What ever happened to dubbing of foreign films?

Cafe Society
1

Years ago many foreign language films had voices dubbed in rather than subtitles. Sometimes in closeups, it was a bit disconcerting when the lips did not match the words, yet it was so much easier to watch the film without trying to read subtitles at the same time.

Haven’t seen that for a long time. Why?

I must admit that in recent films, the titles are much better, more contrst with the background and easier to read. Older films were really frustrating as the letters were almost always white, and if the background was white, they were often unreadable.

I tried watching the 1965 Czech film The House On Main Street on DVD last night, and as good as it was supposed to be, sadly had to give up as not only could I not read most of these due to the aforesaid, but they went by so quickly it was impossible to follow. Too bad. Maybe I’ll watch it again after I learn to speak Czech. :slight_smile:

Where has the dubbing gone?

2

You’re right in that the subtitles are easier to read nowadays.

In addition, the audience for foreign films tends to perfer subtitles, which allow you to hear the expression in the character’s voice (e.g., the line “Le Cowboy” in La Cage au Folles would probably not be as funny dubbed). Also, since dubbing can never match the actors lip movements, it tends to be disconcerting.

3

Also, when the voices are dubbed everything else has to be, too. I watched a dubbed version of Belle epoque years ago, and it was very jarring to watch the actors strolling along a graveled path and listen to someone crunching dry Fruity Pebbles (I’m guessing) to approximate the sound.

4

That doesn’t make any sense. If the film producers are willing to distribute the film to other nations and have it dubbed an original soundtrack without dialogue should not be hard to produce.

Dubbing seems to have fallen out of favor. Ask anyone, they’ll say they appreciate subtitles more. I do, except with anime.

5

Maybe some filmmakers do that. I know what I heard, and it wasn’t the sound of feet striding upon the ground; it was more akin to someone chewing a mouth full of Doritos. But even the voice “talent” was awful on this one, so I guess it isn’t the best example.

6

As a hardcore movie buff, I imagine this to be most of it. People who want to see foreign movies are going to prefer subtitling. People who don’t care about foreign movies don’t care if they’re dubbed, subtitled, or accompanied by a corner inset of Garrett Morris screaming the translated dialogue, because they won’t be seeing them anyway. The market has spoken.

7

I’d watch the last, but only if it was an option on the DVD. Otherwise, give me subtitled, though it can get really tricky at times. You ever try to watch a fully subtitled show that also doesn’t use overlays like His and Her Circumstances? I’m not sure where to look half the time watching a show like that.

I think that’s what has happened to overlays in anime as well. The last show I can think of that I bought that used overlays was Martian Successor Nadesico (does that title make anyone else for some sort of cracker?). I’m pretty sure fan feedback and outrage has made all the major studios get rid of overlays and generally you also get a better dub as well, though I haven’t really bought any new anime in the last couple years.

8

It is my strong opinion that dialogue dubbing is a travesty that destroys the film, and I’d like to think the reason it isn’t as popular is because people realized this and would rather read subtitles than watch a horribly butchered movie.

Dubbing is worse than pan and scan.

Foreign language dubbing is worse than TV-style swear-word dubbing.

It’s maybe the worst thing you can possily do to a film.

9

Nobody’s brought up an obvious fact–dubbing is much more expensive. Actors cost money. Renting soundstage space costs money. Re-mixing an audio track costs money.

Getting a single person to transcribe a film’s dialogue and then printing the transcription on the bottom of the screen is a whole heck of a lot cheaper. True, foreign-language enthusiasts in the US & UK generally prefer subtitles (though that’s far from true in other European markets), so there isn’t a compelling reason to dub. But dubbing costs a lot more and takes more time to do, too.

10

I think dubbing became associated with Godzilla and spaghetti westerns.
I mentioned in another thread the brilliance of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly being tainted by the occassional dubbing of the Italian actors. It just comes off as cheesy. I do still prefer anime in the original Japanese just because I love the language.

11

There was a laughable dubbed version of a Swedish film ( I think maybe “Pelle the Conqueror”).

They used this surfer dude as one of the voices and he would throw in a “totally” here and there.

It was made for MST3K.

12

From what I’ve gathered, the hostility to dubbing seems to be a mainly english phenomena, films originally made in english are often dubbed and accepted in foreign countries.

13

I’m curious as to why you would make an exception for anime. Dubbing any film is monstrous. I can’t stand dubbed anime, personally.

One of the reasons that dubbing tends to suck that has so far gone unmentioned is that the process obliges to translator to wedge their translation into something that matches the syllable count of the original. Meaning will sometimes be sacrificed to this end, because the measure of a “good” dub is how closely the speech is synched to the image. Blech.

More importantly, though, the calibre of actors that typically dub films are rarely able to measure up to the original performance. This is commonsensical. It’s usually pretty painful to watch most of a star-quality performance replaced by someone who can only get VO work.

Back to anime, specifically (where admittedly powerful acting isn’t always the draw) subtitles are invariably superior. (Not counting fan subs, of course.) The few dubbed anime tapes that I have are parts of series for which I have in some instances been unable to find subbed episodes. The dubbed episodes get watched once to maintain continuity, but they’re just too crap to sit through again. (I have a couple dubbed episodes of Blue Seed. It’s amazing how such a gripping, slick production suddenly becomes a squealing load of ass-gas.)

Even beyond the raped-in-the-ears quality that anime VO dubbing folks typically impart to their product, the quality of the translations is usually much, much better in the subtitled versions. A typical example of this contrast is the dubbed version of Akira, where (again, quite apart from the crap acting,) the translators arbitrarily translated the content into NorthAmericanese. Here, for example, the subtitled version reads something like “Hey, give me a few yen, let’s go get some beef-bowl,” where the dubbed version becomes “Hey, give me a few dollars, let’s go get some hamburgers.” And then of course the next scene shows them at a beef-bowl place. What the hell? Did they think that North American audiences would be totally confused by the concept of soup as fast food?

The obverse of that is the obsessive quality of AnimEigo subtitles. (I’m thinking specifically of their fine work with Urusei Yatsura.) Not only are the translations of the dialogue as faithful as possible, but there are *sub-*subtitles, in smaller, differently coloured text, which address any cultural references that may be lost on the average English-speaking viewer. You can let them roll by if you want, but they’re damned helpful little footnotes if you want to actually understand what Ms. Takahashi was on about.

Speaking of Takahashi – RanMa 1/2 is great fun in the subbed version – but those dubs? Man, it’s like the actors thought they were making entertainment for six-year-olds. (Yes, I know it’s probably not age-appropriate entertainment for nerds in their thirties, either, but it’s a lot more palatable in the original. I can’t watch the dubs at all.)

draws self up, attempts to look dignfied

Of course, I prefer stuff along the lines of Perfect Blue.

tugs at collar

14

Absolultely - I watch a lot of German TV and they show all the popular US shows and films dubbed into German.

Subtitles are very rare - CSI, Friends, Sabrina the Teenage Witch… they’re all dubbed into German.

Because it’s so common they tend to do a reasonable job, but sometimes it really doesn’t do justice to the original (esp. The Simpsons).

However, there’s usually a decent attempt to match the types of voices - Steve Buscemi in Armageddon has a similar nasal, whiny voice which matches the genuine article pretty well.

In fact, for a long time (not sure if it’s still the case) there would be a single German actor who would play the part of a particular US actor: so Bruce Willis’ voice would always be done by Otto von Schauspieler.

Eddie Izzard (british stand-up comedian) tells the story of the time he did his whole show in French during a visit to Paris.

One of Izzard’s best gags is based on Sean Connery’s scottish accent, but when he did this in France it didn’t get a single laugh.

It took Izzard a while to realise that the French had never heard the “real” Sean Connery’s voice, as it had always been dubbed - which kinda torpedoed the entire section of the routine. :smack:

15

It’s not quite as simple as English-speaking world=subtitled, everyone else=dubbing. In Scandinavia, for instance, films and television programs for adults, teens, and older children are almost always subtitled. Only programs for children too young to read well are routinely dubbed. I’m sure this started out as a matter of simple economics; dubbing is expensive, and when your potential market is less than the population of many major cities, it’s not worth it. But now people are so used to it that they react when even something as minor as a commercial is dubbed. (Admittedly, sometimes it’s obvious - and bad - see under Kinderegg commercials.)

I wonder - with DVDs, do people in the major European markets, like Germany and France, where dubbing was common, have the choice to watch the original soundtracks with subtitles? And are people choosing to do so?

16

They’re still out there, maybe just not as common (but then again, maybe that indicates a shift in the statistics of where most of our films are coming from); Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was dubbed.

17

Ditto for The Netherlands. In fact, most Dutch people, myself included, find German TV quite amusing. Star Trek, Night Rider etc., are a scream dubbed IMO.

But as far as serious film I’m with Ooner in finding it absolutely awful. I won’t watch a film that has been dubbed. And as someone who has grown up watching subtitles I sincerely don’t get how people think they are so terribly difficult and distracting. Dutch people, if they want to be able to watch about 70% of what’s on television, will have to read subtitles. I have yet to come across anyone over the age of twelve who has any trouble doing so.

18

Not in Holland…but I also re-call seeing that in its original language in the UK and I think that was how most cinemas had it.

19

Lately the trend has been to take English singing musicals and dub them into the native language. Phantom of the Opera has been dubbed into several languages, and soundtracks have been issued in German, Italian and Spanish.

If you can find the Russian CD of Chicago, buy it. Not only is it a collector’s item, it is absolutely fantastic. One of those that makes me wonder “How did they dub it so good?”

20

I had no clue it was dubbed until I bought the DVD. I saw it in a theatre (a fairly major one, not an art house) subtitled.