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I've said it many times, but I hate, hate, HATE the french translation for the show. I want to give you english/foreign people some examples to prove it.

First, the most obvious is the title : "Super Baloo". Seriously?? I know that giving the word "Super" to everything was pretty cool in the early 90's (Super Mario?...), but come on. In the show, he's more like an anti-hero. That just doesn't suit the series at all.
I think the reason why they did that is to focus on the character, considering the Jungle Book is the Disney film which made the most entries ever in theaters, here in France.
But in that case, "Captain Baloo" like they did in Germany seems more suitable.




Second, the theme song...makes the show suitable only for less than 3 years old. You can't do anything more childish.



If I had to do a translation, that would be something like this (and my translation actually makes it feel much better than it is) :

Ah ah ah ah! Engine!
Don't be scared!

(Oh y eh)
Super!
(Oh y ouh)
Ba-loo!

We are having so much fun
with you Super Baloo!

(Oh y eh)
Super!
(Oh y ouh)
Ba-loo!

Hang on you daredevils,
'cause here comes Super Baloo!

Ah ah ah ah! Those pilots are crazy!

Turn turn turn, dance with the rythm of your propeller,
and fly fly fly in the blue sky with delight!




Third, Baloo's voice and acting is utterly irritating. It's simple : he is NEVER serious, and same for the other dubbers : they only played this as a comedy, even in the more serious episodes.

Fourth, the translation itself doesn't work at all because they CHANGED the meaning of several scenes. One of the biggest example is Baloo who, instead of talking about planes, is constantly talking about FOOD. Bananas and ananas over and over again.

They renamed the sea duck "Zingalo" (which is a pun on "plane" and "water", something I only figured out recently because it's terrible) and Higher for Hire "Loupiloc" (which I'm still looking for a meaning)
Wildcat has been renamed "Turbo" (ok, why not - I understand that one because it's highly difficult for a french person to pronounce "Wildcat"), Mad Dog "Truffe" and Dumptruck "Nazeaux" (both mean "nose").
They also changed Don Karnage name to Don Carnage (why? NO IDEA because this doesn't change the spelling)

Talking about Don Karnage, one of the WORST thing they ever did was to make him finish ALL his sentences with the sound "age", the same as the end of his name. Yes, ALL his sentences.
That's right, the accents of him weren't enough, so they added another gimmick to him which is extremely annoying to hear, because it sound forced and unnatural.

Kit and Molly aren't dubbed by children but adults. Kit doesn't sound like he's 12 but more 16. Molly's voice makes it obvious she's played by an adult.

I should also mention the episodes names which are totally different and for most, don't refer to anything that's actually in the episodes.

But to see real translation problems, here are examples :

- At the end of "Her Chance to Dream", instead of saying "Think of your life, think of Molly!", he says "Think a little about me, uh?"

- In "Bearly Alive", when Rebecca listens to the doctor on the phone, instead of saying "Well, you could sell me the spare parts!" he says "You could sell me his 'parts' " BUT parts in french means something completely different, more like shares on stock exchange...

These are the ones I remember, but there are lots more. I'll add more when I watch some episodes in french - which I rarely do, and you see why now...

To summarize : I think they just didn't care much about the series and only allocated a very small budget on the dubbing, so they probably just translated everything "on the fly". To be honest I haven't watched much of the other series in french, but as for theme songs, Ducktales was also very childish but strangely enough, Darkwing Duck didn't suffer half as much...

Here in France, the Disney Afternoon series aren't famous at all, EXCEPT for one : Ducktales. "La Bande à Picsou". Everyone knows about Ducktales here (or at least its theme song), but no one knows about the other series. This is because they were only aired once a week and in a show for young kids, only for 2 or 3 years, while the focus of the programming of all the channels were on japanese anime. Same for the Warner shows and all the other american shows, which aren't quite as famous here as "Dragon Ball Z" and "Saint Seya" and hundred of other japanese series.
Besides, there hasn't been any reairs of the shows, except on "Disney Cinemagic" which is a channel that people who pay for "Disney Channel" can access by paying a little more...(so yeah, *very* few people have access to it)

WOW! They really screwed it up!

One thing, I'd call Baloo abd Kit for that matter Byronic-hero's rather then Anti-hero's and it's too bad they didn't take the show seriously.

I dread too think of what they did to "Stormy Weather". And to think of Kit sounding like a teen when in the series he's 11-12 years old and Molly even older!

I agree with you - French Talespin intro was a disaster. I had got the same problem with the Polish Talespin dubbing. Calling it by "Super Baloo" is really strange for me, at least... So I enjoy watching English version

no i think the french language importance has on its place because many of the users are from french speaking countries so they don,t know the english very well so this thing give them satisfaction however thanks for your such nice post here

So you're from Poland right?



Wow, is this is a spam bot posting or are you a real member?

Sounds really weird.
I can say that Russian dubbing of 1992 was much better and closer to original. The series name, understandable, was changed too: «?????? ?? ???????», which means "The wonders on the rolls", if it's correct.
Character voices were close to original ones, but Kit and Molly were voiced by adult actors again. For example, Kit was voiced by Maria Vinogradova, 67 old actress who voiced lots of cartoons before; anyway, she plays very professionally.