Amelie was originally written by Jean-Pierre Jeunet for Emily Watson (after seeing “Breaking the Waves”) and was to be set in London. With the script written and the shoot set Emily Watson left the project.
This comes from the “It Nearly Happened” section of this month’s British “Total Film” magazine. It has two interesting quotes from Jeunet though:
“At the time, Emily Watson was Amélie”.
“Even I can’t imagine Emily in the part now…”
I prefer subtitles for everything except martial arts movies and Ranma 1/2.
Martial arts movies are much more enjoyable when (like Mafia vs. Ninja) they say “My Friend” and grunt a lot for filler.
Ranma 1/2 has a great dub (IMHO) so I like watching it dubbed. The words match the mouths, so it’s all good.
Subtitles.
No way dubbing. Ever.
Depends how fast you can read.
Subtitles aren’t for everyone but if you can handle it they are definitely worth it, with new voice actors speaking in a new language you might as well be watching a different show. It is a matter of preference but I prefer to hear the dialouge as it was orignally meant to sound and not take chances with crappy dub actors.
But for those of you who have trouble; that is why those dub actors get paid to do what they do.
While I prefer subs, the whole subs vs. dubbing question can be a bit perplexing with certain European films.
The films of horror-meister Dario Argento, for instance, are filmed in phonetic English, spoken by actors who may have no idea of what they’re saying. The films are then dubbed back over by American/English voice actors, with varying degrees of success.
While watching these films with the English dub is technically the correct way, since the voices match the lip movements, I know some actually prefer the Italian-language dubs, which don’t match the lips at all…I guess it’s harder to notice bad voice acting when it’s in a foreign language.
The films of Werner Herzog also have this problem attached. While the German language tracks are always considered the only legitimate way of watching the films, it’s obvious that the actors were speaking English on the set, so again its a question of having a horrible English track that matches lips or a more resonant German track that is clearly off much of the time.
For an example of a horrible dub job, check out “Brotherhood Of The Wolf”…I almost started laughing, because the movie was already shitty enough without that English whining.
No dubbing for me. I do prefer subtitles. I prefer subtitles over closed captions too.
I prefer dubbing, mostly - must be cultural conditioning, because here in Germany we are so used to dubbed movies that we don’t consciously notice that sound and lip movements don’t match. If a German movie has got ambitions on the US market it is sometimes filmed in English and dubbed into German for the home market (with no noticeable disadvantage).
It was a bit of a shock to me to hear John Wayne’s real voice…
When I have a choice (on playing a DVD) I usually choose dubbing, unless there is an option of “subtitles for the hearing impaired” which are what subtitles ought to be (i.e. unabridged dialogue), or unless the quality of the German translation is particularly dire.
Having recently seen a clip of the dubbed version of Roberto Benigni’s Pinocchio on a chat-show, I’ve got to say, it was hurtful. Whoever it was they decided to allow to replace Benigni’s voice chose to use that high-pitched voice that drunken engineering students universally use to mock people that can’t finish forty beers in a sitting.
Any attempt to view the entire production that way would end up with me making wounded noises and hurling excrement at the screen until they dragged me away naked and screaming.
Ok, I suppose this a major bump. . . But it seemed a little silly to start whole new thread when this one was so recent.
I nearly always prefer sub-titles, for the excellent reasons other people have spelled out. Recently, however, I’ve started to wonder about the accuracy of dubbing vs. sub-titles. I just bought Ghost in the Shell on DVD and I discovered that there are fairly serious differences between the English sub-titles and the English dubbing in some places. Since I don’t speak Japanese, I have no way of know which is the more accurate of the two. I would expect that the text might unfortunately be shortened to fit in sub-titles, but I’ve noticed some changes that can’t be accounted for entirely by space concerns.
One example: In the opening scenes, Major Kusanagi is asked why there is so much static in her brain that day. In the dubbed version, she replies, ‘Must be a loose wire.’ In the sub-titled version, she says, ‘It’s that time of the month.’ Obviously, these are pretty different reasons! In the grand scheme, I didn’t see any changes that had a major effect on the meaning of the movie. But it still bothered me to see changes like the one above, for no apparent reason. So, which piece of dialog is closer to the original?
Another, more serious example: A friend of mine owns Vampire Hunter D on DVD. In comparing the dubbing and sub-titles, we noticed a great deal of very significant changes. I can’t quote any specifics at this point (it was a little while ago), but I remember there were some conversations that had almost completely opposite meanings. Many of the changes couldn’t really be accounted for by space concerns. And again, those of us who don’t speak Japanese have no way of knowing which is the more accurate.
Any thoughts?
Enigma, I’ve tried that with my Slayers and Ranma 1/2 DVDs. I’ve noticed completely different personalities for the characters just by watching a few episodes with dubbing, then watching them again with subtitles. It certainly seems to me like the subtitles are the better translation. The advantage they have is that there’s no worry about matching the words to the movements/mouth, so they can use more literal translations.
Just my opinion though, I don’t know a word of Japanese.
Oh yeah, and I did try it on dubbed with subtitles, so I could do a line by line comparison. I’ve noticed the same thing where the two lines don’t have any relation, like one of them was just completely made up. Usually I like the subtitled line better.
There’s several factors involved in differences between subtitled and dubbed versions of things. I’m more familiar with anime so I’ll stick with that but I suspect that the same principles apply with live action.
So, first of all, you’ve got the intent of the original writer verses a literal interpretation. A lot of subtitled anime tend to get locked down to a more literal version because there are fans who think literal is the way to go. A good translator will go for intent but there are a lot of ways to say the same thing in English and the person doing the dub script isn’t necessarily the same as the one doing the subtitles (often they are, but not always).
The reason they’re sometimes different is that what works written doesn’t necessary work when it’s actually said. That can lead to rephrasing of things.
Then there’s lip flap match. American viewers expect at least a close match of mouth movement to sound coming out and the phrasing of a line can be redone, sometimes changing it rather dramatically, so that it can come close.
There’s also the humor factor. A pun in Japanese isn’t one in English so you can wind up with different jokes.
Finally there’s the dreaded “want to get it on TV”. American television has certain broadcast standards especially on what might be aired as children’s programming and the dubbers might have to worry about that.
If you’re just comparing Ghost in the Shell, Vampire Hunter D, and Ranma, I recommend that you look at something with a translation less than five years old. Things have changed in the anime industry and changes between dub and sub that were acceptable a few years ago are not today (though there are certain times where they will be done).
BTW, c_goat, Slayers is one of those times where the dub script is fairly close to the subtitled one for all three series with only an occasional rephrasing. Are you referring to the movie or the OVA (which are radically different between the two but then also done by a different company)?