Fans Release Portuguese Dub for Silent Hill 2
May 17, 2022
Last month Silent Hill fans in Brazil were treated to a complete dub of Silent Hill 2 made by Silent Fandub, a group of fans which specializes in translating and dubbing various games to Brazilian Portuguese. The development of their projects is motivated purely by their love of certain games and is done without any financial interest, having first come together in 2014 to dub Silent Hill 3, hence their name. Since then, they have translated other games, such as Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back, Crash Bandicoot: Warped, God of War 2, Jersey Devil and Resident Evil 4, their most popular release to date.
The release trailer for the project can be seen below:
The project was first announced in 2020, but was put on hold and reemerged in 2021 with an estimated release date of January 2022, but ended being released on April 21 this year. Previously a demo version had been released, featuring fully dubbed scenes up to the first Pyramid Head encounter in Blue Creek Apartments. The Born From a Wish scenario was also completely dubbed, as were all sounds made by the characters during gameplay such as groans of pain and panting by James and Maria.
You can download dubbing and translation patches for PC (including Enhanced Edition) and PS2 versions of the game from the Silent Fandub site:
To better understand how the translation and dubbing process was done, we present an interview with Sonderhen, the director and creator of the dub, as well as a quick exchange with the actor José Roque, who played James in the dubbed version.
1. What made the team decide to dub Silent Hill 2?
Sonderhen: We've dubbed other games and we're big fans of the Silent Hill saga, and so are most of our followers. SH2 has always been highly requested by them, so we decided it was time to start this project.
2. Did past experiences of dubbing other games influence the work done on Silent Hill 2? In what manner did this game differ from the others?
Sonderhen: In our projects we always try to dub 100% of the lines and not just the cutscenes, so that wasn't any different for Silent Hill 2. As for the process of creating the patches, there were times the initial release of some of our previous projects contained a few bugs, so for Silent Hill 2 we put a lot of effort into testing, completing all versions of the game several times, and fixing any bugs we found. We have released the patch a few weeks ago and so far no bugs have been reported.
3. How was the process of attributing voice actors to the characters done? Were there obstacles in deciding who would end up assuming the role of certain characters?
Sonderhen: In Brazil there is a community of amateur voice actors who post their work in Facebook groups. As a director, I watch several videos from these groups while trying to imagine which character the voice of this actor should belong to. After that I invite the person to record one or several tests. If I like the result, I decide this person will be the Portuguese voice actor for the character. If that's not the case, I don't discard that person's talent as we intend on doing other projects in the future and it's certain their voice will be a good fit for another character.
4. What was the dubbing process like? Was it difficult to translate the mannerisms and voice intonations of the characters? Which scenes were the hardest to record?
José Roque: The biggest challenge nowadays is to meet the expectations of the larger audience of established franchises that already have the original audio (in English) as their main frame of reference, and who have to undertake a long period of adaptation for the new language.
Regarding the most difficult scenes to record, they were definitely the endings where James and Mary have their last dialogues and the final fight against the two Pyramid Heads, there were tears and everything.
5. Were there problems in creating the patches for the different versions of the game? How was it done?
Sonderhen: Modifying the audio files for the PC version was simple. The PS2 version however uses more complex audio files that were in a format I had never seen before, but the romhacking community in Brazil is very big and Mumm-Ra from the STR Brasil* team managed to help us modify those files.
*STR Brasil is another group that works with amateur dubs and creates tools for modding games.
6. How long did it take to complete the project?
Sonderhen: Development had to be put on hold for a few months due to personal issues, but it took approximately one year and a half from beginning to end.
7. What was the reception like so far? What got praised? Was there criticism?
Sonderhen: As was the case for Silent Hill 3, the overwhelming majority of our followers and the streamers who played it enjoyed the voice acting a lot, we received many messages of praise on Facebook. The few criticisms we received were constructive and revolved around mismatches between the voices of certain actors and the characters portrayed by them, which is normal, it's impossible to please everybody. Luckily I haven't seen any hate comments yet.
For other releases such as the Resident Evil 4 dub, we received feedback from fans who bought the game on Steam just because of our dub and we're very happy with that. We wanted to see the same happen with Silent Hill 2, but currently the PC version of Silent Hill 2 is not available for purchase on any platform, Konami why????
8. What projects does the team intend on doing in the future?
Sonderhen: Well, in the Silent Hill series we dubbed the second and third entries. When we released the Silent Hill 3 dub (in 2014) the reception was great, but today I see there were some mistakes in editing (audio quality, synchronization etc), so we intend on creating a new dub for SH3 and also dub SH4 (which is one of my favorites).
Credits
Dubbing
Silent Fandub
Direction
Sonderhen
Editing
Sonderhen
Cast
James – José Roque
Mary/Maria – Keila Kamada (SakuFlower)
Angela – Cibele Spina
Eddie – Danilo Battistini
Laura – Jeebie
Game show host – Maurício Arraes
Doctor – Cassiano Ávila
Ernest – Filipi Ghedin
Amy – Mah
Ernest's wife – Teyuki
Harry Mason (UFO ending) – Bruno Shinkou
Translation
James Zanon
Sonderhen
Special Thanks
Mumm-Ra
IlDucci
Infrid