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Brit here. I learned much new information from this. Even so I disagree with many of your conclusions because your analysis is very 'German' and flawed. You claim that German chauvinism is a major driver of the dubbing industry. But the Germans I know personally aren't chauvinistic at all about the German language and culture.
I know that the video was primarily about the German dubbing, but I think that you should have done a more thorough research before making the it. There is one Eastern-European country which has a dubbing industry at least as good as the German (especially considering that German is more closely related to English -- or to almost any other European language --, which makes it way easier for them to lip-sync). If you have looked at the situation in this "mysterious" country, you'd know that it disproves the theory -- heard in the video -- that a country with a population less than 10 million people is just not large a enough market. This country dubs 100% of the content, all the time. Also the quality of the dubbing went down lately, which could be the result of younger people watching English-language movies in original or that streaming platforms trying to get into the dubbing business but don't know how to do it correctly, or just trying to save money. Either way, this could be a case study for the German market, which could make the voice guy more concerned about the future of the industry. And probably the South America situation would have been interesting for comparison too.
I don't think we've ever had dubbing here in England except for some children's programmes. The one exception is Dario Argento movies from Italy in the 1970s/1980s which have really bad dubbing in English.
The biggest problem is that dubbing is done by simple people without knowledge and skills. Regardless of where the actor stands, I can hear him 10 centimeters from me.
Sometimes such a German voice actor can get a funny side-hustle, so to speak. The voice actor for the James Bond actor Pierce Brosnan for example voiced the welcome message at the Cologne airport with the words 'Wilkommen in Bonn. Köln Bonn.' As an homage to his voice for Bond, James Bond.
I lived in Deutschland for 9 months or so, and was surprised how much dubbing changed the very personality of the characters and story. This was most pronounced in the TV show Peter Falk in his show "Columbo". English speakers are in on the joke that Columbo acts like a buffoon to trap his suspects, and his speech patterns are appropriately strange. In the German dubbed versions, he sounds very suave and self assured, which TOTALLY changes tenor of the whole show. From a faux bumbling fool to a self-assured genius detective. When my German friend visited me in NYC, she was so unhappy with the original voice of Peter Falk she couldn't watch the show.
The biggest problem is that dubbing is done by simple people without knowledge and skills. Regardless of where the actor stands, I can hear him 10 centimeters from me.
As a Dutchman (18 milion inhabitants btw) I've always found german dubbing hilarious. It always sounds artificial to me and it adds an ironic tone even when it is not intended. So glad we keep the original language here.
@@xunvenileNot the reason for me personally. I speak four languages but I dislike dubbed films in general, also when I speak the language being dubbed to. It's not the specific language; it's the fact that the actor simply doesn't fit the voice anymore.
British and while we're english-speaking, I think theres a big cultural opposition to dubbing in anything besides Childrens entertainment here. French and Scandinavian dramas are normally watched subbed and there's a cultural cringe against re-dubbing - American television shows are normally redubbed for a more "cinematic" effect, while British television shows traditionally used source audio. That said, oftentimes it just means we only really watch english-language media. although I think Streaming has changed things.
@@Squaretable22What Scandinavian films or series do people watch in the UK? I'm Swedish and I wish we imported more non-English content. We occasionally get French and Dutch documentaries which tend to be very interesting and of good quality.
I don't agree that things like feelings, irony etc is lost in subtitles. You can still hear it in the original language, those things tend to not get lost in translation that often.
in italy they matches the "new" voice with the face so well that it fits more than the original one! Watching the same movie or animated series with the original language is often disappointing. Italian dubbers are better than the Italian actors, there is a long and quite disturbing tradition back in the days, when Mussolini prohibited any non-Italian world, name or concept...
I think it's exactly the opposite of the claim in the video! Dubbing always loses a lot of the emotion in the performance. Even if you don't speak the original language and have no clue about the content of what's being said, you can still understand the emotion. However good a dubbing voice actor is, they're never going to be able to do the feeling as good as the original. They have a lot more contraints and a lot less resources.
Totally agree. Reading the subtitles does not rob us of our ears and eyes, and emotion, irony tends to be very easy to spot. Although I do notice a big difference for films where I don't speak the language at all. I would never contemplate seeing a dubbed film though. Started La Casa de Papel accidentally on english, and half way into first episode it drove me crazy, and I had to find out how to play original version with subtitles instead. I find that I cannot ignore the cultural clash of a wrong language being spoken where it shouldn't. Typical of WWII films of old were that they all spoke english, and the germans just had a german accent. You can't do sh*t like that anymore - a Quality film should always have its actors using their mother tongue where appropriate -i.e. when communicating among themselves and no foreigners present.
in Italy too! It's practically impossible to watch a movie with the original voices. They changes the titles, the names of the products, even "the Simpsons" had the intro butchered because "the" was not supposed to be shown to the Italian public...
In the Netherlands cartoons were subbed, only for me to see cartoons i watched in my youth to be translated now, and it sucks cause we have like a few handful of "voice actors", if you even wanna call them that.
The problem with subtitles is that they often don't follow the spoken word, i.e. they translate something incorrectly. Or they abbreviate something because the actor speaks too fast and too long. Which is just as annoying.
I have a colleague from Bosnia who said that she learned most of her German from cartoons in her childhood. She speaks really well, but her writing is not so good.
I'm from Portugal and there our movies are with the original language and subtitles, the only exception are animation movies or cartoons, those are dubbed in portuguese. But all my life I grew up listening to the original language that now that I'm living in Germany I need to go to the Netherlands every time I want to go to the cinema, luckily I don't live that far from the border. But I simply can't listen to the dub version I always notice that what's being spoken doesn't match the lips. I have to say that watching movies with their original language with subtitles definitely helped with learning English.
thanks for making me feel like i'm not insane i knew france and italy had strong dubbing cultures, recently found out about hungary, now i find this out about germany, i heard him mentioning 'eastern europe', i was beginning to feel like romania was the odd one out! here it's also largely associated with children's media, and even then, i think there are still some subbed showings, as the idea is kids can alrewdy wean off dubs, or understand some english not saying that this is the 'correct' way but i'd be annoyed too if most or especially *all* the options for watching a film were through dubbing
@@aiocafea I believe the only reasonable justification for dubbing is if the target audience is young children who can't read (or read quickly enough) yet. The German voice actor's claim that subtitles are distracting ("an irritation in the art of film") is true to an extant, but replacing the original voice track causes an even more extreme distraction. After having read comments in the past from Germans about how "our dubs are so good they sound better than the original", I looked up some German dubs and still found it bad. The acoustics don't match because it wasn't recorded on set (even if they try to improve that with editing), the lip movements don't match well enough, the voices don't fit the dubbed actor, especially if you actually know that (usually quite famous) person's real voice, and worst of all - the original acting performance is being discarded in favor of the dubber's. I'd say acting is more speech than physical. Imagine being told that subtitles don't convey all of the emotions a spoken language has, so when you go to watch an Oscar-winning performance in the cinema instead of being able to hear _that performance_ you hear a replacement.
I'm British but have lived in Hungary (where very few people speak English) and Croatia (where lots of people speak English. Hungary uses dubbing but Croatia uses subtitles.
Poland has the weirdest kind of dubbing. They use one (male) voice to dub EVERY voice in the movie, and not even synchronous with the lip movements. It's called a 'lektor'.
Yes, the idea of the lektor is you follow the original dialogue, which you can still hear, while the narration tells you what they're saying. That's why it's neutral and emotionless. (For the uninitiated, imagine "Don't kill me. No. It's too late. Please don't. Now you will pay. No." in a single newsreader voice.) People tell me they are used to it, but it drives me nuts.
As a germanspeaking Swiss I grew up with the German dubs. I personally love subtitles and I even sometimes put them on when I watch things in German 😂 Generally: I tend to watch it in the original language with subtitles when I speak or learn a language or when a language is similar to a language I know (the language of the subtitles is either German, English or the language of the movie itself). For other languages I often tend to prefer a dub. I kinda like subs to help me understand what is being said, but I don‘t really like it when the subs are the only option to understand what is being said (I hope it‘s understandable what I mean with that).
In the Czech republic are almost all movies and series fully dubbed. It is almost impossible to see movie with subtitles on any major tv channel. Also text is adjusted to be in sync with lip movement. It could be applied to streaming services as well, what I could see from statistics, dubbed movie has much wide audience than only with subtitles. But how such is possible, that only 11million people speaks Czech and still dubbing seems to be economically viable.
Same here. Especially newer dubbing sound terrible to me. Seems to me that in the olden days, especially before private TV spread, dubbing was done with much more care and effort.
It's a similar situation here in Quebec. Since there's a strong french speaking population here, there's a booming film, tv and music industry that's all in french. Now, we also like American and European pop culture so foreign language films and tv shows get dubbed. However, there are lot's of anglophones in the province, so the english versions are also readily available. Bilingual people like me will rather watch the original versions but if I have to, I find it much less annoying to watch a dubbed version rather than read a movie I can still fully understand!! Also movies dubbed in french are dubbed here. In France they do their own, so you might end up with an American movie with two different titles and different dialogues in french. Our dubs are mostly with an international french accent (leaning towards proper French accent) but in some cases the dubbing is done in Québécois. Being of German origin, I find the topic and the similarities fascinating!!
I confirm that dubbing in France and Quebec are almost always done separately. This may sound weird because even if there are differences in vocabulary and accent between what we call metropolitan French and Quebec French, Quebec dubbing is almost always done using the neutral international French which is indistinguishable from the French we speak in Europe. So why doing different versions as there is no real difference you can ear ? The reason is mainly that distribution in North America and Europe are two separated markets, handled generally by different companies. Even if a French version already exists from Quebec doesn’t mean that it can be freely used by a French distributor and it’s generally economically cheaper to make a new one at home rather than buying the rights to exploit the existing one. There are also cultural reasons when it comes to adapting the original dialogues, where cultural references may differ between the American continent and Europe, plus Quebec has much stricter policies towards the use of anglicisms in French because of its geopolitical situation. As a matter of fact, Belgium has also its own dubbing industry for French but in this case there are much fewer overlapping dubbed French versions for the same film or tv series as distribution is often made by the same companies.
In The Netherlands we use subtitles except for programs for (small) children. I grew up very close to the German border and had accsess to German television as well. I remember they would also vocaly ‘explain’ what was going on in silent films like Charlie Chaplin, L&H (Dick und Doof) and the Pink Panther (Der Rosarote Panther).
It's a wonderful thing if you're trying to learn German. Any tv show adults or kids will have German dubbing. I'm learning Dutch rn and I'm really frustrated that I can't find dubs of any of the shows I want to watch. Not even teen shows!! It just makes it difficult when all I have available is kids movies and tv.
İ've actually had a different experience. İt's true that Germany does an excellent job at dubbing, but still you don't learn a language easily by that because the dubbing is simply different from the way people in real life speak. The best way to learn German is İMO, instead of watching dubbed versions, to watch a film which is originally in German, using subtitles, preferably German ones.
@@xolang I'm a German native speaker and I completely agree. German dubs are really weird; the speaking cadence is completely off and nobody talks like that in real life.
Many Hollywood films (Dracula for example) were made in multiple languages. Czech films were as well. There is a good Norwegian series Netflix(?) series called Northmen which is re-filmed in English on the spot.
I lived in germany as a child and the problem was that some voice actor are used for more than one film. I ran to the TV if I thought heard Terrance Hill and it was some boring movie instead. Also some voice actors demand more money, get sick or die. So they are replaced with another voice so suddenly the character sound different. Having said that even if I am danish if I watch a movie from spain I switch to german audio. e.g. 'La Casa de Papel I watched in german on Netflix. In denmark we only use voice actors for cartoons or some chrildrens moves.
This was entertaining and educating! Answered a lot of questions and gave me new perspective. Great video! Not pro or against dubbing: I personally like original language especially in anime, with the exception of Dragon Ball Z: Goku’s original voice is horrifying! 😅 I’m from Finland and I learned English and Swedish mostly from TV, movies, computer and video games, books and music. I started learning Swedish at school when I was nine and English when I was eleven because my English was so good I spoke it better than most 18 year olds. Granted, I could read perfectly when I was five or six years old so subtitles weren’t a problem. It’s basically movies and TV-shows aimed at children or the whole family that are dubbed, but movie theatres show both dubbed and subbed versions of the same movie. There’s no-one in Finland who could do better than insult original voices like Robin Williams in Aladdin or Eddie Murphy in Shrek, but those guys are exceptions and geniuses. Still, I’m glad that there are dubbed versions for people who need them.
I’m from Austria. So we get all the movies and TV shows here with the dubbing from Germany. I despise this. There are just things that get lost in translation and in general even if the translation works the original is just better. The people dubbing those movies might be "professionally trained", but I would not consider many of them voice actors. The acting just isn’t as good as it is in the original version. Anyways all the points I made set aside. By far the worst part about Germany’s dubbing is that it’s quite impossible to get a hold of the original versions of the film. If you don’t live in a major city then good luck trying to find a cinema that plays movies in their original language. Furthermore sometimes they translate not just the dialogue, but also text in the movie and the title and so it I wanted to get a blu ray of the movie with the unaltered, original version, I’d have to import it. What baffles me even more is, that every German I’ve ever argued with loves the German versions much more, even if the understand English well. They just think the German version is undeniably better. I will never be able to grasp why they believe this.
i'd like to have english movies with english subtitle, so i can grow accustomed to the mumbling. so no easy or "for deaf" english. sometimes it's just the dialect that's hard to understand , but you know all the words. (this excludes the BS like cockney rhyming slang and the Verlan of the french.)
I think it’s interesting that the voice actor claims that feelings are lost with subtitles. I totally agree with him on subtitles moving your gaze away from the action and that is why many people here in Sweden just don’t read them. On streaming service you can actually turn the off all together. On the other hand. When I was a child, cartoons got dubbed while live action was subtitled, even when aimed at kids. Nowadays even live action are dubbed, both on tv and in cinemas. However. My children aren’t watching that. They mostly watch stuff on RUclips where everything is in English. My ten year old is practically fluent in English and the seven year old isn’t far behind. Teachers in Sweden are actually somewhat complaining about their pupils knowing more English than they are tasked to teach. So with that in mind. I don’t think that feelings, humour nor irony is getting lost on us. :)
The biggest problem is that dubbing is done by simple people without knowledge and skills. Regardless of where the actor stands, I can hear him 10 centimeters from me.
Back in the 80s I used to visit a Dutch friend living in Amsterdam. He explained that one of the reasons that the Dutch spoke such good English was that they were able to pick up BBC television, which with the quality of its programmes was very popular. That signal didn't reach as far as Germany, but I don't know if it would have made any difference even if it had. With so many blockbusters being made in English, maybe it's not surprising that those are dubbed, but here in London all foreign language films are subtitled because they appeal to a smaller demographic. I prefer it that way because I want an actor's complete performance and cadence and inflections can be detected even when in a foreign language. Surely German cinema goers can never truly assess an Oscar winning performance when so much of it is lost. BTW are German audiences ever offered the choice of subtitles for any of these films?
It’s funny. I’m dutch and as a kid I used to watch popular movies on german television because they were broadcasted much earlier there than on dutch television. I learned german that way
I'm in the UK, and I used to watch "Nachbarn" - the Aussie soap "Neighbours", dubbed into German - on a satellite channel called Sat.1 in the late 80s/early 90s. It helped with my GCSE in German. 😊 Conversely, we got the German soap opera, "Die Schwarzwaldklinik", here in Britain on Channel 4 dubbed into English, and called "The Black Forest Clinic". 🙂
That is a correct translation but transposing such a very German setting to the UK sounds as transposing Fawlty Towers to Germany (they probably did that).
@@flitsertheoI just looked it up out of curiosity. There are three dubbed versions of fawlty towers in German. One was made 1987 by the GDR Televisions. One was made 1990 by RTL. One was made 1996 by SAT1. Interestingly the first airing of the show on German TV was 1978 on ARD in English with German subtitles (quite unusual for German TV)
Contrary to what the video stated, France has also a very prominent dubbing industry which is extremely professional and specialized. I think that France, Spain and Italy level of precision and quality in the way they do dubbing are identical and no different from Germany. You can add Canadian Quebec that does their own French version (mostly because it’s a separate market from Europe). In France also you will get discussions between people who prefer subtitles over dubbing and vice-versa. There’s no definite answer because both appeal to very different audiences. Luckily, we live in an era where that doesn’t really matter because now you can choose whatever you like, nobody’s forcing you to watch subtitles if you don’t want to or listening to an awkward dubbed version if you don’t like it. The dubbing scene in France have iconic actors and actresses. There are French voices that you recognize immediately and associate with foreign actors like Bruce Willis, Sylvester Stallone, Harrison Ford, Robert De Niro, etc. As in Germany, it’s not systematic to use always the same actor, even if they generally try to keep it consistent. But it also depends on other factors like the availability of the voice actor, the terms of the contract or artistic direction requirements. When it comes to voice dubbing for animated movies like Pixar or Dreamworks or even some Animes, there has been a big marketing tendency to pick local French celebrities over dubbing professionals to be able to use their names for promoting the movie. The daughter of a Friend used to dub in French the main character of an animated series for kids (as a matter of fact, it was a character of German origins : Die Biene Maja (Maya l’abeille in French - Maya the bee in English). She did the voice for all the episodes of the TV series but when they made an animated movie released in theaters, the production picked a popular female French singer to dub Maya in the movie instead of her so they could promote it with a celebrity cast. The problem with what has been called « star talent » dubbing is that even if you are a talented famous actor or actress, that doesn’t mean that you can do dubbing well… it’s a totally different type of performance from playing in front of the camera. And many celebrity cast are not even actors in the first place. So the results are not always good. But they are not always bad either, there have been pleasant surprises as well as total disasters.
@@MatthiasSchwarzerEnglishyes, as are also Spain and Italy, but you were giving the impression that Germans are much more obsessed with having dubs in their own language and try to make them as perfect as possible in Europe. But I honestly see no difference with the state of dubbing in France, and from what I can tell it seems also the case in Italy and Spain. So you seem to think that Germany is a cultural exception in that domain, but it’s not, it’s exactly the same thing for us. For France there’s a RUclips channel called MisterFox that talks almost exclusively about dubbing : techniques, economy, companies, writers, behind the scenes, actors interviews, whereabouts, etc. He even makes comparisons between different dubbing versions of the same movie (sometimes you can get a re-dub on DVD or Blu-ray versions totally different from the theatrical release, for artistic, technical, economic or legal reasons). It’s very interesting.
The big difference between France and Germany in cinema is that in France all Hollywood movies are released both dubbed ánd VO (version originale = subtitled). Theres a choice in most cases. In Germany you have to search for the VO version. On tv in France, most imported series are dubbed of course. And interviews on the news with English speakers are dubbed while you can hear the English underneath. That is really annoying.
@@martijnspruit in France too some English or American Shows are dubbed in French over the English speakers. Top Gear for example, but also most reality shows like Bear Grylls, Pawn Stars or American cop shows. We’ve talked a lot about English movies or shows, but French dubbing is also done for any foreign language : Japanese, Italian, Spanish, etc. And of course German 😉 The only times foreign languages are not dubbed in French is when they don’t have the budget for it.
@@martijnspruit The movies released in VO is actually quite recent, and quite Parisian, because the market is quite different there. In Paris, lots of people come from all over the world and Parisian have high education, so there is an audience for movies in English, that wouldn't be here for translated movies. In the rest of the country, the VO version is usually harder to find. If you check a large movie theater brand (like UGC), you'll find that 65% of US blockbusters in the Parisian area are shown in VO, while in other large cities, 75% of the same movie sessions are translated in French.
Excelente video, you showed that in 1922 only 12% of Italians spoke Italian, but you overlooked that Mussolini wanted a uniform Italian speaking country. The same in Spain as Franco wanted one single country using one single language, and dubbing was a strategic decision to protect. Dubbing in German is very very good 👍👍, I see sometimes things dubbed in Brazilian Portuguese and you want to cry of despair how bad it is.
As a 42 years old native German that never lived anywhere but Germany (and as such only learned English from the 5th grade on): Our dubs are usually AIMING to be good, but if you ask me, often suffer a lot from the same issue that plagues original German productions: The primarily theatrical training most domestic (voice) actors get, which very often leads to a "projecting" voicing instead of a natural one. Clean enunciation and high yet "flat" loudness are needed there, but TV / movies are an entirely different beast with different requirements. There are however a few shows where I genuinely think that the German dub has done better than the original. Alf for example was not quite the hit in the US, but Tommi Pieper's dub made ALL the difference here, making it a staple show for kids my age. Ice Age also was funnier and more "natural" sounding to me in the dubbed version, which especially for comedic material is extreeeemely rare and hard to pull off imho. Another GREAT dub is Sponge Bob! What a perfectly fitting voice, extremely well done! And then there are shows like House MD. Started watching in English, and tried one dubbed episode for fun. EW! Could not bare it for more than a few minutes. Completely wrong! A special case, for me personally, is Star Trek TNG. My all time favourite nostalgic show I grew up with, and I've seen about two runs of it dubbed. Which made it the "natural default" to my ears. I've since watched it many more times in English, making that the new default - but here I can actually go back to the dub and not find it toooo odd. Aside from the lip sync issue. And Picard's changing voice at some point. Overall, to be honest, I think Germany should be past the point of needing dubs. Kids nowadays learn English from 1st grade, making them near fluent by 5th or so. Dub shows aimed at these young ages for all I care, but I really think we should "downgrade" to subtitles at most by now. I'm very sorry to all the great people in this industry that try the best that is often possible, but I really do think it should be phased out.
I discovered this about 20 years ago when I spent a couple of months in Amsterdam and most of the TV shows were subtitled if not produced natively in Dutch. I went to Vienna for a few days and the TV shows were all dubbed (including the wonderful title "Die Nanny"). I actually found watching English language TV with Dutch subtitles really helped me pick up Dutch a lot faster than I expected (I already had a basic level of German to help).
Great video on a subject I'm genuinely interested in. I onve was in Germany for a 4 day course. On one of the evenings I wanted to go to the cinema, turned out everything was dubbed, so I had to make a different plan. I'm Dutch, but don't speak German well. Would have watched an English movie without the need for subtitles. Btw, I would not mind a bit higher pace video without the breaks with stock footage. Cheers!
I like it when the background noises during conversations are usually quieter in the German dubbing. Especially in film scenes in public, e.g. in a park, when it's not possible to have a microphone near the actors, the dialogue often mixes with the background noise. I also have the same problem filtering out individual conversations in noisy places. I'm thinking of film scenes that take place in clubs. In the German dubbing, the volume level of the music is lowered and the actors' dialogue is superimposed over it. But there are also films like the Lord of the Rings trilogy that I can enjoy in English. I now even find it strange to watch the German version.
I totally agree - it's much easier to immerse myself in a film with dubbing instead of jumping between reading and watching - the latter causes to distance myself from it which diminishes the enjoyment of the film. If I really like a film, I use to watch it a second time in the original version (if it is in English, because my French and Spanish are not good enough for film watching) - but then without subtitles because see above.
Dubbing presents a HUGE wall that prevents me from being immersed in the movie. I simply don't watch them anymore. I love subtitled movies. After the first 5 to 10 minutes, I'm watching the movie, unaware that I dont understand the language. The brain is truly amazing. Because I will not be conscious that I'm reading the subtitles.
One aspect was left out: Making a production which is mediocre or even boring in its original language more interesting through dubbing. The most prominent example that comes to mind is “The Persuaders” (with Tony Curtis and Roger Moore) which was not a big hit in its original English language, but when it was dubbed as “Die 2” in Germany many dialogs were significantly changed in the German language and those changes made the series quite successful in Germany.
Good point! A good voice actor could save a movie too. For instance, the Russian voice of young Darth Vader in Star Wars 3 did it. English speakers complain about the movie, Russian speakers love it.
I love dubbing! I used to enjoy a foreign film with subtitles. Then, Netflix put some out with quality dubbing, and I'm hooked! Dubbing allows you to pay attention to the actors' faced and body language.
This was a really interesting video! I don't agree with everything said but it does a really good job explaining the topic! I remember my german friend visiting and said it was wierd that an actor on tv Han "the wrong voice" and I was like, "but it's HIS voice!" 😂
It is an art in itself., rather comfortable for the viewer. Sometimes, especially in English or French movies, as I speak these languages, I‘d prefer the original version. In languages I do not understand Imost certainly prefer the dubbing. Interestingly enough sometimes thedubbed version is even better than the original. Remember the series „Die Zwei“?Don‘tknow the original title. I watched it in English and in German and in the dubbed version it was so sofunny whereas in English, rather dull. Also think of the shop scene in Notting Hill. So much funnier in the German version. Apart from that you can always watch the films can be watched inthe original in several streaming channels.
a while back i watched anime when it was subtitled, or there was dubbing but done by amateurs/fans of the content. so it was very simple like people just reading text...but beyond that some of the translations while maybe accurate sounded really goofy. when reading subtitles the same words don't seem so dorky because my brain is going through reading and interpreting the meaning and applying it to the characters rather than thinking the characters are saying those exact words which might sound very unheroic/serious if it came directly out of their mouths, but since i'm reading i know they're not saying exactly that and give them the benefit of the doubt 🙂
I live in Sweden and I’m so glad we don’t have this dubbing industry. I hate dubbing with a passion. I rather read subtitles. We do have many animated films dubbed, which to me is dumb and sensible at the same time. Many films are also for kids but often there is no way to get the original version for those of us that are not a kid, and just want the original.
The first time I experienced dubbing was in Germany in, I think, 1962. It was some kind of soap opera on TV. Everybody spoke German, but in a typically American setting. Houses, cars, streets etc were US -style. It was utterly confusing for me. I had never seen something like that. It was quiete bizarre. Since then I cannot stand dubbed films. It is terrible . Language and setting have to fit. Cowboys should not speak German, and SS officers should not speak English or Spanish.
I don't hate dubbing, but rather the american way of mastering. Even though I understand english pretty much perfectly, when there's an explosion or loud music going on, I just can't seem to understand shit.
Hi In Portugal we never dubbed or lipstick movies. We always watched it with subtitles, since the first tv broadcast. Watching original sountrack US or UK movies and series trained the ear for English accents and make it easy understanding the dialogs. Now a days I watch many youtubers in English and I really don't need subtitles anymore. I subscribed two german youtubers Germany Television and Conrad_fahrradladen and it is a pitty that English subtitles aren't available... for those who don't speak German.😢 Hugs carlos m.
This is a fascinating video. Worthy of a doc on the BBC! To be the German voice of Di Caprio is pretty cool :) It's got to be up there with Depp or Pitt, perhaps even Nicholson or De Niro. When we hear Jack say 'here's Johnny", Germans must hear someone equally familiar. However I remember watching an undubbed, unsubtitled Hunt for Red October in Hamburg in the 80s, perhaps naively assuming this was normal in Germany. Considering English is not Germany's first language, in my experience you can get around pretty well with just English. But I did have a rather weird experience once trying to hire a bike in Hannover. I spoke in English and the guys in the shop spoke German, and we managed to understand enough of each other to establish how long I needed the bike! We used to get quite a few foreign language in the UK - mainly German - kids programmes when I was a child in the 70s/80s. I suppose Heidi was the main one, but I'm sure there were others. These were all badly dubbed. I can't say for sure, but I doubt today's kids see non English shows or drama. I suppose that's why, when we get Continental TV shows, they always have subtitles these days. Even so, they are always quite niche/cult viewing. My only problem with subtitles is when you can't read them - e.g. light coloured text on a light background. No one wants them to be obtrusive, but sometimes the producers need to give us some help!
Here in Belgium we never had dubbing, only subtitles. Lucky for us. From when I was a kid, I was unknowingly learning english by reading the subtitles and hearing the english words at the same time. I understand that when you are used to watch dubbed content and you switch to subtitles it can be annoying having to read text on the bottom of the screen, but you start to pick up the english language over time and a quick glance over the subs becomes more than enough to follow. Since DVD and streaming, I switch on the english subs on english movies/series instead of the dutch subs and now I hardly look at them anymore and my english is perfect. Since the internet , english became somewhat of a communications standard. People screaming about the history and loss of cultural identity become a minority as the younger generation now prefers original content and due to DVD's , streaming,... now have the ability to choose their preferred language. In my case here in Belgium we have a similar situation with the french speaking southeren part. They also get dubbed movies/series and their level of english is below par, which is also the reason Belgium scores fairly low in your list . I pity the fools who never heard Arnie, Jason Statham, Jerry Lewis, Bobcat Goldtwait... speak. I wonder how the german version of Billy Bob Thornton in 'Sling Blade' sounds... Or what is left of the way Forrest Gump articulates....
Dub in Germany is very good - I've seen series that I tough were German, to find out later they weren't. I'm not german and in my country all used to be subbed. Naturally subtitles make for a lesser and cheaper solution, it's fine if we're used to a lesser standard.
oh wow i knew about hungarians, frenchmen and italians, but germans too? here in romania dubbing is still seen as something for kids' media obviously the dubbing industry hasn't had the same money as in france for example to get up off the ground, and our language is not as different from english as is the case for the hungarians but germany just hm
Great video👍 As a German, I can see that watching films in the original version is on the rise here in Germany. Around 15% of films in Germany can be watched in either OF (Originalfassung / original version), OmU (Original mit Untertitel / original with German subtitles), or OmeU (original with English subtitles). It's a special option like 3D, so still rare and mostly in smaller cinema rooms. This is the reason I don't go to these. I prefer ultimate quality / sound over the original language.
In the US things are generally dubbed except for arthouse films, where the social class that goes to that tends to be friendly to subtitles and often knows a few languages to middling proficiency.
If you come from the US, they neither sub nor dub. They don’t show. They just remake them. That may not be 100%, but I know of some movie from my country, they bought the rights to and then remade them in English.
@@th5841 That's cool! They value their viewers and have enough resources to implement it. Dubbing is not as bad as silly on-screen text, however it cannot fix cultural differences and translate some weird word play.
@@sekrasoft Dubbing is for kids and people who can’t read. People who are too lazy to read or can’t understand the original language, which mostly is English. When you watch an English speaking movie, texting is just a supplement, not something you need to read nonstop or at all. Another factor is listening to the original language, like French or Italian, gives the viewer an additional color. I am Norwegian, and learned a lot of English through movies. I am used to sub texts and having them dubbed would ruin a part of the experience. For the Americans who don’t even get to watch foreign movies, the sense of the rest of the world just gets even lesser.
@@th5841 I would prefer to watch a movie rather than read any texts. It's not about laziness, it's about immersion. Subtitles are helpful when learning a language. However, subtitles (not dubbing) ruin the experience. Professional voice actors do intonations and emotions well. They study their characters and play as it was their role in a movie (sometimes better than original actors). As a Russian, I grew up in a German-like dubbing culture. Everything always was (and is) in my language, so I am not get used to hear anything else. The land and language situation is American-like: non-Russian speakers are far-far away. So what they call "American ignorance" is more like "an independent country citizen's privilege" for me. A language that I don't understand rather annoys me than gives an additional color.
So Kurzgesagt had to make german version of a channel because of this. That can't be named the same "Kurzgesagt" so you have to add some gibberish like "Dinge Erklärt - Kurzgesagt" to distinct it 😀 I remember already in 90's it was said that Czech dubbing is top (Louis de Funès wanted to meet the czech dubber for how good he was), and so little people here knew english well, so subtitles were not a thing here either, we use to have VHS's with home made voice overs, that was fun. Also Slovaks usually use our dubbing, because it's well made and they can understand everything.
I came in tough with the English language by visiting a German Gymnasium (junior collage) where we got 9 years of English language. I felt myself being prepared for the future. But when I first heard Matthew McConaughey talk in his native English voice I felt pretty happy about German dubbing! His English is so far away from Oxford English.
Re Dubbing. On Prime video you can select the dubbed version in various Languages. Messing about one night I tried some of 'The grand tour' in Japanese. Give it a try, the Japanese vo artist doing Jeremy Clarkson is fantastic & relays his manarisims perfectly & similar with Hammond and May. You will not be disappointed. it's also quite funny
Dubbing is also huge in France (French dubbing is generally fairly good contrarily to what you’re suggesting) and it amuses me that I still feel a bit jarred each time I hear Peter Falk in the original English because unbeknownst to me my brain was totally expecting Serge Sauvion‘s voice.
In Hungary, we have the same type of professional dubbing. For example, Woody Allen once said, that his hungarian voice is better then his own. Hungarian language has such a great vocabulary, that it is easier to find alternative words for their English counterparts. For example, we have like 10 words for the word love, depending on the context. Also, hungarian dub actors are usually professional actors as well, because they're underpaid
This is why we foreigners like to mix up Hungarian paprika spice with a little bit of MSG. The Hungarian paprika just does not taste right to our foreign palates. We also mix a little sparkly water with Hungarian Tokaij wines. Much better! (the producer of the sparkling water is a professional...all good!)
The problem with subtitles is that they often don't follow the spoken word, i.e. they translate something incorrectly. Or they abbreviate something because the actor speaks too fast and too long. Which is just as annoying. Not everyone can speak English well enough to really understand every little word. Here in Germany, an actor often has the same dubbing voice for ‘decades’, which is very similar to the original, e.g. George Clooney. And some actors have such bad pronunciation that you can hardly understand them, Marlon Brando is one of them. (Some actors are probably only successful because their dubbing voice sounds better than the original)
If Hungary has a dubbing industry, then that debunks the theory that dubbing is common in Germany because the large audience makes it economically viable. There are more Dutch speakers than Hungarian speakers. but in The Netherlands everything is subtitled
When I was a child ages ago in Denmark we could watch 4 TV channels - 1 Danish and 3 German. As a result I became fluent in German from a young age before receiving any formal schooling in it. This has given me immense joy having full access to the huge corpus of German cultural content with a lot better understanding of all the many nuances, some of which are impossible to translate into other languages. Eg. I think the genious of Rammsteins art would just be something that sounds cool without understanding the subleties of the lyrics. Imagine if I hadn't had that early exposure to German at the time learning a language is easiest - so much would have been totally lost to me. No Dieter Hallervorden, no Loriot, no Raumpatroulle Orion, no Schimanski (Tatort to you younglings), no Perry Rhodan, no 08/15, no Hauptmann von Köpenick and and and....... I always prefer the original if I can understand it. I think you are doing the German people a great disservice by dubbing instead of subtitling. Don't forget the wise words of Otto Walkas: "Dänen lügen nicht"
I agree, I even prefer it if songs are dubbed (it is a joy officially having the song in both languages), just subtitles feels cheap, specially if the rest of the movie is dubbed. Also I only do subs when I totally don't speak the language, if I watch German or English it is just the language. And I totally don't agree with the hate the dubbing industry gets here, I find it very brilliant to have this option.
Interesting video! You presented, analyzed, and summarized the topic in a clear way! However, there is one point I think you might have missed, or perhaps it got cut-out in post production? 18:04 the list of English proficiency, you suggest Germany got 10th since people are less exposed to English due to dubbing. You failed to mention that Austria also is using the German dubs, yet they took 3rd place, thus beating most countirs using subbing. Whilst dubbing certainly plays a part, it can't be the only explanation or even major reason for the low ranking of Germany
Ich bin Niederländer, and I love the German dubbing. For example I watch anime in only two ways, English sub or German dub. English dub is awful, sorry for my English friends.
Finally, someone who appreciates our dub. The English comments here are so different than from the German video. We Germans love our dubs and we're proud of it. It hurts when people here say that they think German dub is horrible. While they don't even speak our language and not knowing the emotion behind our language. But one thing what I admit is that I watch anime only in Japanese. I can't stand watching anime in German, only the old ones like sailor moon, Inuyasha etc. but nowadays I don't like the dubs when it comes to anime
@@JamesWon6 You are totally correct: English dubbing of Japanese Anime is terrible. But the original Japanese voice acting over the cartoons is terrible too.
In Britain, we have quite a lot of TV programmes and films that are dubbed, but we also have foreign language films and TV programmes that have subtitles. I have no problem with the subtitles for Inspector Montalbano (Italian) or The Bridge (Danish/Swedish). The foreign language adds to the atmosphere of the programme/film. EDIT: I want to add that when I watch a British documentary, it always irritates me when someone is interviewed in their own language, but they overdub what they are saying. I would much prefer subtitles, so I can hear the original language as well, particularly if that language is French or German, both of which I speak a bit. EDIT 2: When you provide the English text in side-titles, please use lower case text, because it's easier to read than block capitals.
One positive dubbing example: "The Persuaders", a 70s British TV series with Tony Curtis and Roger Moore, was a bland, forgettable star vehicle that never really got traction in anglophone countries, though it was relatively popular in the UK. When it was sold (cheaply) to the ZDF, the producer who was tasked with the dubbing essentially threw out the original dialogue and substituted a completely new skript that was much more amusing than the original. It became an instant hit in the anglophone area and led to the absurdity that some other dubbings used the German script, not the original.
That is so strange for a country with such a high degree of English fluency, but at least I now understand why thanks to your video. I'm American and only speak English fluently. But in almost every case I would strongly prefer a foreign film be subtitled. The only situation I prefer a dub is for animated films and shows given that there isn't an actual person speaking or onscreen in the first place.
Sometimes (rarely) the dubbing is great, though. The German version of South Park is usually well-written (even when the original relies on an untranslateable pun or a cultural reference) and has a superb voice cast, making it more lively than the oringinal, in which the main voices are done by the same two people. The German voice of Cartman, Jörg Stuttmann, has become somewhat famous for it.
I stopped watching dubs since the eight grade to train my English. Best decision of my life. English is so useful in my life and I can enjoy English films or foreign films with Eng Subs much more.
Try South Africa, where there are 12 official languages, so dubbing can be a little complex. So the most common thing is to have local productions in at least 4 or 5 languages, with English subtitles on to translate them, and the older version was to have simulcast programming, with the dubbed version broadcast on the TV channel, but the original sound track, generally English, as most of these were old out of syndication US TV series, as they were cheap, though the BBC did get a few series broadcast late at night, like Space 1999, with some rather horrid dubbing to get lip sync sort of working. Meant a lot of Friday nights of me as child staying up to 1AM to see it, as the broadcaster only ever showed these after 11PM, on the single channel. Only later on did there come a second channel, and then a third, all from the state broadcaster. Then an upstart, pay TV, who had 2 audio channels as standard, often stereo, though generally it was mono and mono audio, or a main audio channel with a censored sound track, all the "naughty words" muted out, but available on the alternate channel. to garner audiences they also had the time from 6PM to 8PM unscrambled, with soapies and things like The Simpsons, there as drawcards to bring in subscribers, later on 6PM to 7PM, and with them almost totally moving to satellite only (those analogue transmitters are a massive power hog, 100kW and up, and 60kW for even small area fill transmitters) and now streaming, so no more free to watch. Yes cannot easily watch some series without a clash in memory, from the original dubbing.
@@belstar1128 No, a vast swath do not, even though most official communications is in English and a rolling sequence of 10 other languages. 12th language is sign language, as there is a significant population of deaf people. Yes most people in urban areas have some English proficiency, but English alone is not a high number.
@@SeanBZA ok because it seems really annoying to live in south Africa if you don't know English. but i am just looking at it from the outside by watch south African tv and RUclips videos and footage of the streets .
@@belstar1128 Self selecting, you really got only news shows, and those are in English, but there are plenty of non English channels as well. Try SABC1, where it normally has shows not in English, mostly Khosa and Zulu, with subtitles.
When I came to this country (Nederland) dubbing really helped me to learn Dutch. Back then (1968) there were only two channels in black and white. The Dutch were proud of their sub-titles. These days no one wants dubbing which probably has resulted in the level of English achieved here. I once saw a cowboy film dubbed in German and John Wayne was starring in it. I never laughed so much!
It is a terrible thing. Changing the audio on what is essentially a piece of art. What would Italians say if many of their famous paintings were "re-colorized" to make it more "understandable" when exhibited in a foreign country - or classic Italian operas were translated to a foreign language when performed in a foreign country? BTW I'm Norwegian and grew up with subbs on everything.
To use your comparison. What if those paintings were created with invisible color which is visible only for Italians. And you could train somebody for years to be able to see quarter of it. But Some people will never learn it. Or you can pay to someone who is able to see it to paint it again but using colors they will be able to see immediately.
@jarls5890 I get what you are saying, and I agree to some extent but I feel like you have the assumption that the dubbing process is farely straightforward and ends with removing the impressions that the original actors give to their lines. The voice actors and their directors in the dubbing industry, at least in Italy, spend a lot of time and resources to give weight and maintain the original flaire while trying to translate things that, even if directly translated to Italian, don't make sense, like some jokes or sayings.
I'll give an example, I recently watched La casa de papel, the original language is Spanish and the acting was very good. I started watching the first few with subtitles and then tried switching to see which I preferred. Obviously, this is my personal experience but I very much preferred the dub, I understood better the feelings and emotions of the characters.
People will argue for subs over dubs and original voice is the best but I have yet to meet another person that plays Genshin Impact in its original Chinese dub (even though it's much more pleasant than the English one imo. Paimon...). Let's be real, listening to a language you're completely unfamiliar with is more work than a language you're very familiar with. And watching movies, shows and videos is not just focussed watching with your eyes glued to the screen. Most of the time, we put something on to listen to in the background. This comment section is fluent in English and has the privilege to be able to listen to the majority of Western pop culture with ease. But when a market is able to provide the comfort of an easy-to-listen-to dub, it will provide that to the majority of people who are at the end of the day more comfortable with their mother tongue. America dubs stuff too, they even dubbed the Professor Layton games in AE even though there was a British dub already.
In my country (the Netherlands) Scandinavian films and series are almost always watched with subtitles, even though hardly anyone knows anything about any Scandinavian language. Anime is usually watched in Japanese as well. Reading subtitles is just something you will get used to.
@@pargd6236 look, I'm personally used to it and I know many societies are, but I also believe that if you have the luxury of having it voiced in your mother language (at a certain quality), most people will choose this convenience over reading subs. Most people aren't here for the impeccable acting or original experience, they just want to sit back and be entertained
In the Czech Republic, shows on TV are usually dubbed (lip-synced, like in Germany) but movies in the cinema are typically shown in their original language (mostly English) with Czech subtitles. Only movies for families and kids are also dubbed (lip-synced). In that case, there are typically both versions of the same movie to choose from in the cinema.
German synchrone speakers/dubber are actually so well known that something like the passing of the German voice of Squidward died many people were shocked of his passing and the series has not been the same for most people.
I generally watch subtitled films, but with action movies I prefer to a dubbed version where reading the subtitles distracts me from seeing the action. Musicals however are better in the original language. That said though I would love to hear the German version of ‘Always look on the bright side of life’ from Life of Brian. Maybe it’s on RUclips somewhere.
In Poland we have subtitiles, dubbing and "lektor", which is just a person speaking in Polish over the original sound of a movie. It's interesting to see how it looks in Germany
as a finn I feel like I've learned more english through movies, series and games than school. mostly things made for children are dubbed here. and I've even been trying to get into to the habit of using swedish subtitles to brush up my swedish vocabulary
In Portugal it's the opposite of Germany: for the most part, the Portuguese hate dubbing and prefer subtitles, even if the original language is totally unknown to them, like Chinese. (Dubbing is mostly left for animations, not live-action movies. In recent years, some channels introduced dubbing on teenager-focused live-action series, but those are usually ridiculed by adults.) One of the main reasons for the Portuguese aversion to dubbing is mentioned in your video: voice consistence. It's frustrating when an actor you know (e.g. DiCaprio) suddenly has a different dubbing actor - you recognise the face but the voice does not match previous films. And the reverse is also frustrating: when the same voice actor dubs two or more different actors and you notice it - this time, you recognise the voice but the face does not match previous films. When I was a teenager, watching TV series on the Spanish TV (which I could tune in my town in Portugal). Spain uses dubbing, so, after a few year, I was used to many Spanish voice actors. I remember watching a drama film where one of the main characters was dubbed by the same guy that dubbed the "Murdock" character in the action/comedy series "The A-Team"; no matter how hard I tried, after 5 or 6 years of interiorizing that voice as "Spanish Murdock", I just couldn't take that dramatic character seriously, even despite the fact that the face was different; or maybe also because of that - the disconnect was just off-putting.
I’m a native English speaker, but I always prefer to have subtitles, even if I’m watching content in English. I don’t know why, but I prefer it. Sometimes films have audio mastered with cinema or surround sound systems in mind and I find it difficult to hear on my tv, so subtitles are nice for that too.
That's the exact reason, I most often prefer the german dubs. They just master everything in a more understandable way with a focus on the spoken language.
3:500 German is also my 1st Language and the rock is Always voiced by the same guy and i Always asked me how did it came to be This explains evreything
I think in NL most people don't even need subtitles anymore if not for horrible sound design on the film makers part (SFX in current movies is out of control and half the voices are drown out imo) or some very accented/slang language. Most people understand english so well that if you would just remove the subtitles on most films people will follow 95%+ just fine.
As an Englishman who watches a lot of anime, I've always preferred watching it in Japanese with English subtitles. Though a lot of that (for me) stems from an awful lot of English dubbing when I was growing up (90s-early 00s) being very subpar in the voice actor's acting ability compared to the original Japanese VA's ability. So if your VAs are good at getting the emotion of a scene through I can understand preferring it that way. Though like you elude to in the video it does help when learning another language. I took German as one of my GCSEs and watching German dubbed stuff with or without English subtitles helped a lot. I've even picked up on some Japanese words and phrases now though I never actively tried to learn it like with German.
This is also common in the German anime community, many prefer to watch them in the original version with subtitles. Back when I watched a lot of anime, most people watched them illegally, because there weren't really any streaming services that had a decent anime selection, and DVDs/blurays of the German dubbed versions were (and still are) insanely expensive. We're talking around 40 or even 50 € for a DVD that contains around six episodes, so not even a whole season. Given that many anime fans are young teenagers that don't have a lot of money, illegal streaming websites were often the only way to watch anime, and those sites usually only had subtitles.
I was in Belgium which is a bilingual country. On the Dutch speaking TV channels they showed foreign movies using Dutch subtitles. On the French speaking channels the movies were dubbed into French.
Those subtitles are a BRT/VRT speciality. Being a state run station their language and translations always had to be very correct. But no matter if they are showing an artfilm in some obscure dialect only spoken by one tribe of 60 people, they always find a translator. BTW : Belgium is trilingual. Don't forget our German speaking community.
@@flitsertheoplus, the Dutch subtitles in Belgium are often different from the Dutch subtitles in the Netherlands. Both in word order and in choice of certain words.
@@martijnspruit I have seen that too. Though I think you could switch the translations and they would still be understood, except for a few particular words or expressions.
3 месяца назад
In 1982 I went driving by road from France and got to München and everybody we find through the route said that they speak English "just a little" and it went quite well
Other than the obvious that I’d rather want the sound and visuals to match, to me there are two other problems: - Dubbing when the original movie is in several different languages, I assume this might be handled differently between cases - I think it’s generally valuable to hear different languages and their unique melodies and sounds, I think this is part of why Germans tend to sound so German when speaking other languages
19:50 my dude. that take will age like milk. dropping a video and getting back multiple dubbed variants with whatever tone/emotion/contextual awareness you want is easily achievable today with elevenlab’s dubbing studio for basically anyone. that’s arguably the _easy_ part of generative capabilities. sure, today, you’ll still have lots of things to clean up with post processing but brother, please, you’re about the get blindsided by reality faster than VW in the electric segment. 2030 is going to be rough for the business.
In Latin America including Brazil, dubbing has always been the standard. Only cable Tv introduced subtitles but only for those that could afford it. But ever since the 60's when I was a boy dubbing has been the standard. I always found it discusting...but...that's the way it was.
I watched one episode of an American TV series dubbed in French. There was something odd going on but at first I couldn't place it. Then it dawned upon me : there were no background sounds, no birds, no traffic, no wind, nothing. The original soundtrack had been replaced with a voices only dub.
I lived in Germany as a child from 1968-1970, and one of the things I recall from that period was that almost all of the popular television shows in Germany were American Westerns, and all of them were dubbed in German. These same shows were also popular in Holland (where I lived previously), but were shown in the original English language. Popular English language songs of that period were also 'translated' into German by performers like Peter Alexander. But because songs often have lyrics that rhyme, Alexander had to rewrite the lyrics to make them rhyme in German. Here in the US, German films like 'Das Boot' and 'Nosferatu' were not dubbed into English, but were shown in their original German language version with subtitles, as is typical of all foreign language films shown in the US. The fact that the world's population of English speakers greatly outnumbers German speakers, suggests that the 'economic' reason you mentioned for why Germans rely so much more on dubbing than other European nations do is not a satisfactory one. If that were the reason, all foreign language films shown in the US would be dubbed into English, when in fact none of them are.
In Latin America we have always done the German way. Whether Spanish or Portuguese in Brazil. Everything dubbed and singers singing great Anglo hits in Spanish or Portuguese to rhyme changing the lyrics completely...and obviously, the meaning.
Slovakia and the Czech Republic are exactly the same as Germany when it comes to dubbing. TVs will mostly play dubbed versions. The originals are also popular, but you have to watch them in cinemas. I like it that way because you get both :)
For me, a Dutch guy speaking both German and English, hearing this being professional about a dub is much like raygun saying she's a breakdance master.. I mean seriously couldn't you get someone that actually sounds like Arnold Schwarzenegger that speaks German, like... Eehm... Arnold Schwarzenegger? Also we have 18 million people here, not 10 but I'm pretty sure even if we had 100 million people, why? why would you mess up the original audio?
I heard that Arnold Schwarzenegger offered to dub himself in German but they wouldn't let him because being from Carinthia, he would sound like a peasant to German audiences.
You don't really want to hear Schwarzenegger dub himself. It would be German with Austrian AND heavy American accent. I also do not really like german actors to dub themselves for the german versions. Since they act differently than professional voice actors. They always sound out of place. Like Christoph Waltz or Diane Kruger.
Just because you don't see the action while reading - facial expression etc. are lost. When I want to read, e.g. a book, I switch off any distractions like sound. So why not switch off the tv at all and read a book instead?
Dubbing culture is pretty much the same here in Russia. 100+M people, professional voice actors, everyone except for crazy anime fans are not used to subtitles. 1. They don't need to match actor's voice, it's enough to match actor's appearance. The original voice is something that people would probably never hear so nobody would notice the difference. 2. It's far from messing up. They keep all the sounds replacing just some vocal mess by voices in proper language. It makes movies not only watchable but enjoyable too.
![Twenty One Pilots - The Line (from Arcane Season 2) [Official Audio]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/XCz7WUotXs8/mqdefault.jpg)
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Brit here. I learned much new information from this.
Even so I disagree with many of your conclusions because your analysis is very 'German' and flawed.
You claim that German chauvinism is a major driver of the dubbing industry. But the Germans I know personally aren't chauvinistic at all about the German language and culture.
I know that the video was primarily about the German dubbing, but I think that you should have done a more thorough research before making the it. There is one Eastern-European country which has a dubbing industry at least as good as the German (especially considering that German is more closely related to English -- or to almost any other European language --, which makes it way easier for them to lip-sync). If you have looked at the situation in this "mysterious" country, you'd know that it disproves the theory -- heard in the video -- that a country with a population less than 10 million people is just not large a enough market. This country dubs 100% of the content, all the time. Also the quality of the dubbing went down lately, which could be the result of younger people watching English-language movies in original or that streaming platforms trying to get into the dubbing business but don't know how to do it correctly, or just trying to save money. Either way, this could be a case study for the German market, which could make the voice guy more concerned about the future of the industry. And probably the South America situation would have been interesting for comparison too.
@@WgCdrLudditethat's why you know them. Confirmation bias here
I don't think we've ever had dubbing here in England except for some children's programmes. The one exception is Dario Argento movies from Italy in the 1970s/1980s which have really bad dubbing in English.
The biggest problem is that dubbing is done by simple people without knowledge and skills. Regardless of where the actor stands, I can hear him 10 centimeters from me.
Sometimes such a German voice actor can get a funny side-hustle, so to speak. The voice actor for the James Bond actor Pierce Brosnan for example voiced the welcome message at the Cologne airport with the words
'Wilkommen in Bonn. Köln Bonn.'
As an homage to his voice for Bond, James Bond.
money well spent😄
I lived in Deutschland for 9 months or so, and was surprised how much dubbing changed the very personality of the characters and story. This was most pronounced in the TV show Peter Falk in his show "Columbo". English speakers are in on the joke that Columbo acts like a buffoon to trap his suspects, and his speech patterns are appropriately strange. In the German dubbed versions, he sounds very suave and self assured, which TOTALLY changes tenor of the whole show. From a faux bumbling fool to a self-assured genius detective. When my German friend visited me in NYC, she was so unhappy with the original voice of Peter Falk she couldn't watch the show.
The biggest problem is that dubbing is done by simple people without knowledge and skills. Regardless of where the actor stands, I can hear him 10 centimeters from me.
As a Dutchman (18 milion inhabitants btw) I've always found german dubbing hilarious. It always sounds artificial to me and it adds an ironic tone even when it is not intended. So glad we keep the original language here.
We're just 6.5 million in Denmark but I feel exactly the same as you do.
Maybe bc it's not your language. But as a native speaker we hear our language differently
@@xunvenileNot the reason for me personally. I speak four languages but I dislike dubbed films in general, also when I speak the language being dubbed to. It's not the specific language; it's the fact that the actor simply doesn't fit the voice anymore.
British and while we're english-speaking, I think theres a big cultural opposition to dubbing in anything besides Childrens entertainment here. French and Scandinavian dramas are normally watched subbed and there's a cultural cringe against re-dubbing - American television shows are normally redubbed for a more "cinematic" effect, while British television shows traditionally used source audio. That said, oftentimes it just means we only really watch english-language media. although I think Streaming has changed things.
@@Squaretable22What Scandinavian films or series do people watch in the UK?
I'm Swedish and I wish we imported more non-English content. We occasionally get French and Dutch documentaries which tend to be very interesting and of good quality.
I don't agree that things like feelings, irony etc is lost in subtitles. You can still hear it in the original language, those things tend to not get lost in translation that often.
in italy they matches the "new" voice with the face so well that it fits more than the original one! Watching the same movie or animated series with the original language is often disappointing. Italian dubbers are better than the Italian actors, there is a long and quite disturbing tradition back in the days, when Mussolini prohibited any non-Italian world, name or concept...
I think it's exactly the opposite of the claim in the video! Dubbing always loses a lot of the emotion in the performance. Even if you don't speak the original language and have no clue about the content of what's being said, you can still understand the emotion. However good a dubbing voice actor is, they're never going to be able to do the feeling as good as the original. They have a lot more contraints and a lot less resources.
What do you expect the dubbing guy to say?
100% . agreed!!
Totally agree. Reading the subtitles does not rob us of our ears and eyes, and emotion, irony tends to be very easy to spot. Although I do notice a big difference for films where I don't speak the language at all. I would never contemplate seeing a dubbed film though. Started La Casa de Papel accidentally on english, and half way into first episode it drove me crazy, and I had to find out how to play original version with subtitles instead. I find that I cannot ignore the cultural clash of a wrong language being spoken where it shouldn't.
Typical of WWII films of old were that they all spoke english, and the germans just had a german accent. You can't do sh*t like that anymore - a Quality film should always have its actors using their mother tongue where appropriate -i.e. when communicating among themselves and no foreigners present.
In Croatia, we use subtitles. However, kids channels are dubbed. Same in cinema
in Italy too! It's practically impossible to watch a movie with the original voices. They changes the titles, the names of the products, even "the Simpsons" had the intro butchered because "the" was not supposed to be shown to the Italian public...
In the Netherlands cartoons were subbed, only for me to see cartoons i watched in my youth to be translated now, and it sucks cause we have like a few handful of "voice actors", if you even wanna call them that.
The problem with subtitles is that they often don't follow the spoken word, i.e. they translate something incorrectly.
Or they abbreviate something because the actor speaks too fast and too long. Which is just as annoying.
Didn't expect a Croatian comment to be the top comment
I have a colleague from Bosnia who said that she learned most of her German from cartoons in her childhood. She speaks really well, but her writing is not so good.
I'm from Portugal and there our movies are with the original language and subtitles, the only exception are animation movies or cartoons, those are dubbed in portuguese. But all my life I grew up listening to the original language that now that I'm living in Germany I need to go to the Netherlands every time I want to go to the cinema, luckily I don't live that far from the border. But I simply can't listen to the dub version I always notice that what's being spoken doesn't match the lips. I have to say that watching movies with their original language with subtitles definitely helped with learning English.
thanks for making me feel like i'm not insane
i knew france and italy had strong dubbing cultures, recently found out about hungary, now i find this out about germany, i heard him mentioning 'eastern europe', i was beginning to feel like romania was the odd one out!
here it's also largely associated with children's media, and even then, i think there are still some subbed showings, as the idea is kids can alrewdy wean off dubs, or understand some english
not saying that this is the 'correct' way but i'd be annoyed too if most or especially *all* the options for watching a film were through dubbing
@@aiocafea I believe the only reasonable justification for dubbing is if the target audience is young children who can't read (or read quickly enough) yet.
The German voice actor's claim that subtitles are distracting ("an irritation in the art of film") is true to an extant, but replacing the original voice track causes an even more extreme distraction. After having read comments in the past from Germans about how "our dubs are so good they sound better than the original", I looked up some German dubs and still found it bad. The acoustics don't match because it wasn't recorded on set (even if they try to improve that with editing), the lip movements don't match well enough, the voices don't fit the dubbed actor, especially if you actually know that (usually quite famous) person's real voice, and worst of all - the original acting performance is being discarded in favor of the dubber's.
I'd say acting is more speech than physical. Imagine being told that subtitles don't convey all of the emotions a spoken language has, so when you go to watch an Oscar-winning performance in the cinema instead of being able to hear _that performance_ you hear a replacement.
I always prefer original sound with subtitles.
I'm British but have lived in Hungary (where very few people speak English) and Croatia (where lots of people speak English. Hungary uses dubbing but Croatia uses subtitles.
Poland has the weirdest kind of dubbing. They use one (male) voice to dub EVERY voice in the movie, and not even synchronous with the lip movements. It's called a 'lektor'.
garage54 comes to mind… One time the lektor spoke in a very high pitch voice to dub a woman.
Yes, the idea of the lektor is you follow the original dialogue, which you can still hear, while the narration tells you what they're saying. That's why it's neutral and emotionless. (For the uninitiated, imagine "Don't kill me. No. It's too late. Please don't. Now you will pay. No." in a single newsreader voice.) People tell me they are used to it, but it drives me nuts.
That is horrible to watch/hear.
It's simply subtitles in the audio form
Poland deserves a better dubbing
As a germanspeaking Swiss I grew up with the German dubs.
I personally love subtitles and I even sometimes put them on when I watch things in German 😂
Generally:
I tend to watch it in the original language with subtitles when I speak or learn a language or when a language is similar to a language I know (the language of the subtitles is either German, English or the language of the movie itself). For other languages I often tend to prefer a dub.
I kinda like subs to help me understand what is being said, but I don‘t really like it when the subs are the only option to understand what is being said (I hope it‘s understandable what I mean with that).
In the Czech republic are almost all movies and series fully dubbed. It is almost impossible to see movie with subtitles on any major tv channel. Also text is adjusted to be in sync with lip movement. It could be applied to streaming services as well, what I could see from statistics, dubbed movie has much wide audience than only with subtitles. But how such is possible, that only 11million people speaks Czech and still dubbing seems to be economically viable.
I don't know, I am German myself and rather read subtitles than listen to dubbing
mein man 🤝
Same here. Especially newer dubbing sound terrible to me.
Seems to me that in the olden days, especially before private TV spread, dubbing was done with much more care and effort.
I don't know why this guy thinks he speaks for all Germany
@@ArythNeon fr
It's a similar situation here in Quebec. Since there's a strong french speaking population here, there's a booming film, tv and music industry that's all in french. Now, we also like American and European pop culture so foreign language films and tv shows get dubbed. However, there are lot's of anglophones in the province, so the english versions are also readily available. Bilingual people like me will rather watch the original versions but if I have to, I find it much less annoying to watch a dubbed version rather than read a movie I can still fully understand!!
Also movies dubbed in french are dubbed here. In France they do their own, so you might end up with an American movie with two different titles and different dialogues in french. Our dubs are mostly with an international french accent (leaning towards proper French accent) but in some cases the dubbing is done in Québécois.
Being of German origin, I find the topic and the similarities fascinating!!
I confirm that dubbing in France and Quebec are almost always done separately. This may sound weird because even if there are differences in vocabulary and accent between what we call metropolitan French and Quebec French, Quebec dubbing is almost always done using the neutral international French which is indistinguishable from the French we speak in Europe. So why doing different versions as there is no real difference you can ear ? The reason is mainly that distribution in North America and Europe are two separated markets, handled generally by different companies. Even if a French version already exists from Quebec doesn’t mean that it can be freely used by a French distributor and it’s generally economically cheaper to make a new one at home rather than buying the rights to exploit the existing one. There are also cultural reasons when it comes to adapting the original dialogues, where cultural references may differ between the American continent and Europe, plus Quebec has much stricter policies towards the use of anglicisms in French because of its geopolitical situation.
As a matter of fact, Belgium has also its own dubbing industry for French but in this case there are much fewer overlapping dubbed French versions for the same film or tv series as distribution is often made by the same companies.
In The Netherlands we use subtitles except for programs for (small) children.
I grew up very close to the German border and had accsess to German television as well. I remember they would also vocaly ‘explain’ what was going on in silent films like Charlie Chaplin, L&H (Dick und Doof) and the Pink Panther (Der Rosarote Panther).
It's a wonderful thing if you're trying to learn German. Any tv show adults or kids will have German dubbing. I'm learning Dutch rn and I'm really frustrated that I can't find dubs of any of the shows I want to watch. Not even teen shows!! It just makes it difficult when all I have available is kids movies and tv.
İ've actually had a different experience. İt's true that Germany does an excellent job at dubbing, but still you don't learn a language easily by that because the dubbing is simply different from the way people in real life speak.
The best way to learn German is İMO, instead of watching dubbed versions, to watch a film which is originally in German, using subtitles, preferably German ones.
@@xolang I'm a German native speaker and I completely agree. German dubs are really weird; the speaking cadence is completely off and nobody talks like that in real life.
Many Hollywood films (Dracula for example) were made in multiple languages. Czech films were as well. There is a good Norwegian series Netflix(?) series called Northmen which is re-filmed in English on the spot.
I lived in germany as a child and the problem was that some voice actor are used for more than one film. I ran to the TV if I thought heard Terrance Hill and it was some boring movie instead.
Also some voice actors demand more money, get sick or die. So they are replaced with another voice so suddenly the character sound different.
Having said that even if I am danish if I watch a movie from spain I switch to german audio. e.g. 'La Casa de Papel I watched in german on Netflix.
In denmark we only use voice actors for cartoons or some chrildrens moves.
This was entertaining and educating! Answered a lot of questions and gave me new perspective. Great video!
Not pro or against dubbing: I personally like original language especially in anime, with the exception of Dragon Ball Z: Goku’s original voice is horrifying! 😅
I’m from Finland and I learned English and Swedish mostly from TV, movies, computer and video games, books and music. I started learning Swedish at school when I was nine and English when I was eleven because my English was so good I spoke it better than most 18 year olds. Granted, I could read perfectly when I was five or six years old so subtitles weren’t a problem.
It’s basically movies and TV-shows aimed at children or the whole family that are dubbed, but movie theatres show both dubbed and subbed versions of the same movie. There’s no-one in Finland who could do better than insult original voices like Robin Williams in Aladdin or Eddie Murphy in Shrek, but those guys are exceptions and geniuses. Still, I’m glad that there are dubbed versions for people who need them.
I’m from Austria. So we get all the movies and TV shows here with the dubbing from Germany. I despise this. There are just things that get lost in translation and in general even if the translation works the original is just better.
The people dubbing those movies might be "professionally trained", but I would not consider many of them voice actors. The acting just isn’t as good as it is in the original version.
Anyways all the points I made set aside. By far the worst part about Germany’s dubbing is that it’s quite impossible to get a hold of the original versions of the film. If you don’t live in a major city then good luck trying to find a cinema that plays movies in their original language.
Furthermore sometimes they translate not just the dialogue, but also text in the movie and the title and so it I wanted to get a blu ray of the movie with the unaltered, original version, I’d have to import it.
What baffles me even more is, that every German I’ve ever argued with loves the German versions much more, even if the understand English well. They just think the German version is undeniably better. I will never be able to grasp why they believe this.
i'd like to have english movies with english subtitle, so i can grow accustomed to the mumbling.
so no easy or "for deaf" english. sometimes it's just the dialect that's hard to understand , but you know all the words.
(this excludes the BS like cockney rhyming slang and the Verlan of the french.)
I think it’s interesting that the voice actor claims that feelings are lost with subtitles. I totally agree with him on subtitles moving your gaze away from the action and that is why many people here in Sweden just don’t read them. On streaming service you can actually turn the off all together.
On the other hand. When I was a child, cartoons got dubbed while live action was subtitled, even when aimed at kids. Nowadays even live action are dubbed, both on tv and in cinemas.
However. My children aren’t watching that. They mostly watch stuff on RUclips where everything is in English. My ten year old is practically fluent in English and the seven year old isn’t far behind. Teachers in Sweden are actually somewhat complaining about their pupils knowing more English than they are tasked to teach.
So with that in mind. I don’t think that feelings, humour nor irony is getting lost on us. :)
The biggest problem is that dubbing is done by simple people without knowledge and skills. Regardless of where the actor stands, I can hear him 10 centimeters from me.
Back in the 80s I used to visit a Dutch friend living in Amsterdam. He explained that one of the reasons that the Dutch spoke such good English was that they were able to pick up BBC television, which with the quality of its programmes was very popular. That signal didn't reach as far as Germany, but I don't know if it would have made any difference even if it had.
With so many blockbusters being made in English, maybe it's not surprising that those are dubbed, but here in London all foreign language films are subtitled because they appeal to a smaller demographic. I prefer it that way because I want an actor's complete performance and cadence and inflections can be detected even when in a foreign language. Surely German cinema goers can never truly assess an Oscar winning performance when so much of it is lost.
BTW are German audiences ever offered the choice of subtitles for any of these films?
It’s funny. I’m dutch and as a kid I used to watch popular movies on german television because they were broadcasted much earlier there than on dutch television. I learned german that way
I'm in the UK, and I used to watch "Nachbarn" - the Aussie soap "Neighbours", dubbed into German - on a satellite channel called Sat.1 in the late 80s/early 90s. It helped with my GCSE in German. 😊
Conversely, we got the German soap opera, "Die Schwarzwaldklinik", here in Britain on Channel 4 dubbed into English, and called "The Black Forest Clinic". 🙂
sat einz.. ye.. and RTL..
That is a correct translation but transposing such a very German setting to the UK sounds as transposing Fawlty Towers to Germany (they probably did that).
@@flitsertheoI just looked it up out of curiosity. There are three dubbed versions of fawlty towers in German.
One was made 1987 by the GDR Televisions.
One was made 1990 by RTL.
One was made 1996 by SAT1.
Interestingly the first airing of the show on German TV was 1978 on ARD in English with German subtitles (quite unusual for German TV)
Contrary to what the video stated, France has also a very prominent dubbing industry which is extremely professional and specialized. I think that France, Spain and Italy level of precision and quality in the way they do dubbing are identical and no different from Germany. You can add Canadian Quebec that does their own French version (mostly because it’s a separate market from Europe).
In France also you will get discussions between people who prefer subtitles over dubbing and vice-versa. There’s no definite answer because both appeal to very different audiences. Luckily, we live in an era where that doesn’t really matter because now you can choose whatever you like, nobody’s forcing you to watch subtitles if you don’t want to or listening to an awkward dubbed version if you don’t like it.
The dubbing scene in France have iconic actors and actresses. There are French voices that you recognize immediately and associate with foreign actors like Bruce Willis, Sylvester Stallone, Harrison Ford, Robert De Niro, etc. As in Germany, it’s not systematic to use always the same actor, even if they generally try to keep it consistent. But it also depends on other factors like the availability of the voice actor, the terms of the contract or artistic direction requirements.
When it comes to voice dubbing for animated movies like Pixar or Dreamworks or even some Animes, there has been a big marketing tendency to pick local French celebrities over dubbing professionals to be able to use their names for promoting the movie. The daughter of a Friend used to dub in French the main character of an animated series for kids (as a matter of fact, it was a character of German origins : Die Biene Maja (Maya l’abeille in French - Maya the bee in English). She did the voice for all the episodes of the TV series but when they made an animated movie released in theaters, the production picked a popular female French singer to dub Maya in the movie instead of her so they could promote it with a celebrity cast.
The problem with what has been called « star talent » dubbing is that even if you are a talented famous actor or actress, that doesn’t mean that you can do dubbing well… it’s a totally different type of performance from playing in front of the camera. And many celebrity cast are not even actors in the first place. So the results are not always good. But they are not always bad either, there have been pleasant surprises as well as total disasters.
France is mentioned in the first 2 minutes of the video. To be precise, at 1:43.
@@MatthiasSchwarzerEnglishyes, as are also Spain and Italy, but you were giving the impression that Germans are much more obsessed with having dubs in their own language and try to make them as perfect as possible in Europe. But I honestly see no difference with the state of dubbing in France, and from what I can tell it seems also the case in Italy and Spain. So you seem to think that Germany is a cultural exception in that domain, but it’s not, it’s exactly the same thing for us.
For France there’s a RUclips channel called MisterFox that talks almost exclusively about dubbing : techniques, economy, companies, writers, behind the scenes, actors interviews, whereabouts, etc. He even makes comparisons between different dubbing versions of the same movie (sometimes you can get a re-dub on DVD or Blu-ray versions totally different from the theatrical release, for artistic, technical, economic or legal reasons). It’s very interesting.
The big difference between France and Germany in cinema is that in France all Hollywood movies are released both dubbed ánd VO (version originale = subtitled). Theres a choice in most cases. In Germany you have to search for the VO version. On tv in France, most imported series are dubbed of course. And interviews on the news with English speakers are dubbed while you can hear the English underneath. That is really annoying.
@@martijnspruit in France too some English or American Shows are dubbed in French over the English speakers. Top Gear for example, but also most reality shows like Bear Grylls, Pawn Stars or American cop shows.
We’ve talked a lot about English movies or shows, but French dubbing is also done for any foreign language : Japanese, Italian, Spanish, etc. And of course German 😉
The only times foreign languages are not dubbed in French is when they don’t have the budget for it.
@@martijnspruit The movies released in VO is actually quite recent, and quite Parisian, because the market is quite different there.
In Paris, lots of people come from all over the world and Parisian have high education, so there is an audience for movies in English, that wouldn't be here for translated movies. In the rest of the country, the VO version is usually harder to find.
If you check a large movie theater brand (like UGC), you'll find that 65% of US blockbusters in the Parisian area are shown in VO, while in other large cities, 75% of the same movie sessions are translated in French.
This is why i love ❤️ your channel!🇺🇸
Your content is so unique from other countries and other people.Thank you!!😊
Excelente video, you showed that in 1922 only 12% of Italians spoke Italian, but you overlooked that Mussolini wanted a uniform Italian speaking country. The same in Spain as Franco wanted one single country using one single language, and dubbing was a strategic decision to protect.
Dubbing in German is very very good 👍👍, I see sometimes things dubbed in Brazilian Portuguese and you want to cry of despair how bad it is.
As a 42 years old native German that never lived anywhere but Germany (and as such only learned English from the 5th grade on):
Our dubs are usually AIMING to be good, but if you ask me, often suffer a lot from the same issue that plagues original German productions: The primarily theatrical training most domestic (voice) actors get, which very often leads to a "projecting" voicing instead of a natural one. Clean enunciation and high yet "flat" loudness are needed there, but TV / movies are an entirely different beast with different requirements.
There are however a few shows where I genuinely think that the German dub has done better than the original. Alf for example was not quite the hit in the US, but Tommi Pieper's dub made ALL the difference here, making it a staple show for kids my age. Ice Age also was funnier and more "natural" sounding to me in the dubbed version, which especially for comedic material is extreeeemely rare and hard to pull off imho. Another GREAT dub is Sponge Bob! What a perfectly fitting voice, extremely well done!
And then there are shows like House MD. Started watching in English, and tried one dubbed episode for fun. EW! Could not bare it for more than a few minutes. Completely wrong! A special case, for me personally, is Star Trek TNG. My all time favourite nostalgic show I grew up with, and I've seen about two runs of it dubbed. Which made it the "natural default" to my ears. I've since watched it many more times in English, making that the new default - but here I can actually go back to the dub and not find it toooo odd. Aside from the lip sync issue. And Picard's changing voice at some point.
Overall, to be honest, I think Germany should be past the point of needing dubs. Kids nowadays learn English from 1st grade, making them near fluent by 5th or so. Dub shows aimed at these young ages for all I care, but I really think we should "downgrade" to subtitles at most by now. I'm very sorry to all the great people in this industry that try the best that is often possible, but I really do think it should be phased out.
And don't forget all the Bud Spencer and Terence Hill movies which german translations were spectacular
I discovered this about 20 years ago when I spent a couple of months in Amsterdam and most of the TV shows were subtitled if not produced natively in Dutch. I went to Vienna for a few days and the TV shows were all dubbed (including the wonderful title "Die Nanny"). I actually found watching English language TV with Dutch subtitles really helped me pick up Dutch a lot faster than I expected (I already had a basic level of German to help).
First comment! I love your videos! thank you for everything
Great video on a subject I'm genuinely interested in. I onve was in Germany for a 4 day course. On one of the evenings I wanted to go to the cinema, turned out everything was dubbed, so I had to make a different plan. I'm Dutch, but don't speak German well. Would have watched an English movie without the need for subtitles.
Btw, I would not mind a bit higher pace video without the breaks with stock footage.
Cheers!
dude i love short documentaries of yours explaining stuff, they're so good, keep it up
ah yes.. dubbing.. my arch nemesis..
I like it when the background noises during conversations are usually quieter in the German dubbing. Especially in film scenes in public, e.g. in a park, when it's not possible to have a microphone near the actors, the dialogue often mixes with the background noise. I also have the same problem filtering out individual conversations in noisy places. I'm thinking of film scenes that take place in clubs. In the German dubbing, the volume level of the music is lowered and the actors' dialogue is superimposed over it.
But there are also films like the Lord of the Rings trilogy that I can enjoy in English. I now even find it strange to watch the German version.
I totally agree - it's much easier to immerse myself in a film with dubbing instead of jumping between reading and watching - the latter causes to distance myself from it which diminishes the enjoyment of the film. If I really like a film, I use to watch it a second time in the original version (if it is in English, because my French and Spanish are not good enough for film watching) - but then without subtitles because see above.
Dubbing presents a HUGE wall that prevents me from being immersed in the movie.
I simply don't watch them anymore.
I love subtitled movies. After the first 5 to 10 minutes, I'm watching the movie, unaware that I dont understand the language. The brain is truly amazing. Because I will not be conscious that I'm reading the subtitles.
One aspect was left out: Making a production which is mediocre or even boring in its original language more interesting through dubbing. The most prominent example that comes to mind is “The Persuaders” (with Tony Curtis and Roger Moore) which was not a big hit in its original English language, but when it was dubbed as “Die 2” in Germany many dialogs were significantly changed in the German language and those changes made the series quite successful in Germany.
Dubbing someone elses artwork is already rude AF in itself, changing the dialog and meaning of someone elses artwork is pure sacrilegious.
Good point! A good voice actor could save a movie too.
For instance, the Russian voice of young Darth Vader in Star Wars 3 did it. English speakers complain about the movie, Russian speakers love it.
@@gonnaga9302 Maybe. But what if the result is better ?
@@reinhard8053 still rude as fuck, since it's someone elses work.
Make your own.
@@gonnaga9302 But it is part of the business. If you want to earn money in some countries you need dubbing or nobody will watch the film.
I grew up watch the A Team in both English on Dutch TV and German on German TV. The A Team in German is sometimes hilarious.
I love dubbing! I used to enjoy a foreign film with subtitles. Then, Netflix put some out with quality dubbing, and I'm hooked! Dubbing allows you to pay attention to the actors' faced and body language.
This was a really interesting video! I don't agree with everything said but it does a really good job explaining the topic! I remember my german friend visiting and said it was wierd that an actor on tv Han "the wrong voice" and I was like, "but it's HIS voice!" 😂
It is an art in itself., rather comfortable for the viewer. Sometimes, especially in English or French movies, as I speak these languages, I‘d prefer the original version. In languages I do not understand Imost certainly prefer the dubbing. Interestingly enough sometimes thedubbed version is even better than the original. Remember the series „Die Zwei“?Don‘tknow the original title. I watched it in English and in German and in the dubbed version it was so sofunny whereas in English, rather dull. Also think of the shop scene in Notting Hill. So much funnier in the German version. Apart from that you can always watch the films can be watched inthe original in several streaming channels.
Now it starts making sense why a lot is dubbed in Japan too.
Dubbing a western language into Japanese (and vice versa) with lip-sync must be tough though.
a while back i watched anime when it was subtitled, or there was dubbing but done by amateurs/fans of the content. so it was very simple like people just reading text...but beyond that some of the translations while maybe accurate sounded really goofy. when reading subtitles the same words don't seem so dorky because my brain is going through reading and interpreting the meaning and applying it to the characters rather than thinking the characters are saying those exact words which might sound very unheroic/serious if it came directly out of their mouths, but since i'm reading i know they're not saying exactly that and give them the benefit of the doubt 🙂
I live in Sweden and I’m so glad we don’t have this dubbing industry. I hate dubbing with a passion. I rather read subtitles.
We do have many animated films dubbed, which to me is dumb and sensible at the same time. Many films are also for kids but often there is no way to get the original version for those of us that are not a kid, and just want the original.
The first time I experienced dubbing was in Germany in, I think, 1962. It was some kind of soap opera on TV. Everybody spoke German, but in a typically American setting. Houses, cars, streets etc were US -style. It was utterly confusing for me. I had never seen something like that. It was quiete bizarre. Since then I cannot stand dubbed films. It is terrible . Language and setting have to fit. Cowboys should not speak German, and SS officers should not speak English or Spanish.
I don't hate dubbing, but rather the american way of mastering. Even though I understand english pretty much perfectly, when there's an explosion or loud music going on, I just can't seem to understand shit.
Hi
In Portugal we never dubbed or lipstick movies. We always watched it with subtitles, since the first tv broadcast.
Watching original sountrack US or UK movies and series trained the ear for English accents and make it easy understanding the dialogs.
Now a days I watch many youtubers in English and I really don't need subtitles anymore.
I subscribed two german youtubers Germany Television and Conrad_fahrradladen
and it is a pitty that English subtitles aren't available... for those who don't speak German.😢
Hugs carlos m.
This is a fascinating video. Worthy of a doc on the BBC!
To be the German voice of Di Caprio is pretty cool :) It's got to be up there with Depp or Pitt, perhaps even Nicholson or De Niro. When we hear Jack say 'here's Johnny", Germans must hear someone equally familiar. However I remember watching an undubbed, unsubtitled Hunt for Red October in Hamburg in the 80s, perhaps naively assuming this was normal in Germany.
Considering English is not Germany's first language, in my experience you can get around pretty well with just English. But I did have a rather weird experience once trying to hire a bike in Hannover. I spoke in English and the guys in the shop spoke German, and we managed to understand enough of each other to establish how long I needed the bike!
We used to get quite a few foreign language in the UK - mainly German - kids programmes when I was a child in the 70s/80s. I suppose Heidi was the main one, but I'm sure there were others. These were all badly dubbed. I can't say for sure, but I doubt today's kids see non English shows or drama.
I suppose that's why, when we get Continental TV shows, they always have subtitles these days. Even so, they are always quite niche/cult viewing. My only problem with subtitles is when you can't read them - e.g. light coloured text on a light background. No one wants them to be obtrusive, but sometimes the producers need to give us some help!
Here in Belgium we never had dubbing, only subtitles. Lucky for us. From when I was a kid, I was unknowingly learning english by reading the subtitles and hearing the english words at the same time. I understand that when you are used to watch dubbed content and you switch to subtitles it can be annoying having to read text on the bottom of the screen, but you start to pick up the english language over time and a quick glance over the subs becomes more than enough to follow.
Since DVD and streaming, I switch on the english subs on english movies/series instead of the dutch subs and now I hardly look at them anymore and my english is perfect.
Since the internet , english became somewhat of a communications standard. People screaming about the history and loss of cultural identity become a minority as the younger generation now prefers original content and due to DVD's , streaming,... now have the ability to choose their preferred language.
In my case here in Belgium we have a similar situation with the french speaking southeren part. They also get dubbed movies/series and their level of english is below par, which is also the reason Belgium scores fairly low in your list .
I pity the fools who never heard Arnie, Jason Statham, Jerry Lewis, Bobcat Goldtwait... speak. I wonder how the german version of Billy Bob Thornton in 'Sling Blade' sounds... Or what is left of the way Forrest Gump articulates....
Dub in Germany is very good - I've seen series that I tough were German, to find out later they weren't. I'm not german and in my country all used to be subbed. Naturally subtitles make for a lesser and cheaper solution, it's fine if we're used to a lesser standard.
oh wow i knew about hungarians, frenchmen and italians, but germans too?
here in romania dubbing is still seen as something for kids' media
obviously the dubbing industry hasn't had the same money as in france for example to get up off the ground, and our language is not as different from english as is the case for the hungarians
but germany just hm
Great video👍
As a German, I can see that watching films in the original version is on the rise here in Germany.
Around 15% of films in Germany can be watched in either OF (Originalfassung / original version), OmU (Original mit Untertitel / original with German subtitles), or OmeU (original with English subtitles).
It's a special option like 3D, so still rare and mostly in smaller cinema rooms. This is the reason I don't go to these. I prefer ultimate quality / sound over the original language.
In the US things are generally dubbed except for arthouse films, where the social class that goes to that tends to be friendly to subtitles and often knows a few languages to middling proficiency.
Great Video, This is so fascinating. When you come from an english speaking country you never really think about this subject.
If you come from the US, they neither sub nor dub. They don’t show. They just remake them.
That may not be 100%, but I know of some movie from my country, they bought the rights to and then remade them in English.
@@th5841 That's cool! They value their viewers and have enough resources to implement it.
Dubbing is not as bad as silly on-screen text, however it cannot fix cultural differences and translate some weird word play.
@@sekrasoft Dubbing is for kids and people who can’t read. People who are too lazy to read or can’t understand the original language, which mostly is English.
When you watch an English speaking movie, texting is just a supplement, not something you need to read nonstop or at all.
Another factor is listening to the original language, like French or Italian, gives the viewer an additional color.
I am Norwegian, and learned a lot of English through movies. I am used to sub texts and having them dubbed would ruin a part of the experience.
For the Americans who don’t even get to watch foreign movies, the sense of the rest of the world just gets even lesser.
@@th5841 I would prefer to watch a movie rather than read any texts. It's not about laziness, it's about immersion.
Subtitles are helpful when learning a language. However, subtitles (not dubbing) ruin the experience. Professional voice actors do intonations and emotions well. They study their characters and play as it was their role in a movie (sometimes better than original actors).
As a Russian, I grew up in a German-like dubbing culture. Everything always was (and is) in my language, so I am not get used to hear anything else. The land and language situation is American-like: non-Russian speakers are far-far away. So what they call "American ignorance" is more like "an independent country citizen's privilege" for me. A language that I don't understand rather annoys me than gives an additional color.
Not sure what surprises me more, that I clicked a video on this subject or that the road I drive to work is in your intro.
So Kurzgesagt had to make german version of a channel because of this. That can't be named the same "Kurzgesagt" so you have to add some gibberish like "Dinge Erklärt - Kurzgesagt" to distinct it 😀
I remember already in 90's it was said that Czech dubbing is top (Louis de Funès wanted to meet the czech dubber for how good he was), and so little people here knew english well, so subtitles were not a thing here either, we use to have VHS's with home made voice overs, that was fun. Also Slovaks usually use our dubbing, because it's well made and they can understand everything.
I came in tough with the English language by visiting a German Gymnasium (junior collage) where we got 9 years of English language. I felt myself being prepared for the future. But when I first heard Matthew McConaughey talk in his native English voice I felt pretty happy about German dubbing! His English is so far away from Oxford English.
Re Dubbing. On Prime video you can select the dubbed version in various Languages. Messing about one night I tried some of 'The grand tour' in Japanese. Give it a try, the Japanese vo artist doing Jeremy Clarkson is fantastic & relays his manarisims perfectly & similar with Hammond and May. You will not be disappointed. it's also quite funny
Dubbing is also huge in France (French dubbing is generally fairly good contrarily to what you’re suggesting) and it amuses me that I still feel a bit jarred each time I hear Peter Falk in the original English because unbeknownst to me my brain was totally expecting Serge Sauvion‘s voice.
In Hungary, we have the same type of professional dubbing. For example, Woody Allen once said, that his hungarian voice is better then his own. Hungarian language has such a great vocabulary, that it is easier to find alternative words for their English counterparts. For example, we have like 10 words for the word love, depending on the context. Also, hungarian dub actors are usually professional actors as well, because they're underpaid
This is why we foreigners like to mix up Hungarian paprika spice with a little bit of MSG. The Hungarian paprika just does not taste right to our foreign palates.
We also mix a little sparkly water with Hungarian Tokaij wines. Much better! (the producer of the sparkling water is a professional...all good!)
The problem with subtitles is that they often don't follow the spoken word, i.e. they translate something incorrectly.
Or they abbreviate something because the actor speaks too fast and too long. Which is just as annoying.
Not everyone can speak English well enough to really understand every little word.
Here in Germany, an actor often has the same dubbing voice for ‘decades’, which is very similar to the original, e.g. George Clooney.
And some actors have such bad pronunciation that you can hardly understand them, Marlon Brando is one of them.
(Some actors are probably only successful because their dubbing voice sounds better than the original)
Same thing in Czechia except they are not severely underpaid
Same professional approach in Russia.
If Hungary has a dubbing industry, then that debunks the theory that dubbing is common in Germany because the large audience makes it economically viable. There are more Dutch speakers than Hungarian speakers. but in The Netherlands everything is subtitled
Love your content. And you're totally right, dubbing is huge here in Germany. I’m not a fan either.
When I was a child ages ago in Denmark we could watch 4 TV channels - 1 Danish and 3 German.
As a result I became fluent in German from a young age before receiving any formal schooling in it.
This has given me immense joy having full access to the huge corpus of German cultural content with a lot better understanding of all the many nuances, some of which are impossible to translate into other languages. Eg. I think the genious of Rammsteins art would just be something that sounds cool without understanding the subleties of the lyrics.
Imagine if I hadn't had that early exposure to German at the time learning a language is easiest - so much would have been totally lost to me. No Dieter Hallervorden, no Loriot, no Raumpatroulle Orion, no Schimanski (Tatort to you younglings), no Perry Rhodan, no 08/15, no Hauptmann von Köpenick and and and.......
I always prefer the original if I can understand it.
I think you are doing the German people a great disservice by dubbing instead of subtitling.
Don't forget the wise words of Otto Walkas: "Dänen lügen nicht"
I agree, I even prefer it if songs are dubbed (it is a joy officially having the song in both languages), just subtitles feels cheap, specially if the rest of the movie is dubbed.
Also I only do subs when I totally don't speak the language, if I watch German or English it is just the language. And I totally don't agree with the hate the dubbing industry gets here, I find it very brilliant to have this option.
Interesting video! You presented, analyzed, and summarized the topic in a clear way!
However, there is one point I think you might have missed, or perhaps it got cut-out in post production?
18:04 the list of English proficiency, you suggest Germany got 10th since people are less exposed to English due to dubbing. You failed to mention that Austria also is using the German dubs, yet they took 3rd place, thus beating most countirs using subbing.
Whilst dubbing certainly plays a part, it can't be the only explanation or even major reason for the low ranking of Germany
Ich bin Niederländer, and I love the German dubbing. For example I watch anime in only two ways, English sub or German dub. English dub is awful, sorry for my English friends.
likewise Germans switch to Nederlands in a horror movie….
Finally, someone who appreciates our dub. The English comments here are so different than from the German video. We Germans love our dubs and we're proud of it. It hurts when people here say that they think German dub is horrible. While they don't even speak our language and not knowing the emotion behind our language. But one thing what I admit is that I watch anime only in Japanese. I can't stand watching anime in German, only the old ones like sailor moon, Inuyasha etc. but nowadays I don't like the dubs when it comes to anime
@@JamesWon6 You are totally correct: English dubbing of Japanese Anime is terrible. But the original Japanese voice acting over the cartoons is terrible too.
In Britain, we have quite a lot of TV programmes and films that are dubbed, but we also have foreign language films and TV programmes that have subtitles. I have no problem with the subtitles for Inspector Montalbano (Italian) or The Bridge (Danish/Swedish). The foreign language adds to the atmosphere of the programme/film.
EDIT: I want to add that when I watch a British documentary, it always irritates me when someone is interviewed in their own language, but they overdub what they are saying. I would much prefer subtitles, so I can hear the original language as well, particularly if that language is French or German, both of which I speak a bit.
EDIT 2: When you provide the English text in side-titles, please use lower case text, because it's easier to read than block capitals.
One positive dubbing example: "The Persuaders", a 70s British TV series with Tony Curtis and Roger Moore, was a bland, forgettable star vehicle that never really got traction in anglophone countries, though it was relatively popular in the UK. When it was sold (cheaply) to the ZDF, the producer who was tasked with the dubbing essentially threw out the original dialogue and substituted a completely new skript that was much more amusing than the original. It became an instant hit in the anglophone area and led to the absurdity that some other dubbings used the German script, not the original.
That is so strange for a country with such a high degree of English fluency, but at least I now understand why thanks to your video. I'm American and only speak English fluently. But in almost every case I would strongly prefer a foreign film be subtitled. The only situation I prefer a dub is for animated films and shows given that there isn't an actual person speaking or onscreen in the first place.
Sometimes (rarely) the dubbing is great, though. The German version of South Park is usually well-written (even when the original relies on an untranslateable pun or a cultural reference) and has a superb voice cast, making it more lively than the oringinal, in which the main voices are done by the same two people. The German voice of Cartman, Jörg Stuttmann, has become somewhat famous for it.
I stopped watching dubs since the eight grade to train my English. Best decision of my life. English is so useful in my life and I can enjoy English films or foreign films with Eng Subs much more.
Great, insightful video.
Aside from lip syncing the sound channels are fucked up where voices are too quiet or too loud compared to the background which is annoying af
Try South Africa, where there are 12 official languages, so dubbing can be a little complex. So the most common thing is to have local productions in at least 4 or 5 languages, with English subtitles on to translate them, and the older version was to have simulcast programming, with the dubbed version broadcast on the TV channel, but the original sound track, generally English, as most of these were old out of syndication US TV series, as they were cheap, though the BBC did get a few series broadcast late at night, like Space 1999, with some rather horrid dubbing to get lip sync sort of working. Meant a lot of Friday nights of me as child staying up to 1AM to see it, as the broadcaster only ever showed these after 11PM, on the single channel.
Only later on did there come a second channel, and then a third, all from the state broadcaster. Then an upstart, pay TV, who had 2 audio channels as standard, often stereo, though generally it was mono and mono audio, or a main audio channel with a censored sound track, all the "naughty words" muted out, but available on the alternate channel. to garner audiences they also had the time from 6PM to 8PM unscrambled, with soapies and things like The Simpsons, there as drawcards to bring in subscribers, later on 6PM to 7PM, and with them almost totally moving to satellite only (those analogue transmitters are a massive power hog, 100kW and up, and 60kW for even small area fill transmitters) and now streaming, so no more free to watch.
Yes cannot easily watch some series without a clash in memory, from the original dubbing.
doesn't literately everyone in south Africa speak English now. they don't even got things like ads or books in the local languages .
@@belstar1128 No, a vast swath do not, even though most official communications is in English and a rolling sequence of 10 other languages. 12th language is sign language, as there is a significant population of deaf people. Yes most people in urban areas have some English proficiency, but English alone is not a high number.
@@SeanBZA ok because it seems really annoying to live in south Africa if you don't know English. but i am just looking at it from the outside by watch south African tv and RUclips videos and footage of the streets .
@@belstar1128 Self selecting, you really got only news shows, and those are in English, but there are plenty of non English channels as well. Try SABC1, where it normally has shows not in English, mostly Khosa and Zulu, with subtitles.
Your argument for better English without dub falls flat when Austria is top 3 in English proficiency with all German dubs.
Exactly my thought but tbh I'm surprised we are ranked so high 😂
Am surprised too. Considering Austrians can't even speak German.
@@goose-lw6jsIf it's the EF Index, then it doesn't mean anything anyway. It's anything but representative
@@XX-bn9sf as good or bad as a decent portion of germans. we all speak a bavarian dialect (except in vorarlberg) 😂
that is wrong
When I came to this country (Nederland) dubbing really helped me to learn Dutch. Back then (1968) there were only two channels in black and white. The Dutch were proud of their sub-titles. These days no one wants dubbing which probably has resulted in the level of English achieved here.
I once saw a cowboy film dubbed in German and John Wayne was starring in it. I never laughed so much!
I remember as a child when I first encountered german dubbing. Beverly Hills Cop was not the same.
At least they include the original soundtrack on the blu-rays.
In Italy everything is dubbed, our voice acting industry is decade old and full of history.
It is a terrible thing. Changing the audio on what is essentially a piece of art. What would Italians say if many of their famous paintings were "re-colorized" to make it more "understandable" when exhibited in a foreign country - or classic Italian operas were translated to a foreign language when performed in a foreign country?
BTW I'm Norwegian and grew up with subbs on everything.
To use your comparison. What if those paintings were created with invisible color which is visible only for Italians. And you could train somebody for years to be able to see quarter of it. But Some people will never learn it. Or you can pay to someone who is able to see it to paint it again but using colors they will be able to see immediately.
@jarls5890 I get what you are saying, and I agree to some extent but I feel like you have the assumption that the dubbing process is farely straightforward and ends with removing the impressions that the original actors give to their lines.
The voice actors and their directors in the dubbing industry, at least in Italy, spend a lot of time and resources to give weight and maintain the original flaire while trying to translate things that, even if directly translated to Italian, don't make sense, like some jokes or sayings.
I'll give an example, I recently watched La casa de papel, the original language is Spanish and the acting was very good. I started watching the first few with subtitles and then tried switching to see which I preferred. Obviously, this is my personal experience but I very much preferred the dub, I understood better the feelings and emotions of the characters.
The only thing that's ever been dubbed for the UK are Dario Argento movies.
People will argue for subs over dubs and original voice is the best but I have yet to meet another person that plays Genshin Impact in its original Chinese dub (even though it's much more pleasant than the English one imo. Paimon...). Let's be real, listening to a language you're completely unfamiliar with is more work than a language you're very familiar with.
And watching movies, shows and videos is not just focussed watching with your eyes glued to the screen. Most of the time, we put something on to listen to in the background. This comment section is fluent in English and has the privilege to be able to listen to the majority of Western pop culture with ease. But when a market is able to provide the comfort of an easy-to-listen-to dub, it will provide that to the majority of people who are at the end of the day more comfortable with their mother tongue.
America dubs stuff too, they even dubbed the Professor Layton games in AE even though there was a British dub already.
In my country (the Netherlands) Scandinavian films and series are almost always watched with subtitles, even though hardly anyone knows anything about any Scandinavian language. Anime is usually watched in Japanese as well. Reading subtitles is just something you will get used to.
@@pargd6236 look, I'm personally used to it and I know many societies are, but I also believe that if you have the luxury of having it voiced in your mother language (at a certain quality), most people will choose this convenience over reading subs. Most people aren't here for the impeccable acting or original experience, they just want to sit back and be entertained
In the Czech Republic, shows on TV are usually dubbed (lip-synced, like in Germany) but movies in the cinema are typically shown in their original language (mostly English) with Czech subtitles. Only movies for families and kids are also dubbed (lip-synced). In that case, there are typically both versions of the same movie to choose from in the cinema.
German synchrone speakers/dubber are actually so well known that something like the passing of the German voice of Squidward died many people were shocked of his passing and the series has not been the same for most people.
I generally watch subtitled films, but with action movies I prefer to a dubbed version where reading the subtitles distracts me from seeing the action. Musicals however are better in the original language. That said though I would love to hear the German version of ‘Always look on the bright side of life’ from Life of Brian. Maybe it’s on RUclips somewhere.
Rainer Brandt hat die Schaffung der synchronisierten Filmfassungen zu einer eigenständigen Kunstform entwickelt.
Bortkastet talent.
In Poland we have subtitiles, dubbing and "lektor", which is just a person speaking in Polish over the original sound of a movie. It's interesting to see how it looks in Germany
as a finn I feel like I've learned more english through movies, series and games than school. mostly things made for children are dubbed here. and I've even been trying to get into to the habit of using swedish subtitles to brush up my swedish vocabulary
In Portugal it's the opposite of Germany: for the most part, the Portuguese hate dubbing and prefer subtitles, even if the original language is totally unknown to them, like Chinese.
(Dubbing is mostly left for animations, not live-action movies. In recent years, some channels introduced dubbing on teenager-focused live-action series, but those are usually ridiculed by adults.)
One of the main reasons for the Portuguese aversion to dubbing is mentioned in your video: voice consistence. It's frustrating when an actor you know (e.g. DiCaprio) suddenly has a different dubbing actor - you recognise the face but the voice does not match previous films. And the reverse is also frustrating: when the same voice actor dubs two or more different actors and you notice it - this time, you recognise the voice but the face does not match previous films.
When I was a teenager, watching TV series on the Spanish TV (which I could tune in my town in Portugal). Spain uses dubbing, so, after a few year, I was used to many Spanish voice actors. I remember watching a drama film where one of the main characters was dubbed by the same guy that dubbed the "Murdock" character in the action/comedy series "The A-Team"; no matter how hard I tried, after 5 or 6 years of interiorizing that voice as "Spanish Murdock", I just couldn't take that dramatic character seriously, even despite the fact that the face was different; or maybe also because of that - the disconnect was just off-putting.
Same in Scandinavia.
This may explain why Spanish people speak very bad or little English, while Portugese peoole are much better.👍
Portuguese hate dubbing because the population of Portugal is tiny and they do not want their kids to speak like brazilians
I’m a native English speaker, but I always prefer to have subtitles, even if I’m watching content in English. I don’t know why, but I prefer it. Sometimes films have audio mastered with cinema or surround sound systems in mind and I find it difficult to hear on my tv, so subtitles are nice for that too.
That's the exact reason, I most often prefer the german dubs. They just master everything in a more understandable way with a focus on the spoken language.
I grew up having no clue that Schwarzenegger speaks with funny accent. He was always overdubbed.
Consider that a divorce.......with dub
He used to speak Austrian German, now it's more American German.
3:500 German is also my 1st Language and the rock is Always voiced by the same guy and i Always asked me how did it came to be This explains evreything
I think in NL most people don't even need subtitles anymore if not for horrible sound design on the film makers part (SFX in current movies is out of control and half the voices are drown out imo) or some very accented/slang language. Most people understand english so well that if you would just remove the subtitles on most films people will follow 95%+ just fine.
As an Englishman who watches a lot of anime, I've always preferred watching it in Japanese with English subtitles. Though a lot of that (for me) stems from an awful lot of English dubbing when I was growing up (90s-early 00s) being very subpar in the voice actor's acting ability compared to the original Japanese VA's ability. So if your VAs are good at getting the emotion of a scene through I can understand preferring it that way. Though like you elude to in the video it does help when learning another language. I took German as one of my GCSEs and watching German dubbed stuff with or without English subtitles helped a lot. I've even picked up on some Japanese words and phrases now though I never actively tried to learn it like with German.
This is also common in the German anime community, many prefer to watch them in the original version with subtitles. Back when I watched a lot of anime, most people watched them illegally, because there weren't really any streaming services that had a decent anime selection, and DVDs/blurays of the German dubbed versions were (and still are) insanely expensive. We're talking around 40 or even 50 € for a DVD that contains around six episodes, so not even a whole season. Given that many anime fans are young teenagers that don't have a lot of money, illegal streaming websites were often the only way to watch anime, and those sites usually only had subtitles.
I was in Belgium which is a bilingual country. On the Dutch speaking TV channels they showed foreign movies using Dutch subtitles. On the French speaking channels the movies were dubbed into French.
Those subtitles are a BRT/VRT speciality. Being a state run station their language and translations always had to be very correct. But no matter if they are showing an artfilm in some obscure dialect only spoken by one tribe of 60 people, they always find a translator.
BTW : Belgium is trilingual. Don't forget our German speaking community.
@@flitsertheoplus, the Dutch subtitles in Belgium are often different from the Dutch subtitles in the Netherlands. Both in word order and in choice of certain words.
@@martijnspruit I have seen that too. Though I think you could switch the translations and they would still be understood, except for a few particular words or expressions.
In 1982 I went driving by road from France and got to München and everybody we find through the route said that they speak English "just a little" and it went quite well
I can understand english but i always prefer czech dubbing because i want to relax and watch the show without a hassle.
Other than the obvious that I’d rather want the sound and visuals to match, to me there are two other problems:
- Dubbing when the original movie is in several different languages, I assume this might be handled differently between cases
- I think it’s generally valuable to hear different languages and their unique melodies and sounds, I think this is part of why Germans tend to sound so German when speaking other languages
19:50 my dude. that take will age like milk.
dropping a video and getting back multiple dubbed variants with whatever tone/emotion/contextual awareness you want is easily achievable today with elevenlab’s dubbing studio for basically anyone. that’s arguably the _easy_ part of generative capabilities.
sure, today, you’ll still have lots of things to clean up with post processing but brother, please, you’re about the get blindsided by reality faster than VW in the electric segment.
2030 is going to be rough for the business.
In Latin America including Brazil, dubbing has always been the standard. Only cable Tv introduced subtitles but only for those that could afford it. But ever since the 60's when I was a boy dubbing has been the standard. I always found it discusting...but...that's the way it was.
I watched one episode of an American TV series dubbed in French. There was something odd going on but at first I couldn't place it. Then it dawned upon me : there were no background sounds, no birds, no traffic, no wind, nothing. The original soundtrack had been replaced with a voices only dub.
I genuinely think this is why we have such a recognisable accent when speaking English.
I lived in Germany as a child from 1968-1970, and one of the things I recall from that period was that almost all of the popular television shows in Germany were American Westerns, and all of them were dubbed in German. These same shows were also popular in Holland (where I lived previously), but were shown in the original English language. Popular English language songs of that period were also 'translated' into German by performers like Peter Alexander. But because songs often have lyrics that rhyme, Alexander had to rewrite the lyrics to make them rhyme in German. Here in the US, German films like 'Das Boot' and 'Nosferatu' were not dubbed into English, but were shown in their original German language version with subtitles, as is typical of all foreign language films shown in the US. The fact that the world's population of English speakers greatly outnumbers German speakers, suggests that the 'economic' reason you mentioned for why Germans rely so much more on dubbing than other European nations do is not a satisfactory one. If that were the reason, all foreign language films shown in the US would be dubbed into English, when in fact none of them are.
In Latin America we have always done the German way. Whether Spanish or Portuguese in Brazil. Everything dubbed and singers singing great Anglo hits in Spanish or Portuguese to rhyme changing the lyrics completely...and obviously, the meaning.
Slovakia and the Czech Republic are exactly the same as Germany when it comes to dubbing. TVs will mostly play dubbed versions. The originals are also popular, but you have to watch them in cinemas. I like it that way because you get both :)
For me, a Dutch guy speaking both German and English, hearing this being professional about a dub is much like raygun saying she's a breakdance master.. I mean seriously couldn't you get someone that actually sounds like Arnold Schwarzenegger that speaks German, like... Eehm... Arnold Schwarzenegger?
Also we have 18 million people here, not 10 but I'm pretty sure even if we had 100 million people, why? why would you mess up the original audio?
There are 24 million Dutch speakers, if we include the Dutch speaking part of Belgium.
I heard that Arnold Schwarzenegger offered to dub himself in German but they wouldn't let him because being from Carinthia, he would sound like a peasant to German audiences.
You don't really want to hear Schwarzenegger dub himself. It would be German with Austrian AND heavy American accent.
I also do not really like german actors to dub themselves for the german versions. Since they act differently than professional voice actors. They always sound out of place. Like Christoph Waltz or Diane Kruger.
Just because you don't see the action while reading - facial expression etc. are lost. When I want to read, e.g. a book, I switch off any distractions like sound. So why not switch off the tv at all and read a book instead?
Dubbing culture is pretty much the same here in Russia. 100+M people, professional voice actors, everyone except for crazy anime fans are not used to subtitles.
1. They don't need to match actor's voice, it's enough to match actor's appearance. The original voice is something that people would probably never hear so nobody would notice the difference.
2. It's far from messing up. They keep all the sounds replacing just some vocal mess by voices in proper language. It makes movies not only watchable but enjoyable too.