It is beyond me, that a movie or tv production, which can eat
millions and millions of dollars to create something that is at
least similar to the artistic vision of a whole team,
often including writer, director,
director of photography and sometimes even the
producers, is considered finished once the domestic
version of the movie is done.
They seem to forget that international marketing of the
product does not only account for some of the money earned
with the movie, but also offers an audience, that can be
larger than the domestic audience. Only a few directors take
interest in the international versions of their movies and try
to maintain artistic control for them.
For most international markets, movies will be released with the
original title, with added subtitles in the local
language.
For some markets, e.g. the German-speaking market, this is not
enough. Movies released there have to be translated and
audio-dubbed to be acceptable to the local audience. I don't
know who started this or when, but it has a long history (at
least back to the 50's, see Casablanca) and there's no chance
that this will change in the next decade or two.
Now consider these factors degrading the dubbed version (and
remember to add them up):
-
The need to synchronize the spoken words in the target
language to the lip movements in the source language. I have
seen movies dubbed in English, as well as movies dubbed in
German, and my impression is that the Germans are much better
lip-syncers, but they don't pay much attention
to accuracy with respect to the meaning of the dialog.
-
The fact that the German language needs more syllables than
the English language to express the same thought (I think the
number I heard was 30%). As a result of this, some dialog has
to be lost during the dubbing process, or actors have to speak
unnaturally fast (when possible -- remember
lip-synchronisation).
-
Translation errors, resulting from time pressure or lack of
interest and incomplete understanding and comprehension of the
original material. Sometimes I get the impression that most
movies and TV series are translated in a one-pass process
during the first viewing, because some of the mistakes are
really obvious once you've seen the whole movie (yes, you
don't even need to know the original version to spot some of
them).
Of course you'll never find out about most of those errors
unless you watch the original version of the movie. Until
then, it will just feel like crap dialog.
-
Lack of voice-actors available for dubbing work. Not only will
different actors share the same voice over time ("Oh,
Jean-Luc Picards voice, again."), no, whenever
two such actors meet in a movie or when the regular
voice-actor is not available, some actor will suddenly have a
different voice.
-
Lack of athmosphere. It takes a hell of an actor to dub a
movie so that it feels the same. Forget that, when the
voice-actors don't even care. You've got a pretty good chance
to get a decently dubbed version for a blockbuster movie, but
who cares for episode 4711 of some TV sci-fi series? (Well, I,
being the target audience, do...)
And because the dialog and the sound effects are usually on
the same audio track, the sound effects have to be recreated,
too, they're replaced with fake effects or pre-recorded
material ("Ah, that's party mumbling #2,
again.").
But not only is all the dialogue translated and dubbed, so is
the title. And, more often than not, poorly, I might add.
If you're not shocked yet, meditate on those facts for a moment:
Among the few movies released in Germany in original language in the
last twenty years was Kevin Smith's movie Clerks. It even had
reasonably good subtitles. All his following movies were released in
dubbed versions.
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