7 ms·

I'm Swedish and we almost never dub entertainment, unless it's for kids. It just drives me insane when I go abroad and listen to the dialogue being completely b

by pimmen 7y ago

I'm Swedish and we almost never dub entertainment, unless it's for kids. It just drives me insane when I go abroad and listen to the dialogue being completely butchered on TV. Imagine being the director of the movie and seeing this, remembering all the hours you put into directing the actors to give your vision life, and now your work is being mangled. And then politicians in these countries wonder why they're so bad at English...

k_sze 7y ago
There's a quasi exception though: French dub of Japanese anime. For some reason, the French language's intonations work really well to accurately portray and convey the original tones in Japanese anime. e.g. Lupin III (the anime) works really well in French dub. English dubs usually fail to do the same. It's as though English just doesn't work for the genre.
- jacobush 7y ago
  I have thought about this, and I agree. The best English anime dubs are when the voice actors overdo it a little and draw from the Japanese voice acting.
- paganel 7y ago
  The Italian ones are really good, too. The Italian intro/“sigla” [1] for the Lupin the 3rd anime series has stuck with me for 25 years, ever since I first heard it. [1] https://youtu.be/AKmzwpALHg4 https://youtu.be/AKmzwpALHg4
  - k_sze 7y ago
    Now that you mention it, I imagine that other Romance languages of continental Europe (e.g. Spanish and Portuguese) could work really well, too. How does German work? Is it possible that Germanic/Saxon languages aren't good for dubbing anime?
  - rasz 7y ago
    Grrr. I grew up with the misconception All Anime (dragon ball, gigi, daimos, tsubasa, yattaman) was Italian due to 'Polonia 1' pirate TV station being run by Italian businessman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polonia_1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polonia_1 example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzm_bODiJwU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzm_bODiJwU
- tasogare 7y ago
  As a French native speaker with Japanese ability, I disagree completely. Most of the time is cringy as hell, and there are changes in meaning as well. Anime from Club Dorothée area were dubbed in a joking manner by voice actors because they didn't give a shit about it. Philippe Ogouz in an interview said, amongst other things: "Non. On ne suivait RIEN. On ne suivait rien. Là je vais vous décevoir, pour nous c'était.... On s'en foutait, pour nous c'était la déconnade." http://hokuto.free.fr/ecrit.htm http://hokuto.free.fr/ecrit.htm All that stuff is an accident of history, because the professionals of the time didn't take the job seriously, and it produced something funny. That being said, as animation is mostly targeted at kids, it's good there are dubbed, because as a kid reading subtitles of any movie or assimilated is a total fun killer.
  - Mijka 7y ago
    Felt the same. The few french dubs that are feeling "ok" are mostly biased from nostalgia by being the first things we were exposed to. I know i feel that way with the Cowboy Bebop dub (and i won't take into account the Miyazaki movies as they are exceptions for many reasons). The few other dubs i was exposed to later in life weren't good experiences either and you could feel the limited cast (in quality and quantity of actors) failing at not butchering things along the process. Like you said animation and dubbing it wasn't taken seriously at all in the past, and is still limited nowadays in France as i understand it (short discussions with actual french dubbing actress and few articles).
- Grue3 7y ago
  Japanese dubs of almost anything are usually pretty great. Voice acting is a large industry in Japan, and many voice actors are pretty much celebrities.
- saiya-jin 7y ago
  lol my first encounter with anime was on Polish TV, DragonBall Z. Imagine hearing french (which I had no clue about so just guessing situations from emotions), then in parallel dubbed by very monotone Polish voice from single guy, with few seconds delay. I am not very good at understanding Polish (lived not far across the border so we could catch OK analog signal), but much better than French. Hilarious, confusing, and I couldn't care less. At that time, it was so much above any other cartoon TV show, brutal, violent, funny and opened for me the whole world of anime that is not necessarily childish. Good times
kgwgk 7y ago
Do you feel the same about book translations? Do you only see movies / read books in languages that you understand?
- pimmen 7y ago
  I see lots of movies in languages I don’t understand thanks to subtitles. That way, I can read the dialogue and know what they’re saying. About one or two seconds later I see the actors do their performance and get the emotional and cultural context with the dialogue. I didn’t understand English that well when I was a kid but since we don’t translate English language media, except for subtitles, I got to hear English over and over again and now my ability to comprehend spoken English is very good. As is most Swedes, we spend just as many hours a week in English class as they do in France, Spain or Germany yet we are better at it (in general). We’re not geniuses, we just get more practice and less hand holding. Can’t do anything about books though, sadly. If I read a book in a language I don’t understand I probably have the intention to learn that language.
  - kgwgk 7y ago
    Imagine being the director of the movie and seeing this, remembering all the hours you put into directing the actors to give your vision life, and now people is reading lines of text in a different language overlaid on the screen instead of paying attention to what’s happening :-)
    - ivanhoe 7y ago
      That's a misconception by people not used to reading subtitles. It's like a logo of the TV channel, after some time your brain just filters it out and it doesn't steal your attention at all. I grew up reading subtitles and I'm absolutely not aware of the text when watching the movies, my brain just picks it up. If it's in one of the languages that I speak I'll both listen to the original and read the subtitles, and it all happens also on auto-pilot without ever really thinking about it. I become aware of that only when the translation doesn't match.
ptsneves 7y ago
in Poland. They do not dub it, they narrate it/ translate it with the most monochordic voice possible. It's like they strip away emotions from language. I cannot stand a full movie like that,as in Portugal we have it the same way you seem to have in sweeden
- jacobush 7y ago
  The same voice too. I love Star Trek the original series with that Polish overdub. Hilarious! But as far as I recall, they actually keep the original soundtrack at the same time? In which case, the Polish voice becomes almost like a subtitle, a neutral translation to the side.
  - skocznymroczny 7y ago
    Yes. The original soundtrack is underneath, so if you watch Terminator, you can hear Arnold Schwarzenegger's German accent, not some other actor. It's mostly a matter of what you are used to. For Polish people, the full dubs as they do in Western Europe feel weird and fake, we only dub cartoons and teenager movies such as Harry Potter series.
adrianN 7y ago
Some dubs are actually good. For example the German dub of Erik the Viking is funnier than the English original imo.
- AskMeAboutLoom1 7y ago
  Yeah, while most dubs suck, I do have a huge soft spot for the German dubs of Monty Python movies, "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" in particular (it's called "Knights of the Coconut" in German, btw) A lot of that might just be nostalgia speaking, though.

by pimmen 7y ago

k_sze 7y ago

There's a quasi exception though: French dub of Japanese anime. For some reason, the French language's intonations work really well to accurately portray and convey the original tones in Japanese anime. e.g. Lupin III (the anime) works really well in French dub. English dubs usually fail to do the same. It's as though English just doesn't work for the genre.

jacobush 7y ago
I have thought about this, and I agree. The best English anime dubs are when the voice actors overdo it a little and draw from the Japanese voice acting.
paganel 7y ago
The Italian ones are really good, too. The Italian intro/“sigla” [1] for the Lupin the 3rd anime series has stuck with me for 25 years, ever since I first heard it. [1] https://youtu.be/AKmzwpALHg4 https://youtu.be/AKmzwpALHg4
- k_sze 7y ago
  Now that you mention it, I imagine that other Romance languages of continental Europe (e.g. Spanish and Portuguese) could work really well, too. How does German work? Is it possible that Germanic/Saxon languages aren't good for dubbing anime?
- rasz 7y ago
  Grrr. I grew up with the misconception All Anime (dragon ball, gigi, daimos, tsubasa, yattaman) was Italian due to 'Polonia 1' pirate TV station being run by Italian businessman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polonia_1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polonia_1 example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzm_bODiJwU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzm_bODiJwU
tasogare 7y ago
As a French native speaker with Japanese ability, I disagree completely. Most of the time is cringy as hell, and there are changes in meaning as well. Anime from Club Dorothée area were dubbed in a joking manner by voice actors because they didn't give a shit about it. Philippe Ogouz in an interview said, amongst other things: "Non. On ne suivait RIEN. On ne suivait rien. Là je vais vous décevoir, pour nous c'était.... On s'en foutait, pour nous c'était la déconnade." http://hokuto.free.fr/ecrit.htm http://hokuto.free.fr/ecrit.htm All that stuff is an accident of history, because the professionals of the time didn't take the job seriously, and it produced something funny. That being said, as animation is mostly targeted at kids, it's good there are dubbed, because as a kid reading subtitles of any movie or assimilated is a total fun killer.
- Mijka 7y ago
  Felt the same. The few french dubs that are feeling "ok" are mostly biased from nostalgia by being the first things we were exposed to. I know i feel that way with the Cowboy Bebop dub (and i won't take into account the Miyazaki movies as they are exceptions for many reasons). The few other dubs i was exposed to later in life weren't good experiences either and you could feel the limited cast (in quality and quantity of actors) failing at not butchering things along the process. Like you said animation and dubbing it wasn't taken seriously at all in the past, and is still limited nowadays in France as i understand it (short discussions with actual french dubbing actress and few articles).
Grue3 7y ago
Japanese dubs of almost anything are usually pretty great. Voice acting is a large industry in Japan, and many voice actors are pretty much celebrities.
saiya-jin 7y ago
lol my first encounter with anime was on Polish TV, DragonBall Z. Imagine hearing french (which I had no clue about so just guessing situations from emotions), then in parallel dubbed by very monotone Polish voice from single guy, with few seconds delay. I am not very good at understanding Polish (lived not far across the border so we could catch OK analog signal), but much better than French. Hilarious, confusing, and I couldn't care less. At that time, it was so much above any other cartoon TV show, brutal, violent, funny and opened for me the whole world of anime that is not necessarily childish. Good times

kgwgk 7y ago

Do you feel the same about book translations? Do you only see movies / read books in languages that you understand?

pimmen 7y ago
I see lots of movies in languages I don’t understand thanks to subtitles. That way, I can read the dialogue and know what they’re saying. About one or two seconds later I see the actors do their performance and get the emotional and cultural context with the dialogue. I didn’t understand English that well when I was a kid but since we don’t translate English language media, except for subtitles, I got to hear English over and over again and now my ability to comprehend spoken English is very good. As is most Swedes, we spend just as many hours a week in English class as they do in France, Spain or Germany yet we are better at it (in general). We’re not geniuses, we just get more practice and less hand holding. Can’t do anything about books though, sadly. If I read a book in a language I don’t understand I probably have the intention to learn that language.
- kgwgk 7y ago
  Imagine being the director of the movie and seeing this, remembering all the hours you put into directing the actors to give your vision life, and now people is reading lines of text in a different language overlaid on the screen instead of paying attention to what’s happening :-)
  - ivanhoe 7y ago
    That's a misconception by people not used to reading subtitles. It's like a logo of the TV channel, after some time your brain just filters it out and it doesn't steal your attention at all. I grew up reading subtitles and I'm absolutely not aware of the text when watching the movies, my brain just picks it up. If it's in one of the languages that I speak I'll both listen to the original and read the subtitles, and it all happens also on auto-pilot without ever really thinking about it. I become aware of that only when the translation doesn't match.

ptsneves 7y ago

in Poland. They do not dub it, they narrate it/ translate it with the most monochordic voice possible. It's like they strip away emotions from language. I cannot stand a full movie like that,as in Portugal we have it the same way you seem to have in sweeden

jacobush 7y ago
The same voice too. I love Star Trek the original series with that Polish overdub. Hilarious! But as far as I recall, they actually keep the original soundtrack at the same time? In which case, the Polish voice becomes almost like a subtitle, a neutral translation to the side.
- skocznymroczny 7y ago
  Yes. The original soundtrack is underneath, so if you watch Terminator, you can hear Arnold Schwarzenegger's German accent, not some other actor. It's mostly a matter of what you are used to. For Polish people, the full dubs as they do in Western Europe feel weird and fake, we only dub cartoons and teenager movies such as Harry Potter series.

adrianN 7y ago

Some dubs are actually good. For example the German dub of Erik the Viking is funnier than the English original imo.

AskMeAboutLoom1 7y ago
Yeah, while most dubs suck, I do have a huge soft spot for the German dubs of Monty Python movies, "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" in particular (it's called "Knights of the Coconut" in German, btw) A lot of that might just be nostalgia speaking, though.