I like good dubbing better than subtitles, but bad dubbing is too distracting. I don’t care if I’m seeing the original performance in most cases, as that’s usually not why I’m watching. But I do care if what I hear and see seems realistic enough.
Plus, in my experience, if both are available, the sub will be more exact but awkward, while the dub will be more natural but less exact. So, then, the same realism issue rears its head.
I generally can’t detect bad vocal acting in other languages. So it’s the translation quality that is relevant to me. And this is why I don’t care about the original vocal performance so much. It’s all going to seem decent to me.
I didn’t say you can’t enjoy it. I said you can’t fully appreciate it. Not the same thing. You can appreciate something without enjoying it, and you can enjoy something without appreciating it. If you divide your attention between a film and something else you’ll miss bits of both.
All “appreciate” means in common parlance is to recognize something’s value, which you can do while only partially paying attention.
I’m honestly not sure why the top definitions when I looked it up were about understanding something thoroughly, or fully understanding the value of something. That’s not how I use the word, nor how I’ve heard or seen it used most commonly.
To say what you apparently mean by the term, I’d say “fully appreciate all the nuances” to avoid confusion.
For me, the stuff I watch is rarely of sufficient quality where I think that sort of appreciation is necessary. Especially when it comes to translated material: it’s all either bad movies or children’s shows or the like.
My problem with subtitles is that I like to look at what the cinematographer envisaged. All that trouble for a scene, and then you miss most of it while reading the dialogue!
A distinction without a difference. By this definition, I don’t appreciate any form of artistry (except maybe cooking, and only taste and technique, not elaborate plating); I simply enjoy it.
I prefer subtitles because, like others stated above, I’m distracted by the mismatch of voice and mouth and I’m a fast reader, so I don’t miss any of what’s going on in the performance.
But I’d like to add, I wish there was a way that films could adjust the subtitle word placements when it comes to releasing the film on DVD, TV, BluRay, etc… Since many films are released in those formats as widescreen, we have a nice black strip of space where subtitle text would fit nicely and we’d have no conflict of text color and what’s going on onscreen. I know that my DVD copy if Inglorious Basterds have several scenes of subtitles that are white text on a white image, making it difficult to read.
Dubbing is strictly for illiterates. Anyone who cannot be bothered to read subtitles down not deserve to watch foreign fare. You really need to hear a work performed in its original language to get the most out of it. The sole exception might be animation, because all animation is dubbing when you get right down to it.
I do not appreciate you attacking me or anyone else who disagrees with your preference.
As I said above, I see no value in “getting the most out of it.” I’m watching something for entertainment, not studying it. All I care about is the story being told. I just need the acting to be good enough that it doesn’t break the verisimilitude and thus my suspension of disbelief. If I get that, I don’t need to know how good the vocal acting is.
Which, again, I couldn’t tell anyways. Because I, like most people, cannot tell how good the vocal acting is when it’s in another language. I don’t know how many times I’ve seen sub-purists praise the voice acting in a work just to find out that native speakers think it’s stilted and badly acted. We don’t know the nuances of the language, so we can’t tell.
Maybe you can. Fine. More power to you. I can’t, so I have no reason to care about that. I just care if what I’m getting works. If the dub is bad, it doesn’t work, so I prefer a sub. Otherwise, the dub is better because it will seem more natural. And the timing will be correct, not ruining jokes. I know exactly when they are saying each part.
And I would think that my ability to give an explanation shows that I am not illiterate, not even culturally. People can prefer dubs without them being worthy of derision.
Actually, with the Disney Ghibli releases they took pains to rewrite the dubbed dialog to reduce lip flap. This is noticeable because there are two English subtitle choices, one that follows the dubbed dialog (with an occasional dropped word so the slow readers can keep up) and the other being the translated Japanese. Sometimes the two diverge quite a bit, if only temporarily. For example you find out someone is an uncle a minute later in the scene.
I’m definitely in the subtitles over dubbing camp. I once rented the dubbed version of Cinema Paradiso by accident, and I just couldn’t get past the voice acting in it. I only ended up watching maybe 20 minutes of it, then returned it back to the Blockbuster (remember those?) for the subtitled version. I can’t quite remember what it was about the voice acting that bugged me, but it was distracting. I think it was they were speaking in Italian accent tinged English that I just couldn’t help focusing on, but it was over 20 years ago when I saw it.
For me, part of is my interest in foreign languages. I love how foreign languages sound, and I’m always interested in immersing myself in a foreign experience. Plus, even with animated films which are almost always dubbed for kids (assuming a children’s cartoon), I still like to hear what the characters sound like in their original language. Although, it’s also interesting to me to see American cartoons like the Simpsons dubbed into various languages to see how other cultures render certain voices. Some of the foreign dubbed voice acting is quite good and true to the character of the original voices.
The worst, though, was the type of dubbing that was traditionally seen in at least parts of Eastern Europe. I remember visiting my relatives in Poland several times as a child and watching Polish dubbed versions of American TV shows where every single character was voiced by the same male voice actor. Here’s an example. I don’t think they do it much this way anymore, though.
Dub, I don’t like to be required to look at the screen the whole time, particularly when I’m watching it on my laptop and I’m actually just listening 70% of the time.