Death Note....?!
Question: in the 1st episode when Light was deciding on who to kill and considered this guy called Sudo or something.
this sudo guy asked for 20 dollars and the series is set in Japan even in the dub, is that a dubbing error? if not why would someone in Japan have dollars instead of Yen?
Answers: in the 1st episode when Light was deciding on who to kill and considered this guy called Sudo or something.
this sudo guy asked for 20 dollars and the series is set in Japan even in the dub, is that a dubbing error? if not why would someone in Japan have dollars instead of Yen?
As the series is "dubbed" to be friendlier for international countries (or the dubbing countries), there are localizations of dialogue & texts. Most cases, English dubs are for American audiences, so there are changes of the dialogue to match U.S. vocabulary, slang, culture, etc.
So as the series is dubbed from Japanese to English, the general "American" audience wouldn't know what a "Yen" is, but would understand a "dollar."
[Edit] I believe many audience members would "laugh" when they hear a guy say:
"Give me 2000 Yen" vs "Give me 20 Dollars"
With kids saying: what's a Yen? and who carries 2000 "dollars" on them?
20 U.S. dollars = 2,031 Japanese yen
[Edit] Some Licensing studios are "faithful" to the original dialogue, but others are not.
But in the odd chance that "dollars" was purposely put in there for a reason other than "localization." The location could be near Okinawa or some other area close to a U.S. military base, which uses dollars.
Plasma is correct. In the manga he says "Hey Ryochin! Could you lend me like 2000 yen?". I guess the dubbers decided that converting the currency would cause less confusion. Perhaps they concluded that a decent percentage of viewers would incorrectly think 2000 yen is far more than it actually is.