Loved water margin, walked around my village with a black wig my dressing gown and a plastic sword, got some funny looks don’t know why, I’m a a samurai you know 👍

This is a real gem of a featurrette! Loved the water margin as a kid,who could ever forget these names? Monkey too was a smash for my generation,was a good way to learn about history,mythology and other cultures in the world.

Though the enemy are building a fighting force of extraordinary magnitude, they will never take Liang Shang Po!

Nevermind The Water Margin we want to see the dubbing legends behind 1980s BBC2's Monkey! (AKA Monkey Magic).

Fascinating, I had no idea that not doing a direct translation was ever a thing! Great nostalgia, I loved "The Water Margin".

I HAVE ALWAYS LOVED THE WATER MARGIN! I HAVE TWO COPIES OF THE WHOLE SETS!

I'm shocked that they didn't have a translator on the team, so the dub is a completely different story 😂

I loved the Water Margin, cannot believe it was translated by someone who didn't speak the language but he did an amazing job, thanks for the video thumbs up

i’m watching this on amazon prime (freevee). i watched this when i was a kid in the 70s and have totally forgotten the plots.

Shockingly, modern dubs aren't much different. We do use translators more often but there's plenty of instances where it's identical to this (winging it with little to no care for the actual words). It takes a lot of effort to not only translate the script but rewrite it to fit both English syntax and the mouths as well as the plot. Princess Mononoke is a rare example of not only dubbing but reinterpreting the entire script (dialogue and plot) for English whilst maintaining the same underlying messages. The bigger shame is you can't get the Water Margin undubbed in the UK; I love that show and wasn't even born until 20+ years later, it would be great to see it's original form. Or have HBO remake it... c'mon it would be epic

Fascinating. There is also a later version from the 1980s which was a huge hit in the UK.

This is what made ,it such a cult series ,it was huge in the UK and with the long hot summer . Burt and Miriam margoleyes, so underated

The script editor knows the dramatic function of each scene and its role in the story. He's not making it up as much as people think. How each scene gets from A to B though is up to him. In the example, the function of the scene is 'this is how the hero gets his sword, with all its attributes' - and he takes it from there.

Is it a coincidence that not only does one of the performers accent sounds like Eddie, (played by Adrian Edmondson) from "Bottom", but one of the voice actors resembles him? I say "We shall know; we must know." Or maybe not.

Friday night, chippy tea, the whole weekend stretching out before you....parents alive, like us all, id go back there in an instant

I'm so surprised they weren't translated literally!

This is excellent. Thank you.

I can’t believe the gorgeous Lin Chung (Atsuo Nakamara, who’s still very good looking) is voiced by someone who looks like that! Also as mackyj7801 so rightly says it’s shocking they didn’t have a translator! However, the story pretty much follows the original book, so the Japanese actors must be saying similar things. My 2 adult children, who I’ve been rewatching it with recently ( I must have seen it about 100 times!) both speak a little Japanese and can sometimes tell a couple of words, which are similar to the dub. We all agree we’d like to see a version with subtitles just to see what they’re actually saying. However, I do love this dubbed version, ever since I first saw it in 1976, so I’ll never stop watching it. It’s an amazing show, sad, funny, exciting, enthralling, with a marvellous cast especially the 3 main characters. Lin Chung, Hu San Niang (Sanae Tsuchida) and Kao Chiu (Kei Satō) are all fantastic. I love the episode where there’s a flashback to when Kao’s a teenager - somehow, Kei Satō, who was 45 actually looks about 17! He doesn’t look 45 when he’s playing Kao, but even so, he doesn’t look 17 either. I think the Japanese tend to look young anyway, the man who plays Shi Jin, Teruhiko Aoi, looks about 15 or 16, but was actually in his mid twenties! All the actors look good even now; sadly Kei Satō died in 2010 at 82, but he didn’t look that old. This is a classic show, suitable for children and adults and never palls. No matter how recently I’ve watched it, I’m always ready to watch again; on one occasion, we binge watched it at the weekend, watching both series, and started at Episode 1, season 1, again on Monday evening! All the episodes are well written - one of my favourites is The War To End All Wars, when a traveller to is helped by Liang Shan Po, and he shows them the skills he’s mastered which is using firework gunpowder to make bombs, and Lin Chung and the others ask him to make something to shoot these bombs from, so he shows them what he saw on his journey, which is a rudimentary cannon. Lin Chung works out how to make it fire without breaking, and they use it against Kao’s troops. In the end, they decide it’s too dangerous to use, as it probably wouldn’t take Kao that long to discover the secret and he’d make dozens of cannons and it would be the war to end all wars. It’s such a cleverly written story and so we’ll acted. And, as always with Japanese shows, whether Anime or live action, the women are strong characters but also very feminine. Hu San Niang is a perfect example, but Lin Chung’s doomed wife, the beautiful Hsiao Lan, although not a warrior like Hu San Niang, is strong enough to get over seeing her beloved Lin Chung dragged off to a horrific prison far away, and after that being raped by Kao, to walk at least 80 miles to find Lin Chung. She sacrifices her own life to save his. And, unlike the ‘strong’ men in western TV, Lin Chung is not ashamed to cry. Indeed, all the male characters cry when one of the heroes loses a loved one. It’s really believable and good to see. Great music, great episodes and Bert Kwouk, the excellent narrator, also made up all the sayings that were supposed to be the words of the Ancient Sages! One more fun fact - the Japanese weren’t familiar enough with Chinese martial arts and didn’t have time to have the actors learn them, which is why the heroes do those brilliant leaps up into the air! They really look like some kind of amazing martial art - at least, to western eyes! A thoroughly excellent show!

Well that was an eye opener, loved that show, I can still remember the theme tune. A surprising big hit for it’s time and no doubt paved the way for shows like Monkey Magic. Makes me wonder what the real story and script were like?

I miss dubs

Hands up. Who started singing the intro of I Feel Fine by The Beatles at 2:24? 😀

Wow. Brilliant!

As a child I put two forks together to make chopsticks and always wanted to be like Hu San Jung, I hope spelling is correct. I also became drunk on a few small glasses of rice wine in our pantry!🤣🥰

this is a good explanation of how dubbing worked backed in the day

How much of this great masterpiece of Chinese literature was left after being reinterpretated in Japan and then dubbed by guesswork in England?

It's not the fact that it's dubbed into English; it's that we're not watching the Water Margin. Instead, it is a totally different story just dreamed up by David Weir.

Interviewer : "could the unsuspecting viewer be aware that it has been dubbed ?" 😅😂😅 Man: Oh no they shouldn't be aware of it at all 😂😅😂

Wardour Street SOHO LONDON

This explains my utter love and confusion of Monkey!

Not me watching hundreds of movies with subtitles 😂😂😂😂😂 Monkey is the only one I would accept dubbed.

Would rather have the original language with subtitles, thank you very much.

"No, they can be saying anything at all really." Anime sub fans would be shocked just how much dubbing has actually improved since then...

Good old Adrian Edmondson 😅😅

I have the DVD and VHS box sets and there are far more than ten episodes.

Ahhh - so! They did a Magic Roundabout i.e. ignored the original dialogue and made the story up as they went along! Brilliant!

Extraordinary! So that posh bloke wrote a script based on how their lips moved, nothing to do with the Chinese/Japanese actual story/script. He the got posh actors say his words in cod oriental accents for a laugh? It's unbelievable!!!

remember nationwide and water margin, and this item, brilliant

Any one else checking the date? Nope, not April 1st.

Hang on Hang on ! so when I watched this when it was first broadcast, was I hearing the original story line. or an interpretation from the imagination of David Weir ??

Have I missed something here, or is he saying that he’s basically guessing the story from the pictures and writing the overdubs accordingly? Can’t be true

So we have London-based actors doing dialogue by an English writer, who doesn't know the plot or speak Japanese, of a Japanese adaption of a book written in old-fashioned Chinese? I see.

I doubt they'd do the accents today.

Ahh so that's how they did it.

I can't process what the hell they're saying: they just made up a story based on the pictures and used that instead of what the story was actually about?... What the hell?

Putting words in actors' mouths they have never said? Basically, writing a new script based on pictures? Even Soviet amateur home video dubbers rarely stooped to this level of "quality".

I will never play Street Fighter again,to think all that was for nothing 😂

used to watch C-dramas in chinese. heroine is manacled to wall. evil guy walks in. "NI!" gotcha python

Nowadays, they would need translators for dubbing foreign programming.

I once saw a German dubbed version of Starsky and Hutch, the German dubbers had high pitched voices, nothing like Paul Michael Glaser's or David Soul's voices. 😁😂🤣 I wouldn't be surprised if the real Japanese actors had much better voices than the dubbers. 🙄😁

Absolutely staggering how they approached this, it really is a masterpiece. Most English males in their 40's and 50's watched this as children - Epic series. Sadly this would not be allowed today as the BBC has gone a little woke.

I'm sure this is a spoof 🤭

I prefer subtitles to dubbing. The dubbed voices are never as good.

This and Monkey total classics, not least due to the brilliant voice dubbing. Sobering thought that this wouldn't be aloud now as racilaism.

The whole thing was a lie ? 😭

¿que la doblaron al ingles? 😮 ja ja ja ja ¿y por que la doblaron con esa pronunciación tan rara ?

I loved the Water Margin but found that a bit sad to watch, I cannot see why nobody was brought in to do the translation, so the original words of the actors were heard with the voiceover. Feels a bit racist, to be honest on why it was not done properly, that guy who explained what he did, did not impress me one bit with his you can say anything! Well, knowing this now has tainted the show a bit and it's a shame such thinking was considered fine back then!

Dubbing, like canned laughter, is unwatchable today. Just use subtitles. Even worse they didn't start with a translation.

The Water Margin and Monkey were brilliant. Not sure they'd have white actors with dodgy Japanese accents doing this kind of thing these days. Cultural appropriation or some such wokeness.

Colonial racism. Just one translator and you'd have an accurate story.

"I 𝑐ℎ𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑒𝑛𝑔𝑒 you to a fight! You 𝒅𝒐 take part in unarmed combat... 𝒅𝒐𝒏'𝒕 you? I will defeat all challengers with my Kung Fu, it's pretty good, don't you know! And 𝒅𝒐 𝒏𝒐𝒕 call me a dog, I must 𝒘𝒂𝒓𝒏 you! I do not take kindly to being called one, so now... 𝑰 𝑴𝑼𝑺𝑻 𝑭𝑰𝑮𝑯𝑻 𝒀𝑶𝑼!!!"