A Question to Europeans
by asi
Every time I happen to be in Europe I find the whole dubbing thing baffling. It is surely a cultural thing which I simply don’t get! I find it incredibly funny at best and as a violation of an art work at worst. Coming from a non-English speaking country myself, we simply use subtitles for everything that comes in foreign language. Language/speech/voice in video is such a multidimensional expressive element and an integral and basic part of the work that playing with the voices of the actors seems to me no better than changing the faces of the actors.
Any European readers can enlighten me here?
The thing i found interesting about this topic was whether the voice over people were famous for being the voice of famous people. I asked a ukrainian friend and she said that they usually utilise big local celebrities to do the voices for films as it drives more people to the cinema.
Im guessing it gives more of a relevant feel for advertising as well
Well I guess the root of this behaviour is embedded in the European belief that we (French, German, Italian, Spanish…) are still ruling the world! When Charlemagne/Napoleon/LouisXIV reigns are actually over! (From a French perspective!)
French for instance have created the ‘Académie française’
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academie_francaise
which is controlling and regulating the different uses of the French language. They came up with “courriel” to translate email!
‘Patrimony Preservation’ my friend!
Cinema as an art work can be seen with no dubbing in most European cities. Sometimes it may a be a bit hard to find the right cinema with the original sound but you can usually find it.
Cinema is also an entertainment. As such, people wanna enjoy it in their own language. Don’t we read translated books? Why not translated movies? Moreover, in Spain at least, the art of dubbing has evolved so much that it is interesting on its own (the foreword in Jacques Ranciere’s ‘The politics of aesthetics’ refers to the fact that ‘some’ translations are by its own right a piece of art; I think one could easily say the same about ‘some’ dubbed version).
I think that the wealth of European culture lies in its diversity. Together with diversity, freedom allows individuals to choose what they most prefer…
I’m English and live in Germany and suffer this all the time. I think there are a few reasons for it here.
One is that a whole generation of Germans who grew up during the war didn’t learn any foreign languages at all (thanks, Hitler). I can imagine dubbing took root as part of that.
Some of my German friends think it’s just that Germans are lazy. (In France, for example, they tend to subtitle more).
German sentences can get really long, as can certain compound nouns, which might be quite hard to fit on the screen when subtitling. Also, because the verb often ends up at the end in a sentence in German, you don’t know what’s going on until you’ve read the entire thing (so a subtitle split over two screens doesn’t work).
There is an entire industry now built around dubbing and I imagine it keeps a lot of German actors in work.
I suspect the last one of those is probably the biggest factor.
Interestingly, either due to budget or cultural shifts, most imported MTV-style shows (Flava of Love, Jackass, etc.) aren’t dubbed, they’re subtitled.
Also, as a voice-over artist you’re career rises or falls with the star you always do (voices usually remain the same – so the guy that does Tom Cruise got a lucky break when he first did Tom Cruise and now he’s obviously big into Scientology speeches).
The down-side of that is that sometimes the same people do voiceovers for ads, so it sounds like Tom Cruise is selling cat food (though I’ve not go a good enough ear for German voices yet to really notice).
Bart hasn’t got nearly as a ridiculous voice and Homer is much more hard-sounding in The Simpsons.
Weirdly, I have to drive over the border (near me) to France to watch films in English in the Cinema.
All right, for starters we are in still Europe here! I know the English would have any foreigners believe that the Channel is as wide a gap as the Atlantic, but it’s actually not true… It’s a topic I like being controversial about.
Anyways, I agree that it’s interesting but not all continentals are that way, in Netherlands, Belgium, pretty much all over Scandinavia, movies aren’t generally dubbed in the language. Being brought up in France where pretty much everything is dubbed in French (which I admit drove me nuts, though luckily Paris has all the movies in original language as well), I guess they’re just lazy…
To finish on this, it’s not as obvious because most of the movies coming out here are in English, but Asian movies are dubbed in English, at least in the US.
I’ve thought about this question too and the only similarity I’ve seen around the world is that low media literacy requires dubbing. High brow audiences don’t put up with it.
The lowbrow/highbrow argument doesn’t really have a lot to do with it. I’ve seen both dubbed and both subtitled. It really depends on cultural norms…
On a side note, a couple of interesting things sometimes happen. One is that the voice-over actor is better than the original, the other is that the original actor is of the same nationality. I saw the Bourne Ultimatum in German and, of course, Franka Potenta dubbed her own voice, which must be an odd experience.
great stuff!
thanks loads for your lovely comments
I wonder how long this cultural-weirdness will last?
Will new generations with greater cosmopolitan awareness push it out or will Europhiles win over?