they are definitely real animals and not people.

Nothing suspicious about that!

It’s because people can’t read it as fast as people talk. Or, the dub has to match up the mouth movements, but the subtitles don’t.

I watched a fan-subtitled anime a long time ago, where they literally translated every word. It was like a paragraph of text on each screen, and it was impossible to keep up with.

I’m dumb or OOTL. What book?