Dubbing Differences: Winnie the Pooh

 

I found the following notable changes in the Brazilian Portuguese dub of Disney's The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh:

• Winnie the Pooh’s name is “Little Poof Bear,” or just “Poof” for short.
• The Hundred-Acre Wood is called the “Enchanted Wood.”
• For his exercise song, Pooh sings “one, two” instead of “up, down.”
• Instead of muttering “stuff and fluff,” Pooh says, “Ooh, that was my fur.”
• The names of most of the other characters are about as intuitive as their English ones. Tigger’s name translates as Big Tiger, Owl is Big Owl, and Christopher Robin is just Christopher. However, Eeyore’s name is Bisonho, which I guess means “untrained,” and Rabbit’s name is Abel. Roo’s name is Guru.
• Instead of saying “The bees S-U-S-P-E-C-T something,” Pooh just says that they’re getting suspicious.
• Gopher speaks with his characteristic whistling S’s, but his speaking voice is a lot like Stitch’s from Lilo & Stitch. His name seems to be Roque-roque (hoki-hoki), which means Rock-Rock. Or maybe it’s Roki-moki.
• In English, Gopher’s lunch is full of foods that start with S to make the most of his whistling S’s. In Portuguese, they missed the chance to do that and instead translated most things literally. Summer squash becomes aboborinha, which has no S’s in it. They change succotash to canjica, which is a type of Brazilian corn porridge, and the only one that ends up working with the joke is salmon salad, which is salada de salmão. They seem to miss this idea later on as well, literally translating things like “skedaddle” to non-S words.
• The song about it being a “blustery day” instead sings about it being a “day no one likes” and a “day without sun.”
• The jokes about “Winds-day” is lost. Instead, Gopher just warns Pooh about “The wind,” and Pooh wishes people a “happy windy day.”
• Piglet is voiced by a woman, which is a shame. But then, none of the voice choices are any good at all, except maybe Eeyore, Gopher, and Tigger. Rabbit’s voice actor sounds more bored and monotonous than him though. It’s frustrating with how animated Rabbit’s English voice actor sounded.
• Rabbit says that he hopes that Pooh will go through his potatoes instead of his rutabaga patch.
• Owl: “I would never say that this is a true wind, just a gentle summer zephyr.”
• When Owl says he remembers the “big blow of ‘76” well, Piglet says that he remembers it too, instead of saying he’ll remember this one.
• Owl says his cousin was the “only gifted owl in the family” instead of being gifted on the glockenspiel, putting a higher focus on her being a singer.
• Owl says his aunt laid a duck egg by mistake instead of a seagull egg.
• Tigger spells his name normally.
• Pooh says “His tail stayed” instead of “All except for the tail.”
• Cleverly, “Heffalumps and Woozles” in Portuguese is “Efalantes e dinonhas,” which is “elephants and weasels” with the inner vowels switched. Basically like saying “Ephalents and wuzeals.”
• Pooh: “Is it raining in there? Here it’s raining a lot.”
• Pooh says he’s trying to save his lunch from the rain instead of his supper.
• Eeyore doesn’t spell out “owl” when he finds Piglet’s house and says Owl’s name is on it. He just says “It even has his name on it. Imagine that. Just perfectly.” Since “Trespassers Wil” probably means nothing to Portuguese readers, I question this decision.
• Gopher’s scream when he falls down the hole is undubbed, except when he gets knocked down it during the hero song after the Hero Party.
• Tigger: “I recognize you! You’re the one with the fluffy tummy.”
• Piglet says “I think Rabbit’s genius plan failed,” instead of “I don’t think Rabbit’s splendid idea worked.”
• Kanga: “I’m doing well, Tigger Sir!”
  Tigger: “Hoo hoo! She called me Sir!”
• Kanga tells Tigger to have Roo back in time for lunch instead of his nap.
• Tigger says that climbing trees is what he “likes most of all” instead of “what tiggers do best.”
• The “see-sick” joke in “Thank goodness. I was just getting see-sick from… seeing too much” is lost. Instead, he says “Oh, thank God. I was just getting sick of seeing… such a beautiful view.”
• Pooh says something other than “jagulars” when he hears Tigger in the tree. It sounds to me like “Bum fera,” and I know fera means “beast,” but I’m not sure if it’s an actual word for a real animal or a nonsense word.
• The “What’s up?” “Tigger and Roo are up” pun is lost.
• Oddly, when they tell Tigger to bounce down, he says “Tiggers don’t bounce. They leap.” I’m not sure why they didn’t reverse the verbs so it made more sense. Obviously Tiggers bounce.
• Humorously, Christopher Robin learns where Guyana is, instead of Brazil.