due to unnaturalness. On the contrary, the rankings in this study are on specific lines heard separately through a high-definition output device, and overall fondness may be influenced by various factors other than naturalness, such as translation quality and voice character10. Spearman's rank correlation coefficient was run to see the Taiwanese dubbing performances’ ranking correlation of naturalness/fondness. Table 3.4 shows the results.
Table 3.4: Spearman's rank correlation coefficient of naturalness/fondness ranking of (1) to (10)
10 According to colleagues who were trained in both Japanese and Taiwanese voice acting
programmes, Taiwanese training is more restricted in terms of preferred voice quality, while Japanese training is more open to different voices. Taiwanese training almost always prefer a bright and sharp voice, which functions well in terms of signal clarity but may not always be pleasant.
As the table shows, there is indeed no correlation observed between the two rankings. Some of the answers collected from the open question section, however, show more explicit links between naturalness and fondness. At least 15 participants wrote that the lines sounded unnatural and were uncomfortable to listen to. Among these 15, they either noticed excessive amount of retroflexion or pointed out they sense traits of Mandarin speakers from Mainland China. There were also comments on voice and emotion but they tend to be mixed. Some participants liked the bright voice quality while others did not find it pleasant, saying that it sounds fake. Some liked the emotional performance while others found it exaggerated. Some did not have particular feelings to either voice or performance at all. These comments explain why there was not a consistent correlation between naturalness and overall fondness, the latter being affected by different factors and tastes. The only consistency in open question is that if naturalness and standardness are mentioned, the lines were always considered very standard and unnatural. Although in the context of separated selected materials, this may not be the sole or superseding factor causing the low ranking of fondness, the ranking in naturalness itself is worth investigating as it is the reason of general rejection as Ishii et al. (1990) show, and seems particularly low by the comparison made in this study.
For a brief summary, over 30 participants commented that the pronunciation was extremely standard, and half of them noticed the lines always have retroflex sounds. Also there were over 20 participants who pointed out that the lines sounded exaggerated. Over 10 mentioned specifically that the lines remind them of Mandarin speakers from the mainland part of China.
Overall, the survey shows that there is a gap between naturalness and standardness in how audience perceive Taiwanese dubbing performance, which does
not exists in the case of Japanese lines, which are the originals of this study’s materials. The responses to open questions show that the exaggerated way of speaking and retroflex sounds seem to contribute the unnaturalness and standardness of dubbing performance. In the next chapter, dubbing performance’
specific phonetic characteristics will be compared with those of daily speech so as to see what exactly are making the performance to appear as unnatural.
Chapter 4
What Is Dubbing Like: Phonetic Analysis
The previous chapter concludes that audience generally find dubbing performance in Taiwan to be unnatural. To explore from an acoustic aspect what exactly causes the unnaturalness, this chapter describes the phonetic analysis of materials from dubbing artists and non dubbing artist informants. It has a 4-section structure, where section 4.1 introduces the retrieval of non dubbing artists’ reading of the same lines as in the materials. Section 4.2 discusses the lines’ pronunciation that is inconsistent with the prescriptive standard Guoyu pronunciation. Section 4.3 analyses the pitch contour and section 4.4 analyses the PVI of the performance.