posted
It's interesting. I finished reading the new OSC "reviews everything" column. In some part, he tells how he hates subtitled movies. Now, I've read this before: that the average American film-goear doesn't like subtitled movies, but would rather watch a dubbed one. Why is that? Over here, in Brazil, we actually prever subtitled movies (ok...most people), so we can listen to the actors' original voices. My case is a bit different, because I can easily understand spoken english, but still... Maybe it's because most movies we (brazilians) watch are foreign one, so we grow used to read subtitles. Well...I know I hate dubbing.
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quote:Originally posted by Eduardo_Sauron: Maybe it's because most movies we (brazilians) watch are foreign one, so we grow used to read subtitles. Well...I know I hate dubbing.
I think that is one of the reasons, but it's probably also a question of environment. I mean, the French, the Germans or the Italians all show foreign movies dubbed on TV. In Romania they never do it, and so I grew up with (mostly) English or French movies with subtitles. As you said, it's nice to hear the actual voice of the actors, or else there's something lost in the process. Maybe not much, but nonetheless I'll go with subtitles.
Fortunately here in Lyon there are cinemas where they show some movies in the original version. I never read the French subtitles since I understand English enough not to need them.
And a short funny story (or not so funny, depends on how you look at it): a Romanian friend of mine talked to one of his French colleagues and said that he won't go to a movie starring Eddie Murphy because he wouldn't be able to hear his voice (it was a French version only movie). She answered that it IS his voice! Meaning that it's the same actor that always replaces him in the French versions... Posts: 4519 | Registered: Sep 2003
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I want to add something about dubbing and subtitle. The great difficulty in dubbing, is to translate correctly the text and after, make it superposable on the mouth move. It happened we have a lost of sens. In that, subtitle is better. But, because there is a "but", for subtitle, there is another constraint : The size of the screen. Translator must stay into. So they have to translate dialogue by shorter sentences sometime. We have another lost of sens here. Now, i prefer original version with subtitles because i understand a little english and i understand more better actors playing.
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posted
What I find about watching sub-titled movies is that I wind up concentrating on the bottom 2 inches of the screen, and not paying enough attention to what the actors are doing or their facial expressions. I miss things, in other words.
Fahim, on the other hand, dealt with it by learning Tamil and then Hindi to watch Tamil and Hindi movies without having to bother with the subtitles.
I'm wondering if that's what I'm going to have to do.
We don't get dubbed movies here very often. We had one the other day, and it was kinda funny. The original language was English, but it was a Hong Kong release of the movie with Chinese dubbed. Chinese was the default language (not just for voice - for all menu selections, too!), and the Chinese voiceover was fantastic quality. Fahim switches it over to English, and it's muffled and almost impossible to figure out what's being said.
And it didn't have English subtitles. Go figure.
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Some of the English movies we have to watch sub-titled because it's a camera copy and the sound isn't that great. But then, whenever the guy in Thailand or Malaysia or wherever it is who does the sub-titles is doesn't understand the word, he just fills it in with whatever he *thinks* he heard.
So if the line was, "Go ahead. Make my day." It might wind up sub-titled as, "Go to lead. Cake my lei." Or something equally or more stupid than that. It's amusing, but also frustrating. Cuz, after all, what's the point in having sub-titles at all if that's what you're offering?
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posted
It's all about subtitles. I even put subtitles on movies in English, just so I can read and understand all of the dialogue. I can't abide live action dubs. Nothing can be more annoying. Most anime dubs are irratating enough as it is (Though, one good thing about Disney is they do a good job when it comes to dubbing Miyazaki. But, I still want to see the subtitled version of HMC having read the book) At least when you buy subtitled anime you can say you are buying it to study japanese.
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posted
I don't watch a lot of foreign movies, so I don't come across this problem very often. A movie has to be really good for me to watch it in another language, because the fact that I cannot understand the words is going to automatically reduce the quality of my experience a couple of points. There is a lot of nuance in language, and whether the translation is dubbed or subtitled, the viewer who doesn't understand the original language is missing out on some things.
That being said, when I do watch a foreign movie, I can't stand dubs. I am already annoyed about missing the nuances of the original language, how could I possibly enjoy the movie when I am missing the nuances of the original acting? I would rather have to read the words and miss a little action in the upper corners of the screen than hear an interpretation of what the actors on the screen may have been intending.
posted
If you ever want to see the difference between subtitles and dubbing, watch Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon in both.
Dubbed, it's a bad Kung-Fu movie with good fight scenes. All nuance is gone.
Subtitled, it's a powerful story. Plus, Yun-Fat Chow's inflection is amazing even when you can't understand the words.
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posted
That's part of what I find fascinating about foreign films. Sometimes, Fahim watches Hindi, Tamil, or Sinhalese movies that don't have subtitles. And sometimes, when I'm sitting beside him and I watch a few minutes, I can get the gist of what's going on by speech patterns. Granted, facial expressions and other body language helps, but inflections help a whole lot more.
And I'm also reminded of the James Bond surfing movie with subtitles that talk about Confuscious and red roses. Like THAT ever happened in any James Bond movie! Explanation: sometimes, the wrong subtitles are put onto the wrong film. Or closing credits. Or both. We have about a half dozen or so movies that all have the same closing credits. Eh.
Dags, thanks for the comments on Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. I'll have to give that a try. Posts: 8355 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
I like subtitles movies a lot more than dubbed ones. When they're dubbed, I feel like I'm watching bad anime. It only takes me a few minutes of reading the translations before I stop noticing I'm reading them and simply get involved in the story.
I remember watching Life is Beautiful in the original Italian and absolutely loving it. My little brother told me about watching the dubbed version at school, and how certain scenes completely lost meaning. Like when Guido's son pretending to be a German boy accidentally says "Thank you" in itallian and Guido teaches all the children to say it.
posted
The only subtitled movies I've ever seen are Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, The Passion of the Christ, and Hero so I'm not tired of it. Though, if you blink, you might miss something. So it can get annoying. I've really no preference.
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posted
Heh, I used to hate subtitled movies when I was a kid... mostly because I couldn't read fast enough. Then I started to get into anime a bit and I found that I disliked the dubbings, they were so corney, and it felt so bland watching them. I found out they had to try to lip sync it so a lot of the key parts that are so good are taken out.
So, then I watched it in Japanese with English subtitles, at first it was a bit odd reading it and trying to glance up at what's going on at the same time. But... to hear Kenshin scream in rage in the Japanese version really makes it worth it. Eventually I was just watching it and reading what was at the bottom of the screen too, I wasn't missing anything.
This carried over to other movies too. Like Sarcastic Muppet was talking about, I watched Life is Beautiful for my first time, recently. I started it off and it was in Italian (I had to turn on subtitles, odd.) and I was liking how the actors' voices worked in it. When I switched it to English, I found it was more of a pain to watch than easier, so I kept it in Itallian. (A personal note on the movie, it's just great watching Guido 'translate' the German in the Concentration Camp rules, I've been taking German so I can pick up a lot of what the Germans are saying, so to see how he murdered it was awesome.)
This is also the same for movies in English now. I've grown tired of some random person saying something so you miss some dialogue in a movie, plus, sometimes I just couldn't hear the person properly, so with subtitles, it really helps me.
So, summed up, Subtitles = very good to me.
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posted
I prefer subtitles to dubbed, but I have been seeing them since I was little. My husband gets tired of keeping up with the movie and reading the subtitles simultaneously.
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posted
I love subtitles. We got a new TV when I was maybe 13 and it had closed-captioning on it, so my dad and I watched all movies with closed-captioning on, even those in English, just because we liked it. It annoyed all my friends who came over. I never, ever watch a dubbed version of a foreign movie if I can help it. It's even worse than watching B&W movies with added colour.
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posted
I much prefer subtitles. Dubbing, for me, takes away half the film- the original voices of the actors I can see is so important to me. I love to hear people in other languages say something. I flick my eyes back and forth between the subtitles and the screen... sometimes I'll forget that there were subtitles at all.
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posted
We watch all movies with subtitles. It makes it easier for us to keep up with what is going on. After a while you get used to reading them and keep up with it.
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posted
I tend to immediately forget I'm reading at all. I'm being totally literal here: I become completely unaware of the subtitles. With dubbing, on the other hand, I am constantly aware of the dubbing and giggling at the discrepancy between the sounds and the mouth movement.
I didn't think of it until now, but my aunt and uncle are deaf and I watched a lot of movies at their house when I was a kid, because they had cable and we didn't, and they recorded a lot of movies off of HBO and stuff. Their recorded movies were recorded with the closed captioning on them, and it may be that I just got used to reading dialog that way.
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posted
Actually they have started to dub the cartoons on Fox Kids (I think) and Cartoon Network. There's no greater horror than "Dexter's Lab" in Romanian! Posts: 4519 | Registered: Sep 2003
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posted
I think subtitling really increases both your appreciation of the movie and your aptitude for the language. When I've seen a movie enough times, I get spoken phrases stuck in my head that come up really handy - those aren't the kind of things you can learn in a language class. And this doesn't just apply to languages I'm actively learning - I've picked up little nuances in Hindi simply from watching subtitled Bollywood that really enhance my appreciation of the language.
Most of the Netflix movies I get are foreign, and I started out just watching them with my mom, but a couple times my 8 and 10 year old sisters have watched them with us, and their ability to keep up with the subtitles astonishes me. Even my 6 year old brother, who can barely read, can keep his attention riveted on a 3-hour movie he doesn't understand, and I think that's really saying a lot.
One thing I didn't like when I was in France was that it was hard to find a theater with subtitled movies. Dubbing really ruins the original film.
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posted
Annie, where was you in France to have no theater with subtitled movies ? Because in Paris, there are a lot!
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posted
Interesting tangent: will it be possible to create different mouth movements for different languages on a single animated film? I've got to imagine that computer design tools would help isolate the parts that need to change and allow animators to make several versions of each mouth movement.
It would cost a lot, but not nearly as much as animating the entire film again.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
Add me to the list of Americans who much prefer subtitles to dubbing. Although "What's Up Tigerlilly" was very funny, but that was a special case and meant to be the way it was.
I also much prefer it when documentaries that interview non-English speakers are subtitled rather than dubbed. I'd much rather hear the voice of the actual person and read subtitles than not be able to hear what that person really sounds like because someone is talking over them, telling me what they are supposed to be saying. Also, in those cases, subtitling keeps the documentarians honest - anyone who speaks the language being spoken can tell how true the translations in the subtitles are to what the person is really saying.
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Subtitles are so much better. So so so much better. (But yeah for people who can't see very well or read very fast they suck, I guess.)
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quote:Also, in those cases, subtitling keeps the documentarians honest - anyone who speaks the language being spoken can tell how true the translations in the subtitles are to what the person is really saying.
In my experience, not terribly! That's the most disconcerting thing about subtitles when a movie is in Spanish. (Or English with Spanish subtitles.)
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quote:Annie, where was you in France to have no theater with subtitled movies ? Because in Paris, there are a lot!
I was in Quimper - so maybe it was just a small town thing.
But it was OK - it's not like you should be spending your vacation time in Bretagne at the movie theater anyway. Posts: 8504 | Registered: Aug 1999
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posted
As a lover of Anime I have to deal with this issue all the time. If possible I like no subtitles so I can focus on the story and details and whatnot. And American companies that do the English ADR are getting better and better. But every once in a while you find an English dubbed Anime, usually the older ones, that just SUCKS. In this case the poor voice acting gets in the way of my enjoying the show, so after a little analysis of what sounds better, I switch over to the subtitles and original Japanese.
BUT, subtitles also have another good use because they usually have different translators for the dub vs. the subtitles. You can sometimes get a whole new spin on the meaning of a statement if you check out both translations.
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posted
The only cases that I can recall where I actually like dubbing on a foreign film are the recent Miyazaki films that have been coming out here...and the one of those that I will actually refuse to watch subtitled is Castle in the Sky, largely because I dislike the score in the original, but I absolutely love it in the dubbed version.
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posted
Reiko - I totally agree with you about the rescoring of Castle in the Sky. However, some of the supporting characters in that dub annoy me, so usually I'll watch it subbed anyway.
I will never, ever watch a live action movie dubbed from another language. Subtitles do not bother me, but the bad acting that usually accompanies a dub does.
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posted
Can I just put in another good word for Kung Fu Hustle here? It was subtitled, of course, and what a wonderful movie! Funny and sweet with exciting action and fantastic fight scenes, the story also had subtleties that kept you thinking about it for days. I was expecting simple entertainment, I think, but this movie far overshot the mark, delivering a feast for the heart, mind, and spirit as well as the eyes. I hope we continue to get movies like that out of Hong Kong. Based on this one and Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon I'd go see most anything else they send our way.
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