Pitsskurt of Peacecraft

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Pitsskurt of Peacecraft By Christine C. Rivero HAI, they've heard the flak. Complaints about the translation, the name-changing and other things have reached the "Gundam Wing" dubbers. Let's get to know some of them first, shall we? Heero, Zechs, Relena, Trowa, Towlys Carlo Eduardo "Bambam" Labalan, 27, is the voice behind pilot Heero Yuy. Cool dude Bambam is already a veteran in the dubbing biz since he started out dubbing for movies when he was only 9 years old. A former engineer, Ed Belo, 38, found voice-acting in radio dramas a whole lot more fun than his old job. Later on he got into dubbing for telenovelas and cartoons. Kuya Ed is quite the joker but he leaves all his wisecracking behind when he voices the mysterious Lieutenant Zechs. Twenty-year-old Charvie Abletes lends her voice to feisty Relena Pittskurt (Peacecraft, yes, yes, we know, we'll go into that later, okay?). She is also a radio talent and "Gundam Wing" is her first anim‚ dubbing stint. Soft-spoken Trowa Barton is voiced by John Patrick "Whannie" Dellosa. Twenty-three-year-old Whannie was a dubbing technician before becoming a voice actor himself. Buzzed into the telenovela scene by a pretty persistent performing bug, Jill Belen, 22, now finds herself giving anim‚ a try. Her voice does all the sassing for sarcastic Towlys. Now about that translation. . . The first thing the dubbers would like to let everyone know is that they aren't the translators. "We're just the voice actors," says Bambam, "the script comes from Japan." He explains that the Japanese script is translated into English in Japan then it's shipped here where a Pinoy translator rewords the whole thing into Filipino. "We didn't change any of the names ourselves, either," adds Kuya Ed, "we only followed what was written on the script." "When we first got the script," says Charvie, "Relena's last name was spelled as Pittskurt." Since she had already introduced herself as Relena Pittskurt, Charvie thought it might be weird to change her name in the middle of the series. So Pittskurt stuck even after their group learned that Relena's name really ought to be Relena Peacecraft. Swak or how a script gets snipped to stay in sync Although they don't mess around with how people and things on "Gundam Wing" are named, the dubbers revealed they sometimes changed parts of the Filipino script when it wasn't working out. "Sometimes the lines are so long it no longer matches the mouth movements (of the Gundam characters)," says Bambam. So what they do is either snip the dialogue or change the lines entirely to make it fit the scene. "Kailangan swak," agrees Whannie. Whannie also points out that they can't have a character saying bad words on the show even though it's in the script. Instead, they utter a growly "HAH!" or some other fierce-sounding non-bad-word alternative. Fans are the biggest help "You know how we found out about all these problems?" Kuya Ed asks smiling. "Through all the kids and fans who wrote to us and pointed them out." He continues, "We rely on this feedback to help us see how we can improve future projects and episodes. We hope we can keep on helping each other." Those of you who still think "Gundam Wing" could use a hand can e-mail GMA-7 at feedback@ gmanetwork.com or send snail mail to the dubbers themselves c/o ALTA Productions, Sagittarius Bldg., H.V. dela Costa Street, Makati City.  Pitsskurt of Peacecraft Play with your Voice A Day for Remembering Our National Hero Caring for 'askals' and 'puskals' RECYCLE