There's often a large outcry over dubs. There are claims aobut them being lacking in particular departments and overall being bad.

But what really makes a great dub?

To this, I'd say there are several important factors:

First of all, let's not delve into voice acting just yet. Let's stick to the guys that are so central to the process: the translators themselves.

What do they need to do to make a great dub?

1. Make sure the translation itself is excellent. Don't give up halfway and leave half the words still untranslated.

2. Make it workable in the language according to the pictures. If you don't want the viewers to lose interest, you need to at least make a bit of sync possible.

3. Don't be afraid to switch up the original text(people may be annoyed at this sentiment). Being to faithful to the original text can make dialogue stilted, and jokes that work well in one language, may not translate well.

4. Do not make your translation simply perfectly correct but lifeless- inject some energy in it.

Essentially, there's a lot more than just quality of the translation itself.

Now we can move on to the voice actors.

1. Flair. As a rule- do not cast voice actors to emulate the originals. It can work, but it is rare. What makes the originals work is their flair and usage of the voice, not so much the pitch or similar things. Instead, cast people who have a flair that fits the character.

2. Emotion. There's nothing quite as important to a good dub as this. If the actors don't emote, no script, no matter how well thought out, is going to work.

3. If your dub is going to have songs- think beforehand about the actor chosen. Can he/she sing well? If not, how can you work around it? Who can do a an impersonation?

4. Dialect. This is more important than you may realize- but if you want to emulate certain stereotypes, you need to get the equivalent in your language. This partly goes under flair.

And of course, for both translators and VAs, experience matters a ton. There's a reason why the "Swedish dubbing dynasties" are a thing.

The problems of the Swedish FiM Dub(as I am Swedish, this will be my example) are numerous.

Again, let's start with translators.

1. The translation is haphazard and a lot of words are still in english.

2.3. The translation also fail at both these points. It sticks far to close to the original and ends up very stilted and uncomfortable.

4. As a natural side effect of the above, this point also fails.

Now to VAs.

Obviously the failure on the translation team's does negatively impact the VAs' performance.

1. Flair. There's a lack of freedom taken with the characters by the dubbers overall, making the characters rather lifeless.

2. As a natural consequence, the emotiveness of the dub sinks.

3. This is the part that really works. Almost all the VAs for the Swedish Dub have extensive schooling, or even extensive careers as singers. This allows them to save pretty haphazard texts with sheer skill.

4. They missed dialects completely, having just about everyone speak with a similar one. AJ should really be scanian.

It is worth mentioning that dubbing experience was woefully lacking here. The translators are young and relatively new, and most of the VAs might have theatric schooling, but are still doing their first VA work.

The best VA in the Swedish dub so far is Lizette Pålsson, who voices Fluttershy. Anneli Heed does a decent job with Spike, and a rather mediocre one with Spitfire(incoming flames?), but she's not up to her regular standard.

FiM had the bad luck of arriving to Sweden during what can be considered a generational shift- young and inexperienced VAs trying to establish themselves, while the old guard is becoming exactly that- old.