The Albanian dubs of Dragon Ball have always been notorious for their illegal status, largely due to significant copyright enforcement problems, which efforts have been made in recent years to criminalize.
There is one Albanian dub, which may have been a licensed production however. According to Kanzenshuu user damn there was a dub produced in Kosovo in the early 2000s that predates the dubs from Albania.
As this comment is the first known mention of this dub online I’m aware of little else is known about it, although I have tried to do some research to learn more about this dub, like more specific details about when it aired, how it sounded, whether it was in fact a legal dub unlike the later dubs from Albania.
I have tried reaching out to the channel in question (Kohavision) but to no avail, and have contacted Kosovo-based translators and actors on the chance they may have worked on this dub or even been aware of it, sadly none who I have spoken to recall anything about there being a local dub of Dragon Ball.
With the lack of online discourse about this dub from Kosovo I asked on Reddit, which led to a range of recollections about the dub, some being pleased to remember they watched it, others dissatisfied with the quality.
With regards to complaints from fans, some included the following:
Interestingly one fan was pleasantly surprised to hear it was not a false memory. This fan’s memory indicates that more than 13 episodes may have been dubbed as they recall Lunch (a character who first appeared in episode 15) appearing in the dub.
While the above comment is in Albanian a quick Google Translate reveals in English that this user seems to remember Kuririn/Krillin (a character introduced in episode 14) being in the dub, indicating once more that Kohavision may have aired more than the first 13 episodes of the series.
The initial mention of this dub’s existence on Kanzenshuu was not the only case of a fan that watched this dub remembering Goku’s name as being pronounced Son Joke-U as another Google Translate of a Reddit comment reveals.
Curiously the Macedonian dub of Dragon Ball also has this mispronunciation, and since both dubs are allegedly based on the Japanese version that may suggest they shared scripts or were somehow related, but that is a question for another day.
96bottlesofpepsi is also not the only user that recalls Kohavision airing Dragon Ball in the early mornings.
Indeed the channel’s online schedule from the time states that Dragon Ball was aired at 11:30am in both April and October of 2003.
Of course the elephant in the room since this was an Albanian dub is whether it was in fact a legal production.
According to a report, which was published around the time that Dragon Ball aired on Kohavision the TMC (Temporary Media Commissioner) began to clamp down on illegal broadcasting while Kosovo was waiting for local copyright law to be enforced.
The director at the time stated that Kohavision (KTV) had to buy programmes, which were not their own, which would of course include Dragon Ball since it is a TOEI property.
The mention of the contract with Top Channel in Albania made me curious as to whether Kohavision’s broadcast of Dragon Ball was a rebroadcast, but this does not seem to be the case, as Albanian fans on Reddit don’t recall the show ever airing on this channel.
Another fan said that even if Top Channel aired Dragon Ball there would be some proof and they likely wouldn’t have aired a different dub than the dub that eventually aired in Albania.
Conversely, while Kosovar Dragon Ball fans said they had no idea a licensed Albanian dub existed fans from Albania were divided about the legal status of dubs from their country, probably for the previous stated reason that their culture is not as strict when it comes to copyright enforcement.
Another reason, as this user suggests is that Albanian dubs, even those from Albania are not universally illegal.
