Years after watching the english dub of the 1995 film I watched the Japanese original and found either the subtitle translation was way off or the English dub just seemed to capture more complex philosophical ideas. Perhaps I'm biased because my perception is limited to mostly Western culture and ways of thinking, but the Japanese version seemed terse and lacking the same descriptive language that made the concepts easy to grok.
The "official" subtitles that come with the 1995 version of the movie are absolutely terrible, riddled with mistakes, and literal translations that don't work in the english language. Case in point: At the end of the chase scene, after the thug fired his remaining 8 bullets, the subtitles make the major say "All Finished?" instead of "Out of bullets?" - which would've certainly worked better in English.
Another thing is the concept of "Ghost", which western viewers often misinterpret as some spiritual soul but should be understood as "self-aware (part of the) mind/consciousness". From what I heard this is obvious to jap. viewers. But this is hard to translate regardless of how you approach it.
Anyways I recommend watching it with any fansub you can find online - any of them will be of much higher quality than the bundled subtitles.
