I wrote recently about how disconcerting it was when watching a film when the audio and video are not synchronized, so that the spoken words do not match up with the mouth movements of the speaker.
I recently watched a film where this problem was even more pronounced. It was an Italian film but they had dubbed it into English. Dubbing is usually bad and rarely done these days. When I was young in Sri Lanka, I recall seeing a number of so-called ‘spaghetti western’ films that were made in Italy that had one American star (like Clint Eastwood in the Man With No Name trilogy) or with Steve Reeves as various mythical heroes like Hercules, with the rest of the cast being Italian. So the star would speak in English but all the others in Italian with their voices dubbed in English. They were pretty bad.
Dubbing went out of fashion but this film I watched recently was an old film and it served to remind me how irritating it is. Sometimes the dubbers try as much as possible to choose words in English that match the motions of the speaker’s mouth movement and also last exactly the same amount of time. But the dubbing in this film was really slipshod, both in terms of length and alignment so that the mismatch was extremely noticeable. When there was a quick exchange of dialogue, it was not clear who was saying what.
I turned on the English subtitles to see if that would help but that only compounded the problem because the written English words did not even match the spoken English words, and sometimes was quite different. It was as if the people who created the English subtitles did not work from the English dubbed version but that the two groups each worked from the original Italian and did not communicate with each other at all.
So now there was a three-way mismatch: between the mouth movements, the spoken words, and the written words.
Needless to say, I quickly gave up watching it.
There are some films with quite good dubbing. The animated features from Studio Ghibli are done very well, often using well-known actors for the voices. Of course, the simplified mouth motions in animation may make it easier, but the dubbing in the Miyazaki films match well in timing too. That speaks to the high level of attention to detail by the studio.
I am a fan of Kurosawa & (bizarrely) 1980s Hong Kong Films. When I watch a foreign language film, I always prefer to watch it with original sound and subtitles. Mostly it works best.
However, some Hong Kong films are ONLY ever available in badly dubbed english audio or -- even more perversely in another dialect of Chinese (for example, the characters may be speaking Cantonese, but the audio is in Mandarin!). Any such dubbing (because it is done on a shoestring budget with no ‘selection’ of voice actors) is very flat and unappealing. Sometimes it feels as if the voice actors are just going through the motion with an eye on the clock!
Mano wrote:
That depends on the size of the target market. E.g. for German TV and cinema, most foreign language films are dubbed. Even Netflix or Amazon Prime often provide an alternative German soundtrack.
That’s because the subtitles are a reasonably accurate translation (for some value of reasonably) while dubs are designed as you mentioned -- to convey what’s going on but with extra attention to matching lip flap and duration, and, in the best dubs, a more natural fluency in the dub language than a strict translation would allow. So subs and dubs will necessarily be different -- they have different goals. What you seem to be asking for are called “dubtitles,” which are essentially transcriptions of the dub and are almost universally reviled, at least among anime fans. Not to be confused with closed captioning.
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There’s more care taken with subs and dubs these days, but back in the before times it was a pretty low budget, shoddy affair. When watching subbed samurai movies it always amused me how the characters would deliver a long, emotional line and the sub would pop up with, “Yes!” or the character would be screaming at the top of her lungs at some guy and all the subs would say was, “I love you!” Or “Brace up!” to the guy with 12 arrows in his head.
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And then there were the typos. My favorite was an attractive young woman bitterly dismissing samurai as arrogant marauders she’d hated since childhood. “The samurai! I’ve known them ever since I was a body!”
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I don’t watch a lot of dubbed live action movies, but it’s really weird to me when I see one that’s dubbed by voice actors I recognize from anime. In addition to the incongruity of hearing those voices come out of unfamiliar faces, I’m also imagining what both the actor and some of their best characters look like, so there’s no hope of any immersion after getting used to the other shortcomings of live action dubs.
The Italian cinema has a long history of dubbing foreign (non-Italian) films, so much so that apparently it’s next-to-impossible to watch (at least in cinemas) a film in the original language and/or using subtitles. In addition, there are yearly(?) Italian dubbing awards (the Voice in the Shadows awards), and apparently the voice-over actors are trained to lip-sync (and supposedly quite good at it).
I recall seeing an episode of Stargate SG-1 in a Polish hotel that was dubbed, I think, into German and I was very impressed with how well it was done -- the speech sounded normal, matched the lips and the voices seemed to fit the cast.
I don’t speak German well enough to have an opinion on how well written the dubbed dialogue was -- but I imagine it made perfect sense.
@Ridana #4
My favourite was one where a hireling was talking to his evil boss after a fight. “What shall we do about … (protagonist)?” “Don’t worry about him now. Pick up fixed loose.”
Dondueed: Anime dubbing is fairly seemless these days not just because animation is simpler, but because they have software that actually reanimates the lip movements to match the sounds of the speaker. Any dubbing that doesn’t match these days is a clear sign of a studio that just does not care.
I actually generally watch my anime both with the dubbed soundtrack and the subtitles running at the same time. Since, as discussed, the subtitles are generally a more literal translation made without respect for timing, they often don’t match, but this never bothered me. It’s just felt like having footnotes to the script and added shades of meaning.
My favorite translation mismatches were always swear words in product aimed at family audiences. I was watching some martial arts film and a character dropped a heavy mace on his foot. He spent the next two minutes dancing on his other foot while holding his injured foot and unleashing an endlessly stream of very angry sounding Japanese. The subtitle informed us, “Ouch. That hurt.” Sure, that’s what he’s saying!
Oh, another great moment in subtitles versus dubbing. I’m watching a Jet Li film, where our hero is describing this woman he’s fallen in love with. The dubbing tract informs us that she has huge breasts, while the subtitles inform us she has a tiny nose. The best thing about this is that Jet Li is making hand gestures, and has his fingers pinched together to show her tiny nose, while the dub is trying to convince us he likes her huge breasts. The gesture is so hilariously wrong! (Also, the actress didn’t really have huge breasts, but apparently the dub writers simply couldn’t comprehend this concept. Insert your own joke about Americans here.)
The dub of the French zombie file The Horde was really well done, in matching timing, translated dialogue, and the intensity of the perfomances.
I recently mentioned the anime film The Castle of Cagliostro. Carl Macek of Streamlined Pictures usually *tried* to make the dubbing match, but he was infamous for cutting corners on the voice acting talent (“let’s get Bob from accounting and Tracy from marketing!”). Some were better than others, many early anime dubs were dreadful, but the quality improved as the sales increased.
I have watched countless dubbed films in my life, I mean, the overwhelming majority of films I have watched were dubbed, given how this is the standard practice for Latvian TV channels. (Back when I was a child, I used to watch movies on Latvian TV channels; nowadays I don’t watch movies anywhere at all).
Dubbing was never a problem for me, and I never cared about any mismatch between lip movements and the dubbed voice. I think I didn’t even notice that there exist any. I didn’t really pay attention.
Then again, I am face blind. I am also a person who cannot reliably decipher facial expressions and their meaning. I’m inherently less prone to pay attention to people’s faces, so I probably just don’t pay attention to their lip movements as a result.
I’ve heard someone claiming that in Italy all movies are dubbed, including Italian ones.
According to the story, Italian studios are so accustomed to dubbing that they don’t even bother to record a live soundtrack of the actors. What you hear is a later creation with dubbed voices and background noises (“Foley art”). That’s why the movies sound so unnatural.
8) suttkus says “Anime dubbing is fairly seemless these days not just because animation is simpler, but because they have software that actually reanimates the lip movements to match the sounds of the speaker.”
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Ocean Studios in Canada used to use WordFit software for most of their dubs, but since then, almost no one dubbing anime still does. In many cases the licenses these days forbid it because adjusting lip flap for English (and other languages) skews it for the original Japanese track (and other languages), which of course has priority to the ones selling the rights, as well as to militantly sub-only purists. Since almost no anime is sold with only one spoken-language track these days (unless that language is Japanese), matching software causes more problems than it solves, and the actors and writers have gotten skilled enough over time that it’s unnecessary. Since there are also a lot of “simul-dubs” now streaming within a day or two of the Japanese tv airings, there’s no longer time to tweak it with software, and only the most glaring lapses will get corrected before it hits a physical media release.
Forgot to mention:
The dialogs of most Indian movies sound flat and unemotional (often needing pretty violent musical support to beef up the emotions) because THEY ARE ALL DUBBED. You heard it right: No sound (voice or otherwise) is ever recorded during shooting of the movie. The voice is recorded after the production is complete, in an air-conditioned dubbing theater with all the actors recording their respective voices (or having different voice actors do it for them), syncing carefully with the silent picture rolling on the screen.
Ah…note to self: Read all comments before adding your own. Lassi @11 beat me to it -- and much more succintly too.
Watch the following video from 7:36…
https://youtu.be/NFwUnkVEqgM
I used to not mind dubbing but generally prefer subtitles these days because I want to enjoy the entire performance -- at least in live action. I do watch anime and while I will watch Ghibli movies in English, I’ll usually watch most shows in Japanese because I’m used to subtitles now.
Tavvy (#16) -- In the 1990s, many anime fans were considered snobs and weaboos for preferring subtitles over dubbed films. Instead, people preferred a good subtitle over a bad dub. When the quality of dubbed versions became good, people watched them.
Native English speakers are the worst. Most are unwilling to watch films with subtitles, even though most of the world has watched subtitled American and British movies for decades without complaint. Even in Canada, many English speakers won’t watch French subtitles.
“They were pretty bad.”
It all depends on the effort and hence the budget, as usual. Did you know Eastwood (and later Van Cleef and Wallach) overdubbed their own voices? Like all Italian directors of that time (including “artistic ones” like Visconti, Pasolini, Bertolucci and Scola) Leone filmed the scenes and added every single piece of audio afterwards. @12 and 13 are right.
Some effects are a bit weird though. As a fan of Alain Delon I’ve seen many of his French movies and I can’t stand his Italian ones, in which he has a completely other voice. At the other hand I’m used to Luigi Pistilli being overdubbed and hence find it weird to hear his own voice ….
@2 Mastmaker: “I always prefer to watch it with original sound and subtitles. Mostly it works best.”
In the case of those Italian films thë dubbed versions are the original ones.
But I’m totally with you when American, English and French films are overdubbed in German or Italian. I can’t stand it. The exception is the Swedish series Pippi Longstocking; as a child I’ve seen them with Dutch voices.
@5 blf: “(and supposedly quite good at it).”
You can check that by yourself by watching some of your favourite Italian classics.
My take: being principled is silly. Was the movie shot with audio? I prefer subtitles. Is the movie Italian? It’s important that the director put as much effort in adding the audio afterwards as in shooting the scenes.
My tribute to dubbing today:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJ_TxwpcmhI
Yes, that’s a young Robert de Niro “speaking” Italian.
‘What’s Up, Tiger Lily?’ (1966)
😉
Ridana, clearly I’ve been away from the fandom a little while and am out of date.
@Intransitive: I love Robotech (and, yes, separately Macross) enough to cut Macek a lot of slack. My impression was that he really loved what he was trying to bring over and did the best he could. And I actually find a lot of charm in some of the more awkward dubs.