MovieChat Forums > La meglio gioventù (2003) Discussion > What happened to Dubbing?

What happened to Dubbing?

posted 13 years ago by hardwood53
2 replies | jump to latest

I used to watch the old kung fu films and often laugh that the lips did not move with the words. I have read about how American films are dubbed into the language of the country they were being distributed in. I have read in actors profiles who dubs their voices in each international version.
Lately there have been quite a few foreign movies show on cable that are not dubbed, many of these are very popular or award winning films. I cannot think of one case where they are dubbed. I see they also make whole new versions of some of these films with English speaking actors. Often people complain the remake does not do the original film justice.
I feel like a lot of people are like me, too busy or distracted to give the screen 100% attention as is required for reading subtitles. Reading subtitles also makes you miss the camera work and detracts from the impact of the images shown. It can also be argued that reading subs uses a different part of the brain, that for those used to reading books conjures its own images.
So factoring all that, it would seem that dubbing would be vital to bringing these great foreign films to an American audience.

[–] Conquerer13 12 years ago

Strong disagree from me.

I had no problem seeing all the emotion and actions in this film while reading the subtitles and I'm probably a slightly slower than average reader.

The original voices in a film are in some sense vital to its storytelling. Not that the story can't be told without them, but I don't think a dubbed voice can provide the audience with the same emotion as the original actor -- another very important thing because in a dub you're only getting half the acting of the original actor under direction from the director. Plus every language has its nuances that almost inherently become part of the storytelling and the way the characters speak -- the way we speak is a part of us as characters and humans. It feels like a crime to take the voices away from the actors on screen and replace them with others' speaking into a microphone in a lifeless post production studio. (I know there might be some irony in these words since ADR (redubbing by the original actors for better sound quality) is a huge part of modern films, but it's still the original actors who are those characters and know all about the feelings they had on screen while acting.)

And coming from someone who only fluently knows one language (and only less than casually another), I find tremendous beauty in the languages in foreign films. Whether it's Italian, French, German, Spanish, and so on, I think these "exotic" languages (to those not used to them) add a sort of authenticity to the films and just seem to make them more interesting. It also helps keep the magic of movies alive because there's nothing artificial about the way people are speaking -- for example Germans speaking only English in a WWII film.

I remember I had a dual audio version of Life is Beautiful and by default it had the subtitles on while the English voice dub was playing (I assumed the Italian version would play by default) and immediately I was so turned off by the English voice with the Italian actors on screen. It just didn't match and completely took me out of the film by making me strongly aware that I was watching a film with a dub by other actors. I switched to the Italian version with subtitles and was immediately able to get into the film as things felt so much more natural -- especially in that film with the way the main character spoke. Yes, a dubbing actor can try to replicate it but I'd rather listen to the real thing than someone trying to copy the original actor in a different language.

I don't know, maybe someone else can better explain this than I can but to me the original language is very important to its respective storytelling in every visual story.

[–] CoSMiGoNoN 9 years ago

Dubbing is crap. With dubbing you lose half of the actor's performance which is his voice and how he transmits feeling with it, whether you understand it or not. To me it would be the same as having the voice of the actor but then having someboy else play the part. Just say no to dubbing.