Dubbing (filmmaking)
Encyclopedia
Dubbing is the post-production process of recording and replacing voices on a motion picture or television soundtrack subsequent to the original shooting. The term most commonly refers to the substitution of the voices of the actors shown on the screen by those of different performers, who may be speaking a different language. The procedure was sometimes practised in musicals when the actor had an unsatisfactory singing voice, and remains in use to enable the screening of audio-visual material to a mass audience in countries where viewers do not speak the same language as the original performers. "Dubbing" also describes the process of an actor re-recording lines spoken during filming in order to improve audio quality or reflect dialog changes. This process is called Automated Dialogue Replacement, Additional Dialogue Recording or ADR for short. Music is also dubbed onto a film after editing is completed.
Films, videos and sometimes video games are sometimes dubbed into the local language
of a foreign market. Dubbing is common in theatrically released film, television series, cartoons and anime
given foreign distribution.
it is called post-synchronisation or post-sync.
In conventional film production, a production sound mixer
records dialogue during filming. Accompanying noise from the set, equipment, traffic, wind, and the overall ambience of the surrounding environment often results in unusable production sound, and during the post-production process a supervising sound editor or ADR Supervisor reviews all of the dialogue in the film and decides which lines will have to be re-recorded. ADR is also used to change the original lines recorded on set in order to clarify context, or to improve the actor's diction and timing.
For animation
such as computer-generated imagery
or animated cartoons dialogue is recorded to a pre-edited version of the show. Although the characters' voices are recorded in a studio, ADR is necessary whenever members of the cast can not all be present at once.
ADR is recorded during an ADR session, which takes place in a specialized sound studio. The actor, usually the original actor from the set, is shown the scene in question along with the original sound, following which he or she will attempt to recreate the performance as closely as possible. Over the course of multiple re-takes (hence looping) the actor will repeatedly perform the lines while watching the scene, and the most suitable take will make it to the final version of the scene.
Sometimes, a different actor is used from the original actor on set. One famous example is the Star Wars
character Darth Vader
, portrayed by David Prowse
and later Hayden Christensen
. In post-production, James Earl Jones
always dubbed that character's voice.
Sometimes actors are hired to dub actors who speak the same language but delivered their lines with a foreign accent or poor diction. For example, Frenchmen Philippe Noiret and Jacques Perrin were dubbed into Italian for Cinema Paradiso and Austrian bodybuilder Arnold Schwarzenegger
was dubbed for Hercules in New York
. Argentine boxer Carlos Monzon, who didn't have a clear diction, had his voice dubbed by a professional actor when he played the lead in the drama La Mary
.
ADR can also be used to redub singing. This technique was used by, among many others, Billy Boyd and Viggo Mortensen
in The Lord of the Rings
.
There are variations of the ADR process. It does not have to take place in a post-production studio, but can be recorded on location, with mobile equipment. ADR can also be recorded without showing the actor the image they must match, but only by having him listen to the performance.
, along with numerous additional indications for the actor (laughs, cries, length of syllables, mouth sounds, breaths, mouth openings and closings, etc.). The rythmo band is projected in the studio and scrolls in perfect synchronization with the picture. Thanks to the efficiency of the rythmo band, the number of retakes can be reduced, resulting in substantial savings in recording time. The time saved in the studio comes at the price of a long preparatory process.
The preparation of a rythmo band is a time-consuming process involving a series of specialists organized in an old fashioned production line. Until recently this prevented the technique from being more widely adopted, but software emulations of rythmo band technology overcome the disadvantages of the traditional rythmo band process and significantly reduce the time needed to prepare a dubbing session. Studio time is also used more efficiently, since with the aid of scrolling text, picture, and audio cues actors can read more lines per hour than with ADR alone (only picture and audio). With ADR, actors can average 10-12 lines per hour, while with rythmo band they can read from 35-50 lines per hour, and much more with experience.
At present, there exist several dubbing software solutions, among which are dubStudio (developed in Quebec, Canada) and Synchronos (developed in France).
fandom, for example, or when their voice has become synonymous with the role or the actor or actress whose voice they usually dub. In the United States, many of these actors also employ pseudonyms or go uncredited due to Screen Actors Guild
regulations or a simple desire to dissociate themselves from the role. However, famous local actors can also be hired to perform the dubbing, particularly for comedies and animated movies, as their names are supposed to attract moviegoers, and the entire Hollywood cast may be dubbed by a local cast of similar notoriety.
—meaning the UK
, Republic of Ireland
, the Netherlands
and the Nordic countries
—Portugal
and Balkan countries
generally only movies and TV shows intended for children are dubbed, while all TV shows and movies for older audiences are subtitled (animated productions have a tradition of often being dubbed, though). For movies in cinemas with clear target audiences both below and above around 10–11 years of age, usually both a dubbed and a subtitled version are available.
In the Netherlands, in the majority of cases Dutch versions are only made for children and youth related films. Animation movies are shown in theaters with Dutch dubbing, but usually those cinemas with more screening rooms also provide the original subtitled version; that was the case for movies like Babe, Atlantis: The Lost Empire
, Finding Nemo
, Cars, Shrek the Third
, Ratatouille
, Kung Fu Panda
or WALL-E
.
Since Belgium
is a multilingual country, films are shown in French
and Dutch
. The range of French dubbed versions is approximately as wide as the German
range where practically all films and TV-series are dubbed. Sometimes separate versions are recorded in the Netherlands
and in Flanders
; for instance several Walt Disney films or Harry Potter films
. These dubbed versions only differ from each other in using different voice actors and different pronunciation while the text is almost the same. In general, movies shown by Flemish broadcasters are always shown in original language with subtitles, with the exception of movies for a young audience.
In the United Kingdom
and Ireland
, the vast majority of foreign films are subtitled although some, mostly animated films and TV programmes, are dubbed in English. These usually originate from North America
as opposed to being dubbed locally, although there have been notable examples of films and TV programmes successfully dubbed in the UK, such as the Japanese Monkey
and French Magic Roundabout
series. When airing films on television, channels in the UK and Ireland will often choose subtitling over dubbing, even if a dubbing in English exists. It is also a fairly common practice for animation aimed at pre-school children to be re-dubbed with British voice actors replacing the original voices, although this is not done with shows aimed at older audiences.
Some animated films and TV programmes are also dubbed into Welsh
and Scottish Gaelic. Similarly, in Ireland, animated series shown on TG4
are shown dubbed in Irish
.
In Portugal
, dubbing was banned under a 1948 law, as a way of protecting the domestic film industry. Till 1994 animated movies as well as other tv series for children in Portugal were dubbed in Brazilian Portuguese
due to the lack of interest from Portuguese companies in the dubbing department. This lack of interest was justified since there were already quality dubbed copies of shows and movies in the Portuguese Language made by Brazilians (same language, different accent and some dialogue changes). The Lion King
was the first feature film to be dubbed in European Portuguese
rather than just Brazilian Portuguese alone. Nowadays all movies for children are dubbed in European Portuguese. Subtitles are preferred in Portugal, being used in every foreigner language documentaries, TV series and films, the exception being when children are the target public. While on TV children shows and movies are always dubbed, in cinema theaters films with a clear juvenile target can be found in two versions, one dubbed (identified by the letters V.P., meaning Versão Portuguesa - Portuguese Version) and other subtitled version (V.O., meaning Versão Original - Original Version). This duality applies only to juvenile films, others use subtitles only. While the quality of these dubs is recognized (some already got international recognition and prizes), original versions with subtitles are usually preferred by the grown public (Bee Movie
as an example). It is not common practice to dub animation for adults (such as The Simpsons
or South Park
). When The Simpsons Movie debut in Portugal most cinemas showed both versions (V.O. and V.P.), but in some small cities, cinemas decided to offer only the Portuguese Version, decision that lead to the public protest. Nowadays, Live action series and movies are always shown in its original language format with Portuguese subtitles.
In Romania
, virtually all programmes intended for children and young adults are dubbed in Romanian
, including cartoons, live-action movies and TV series on Disney Channel
, Cartoon Network
, Minimax, Nickelodeon
as well as those shown on generalist television networks, children-focused series like Power Rangers
, The New Addams Family
, The Planet's Funniest Animals
or movies screened on children television. Animation movies are shown in theaters with Romanian dubbing, but usually those cinemas with more screening rooms also provide the original subtitled version; that was the case for movies like Babe, Atlantis: The Lost Empire
, Finding Nemo
, Cars, Shrek the Third
, Ratatouille
, Kung Fu Panda
or WALL-E
. Other foreign TV shows and movies are shown in the original language with Romanian subtitles. Usually subtitles are preferred in the Romanian market, except for programme intended for children. According to "Special Eurobarometer 243" of the European Commission (research carried out in November and December 2005), 62% of Romanians prefer to watch foreign films and programmes with subtitles, rather than dubbed; nonetheless 22% have a preference for dubbing, while 16% declined to answer. This is led by the assumption that watching movies in their original versions is very useful for learning foreign languages. However, according to the same Eurobarometer, virtually no Romanian found this method—watching movies in their original version—to be the most efficient way of learning foreign languages, compared to 53 percent who preferred language lessons at school.
In the Nordic countries
, dubbing is used only in animated features and other films for young audiences. Some theaters in the major cities may also screen the original version, usually as the last showing of the day, or in a smaller auditorium in a multiplex. According to a survey, almost 95% of the population in these countries prefer the original version. In Finland
, for children of the 5% Swedish-speaking minority, the dubbed version from Sweden may also be available at certain cinemas, but only in cities/towns with a significant percentage of Swedish speakers. DVD releases usually only have the original audio, except for children's films which have both Finnish and Swedish language tracks, in addition to the original audio and subtitles in both languages. In movie theaters, films for grown-up audiences have both Finnish and Swedish subtitles, the Finnish printed in basic font and the Swedish printed below the Finnish in a cursive font. In the early ages of television, foreign TV shows and movies were dubbed by one actor in Finland, as in Russian Gavrilov translation
. Later, subtitles became a practice on Finnish television. Dubbing of other than children's films is unpopular in Finland, as in many other countries. A good example is The Simpsons Movie
. While the original version was well-received, the Finnish dubbed version got poor reviews; some critics even calling it a disaster. On the other hand, many dubs of Disney animated features have been well received, both critically and by the public.
In Greece
, all films are released theatrically in their original versions and contain subtitles. Only cartoon films (for example, Finding Nemo
, The Incredibles
, Ratatouille
and so on) are released in both original and Greek
dubbed versions, for children who cannot yet read quickly or not at all. Foreign TV shows are also shown in their original versions except for most cartoons. For example The Flintstones
and The Jetsons
were always dubbed, while Family Guy
and American Dad!
are always subtitled and contains the original English dialogue, since it is mostly for adults rather than children. Only Mexican
TV series like Rubí
, La usurpadora
, and teen series like Hannah Montana
and The Suite Life of Zack & Cody are dubbed in Greek. Japanese Anime
like Dragon Ball
, Tokyo Mew Mew
, Sonic X
Pokémon
and Sailor Moon
are shown dubbed in Greek.
In Israel
, only children's movies and TV programming are dubbed in Hebrew. In programs aimed at teenagers and adults, dubbing is rarely considered as a method of translation not only because of its high costs, but also because the audience is mainly multi-lingual. Most viewers in Israel speak at least one European language in addition to Hebrew, and there is also a large audience that speaks Arabic
. Therefore, most viewers prefer to hear the original soundtrack, aided by Hebrew subtitles. Another problem is that dubbing does not allow for translation into two different languages simultaneously, as is often the case in Israeli television channels that use subtitles in Hebrew and another language (like Russian
) simultaneously.
In Serbia
, Croatia
, and most other Serbo-Croat speaking parts of former Yugoslavia
, foreign films, TV series and TV news are always subtitled, while children's movies and cartoons are dubbed into Serbo-Croat. The dubbing of cartoon classics during the 1980s had a twist of its own: famous Belgrade actors provided the voices for Disney's, Warner Brothers', MGM's and other companies' characters, frequently using region specific phrases and sentences and thus adding a dose of local humor to the translation of the original lines. These phrases became immensely popular and are still being used for tongue-in-cheek
comments in specific situations. Even though these dubbed classics are seldom aired nowadays, younger generations continue to use these phrases without knowing their true origin.
In Croatia
foreign films and TV series are always subtitled, while some children programs and cartoons are dubbed into Croatian
. Recently, more efforts have been made to introduce dubbing, but public reception was poor. Regardless of language, Croatian audience prefers subtitling to dubbing. Some previously quite popular shows (for example, Sailor Moon
) lost their appeal completely after dubbing started and were eventually taken off the program. The situation is similar with theater movies with only those intended for children being dubbed (Finding Nemo
, Shark Tale
), but they are also regularly shown subtitled as well. Recently, there has been effort to impose dubbing by Nova TV with La Fea Más Bella
translated as Ružna ljepotica (lit. "The Ugly Beauty"), a Mexican telenovela, but it failed poorly. In fact they had only dubbed a quarter of the show, ultimately replacing it with the subtitled version due to lack of interest for the dubbed version.
In Slovenia
, all foreign films and television programmes are subtitled without exception. Traditionally, children's movies and animated cartoons used to be dubbed, but subtitling has gradually spread into that genre as well. Nowadays, only movies for pre-school children remain dubbed.
, French
, German
, Spanish
, Turkish
, Hungarian
, Czech
, Slovak
, Russian
and Ukrainian
language speaking markets of Europe, almost all foreign films and television shows are dubbed (the exception being only theatrical releases and high profile videos in Russia). There are few opportunities to watch foreign movies in their original versions, and even in the largest cities there are few cinemas that screen original versions with subtitles
, or without any translation. However, digital pay-TV programming is often available in the original language, including the latest movies. Prior to the rise of DVDs, which in these countries are mostly issued with multi-language audio tracks, original language films other than in the country's official language were rare, whether in theaters, on TV, or on home video, and subtitled versions were considered a product for small niche markets such as intellectual or art films.
In France
, movies and TV series are always released dubbed in French. Films are usually released theatrically in both dubbed and original versions in large cities' main street theaters, and a theater showing a subtitled movie typically has a sign on the poster advising moviegoers that the film is an original-language version (usually abbreviated VO [version originale] or VOST [version originale sous-titrée] as opposed to VF [version française]). Art house movies
are often available in their original version only due to limited distribution. Some voice talents, such as Alexandre Gillet, Roger Carel
, Richard Darbois
, Edgar Givry, Jacques Frantz, Jacques Balutin Marc Alfos
, Serge Faliu or Francis Lax, have achieved significant popularity.
The Germanophone dubbing market is the largest in Europe. Germany has the most foreign movie dubbing studios per capita and per given area in the world. In Germany
, Austria
and the German speaking part of Switzerland
, practically all films, shows, television series and foreign soap opera
s are shown in dubbed versions created for the German market. (In Switzerland however in every bigger town (10,000 and more inhabitants), both versions are shown, either in the same theatre at different hours/days or in different cinemas.) Even computer games and video games feature German text menus and are dubbed into the German language if there are any speaking parts in the games. However, in recent years, Swiss-German television, SF1 and SF2 have been showing increasing numbers of movies in "dual sound", which means the viewer can choose between the original language (usually English) or German. In addition, Swiss-French television shows many broadcasts available in either the original language or in French, as does the Swiss-Italian television channel RSI. A common example is the American detective series Columbo and other popular series-based broadcasts, such as Starsky and Hutch
.
Dubbing films has been and is still tradition and common practice in the German speaking area since subtitles are not accepted and used as much as in other European countries. According to a European study, Austria is the country with the highest rejection (more than 70 percent) with regard to using subtitles, followed by Italy, Spain and Germany.
Although voice actors play only a secondary role, they are still notable for providing familiar voices to well-known actors. Famous foreign actors are known and recognized for their German
voice and the German audience is used to them, so dubbing is also a matter of authenticity. However, in larger cities there are theaters where movies can be seen in their original versions as English
has become more popular, especially among younger viewers. On German TV, few movies are subtitled, although pay-per-view programming is often available in its original language.
German dubbed versions sometimes diverge greatly from the original, especially adding humorous elements to the original. In extreme cases, like The Persuaders!
, the dubbed version was more successful than the English original. Often it also adds sexually explicit gags the U.S. versions might not be allowed to use, like in Bewitched, translating The Do-not-disturb sign will hang on the door tonight to The only hanging thing tonight will be the Do-not-disturb sign.
Some movies dubbed before reunification
exist in different versions for the east and the west. They use different translations, and often they are different in the style of dubbing.
In Italy
the use of dubbing is systematic, with a long tradition going back to the 1930s in Rome
, Milan
and Turin
. In Mussolini's fascist Italy, foreign languages were banned. Rome is the principal base of the dubbing industry, where major productions such as movies, drama, documentaries and some cartoons are dubbed. However, in Milan it is mostly cartoons and some minor productions which are dubbed. Practically every American film, of every genre, whether for kids or adults, as well as TV shows, are dubbed into Italian. In big cities original version movies can also be seen. Subtitles are usually available on late night programmes on mainstream TV channels, and on pay-TV all movies are available in English with Italian subtitles, and many shows feature the original English soundtrack. But for fans of dubbing, there are some little-known sites on the Internet that offer the free streaming of movies with their Italian soundtrack. Early in his career, Nino Manfredi
worked extensively as a dubbing actor. Furthermore, common practice at one point in Italian cinema was to shoot scenes MOS and dub the dialogue in post-production, a notable example being The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, in which even actors speaking English on screen had to dub in their own voices.
In the Czech Republic
and Slovakia
, virtually all foreign films and television programmes shown on television are dubbed, often by very well-known actors. In Slovakia often the Czech dub is shown instead of producing a local one. Some audiences prefer the Czech dubs because they are considered to be of higher quality. In both countries dubbing actors often "overact", causing audiences to express views that American films are of low intellectual quality. In cinemas, films are usually shown subtitled, unless they are intended for children of 12 years of age and younger; Slovak law requires that those films be dubbed or rated as MP-12 (roughly equivalent to PG-13, without a cautionary meaning in this case.). Cinemas sometimes offer both dubbed and subtitled screenings for either very major movie releases (for example, the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy
) that would have otherwise not been dubbed, or conversely for children's films or family films that are expected to also attract mature viewers (for example, Shrek
) to maximize the potential audience. In the Czech republic it's also common that some actors are dubbed always by one Czech actor, for instance Louis de Funes was almost always dubbed by František Filipovský. In Slovakia, state-owned public broadcaster Slovenská televízia dubs programs that it acquires from foreign companies for its channels into Slovak. Markiza and TV JOJ also dub. In the Czech Republic, MiniMax, Animax, TV Prima
and other Czech language stations also impose dubbing. For example, Jan Maxián is the official Czech voice dubbing artist for high-profile actor, Elijah Wood
. But in the Slovak Dubbing markets, Elijah Wood's Slovak dubbing voice was provided by Michal Hallon.
In Spain
, practically all foreign television programmes are shown dubbed in European Spanish
, as are most films. Some dubbing actors have achieved popularity for their voices, like Constantino Romero, who dubs Clint Eastwood
, Darth Vader
and Schwarzenegger
's Terminator
, among others, and Óscar Muñoz
who is the official European Spanish dub-over voice artist for Elijah Wood
and Hayden Christensen
.
In Catalonia
, the Valencian Community
, the Balearic Islands
, Galicia and the Basque Country
, many or most foreign programmes are also dubbed into their own official languages, different from European Spanish. Currently, with the spread of the Digital terrestrial television
most movies and series can be listened to both in the original and in the dubbed version.
, television series are dubbed. But most television channels in Bulgaria use subtitles for the action and drama movies. AXN
uses subtitles for its series, but as of 2008 emphasizes dubbing. Only Diema
channels dub all programmes. Movies in theaters, excepting films for children, use subtitles. Dubbing of television programs is usually done using voice-overs, but usually with at least four or five actors reading the lines and always trying to give each character a different voice and use appropriate intonations in each sentence. Dubbing with synchronized voices is rarely used, mostly for animated films (with Mrs. Doubtfire
being a rare example of a feature film dubbed this way on BNT Channel 1
, though a subtitled version is currently shown on other channels). Walt Disney Television
's animated series (for example, DuckTales
, Darkwing Duck
, Timon and Pumbaa
) were only aired with synchronized Bulgarian voices on BNT Channel 1
until 2005, but then the Disney show was canceled. When airing of Disney series resumed on Nova Television
and Jetix
in 2008, voice-over was used (but Disney animated movie translations still use synchronized voices). Voice-over dubbing is not used in theatrical releases. The Bulgarian Film Industry Law requires all children's films to be dubbed, not subtitled. Nova Television
dubbed and aired Pokémon with synchronized voices now its airing on Disney Channel also in synchronized form.
In Hungary
, practically all television programmes are dubbed, as are about 50 percent of movies in theaters. In the socialist era, every one of them was dubbed with professional and mostly popular actors. Great care was taken to make sure the same voice actor would lend his voice to the same actor. In the early 1990s, as cinemas tried to keep up with showing newly released films, subtitling became dominant in cinema. This, in turn, forced TV channels to make their own cheap versions of dubbed soundtracks for the movies they presented, resulting in a constant degrading of dubbing quality. Once this became customary, cinema distributors resumed the habit of dubbing for popular productions, presenting them in a quality varying from very poor to average. However, every single feature is presented with the original soundtrack in at least one cinema in large towns and cities.
However, in Hungary most of documentary films and series (for example, on Discovery Channel
, National Geographic Channel
) are made with voice-over. Also some old movies and series, or ones that provide non-translatable jokes and conversations (for example, Mr. Bean
television series), are shown only with subtitles.
There is a more recent problem arising from dubbing included on DVD releases. Many generations have grown up with an original, and by current technological standards outdated soundtrack, which is either technologically (mono or bad quality stereo sound) or legally (expired soundtrack licence) unsuitable for a DVD release. Many original features are released on DVD with a new soundtrack, which in some cases proves to be extremely unpopular, thus forcing DVD producers to include the original soundtrack. In some rare cases the Hungarian soundtrack is left out altogether. This happens notably with Warner Home Video Hungary, who ignored the existence of Hungarian soundtracks completely. This was because they did not want to pay the licensees for the soundtracks to be included on their new DVD releases, which appear with improved picture quality, but very poor subtitling.
, in TV series, original soundtracks are kept and Georgian text is spoken by a lector
. Film
s are always subtitled besides films broadcast on Global Media Group channels.
In Poland
cinema releases for general audiences are almost exclusively subtitled, with the exception of children's movies, and television screenings of movies, as well as made-for-TV shows, are usually shown with voice-over, where the original soundtrack is kept, and translation is read by a voice talent. This method is similar to the so-called Gavrilov translation
in Russia, with one difference - all the dialogues are translated with only one acute, and usually male voice, preferably deep and neutral which does not interfere with the pitch of voice of the original speakers in the background. To some extent it resembles live translation. Certain highly qualified lectors are traditionally assigned to a particular kind of production such as action or drama. Standard dubbing is not widely popular with most audiences, with the exception of cartoons and children's shows, which are dubbed also for TV releases.
Poland has long lasting dubbing traditions which reaches inter-war years. One of the first movies dubbed into Polish in 1931 were Dangerous Curves
(1929), The Dance of Life
(1929), Paramount on Parade
(1930) and Darling of the Gods (1930). 1949 saw the opening of the first dubbing studio, located in Łódź. The first film dubbed the same year was Russkiy vopros (filmed 1948).
The Polish dubbing in the first post-war years did not have good opinion because of bad synchronization. The Polish dialogues were unclear, so people could not understand them. Cinemas had an old aperture which sometimes made a film more unclear than it was. In the 50's the Polish publicist discussed about the quality of Polish versions to foreign movies.
Both the number of dubbed movies and its quality had improved. In the 60's-80's the Polish dubbing had a golden age. In the cinemas were dubbed 1/3 of foreign movies. It was said about "Polish dubbing school" because of its high quality. In that time Poland had some of the best dubbing in the world. The most important person who initiated high quality dubbing versions was director Zofia Dybowska-Aleksandrowicz. Her works were as good as original and sometimes even better who admitted people connected with the original version (actors and directors). In that time dubbing in Poland was very popular. Polish television dubbed very popular films and TV series such as Rich Man, Poor Man
, Fawlty Towers
, Forsyte Saga, Elizabeth R
, I, Claudius
, I'll Take Manhattan
, Peter the Great
.
In the 1980s due to low budget, the television did not have money for tapes so they used the actual record. After first emission dubbing was cancelled (they recorded on that tape something else). In the whole period of communism were dubbed almost 1000 films. In the 90's after democratic transformation Polish television (TVP
) was still dubbing films and TV series. Unfortunately like in the 1980s it was a dubbing only for one emission.
In the year 1995 to Poland entranced Canal+ who at the first years dubbed 30% of schedule. They dubbed very ambitious films and popular TV series. One of the well known and popular dubbing were Friends. Unfortunately they stopped dubbing Friends in 2001 and films in 1999 although many people supported the idea of dubbing and bought the access only for dubbing versions of foreign productions. According to survey of public opinion dubbing in Canal+ supported 43,4% subscribers (almost 500,000 people). The other 50,2% preferred lectors and 8,1% with subtitles. In the 1990s dubbing was made also by television Wizja Jeden
. They dubbed mainly production of BBC such as very popular The League of Gentlemen
, Absolutely Fabulous
or Men Behaving Badly
. Wizja Jeden was closed in 2001. In the same year TVP stopped dubbing TV series Frasier
although that dubbing was very popular.
Nowadays according to the recent survey of public opinion made by TVP, dubbing and voice-over is equally supported by 45% of society each. At present dubbing to films and TV series for teenagers is made by Nickelodeon
and Disney's Channels
. One of the major breakthroughs in dubbing was the Polish release of Shrek
, which contained many references to local culture and Polish humor. Since then, people seem to have grown to like dubbed versions more, and pay more attention to the dubbing actors. However, this seems to be the case only with animated films, as live-action dubbing is still considered a bad practice. In the case of DVD releases
, most discs contain both the original soundtrack and subtitles, and either lector or dubbed Polish track. The dubbed version is in most cases the one from the theater release, while voice-over is provided for movies which were only subtitled in theaters.
Russian
television is generally dubbed with only a couple of voice actors, with the original speech still audible underneath. In the Soviet Union
most foreign movies to be officially released were dubbed. However, with the fall of the regime many popular foreign movies, previously forbidden or at least questionable under communist rule, started to flood in, in the form of low-quality home-copied videos. Being unofficial releases, they were dubbed in a very primitive way, for example, the translator spoke the text directly over the audio of a video being copied, using primitive equipment. The quality of the resulting dub was very low, the translated phrases were off-sync, interfered with the original voices, background sounds leaked into the track, translation was inaccurate and most importantly, all dub voices were made by a single person and usually lacked the intonation of the original, making comprehension of some scenes quite difficult. In modern Russia
, the overdubbing technique is still used in many cases, although with vastly improved quality and now with multiple voice actors dubbing different original voices.
In Ukraine
television and cinema is generally dubbed with the overdubbing technique, with multiple voice actors dubbing different original voices. But for Russian films are possible subtitles. Russian language TV programs are usually not dubbed.
In Latvia
and Lithuania
, voice-over dubbing is hugely popular on Television; almost all shows are voice-over dubbed. This dubbing method is similar to the Polish method which means that only one person reads the whole translated text while the original sound can be heard in the background in a lowered loudness, throughout the entire program. In cinemas, only children's animated (such as The Tale of Despereaux
) and live action films (such as Charlotte's Web
) is dubbed in Latvian
and Lithuanian
languages.
and most of Canada
outside of Quebec
, foreign films shown in theaters such as Metropolis
and Doraemon: Nobita's Dinosaur 2006 are usually subtitled. The exceptions are Tokusatsu
and daikaiju films, which are dubbed when imported into the U.S.; the poor quality of the dubbing of these films has become the subject of much mockery. A small number of British films have been dubbed when released in America owing to dialects used that Americans are not familiar with (for example, Kes
, Trainspotting
). In addition, British children shows (such as Bob the Builder
) are re-dubbed with American voice actors, making the series more understandable for American children. Televised Japanese anime
is almost always aired in its dubbed format regardless of its content or target age group, with the sole exceptions occurring either when an English dub has not been produced for the program (usually in the case of feature films) or when the program is being presented by a network that places importance on presenting it in its original format (as was the case when Turner Classic Movies
aired several of Hayao Miyazaki
's works, which were presented both dubbed and subtitled). Most anime
DVDs contain options for original Japanese, Japanese with subtitles, and English dubbed, except for a handful of series which have been heavily edited and/or Americanized. Also, Disney has a policy that makes its directors undergo stages to perfect alignment of certain lip movements so the movie looks believable.
For Spanish-speaking countries, all foreign language programs, films, cartoons and documentaries shown in free aired TV channels are dubbed into Neutral Spanish, while in cable and satellite pan-regional channels, films are either dubbed or subtitled. In theaters, only films made for children are dubbed into Neutral Spanish (usually with Mexican pronunciation) and sometimes dubbed into local Spanish. In Argentina
, all movies are shown in their original language, in addition to Spanish-dubbed versions of films for children.
In Mexico
, by law, films shown in theaters must be shown in their original version; films in languages other than Spanish are usually subtitled. Only educational documentaries and movies classified for a children's audience may be dubbed, but this is not compulsory and some animated films are shown in theaters in both dubbed and subtitled versions. Dubbing must be made in Mexico by Mexican nationals or foreigners residing in Mexico. Most of the movies released as DVD have the feature of Neutral Spanish. On broadcast TV foreign programs are dubbed. In pay TV
most shows and movies are subtitled.
In Brazil
, foreign programs are invariably dubbed into Brazilian Portuguese
on broadcast TV, with only a few exceptions. Films shown at cinemas are generally offered with both subtitled and dubbed versions, although subtitling is preferential for adult movies and dubbing is preferential for children movies. Pay TV
commonly offers both dubbed and subtitled movies, but subtitling is predominant. When released on DVD
, all movies usually feature both dubbing and subtitling.
In Quebec
, Canada
, most films and TV programs in English are dubbed into Quebec French
(with an International French
accent for ease of comprehension and regional neutrality). Occasionally, the dubbing of a series or a movie, such as The Simpsons
, is made using the more widely-spoken joual
variety of Quebec French. This has the advantage of making child
ren's films and TV series comprehensible to younger audiences, but many bilingual Québécois prefer subtitling since they would understand some or all of the original audio. In addition, all films are shown in English as well in certain theaters (especially in major cities and English-speaking areas such as the West Island
), and in fact, some theatres, such as the Scotiabank Cinema Montreal, show only movies in English. Most American television series are only available in English on DVD
, or on English language channels, but some of the more popular ones have French dubs shown on mainstream networks, and are released in French on DVD as well, sometimes separately from an English-only version.
Formerly, all French-language dubbed films in Quebec were imported from France, and to this day some still are. Such a practice was criticized by former politician Mario Dumont
after he took his children to see the Parisian French dub of Shrek the Third
, which Dumont found incomprehensible. After Dumont's complaints and a proposed bill, Bee Movie
, the following film from DreamWorks Animation
, was dubbed in Quebec, making it the studio's first animated film to have a Quebec French dub, as all DreamWorks Animation films had previously been dubbed in France. In addition, because Canadian viewers usually find Quebec French more comprehensible than other dialects of the language, some older film series that had the French-language versions of previous installments dubbed in France have later ones dubbed in Quebec, often creating inconsistencies within the French version of the series' canon. Lucasfilm
's Star Wars
and Indiana Jones
series are examples. Both series had films released in the 1970s and 80s with no Québécois French dubbed versions; instead, the Parisian French versions with altered character and object names, terms, and so on, were distributed in the province. However, later films in both series released 1999 and later were dubbed in Quebec, using different voice actors and "reversing" name changes made in France's dubbings due to the change in studio. The French dub of Naruto
that airs in Quebec is from France but uses a local opening.
has a long tradition of generally dubbing foreign films into Mandarin Chinese which started in the 1930s. Beginning in the late 1970s, not only films, but popular TV series from the United States
, Japan
, Brazil
, and Mexico
were also dubbed. The Shanghai Film Dubbing Studio has been the most celebrated one in the film dubbing industry in China. In order to generate high-quality products, they divide each film into short segments, each one lasting only a few minutes, and then work on the segments one by one. In addition to the correct meaning in translation, they make tremendous effort to match the lips of the actors. As a result, viewers can hardly detect that the films they are seeing are actually dubbed. The cast of dubbers is acknowledged at the end of a dubbed film. Quite a few dubbing actors and actresses of the Shanghai Film Dubbing Studio became well-known celebrities, among whom are Qiu Yuefeng, Bi Ke, Li Zi, and Liu Guangning. In recent years however, especially in the larger cities on east and south coast, it has become increasingly common that movie theaters show subtitled versions with the original soundtrack intact. Taiwan
also dubs and shows foreign films and TV series in Mandarin Chinese.
In Hong Kong
, foreign television programmes, except for English and Mandarin television programmes, are dubbed in Cantonese Chinese, and Japanese programs, including anime
, are also dubbed in Cantonese Chinese. English and Mandarin programmes are generally shown in their original language with subtitles. Foreign films such as most live action films and animated films are also generally dubbed in Cantonese Chinese such as anime films and Disney animated films.
Almost all the time, Foreign films and TV programs, both Live action and animated, are generally dubbed in both Mandarin Chinese and Cantonese Chinese languages.
For example. In The Lord of the Rings film series, Elijah Wood's character: Frodo Baggins
was given a Mandarin Chinese voice-over dubbed by Jiang Guangtao for China
and Taiwan
. But for the Cantonese Chinese voice-over localization, His voice was given by: Bosco Tang for the Hong Kong
Market.
In Japan
, foreign television programmes and films began to be shown dubbed in Japanese
on TV since the 1950s. In the first stage, the lack of video software for domestic television, video software is imported from abroad, when it is televised, broadcast on commercial TV was mostly dubbed. This is the character limit for a small TV screen at a lower resolution and the initial response to their poor elderly and illiterate eye, as far as television was to be used for audio dubbing. Nowadays, TV shows and movies that are aimed either at all ages, or for adults-only are both shown Generally dubbed and shown with its original language with Japanese subtitles and contains the original language option when that film gets released on VHS
, DVD
and Blu-Ray. Adult cartoons such as Family Guy
and South Park
are shown dubbed in Japanese on the WOWOW
TV channel. But for: South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut, It was dubbed in Japanese, by different actors instead of the same Japanese dubbing-actors from the cartoon, due to the fact that it was handled by a different Japanese dubbing studio, and also marketed for the Kansai market. Foreign films usually contains multiple different Japanese-dubbing versions, but with a bunch of different original Japanese-dubbing voice actors depending whenever on which TV station it airs on. NHK
, Nippon TV, Fuji TV, TV Asahi
and also TBS
usually do this, and same for even on software releases such as being released on VHS
, DVD
and Blu-Ray. There also exists: "Japanese Dub-over artists" for famous celebrities which for example:
In Thailand
, foreign television programmes are dubbed in Thai
, but the original soundtrack is often simultaneously carried on a NICAM
audio track on terrestrial broadcast, and alternate audio tracks on satellite broadcast; previously, terrestrial stations simulcast
ed the original soundtrack on the radio. On Pay-TV, many channels carry foreign language movies and television programmes with subtitles. Nearly all movie theaters throughout the country show both the subtitled version and the dubbed version of English-language movies. In Bangkok, the majority of theaters showing English-language movies are subtitled only. In big cities like Bangkok Thai-language movies have English subtitles. For English-language animated movies, Disney films like: The Lion King
, Mulan and Tangled are dubbed entirely in Thai. Chonnai Sukawat has provided the Thai-dubbing voice for the heroine Rapunzel in the film, Tangled. In Harry Potter, Hermione Granger
was dubbed in Thai by Thai singer and actress known as: Bismillah Nana. Many English-language movies are sold on VCD
s in Thailand, with the original English language with Thai subtitles as well as also being available with the Thai language dubbed version, such as Eragon
, Avatar, The Harry Potter film series
and The Lord of the Rings film series. Thai lakorn
s are with English subtitles if broadcast on international television channels, or sold as DVD abroad.
In Indonesia
and Malaysia, South American telenovela
s are dubbed in Indonesian
and Malay
, while English language programmes are usually shown in the original language with Indonesian
and Malay
subtitles, respectively. However, this has recently changed in Malaysia, and South American telenovelas now retain their original language, with Malay subtitles. Most but not all Korean and Japanese dramas are still dubbed in Mandarin
with Malay subtitles on terrestrial television channels. Cantonese, Mandarin, Tamil
and Hindi
programmes are shown in original language all this while, usually with Malay subtitling (and in some cases, multilingual subtitling). Cartoons and anime are also dubbed as well, such as Kekkaishi
, Megas XLR
, Spheres
(Korea
), dubbed by young soundman Mohamad Nor Aliff Abd Majid a.k.a Aliff JJ, and others like Crayon Shin Chan, Doraemon
, Bleach
, and Naruto
. Although English-language cartoons are normally not dubbed, and some anime do retain their original Japanese language. In Indonesia English-language daytime cartoons are mostly dubbed, however on some pay-tv channels like Nickelodeon cartoons are not dubbed and do not have subtitles. Feature animations are either dubbed or subtitled depending on which television-channel it is shown on.
In Malaysian news program, it is broadcast in several languages for twenty minutes each language for minor languages and international languages, including dialects of Chinese, the languages of news to broadcast by law is Malay
, English
, Mandarin Chinese, Min Nan
and Thai
.
In the Philippines
, Japanese anime are more often than not dubbed in Tagalog
or another Philippine regional language. The channel HERO TV, which focuses on anime and Tokusatsu shows, has all its foreign programs dubbed in Tagalog. Animax
, meanwhile, have their anime programs dubbed in English. Also popular in the Philippines are Chinese, Korean, and Mexican dramas which are termed Chinovelas, Koreanovelas, and Mexicanovelas, respectively, and all these are also dubbed in Tagalog or another Philippine regional language, with its unique set of Filipino-speaking voice actors. The prevalence of media needing to be dubbed has resulted in a talent pool that is very capable of syncing voice to lip, especially for shows broadcast by the country's three largest networks. It is not uncommon in the Filipino dub industry to have most of the voices in a series dubbed by only a handful of voice talents. Normally, English language programs are usually not dubbed, because Filipinos can understand English. Notable exceptions are a number of Nickelodeon
cartoons shown on TV5
which are dubbed in Tagalog or another Philippine regional language. TV5
is also the only television channel in the country that airs English-language movies dubbed in Tagalog.
In Mongolia
, most television dubbing uses the Russian method, with only a few voice actors, and the original language audible underneath. In movie theaters, foreign films are shown in their original language with Mongolian
subtitles underneath.
In India
, where "foreign films" are synonymous with Hollywood films, dubbing is done mostly in Hindi
, and languages like Tamil
and Telugu
. The finished works are released into the towns and lower tier settlements of the respective states (where English penetration is low), often with the English language originals being released in the metropolitan areas. In all other states, the English originals are released along with the dubbed versions where often the dubbed version collections are outstanding than original. The most recent dubbing of Spider-Man 3
was also done in Bhojpuri, a language popular in northern India. Ami Trivedi
has done the Hindi voice for Harry Potter
in the first Harry Potter film
, but her older brother, Karan Trivedi
took over as the second Permanent Hindi dubbing voice for Harry Potter in the rest of the trilogy, since the second film. Rajshree Nath
originally did the Hindi dubbing voice for Hermione Granger
in the first two Harry potter films, But since the third film, Hermione's second and permanent Hindi dubbing voice was done by: Parignya Pandya
. Nachiket Dighe has done Ron Weasley
's Hindi dubbing voice, throughout the entire series. Pinky Rajput and Rajshree Nath
both voiced the all time favorite Barbie character in the Hindi dubs of the Barbie films.
In Pakistan
, almost 60% of the population speaks Punjabi
as their mother tongue. Therefore, Punjabi films have more business than Urdu films. The film companies produced Punjabi films and re-record all films in Urdu and released the result as a "Double Version" film.
Also in Pakistan
, where "foreign films" are synonymous with Hollywood films, dubbing is done mostly in Urdu , which is the national language, and the finished works are released in the major cities throughout country.
In Vietnam
, foreign-language films and programs are subtitled on television in Vietnamese
, and previously (until 1985) are not dubbed, but are brief translated with a speaker before commercial breaks. RiO was considered to be the very first American Hollywood film to be entirely dubbed in Vietnamese
.
In multilingual Singapore
, English language programmes on the free-to-air terrestrial channels are usually subtitled in Chinese or Malay, while Chinese, Malay and Tamil programmes are almost always subtitled in English. Dual sound programs like Korean and Japanese dramas offer sound in the original languages with subtitles, Mandarin dubbed and subtitled, or English dubbed. The deliberate policy to encourage Mandarin
among citizens made it required by law for programmes in other Chinese dialects (Hokkien
, Cantonese and Teochew) to be dubbed into Mandarin, exceptions being traditional operas. Cantonese and Hokkien shows from Hong Kong and Taiwan respectively are nevertheless available on VCD and DVD. In a recent development, news bulletins are subtitled.
In South Korea
, several English-speaking (mostly American
) live-action films were dubbed in Korean
, but they were not shown in theaters. Instead they were only broadcast on South Korean television networks (KBS
, MBC
, SBS
), while DVD import releases of these films were shown with Korean subtitles. This may be due to the fact that the six American major film studios may not own any rights to the Korean dubs of their live-action films, currently to this point, that the Korean television networks have dubbed and aired. Even if they don't own the rights, Korean or Non-Korean viewers can record off Korean dubbed live action films from Television broadcasting onto DVDs with DVR
s.
, dubbing started in 1946 with the advent of movies and cinemas in the country. Since then, foreign movies have always been dubbed for the cinema and TV. Using various voice actors and adding local hints and witticisms to the original contents, dubbing played a major role in attracting people to the cinemas and interesting them in other cultures. The dubbing art in Iran reached its culminant point during the 1960s and 1970s with the inflow of American, European and Hindi movies. The most famous musicals of the time, such as My Fair Lady
and The Sound of Music
were translated, adjusted and performed in Persian
by the voice talents. Since the 1979 revolution
in Iran, the dubbing industry has declined, with movies dubbed only for the state TV channels. During recent years DVDs with Persian subtitles have found a market among the educated, but most people still prefer Persian-spoken versions.
and Morocco
, most foreign movies (especially Hollywood productions) are shown with French dubbing. These movies are usually imported directly from French film distributors. The choice of movies dubbed into French can be explained by the colonization past of these countries by France and the widespread use of the French language (among the intellectual elite), in addition to the marginalization of one national language (that is, the Berber
language). Another important factor is that local theaters and private media companies do not dub in local languages to avoid high costs, but also because of the lack of both expertise and demand. Starting from the 1980s, dubbed series and movies for children in Modern Standard Arabic became a popular choice among most TV channels, cinemas and VHS/DVD stores. But it should be noted that dubbed films are still imported and dubbing is performed in Arab countries with strong tradition of dubbing and subtitling (mainly Syria
, Lebanon
and Jordan
). The evolution of movies targeting the adult audience was different. After the satellite boom in the Arab World
and the emergence of Pan-Arab channels, the use of subtitles, which was already popular in the Middle-East, was highly popular among local viewers in Algeria and Morocco.
In Tunisia
, theaters usually show French dubbed movies, but cinema attendance in the country for such movies is in continuous decline compared to Tunisian and Arab movies. This decline can be traced to the huge popularity of free-to-air Pan-Arab movie channels offering mainly subtitled content and the government's reduced efforts to limit piracy. Tunisia National Television (TNT), the public broadcaster of Tunisia, is not allowed to show any content in any language other than Arabic, which forced it to broadcast only dubbed content (this restriction was lately removed for commercials). During the 1970s and 1980s, TNT (known as ERTT at the time) started dubbing famous cartoons in Tunisian and Standard Arabic. This move was highly successful locally, but was not able to compete with mainstream dubbing companies (especially in the Middle East). In the private sector, television channels are not subject to the language rule and sometimes broadcast foreign content dubbed into French (excluding children content), although some of them, such as Hannibal TV started adopting subtitling in Arabic instead, which proved to be more popular than simply importing French dubbed content.
, many television programmes, including The Six Million Dollar Man
, were dubbed in Afrikaans
, with the original soundtrack (usually in English, but sometimes Dutch or German) "simulcast
" in FM stereo on Radio 2000. However, this practice has declined as a result of the reduction of airtime for the language on SABC TV, and the increase of locally produced material in Afrikaans on other channels like KykNet
and MK. Similarly, many programmes, such as The Jeffersons
, were dubbed into Zulu
, but this has declined as local drama production has increased.
, with foreign language television programmes and films being shown (usually on SBS
) with subtitles. This has also been the case in New Zealand
, but the Maori Television Service
, launched in 2004, has dubbed animated films, like Watership Down
, into Maori
. However, some TV commercials which originated from foreign countries are dubbed, even if the original commercial came from another English-speaking country.
can be used instead of dubbing, as different countries have different traditions regarding the choice between dubbing and subtitling. In most English-speaking
countries, dubbing is comparatively rare. In Israel
, some programmes need to be comprehensible to speakers of both Hebrew
and Russian
. This cannot be accomplished with dubbing, so subtitling is much more commonplace—sometimes even with subtitles in multiple languages, with the soundtrack remaining in the original language, usually English. The same also applies to certain television shows in Finland
, where Finnish
and Swedish
are both official languages.
In the Netherlands
, Flanders
, Nordic countries
and Estonia
, films and television programmes are shown in the original language (usually English) with subtitles, and only cartoons and children movies and programs are dubbed, such as the Harry Potter
series, Finding Nemo
, Shrek
, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
, and so on. Cinemas usually show both a dubbed version and one with subtitles for this kind of movie, with the subtitled version shown later in the evening.
In Portugal
this has traditionally also been the case (at least for live-action material), but one terrestrial channel, TVI
, dubs U.S. series like Dawson's Creek
into Portuguese
. RTP also transmitted Friends
in a dubbed version, but it was poorly received and later re-aired in a subtitled version. Cartoons, on the other hand, are usually dubbed, sometimes by well-known actors, even on TV. Animated movies are usually released to the cinemas in both subtitled and dubbed versions.
On DVD
s with higher translation budgets, the option for both types will often be provided to account for individual preferences; purist
s often demand subtitles. For small markets (small language area or films for a select audience) subtitling is more suitable because it is cheaper. For films for small children who cannot yet read, or do not read fast enough, dubbing is necessary.
In Argentina
and Venezuela
, terrestrial channels air films and TV series in a dubbed version, as demanded by law. However, those same series can be seen on cable channels at more accessible timeslots in their subtitled version, and usually before they are shown on open TV. In contrast, the series The Simpsons
is aired in its Mexican dubbed version both on terrestrial television and on the cable station Fox, which broadcasts the series for the area. Although the first season of the series appeared with subtitles, this was not continued for the following seasons.
Apart from airing dubbed TV series (for example, Lost
, ER
and House
) the Argentinian open TV station Canal 13 (Argentina)
has bought the rights to produce and air a "ported version" of Desperate Housewives
in Argentina, with local actors and actresses.
, Japan
and/or PAL
countries such as Europe
and Australia
, are also dubbed into the market's main languages. Because characters' mouth movements are often part of the game's code, lip sync
is often achieved by re-coding the mouth movements to match the dialogue in the new language, when translated to a new one. The Source engine
is known for automatically generating lip-synch data, making it easier for games to be localised.
For the European version of a game, the text of the game is available in various languages, and in many cases, the dialogue is dubbed into the respective languages as well.
The North American version of any game is always available in English
with translated text and dubbed dialogue if necessary, as well as in other languages in some cases, especially if the North American version of the game contains the same data as the European version. Because the English voice casts of many Japan
ese games are perceived negatively, some Japanese games, such as those in the Sonic the Hedgehog, Dynasty Warriors and Soulcalibur
series, include the original Japanese audio as well as an English translated version.
have decided to replace; this is usually done to remove profanity
. In most cases, the original actor does not perform this duty; instead, an actor with a similar voice is called in. The results are sometimes seamless, but in many cases the voice of the replacement actor sounds nothing like the original performer, which becomes particularly noticeable when extensive dialogue needs to be replaced. Also, often easy to notice, is the sudden absence of background sounds in the movie during the dubbed dialogue. Among the films considered notorious for using substitute actors that sound very different from their theatrical counterparts are the Smokey and the Bandit
and the Die Hard
film series as shown on broadcasters such as TBS. In the case of Smokey and the Bandit, extensive dubbing was done for the first network airing on ABC Television
in 1978, especially for Jackie Gleason
's character, Buford T. Justice
. The dubbing of his phrase "Sombitch" became the more palatable (and memorable) "Scum Bum", which became a catchphrase of the time.
Dubbing is commonly used in science fiction
television as well. Sound generated by effects equipment such as animatronic puppets or by actors' movements on elaborate multi-level plywood sets (for example, starship bridges or other command centers) will quite often make the original character dialogue unusable. Stargate
and Farscape
are two prime examples where ADR is used heavily to produce usable audio.
Since some anime series contain some amount of profanity, the studios recording the English dubs often re-record certain lines if a series or movie is going to be broadcast on Cartoon Network
, removing references to death
and hell
as well. Some companies will offer both an edited and an uncut version of the series on DVD, so that there is an edited script available in case the series is broadcast. Other companies also edit the full-length version of a series, meaning that even on the uncut DVD characters say things like "Blast!" and "Darn!" in place of the original dialogue's profanity. Bandai Entertainment's
English dub of G Gundam is infamous for this, among many other things, with such lines as "Bartender, more milk".
Dubbing has also been used for comedic purposes, replacing lines of dialogue to create comedies from footage that was originally another genre. Examples include the Australian shows The Olden Days and Bargearse, redubbed from 1970s Australian drama and action series, respectively, and the Irish show Soupy Norman
, redubbed from Pierwsza miłość, a Polish soap opera.
Dubbing into a foreign language does not always entail the deletion of the original language; in some countries, a performer may read the translated dialogue as a voiceover. This often occurs in Russia
and Poland
, where "lektories" or "lektors" read the translated dialogue into Russian
and Polish
. In Poland, a single person reads all parts of the performance, both male and female. However, this is done almost exclusively for the television and home video markets, while theatrical releases are usually subtitled. Recently, however, the number of high-quality, fully dubbed films has increased, especially for children's movies. If a quality dubbed version exists for some film, it is shown in theaters (however, some films, such as Harry Potter
or Star Wars
, are shown in both dubbed and subtitled versions varying with the time of the show) as well as on TV (although some channels drop it and do standard one narrator translation) and VHS/DVD. In other countries, like Vietnam
, the voiceover technique is also used for theatrical releases.
In Russia, the reading of all lines by a single person is referred to as a Gavrilov translation
, and is generally found only in illegal copies
of films and on cable television
. Professional copies always include at least two actors of opposite gender translating the dialogue. Some titles in Poland have been dubbed this way, too, but this method lacks public appeal so it is very rare now.
On special occasions, such as film festival
s, live interpreting
is often done by professionals. See also dubtitle
.
Those who dislike dubbing sometimes claim that it devalues films or TV programs, as original soundtracks are closer to what the director intended. The humorous effect of Inspector Clouseau
's accent is, of course, entirely lost if dubbed in French. Some consider that the body language
of Italian
actors make their performances particularly ill-suited to dubbing, as foreign post-synchronization often destroys much of the original Italian language's feeling. Comedy performers such as Peter Sellers
, Louis de Funès
, Steve Martin
or Roberto Benigni
are considered to lose much of their impact when dubbed into foreign languages, as the humorous effect resulting from the interaction between their voices and bodies is partially lost. Some feel that dubbing can make the film or program less authentic. For example, German
officers in WWII
movies can be distracting to some if not speaking German
, while in the German-dubbed versions of these films, the contrast between Germans and speakers of other languages is lost. The best example here is from the Indiana Jones
movies, where the German characters had to be dubbed by native Germans for the German release. For the later re-release of the movies for television and DVD, the dubbed lines were retained in the soundtrack to make it sound more authentic. In films (usually English films) in which an actor is originally speaking German, the original German speaking actor is often dubbed into other German dialects
; for example, Eastern German dialects, Austro-Bavarian German
, or Swiss German
, as was done with Üter Zörker from The Simpsons
, who is a German in the English version, but a Swiss in the German version.
Likewise, some claim it is distracting in English dubbed anime
when many characters speak in North American accents, which may not match their ethnicity and nationality or the time and setting of the story. Similarly, in dubbed versions the different accents of the protagonists may be important to the story (for example in Upstairs, Downstairs
, portraying the lives of an upper-class London family and their servants in the early 20th century) but cannot always be adequately reproduced in certain languages. In addition, a significant part of an actor's performance consists of his vocal inflections. Very often, memorable lines from popular films are frequently quoted, not for their substance, but for the way they were spoken; a good example is a famous sentence uttered by Jack Nicholson
in the film A Few Good Men
: "You can't handle the truth!" For these reasons, some may feel they miss part of a film's artistic value when watching it dubbed into another language. Also, lip synchronization is normally lost when dubbing, even with quality dubbing between closely related languages. There are examples of films which have been reshot or reanimated to remedy this problem. The dubbing of many television series is often criticized: the French dubbing of Dynasty
and many American soap operas was and still is considered especially poor and ill-synchronized, and in addition it sometimes appears as if the dubbing was filmed with the camera on a different setting.
Dubbing performers are occasionally known to take liberties with some works they do not hold in particular esteem, or consider to be exploitation films. The French
dubbing of the anime Fist of the North Star
is notorious, as the performers disliked the violence of the series so much that, after post-synchronizing a few episodes, they only agreed to continue their work if they could turn the show into a spoof. This resulted in episodes full of idiotic puns, absurd dialogue and extreme overacting by everybody. This dubbing has gathered a cult following in France for that precise reason, although many anime
fans consider it highly disrespectful to the original work.
Another example is the German dub of Monty Python and the Holy Grail
. The people responsible for the dub deemed Monty Python's humour unsuitable for a German audience (which was disproven by the huge success of Monty Python in Germany up to the present day, the group having even produced a German-language TV show and actually speaking the language in it) and introduced a lot of awkward puns into the dialogue, whereby they often completely killed the original humour. However, this practice was a success with The Persuaders!
, where Tony Curtis
' and Roger Moore
's suddenly very humorous dialogue generated a cult following in Germany, whereas the series was not as well received in its original country, the UK.
A growing lobby in Europe cites dubbing as hindrance to multilingualism. In countries where subtitling is the preferred option, English literacy and comprehension is statistically far higher than in countries where television and films are routinely dubbed. Of course, this could be a "chicken or egg came first" situation. It could be that the films are routinely dubbed because of the illiteracy.
Occasionally, dubbing teams can show some disregard for the meaning and setting of the movies, regardless of their perceived quality. The French version of Gunfight at the O.K. Corral
renames Wyatt Earp
"Edward Thorpe", as Earp's name is difficult to pronounce in French. Since Wyatt Earp is not familiar to French audiences as a historical figure, the adapters did not feel bound to retain his name.
Dubbing can also induce censorship issues, especially if a film's topic is uncomfortable for the country where it is going to be released. For instance, in the '50s and '60s in Germany
it was usual to conceal any mentioning of Nazis in popular movies: in the 1952 version of Casablanca (film)
shown in Germany, all the Nazi characters were cut out and dialogues were replaced in order to remove any mention of them (most notably, the freedom fighter Victor László has been renamed to a Norwegian scientist Victor Larsen who was hunted by a crime syndicate because of his invention). Latter examples include the first Die Hard
film where the names of the originally German terrorists have been changed to English-sounding ones, and Starship Troopers (film)
, where dialogues were rewritten in the dub in order to soften down the fascist society depicted in the film.
In many European countries, Hollywood movies are regularly dubbed and some people maintain that a creative translation (not necessarily faithful to the original English words) can occasionally bring additional fun and depth to films. English-language series such as The Persuaders!
and Starsky and Hutch
are highly popular in France
for their talented dubbing. The French version of The Persuaders! was in fact a translation of the German version instead of the English original—and was also successful. It also frequently included remarks about the series itself like "Junge, lass doch die Sprüche, die setzen ja die nächste Folge ab!" ("Stop those jokes, or they'll cancel the series!") or about the dubbing: "Du musst jetzt etwas schneller werden, sonst bist du nicht synchron" ("Talk faster, or you won't be in sync any more").
In Hungary
, it is common for translators to create a Hungarian
text which rhymes for comedies and cartoons, using well-known local actors to provide the reading voices. The most famous example is perhaps the The Flintstones
, with its entire Hungarian text in rhymes.
In many cases, dubbing of films or series involves the addition of dialogue where there previously was none. This often happened during the dubbing of anime
for television. Extended silent scenes with no dialogue are often used for dramatic effect in anime, as in live action. This is typically considered too slow-paced for North American children's cartoons where dialogue is considered the most important element. This was commonly seen in early anime dubs such as Robotech
or Voltron
, where narration or character voiceovers (an animated equivalent to "thought balloons" in comics
) would fill in silence. American cartoons are known for rarely having scenes without background music due to the same concerns over slow pacing. Therefore, in anime dubs, background music would also be edited into scenes that previously contained no background music.
Dubbed films can also be regarded as a second edited version of a film since the film is narrated and acting once more and several dubbed versions could be considered as an additional film next to the original one as it offers more scope in spoken language and text content and has not to be translated uninspiredly word by word. On DVDs you even have the choice to choose the language you better like but which is not possible with subtitled films where you are forced to watch the only existing version.
One more advantage of dubbing films is the opportunity to improve the original film by adding regional phrases, hints or some simple side noises like coughing, laughing, buzzing and so on, which would be considered as more natural in another language while such noises are missing in the original for example.
Dubbing films affords also the opportunity to change the original text or meaning which was originally made and intended for only one group or a few groups of audience but would be regarded kind of weird or would not be understood in the same way as it actually should when it would be translated literally into another language.
In this case the text or the meaning would get confusing or it would reduce or even lose its fun factor. Dubbed versions do have the advantage to use a proper imaginative translated counterpart of a word or a phrase and enriches so the comprehension of the audience watching the dubbed version.
Subtitled versions, in contrast, could be confusing because there is the problem of how to translate the phrase analogously or literally, and it should please the audience as well.
was translated to European Spanish, Mexican Spanish
, Venezuelan Spanish
and Rioplatense Spanish
. However, people from Chile
and Uruguay
clearly noticed a strong porteño
accent from most of the characters of the Rioplatense Spanish translation. Another example is the French dubbing of The Simpsons
, which is entirely different in Quebec
and France
, the humor being highly different for each audience (see Non-English versions of The Simpsons
). Audiences in Quebec are generally critical of France's dubbing of The Simpsons, which they often do not find amusing. The French-language Télétoon network once aired the Quebec Simpsons dub, as well as Parisian French dubs of Futurama
and Family Guy
, which were both similar to the Parisian Simpsons dub. The two latter shows have since been taken off the network (probably due to a lack of popularity), while The Simpsons continues its run on Télétoon. The Quebec French
dubbing of films, while generally made in accent-less Standard French
, often sounds peculiar to audiences in France, because of the persistence of some regionally neutral expression which may not sound quite natural to all audiences, and because Quebec French performers pronounce Anglo-Saxon names with an American accent, while French performers do not. Occasionally, for reasons of cost, American direct-to-video
films, such as the 1995 film When the Bullet Hits the Bone, are released in France with a Quebec French dubbing, sometimes resulting in what some members of French audiences perceive as unintentional humor.
Portugal
and Brazil
also use different versions of dubbed films and series. Because dubbing has never been very popular in Portugal
, for decades children films and television series were distributed using the good-quality Brazilian dub. Only in the 1990s dubbing began to gain importance in Portugal, thanks to the popularity of dubbed series like Dragon Ball
. The Lion King
became the first Disney feature film to be completely dubbed into European Portuguese
, and subsequently all major animation films and series gained European Portuguese versions. In recent DVD
releases, most of these Brazilian-dubbed classics were released with new Portuguese dubs, eliminating the predominance of Brazilian Portuguese dubs in Portugal.
The German
speaking area which includes Germany
, Austria
, the German speaking part of Switzerland
and Liechtenstein
share together one common German dubbing version. Although there are sometimes some differences concerning some local words or the pronunciation of some words, there's no need to dub into their own versions because all films, shows and series are still dubbed into one single German
version made for the German speaking audience irrespective of any geographical borders. Most voice actors are primarily Germans
and Austrians
since here there has been a long tradition of dubbing films. Switzerland
which has four official languages (German
, French
, Italian
, Romansh) generally use the dubbed versions made in its respective countries (except for Romansh). Liechtenstein
uses German-dubbed versions only.
Sometimes films are also dubbed into several German dialects
for example, (Berlinerisch
, Kölsch, Saxonian, Austro-Bavarian or Swiss German
) which concerns especially animated films or Disney films. It's rather made for amusement and as an additional "special feature" for making the audience buying it. Popular animated films which were dubbed into German dialects were Asterix
films (in addition to its standard German version, every film has a particular dialect version), The Little Mermaid
, Shrek 2
, Cars
(+ Austrian German
) or Up
(+ Austrian German
).
But there are also live-action films or TV-series which have an additional German dubbing: Babe
and its sequel Babe: Pig in the City
(Germany German
, Austrian German
, Swiss German
); Rehearsal for Murder
, Framed
(+ Austrian German
).
TV-series: The Munsters
, Serpico
, Rumpole (+ Austrian German
); The Thorn Birds
(only Austrian German
dubbing).
Before the German reunification
, East Germany also made its own particular German version. For example: Olsen Gang
or the Hungarian
animated series The Mézga Family
were dubbed twice. So you got the opportunity to see a quality comparison.
The many martial arts movies from Hong Kong
that were imported under the unofficial banner Kung Fu Theater were notorious for their seemingly careless dubbing which included poor lip sync and awkward dialogue. Since the results were frequently unintentionally hilarious, this has become one of the hallmarks that endear these films to part of the 1980s culture.
While the voice actors involved usually bear the brunt of criticisms towards poor dubbing, other factors may include script translation and audio mixing. A literal translation of dialogue typically contains speech patterns and sentence structure that are native to the foreign language but would appear awkward if translated literally. English dubs of Japanese animation, for example, must rewrite the dialogue so that it flows smoothly and follows the natural pattern of English speech. Voice actors in a dubbing capacity typically do not have the luxury of viewing the original film with the original voice actor and thus have little idea on how to perform the role. Also, on some occasions, voice actors record their dialogue separately, which lacks the dynamics gained from performing as a group.
, known as Video Rewrite, uses computer animation to match lip movements with the new voice track. In a video clip made using this technology, John F. Kennedy
appears to be saying "Video Rewrite gives lip-synced movies".
Media Movers, Inc., a dubbing company, has developed a piece of proprietary software
which can automatically sync ADR/dubbed tracks with pre-defined algorithms.
TM Systems received Emmy awards
in 2002 and 2007 for their dubbing and subtitling software.
Films, videos and sometimes video games are sometimes dubbed into the local language
Language
Language may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication...
of a foreign market. Dubbing is common in theatrically released film, television series, cartoons and anime
Anime
is the Japanese abbreviated pronunciation of "animation". The definition sometimes changes depending on the context. In English-speaking countries, the term most commonly refers to Japanese animated cartoons....
given foreign distribution.
Automated Dialogue Replacement / post-sync
Automated Dialogue Replacement or Additional Dialogue Recording (ADR) is the process of re-recording the original dialogue after filming for the purpose of obtaining a cleaner, more intelligible dialogue track (also known as looping or a looping session). In the UKUnited Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
it is called post-synchronisation or post-sync.
In conventional film production, a production sound mixer
Production sound mixer
A production sound mixer, location sound recordist, location sound engineer or simply sound mixer is the member of a film crew or television crew responsible for recording all sound recording on set during the filmmaking or television production using professional audio equipment, for later...
records dialogue during filming. Accompanying noise from the set, equipment, traffic, wind, and the overall ambience of the surrounding environment often results in unusable production sound, and during the post-production process a supervising sound editor or ADR Supervisor reviews all of the dialogue in the film and decides which lines will have to be re-recorded. ADR is also used to change the original lines recorded on set in order to clarify context, or to improve the actor's diction and timing.
For animation
Animation
Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. The effect is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in several ways...
such as computer-generated imagery
Computer-generated imagery
Computer-generated imagery is the application of the field of computer graphics or, more specifically, 3D computer graphics to special effects in art, video games, films, television programs, commercials, simulators and simulation generally, and printed media...
or animated cartoons dialogue is recorded to a pre-edited version of the show. Although the characters' voices are recorded in a studio, ADR is necessary whenever members of the cast can not all be present at once.
ADR is recorded during an ADR session, which takes place in a specialized sound studio. The actor, usually the original actor from the set, is shown the scene in question along with the original sound, following which he or she will attempt to recreate the performance as closely as possible. Over the course of multiple re-takes (hence looping) the actor will repeatedly perform the lines while watching the scene, and the most suitable take will make it to the final version of the scene.
Sometimes, a different actor is used from the original actor on set. One famous example is the Star Wars
Star Wars
Star Wars is an American epic space opera film series created by George Lucas. The first film in the series was originally released on May 25, 1977, under the title Star Wars, by 20th Century Fox, and became a worldwide pop culture phenomenon, followed by two sequels, released at three-year...
character Darth Vader
Darth Vader
Darth Vader is a central character in the Star Wars saga, appearing as one of the main antagonists in the original trilogy and as the main protagonist in the prequel trilogy....
, portrayed by David Prowse
David Prowse
David Prowse, MBE is an English former bodybuilder, weightlifter and actor, most widely known for playing the role of Darth Vader in physical form. In Britain, he is also remembered as having played the Green Cross Code man...
and later Hayden Christensen
Hayden Christensen
Hayden Christensen is a Canadian actor. He appeared in Canadian television programs when he was young, then diversified into American television in the late 1990s. He moved on to minor acting roles before being praised for his role of Sam in Life as a House, for which he was nominated for a Golden...
. In post-production, James Earl Jones
James Earl Jones
James Earl Jones is an American actor. He is well-known for his distinctive bass voice and for his portrayal of characters of substance, gravitas and leadership...
always dubbed that character's voice.
Sometimes actors are hired to dub actors who speak the same language but delivered their lines with a foreign accent or poor diction. For example, Frenchmen Philippe Noiret and Jacques Perrin were dubbed into Italian for Cinema Paradiso and Austrian bodybuilder Arnold Schwarzenegger
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Arnold Alois Schwarzenegger is an Austrian-American former professional bodybuilder, actor, businessman, investor, and politician. Schwarzenegger served as the 38th Governor of California from 2003 until 2011....
was dubbed for Hercules in New York
Hercules in New York
Hercules in New York is a 1969 fantasy adventure film. It is known for being the first feature film to star Arnold Schwarzenegger, who was about 22 years old when the film was produced...
. Argentine boxer Carlos Monzon, who didn't have a clear diction, had his voice dubbed by a professional actor when he played the lead in the drama La Mary
La Mary
La Mary is a 1974 Argentine film directed by Daniel Tinayre and starring Susana Giménez and Carlos Monzón. Monzón was a boxer, not a professional actor, and his poor speech skills forced producers to hire a professional actor, Luis Medina Castro, to dub Monzón's lines.- Plot :By 1930, Evaristo, a...
.
ADR can also be used to redub singing. This technique was used by, among many others, Billy Boyd and Viggo Mortensen
Viggo Mortensen
Viggo Peter Mortensen, Jr. is a Danish-American actor, poet, musician, photographer and painter. He made his film debut in Peter Weir's 1985 thriller Witness, and subsequently appeared in many notable films of the 1990s, including The Indian Runner , Carlito's Way , Crimson Tide , Daylight , The...
in The Lord of the Rings
The Lord of the Rings film trilogy
The Lord of the Rings is an epic film trilogy consisting of three fantasy adventure films based on the three-volume book of the same name by English author J. R. R. Tolkien. The films are The Fellowship of the Ring , The Two Towers and The Return of the King .The films were directed by Peter...
.
There are variations of the ADR process. It does not have to take place in a post-production studio, but can be recorded on location, with mobile equipment. ADR can also be recorded without showing the actor the image they must match, but only by having him listen to the performance.
Rythmo band
An alternative method, called rythmo band (or "lip-sync band") was historically used in Canada and France. It provides a more precise guide for the actors, directors and technicians and can be used to complement the traditional ADR method. The band is actually a clear 35 mm film leader on which the dialogue is written by hand in India inkIndia ink
India ink is a simple black ink once widely used for writing and printing and now more commonly used for drawing, especially when inking comic books and comic strips.-Composition:...
, along with numerous additional indications for the actor (laughs, cries, length of syllables, mouth sounds, breaths, mouth openings and closings, etc.). The rythmo band is projected in the studio and scrolls in perfect synchronization with the picture. Thanks to the efficiency of the rythmo band, the number of retakes can be reduced, resulting in substantial savings in recording time. The time saved in the studio comes at the price of a long preparatory process.
The preparation of a rythmo band is a time-consuming process involving a series of specialists organized in an old fashioned production line. Until recently this prevented the technique from being more widely adopted, but software emulations of rythmo band technology overcome the disadvantages of the traditional rythmo band process and significantly reduce the time needed to prepare a dubbing session. Studio time is also used more efficiently, since with the aid of scrolling text, picture, and audio cues actors can read more lines per hour than with ADR alone (only picture and audio). With ADR, actors can average 10-12 lines per hour, while with rythmo band they can read from 35-50 lines per hour, and much more with experience.
At present, there exist several dubbing software solutions, among which are dubStudio (developed in Quebec, Canada) and Synchronos (developed in France).
Practice of dubbing foreign films throughout the world
Dubbing is often used to localize a foreign movie. The new voice track will usually be spoken by a voice artist. In many countries, most actors who regularly perform this duty are generally little-known outside of popular circles such as animeAnime
is the Japanese abbreviated pronunciation of "animation". The definition sometimes changes depending on the context. In English-speaking countries, the term most commonly refers to Japanese animated cartoons....
fandom, for example, or when their voice has become synonymous with the role or the actor or actress whose voice they usually dub. In the United States, many of these actors also employ pseudonyms or go uncredited due to Screen Actors Guild
Screen Actors Guild
The Screen Actors Guild is an American labor union representing over 200,000 film and television principal performers and background performers worldwide...
regulations or a simple desire to dissociate themselves from the role. However, famous local actors can also be hired to perform the dubbing, particularly for comedies and animated movies, as their names are supposed to attract moviegoers, and the entire Hollywood cast may be dubbed by a local cast of similar notoriety.
Europe
Dubbing only for children
In North-West EuropeNorth-West Europe
North-West Europe is a term that refers to a northern area of Western Europe, although the exact area or countries it comprises varies.-Geographic definition:...
—meaning the UK
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
, Republic of Ireland
Republic of Ireland
Ireland , described as the Republic of Ireland , is a sovereign state in Europe occupying approximately five-sixths of the island of the same name. Its capital is Dublin. Ireland, which had a population of 4.58 million in 2011, is a constitutional republic governed as a parliamentary democracy,...
, the Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
and the Nordic countries
Nordic countries
The Nordic countries make up a region in Northern Europe and the North Atlantic which consists of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden and their associated territories, the Faroe Islands, Greenland and Åland...
—Portugal
Portugal
Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...
and Balkan countries
Balkans
The Balkans is a geopolitical and cultural region of southeastern Europe...
generally only movies and TV shows intended for children are dubbed, while all TV shows and movies for older audiences are subtitled (animated productions have a tradition of often being dubbed, though). For movies in cinemas with clear target audiences both below and above around 10–11 years of age, usually both a dubbed and a subtitled version are available.
In the Netherlands, in the majority of cases Dutch versions are only made for children and youth related films. Animation movies are shown in theaters with Dutch dubbing, but usually those cinemas with more screening rooms also provide the original subtitled version; that was the case for movies like Babe, Atlantis: The Lost Empire
Atlantis: The Lost Empire
Atlantis: The Lost Empire is a 2001 American animated film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation. Written by Tab Murphy, directed by Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise, and produced by Don Hahn, it is the first science fiction film in the Disney animated features canon and the 41st overall. The film...
, Finding Nemo
Finding Nemo
Finding Nemo is a 2003 American comi-drama animated film written by Andrew Stanton, directed by Andrew Stanton and Lee Unkrich and produced by Pixar. It tells the story of the overly protective clownfish Marlin who, along with a regal tang called Dory , searches for his abducted son Nemo...
, Cars, Shrek the Third
Shrek the Third
Shrek the Third is a 2007 American animated film, and the third film in the Shrek series. It was produced by Jeffrey Katzenberg for DreamWorks Animation, and is distributed by Paramount Pictures. It was released in U.S. theaters on May 18, 2007...
, Ratatouille
Ratatouille (film)
Ratatouille is a 2007 American computer-animated comedy film produced by Pixar Animation Studios and distributed by Walt Disney Pictures. It is the eighth film produced by Pixar, and was directed by Brad Bird, who took over from Jan Pinkava in 2005...
, Kung Fu Panda
Kung Fu Panda
Kung Fu Panda is a 2008 American computer-animated action comedy film produced by DreamWorks Animation and distributed by Paramount Pictures...
or WALL-E
WALL-E
WALL-E, promoted with an interpunct as WALL•E, is a 2008 American computer-animated science fiction film produced by Pixar Animation Studios and directed by Andrew Stanton. The story follows a robot named WALL-E, who is designed to clean up a waste-covered Earth far in the future...
.
Since Belgium
Belgium
Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...
is a multilingual country, films are shown in French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
and Dutch
Dutch language
Dutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...
. The range of French dubbed versions is approximately as wide as the German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
range where practically all films and TV-series are dubbed. Sometimes separate versions are recorded in the Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
and in Flanders
Flanders
Flanders is the community of the Flemings but also one of the institutions in Belgium, and a geographical region located in parts of present-day Belgium, France and the Netherlands. "Flanders" can also refer to the northern part of Belgium that contains Brussels, Bruges, Ghent and Antwerp...
; for instance several Walt Disney films or Harry Potter films
Harry Potter (film series)
The Harry Potter film series is a British-American film series based on the Harry Potter novels by the British author J. K. Rowling...
. These dubbed versions only differ from each other in using different voice actors and different pronunciation while the text is almost the same. In general, movies shown by Flemish broadcasters are always shown in original language with subtitles, with the exception of movies for a young audience.
In the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
and Ireland
Republic of Ireland
Ireland , described as the Republic of Ireland , is a sovereign state in Europe occupying approximately five-sixths of the island of the same name. Its capital is Dublin. Ireland, which had a population of 4.58 million in 2011, is a constitutional republic governed as a parliamentary democracy,...
, the vast majority of foreign films are subtitled although some, mostly animated films and TV programmes, are dubbed in English. These usually originate from North America
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...
as opposed to being dubbed locally, although there have been notable examples of films and TV programmes successfully dubbed in the UK, such as the Japanese Monkey
Monkey (TV series)
Monkey is the dubbed English language version of the Japanese television series , based on the classic sixteenth century Chinese novel Journey to the West by Wu Cheng'en. It was originally produced by Nippon Television and International Television Films in association with NHK.The series ran for...
and French Magic Roundabout
The Magic Roundabout
The Magic Roundabout was a children's television programme created in France in 1963 by Serge Danot...
series. When airing films on television, channels in the UK and Ireland will often choose subtitling over dubbing, even if a dubbing in English exists. It is also a fairly common practice for animation aimed at pre-school children to be re-dubbed with British voice actors replacing the original voices, although this is not done with shows aimed at older audiences.
Some animated films and TV programmes are also dubbed into Welsh
Welsh language
Welsh is a member of the Brythonic branch of the Celtic languages spoken natively in Wales, by some along the Welsh border in England, and in Y Wladfa...
and Scottish Gaelic. Similarly, in Ireland, animated series shown on TG4
TG4
TG4 is a public service broadcaster for Irish language speakers. The channel has been on-air since 31 October 1996 in the Republic of Ireland and since April 2005 in Northern Ireland....
are shown dubbed in Irish
Irish language
Irish , also known as Irish Gaelic, is a Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family, originating in Ireland and historically spoken by the Irish people. Irish is now spoken as a first language by a minority of Irish people, as well as being a second language of a larger proportion of...
.
In Portugal
Portugal
Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...
, dubbing was banned under a 1948 law, as a way of protecting the domestic film industry. Till 1994 animated movies as well as other tv series for children in Portugal were dubbed in Brazilian Portuguese
Brazilian Portuguese
Brazilian Portuguese is a group of Portuguese dialects written and spoken by most of the 190 million inhabitants of Brazil and by a few million Brazilian emigrants, mainly in the United States, United Kingdom, Portugal, Canada, Japan and Paraguay....
due to the lack of interest from Portuguese companies in the dubbing department. This lack of interest was justified since there were already quality dubbed copies of shows and movies in the Portuguese Language made by Brazilians (same language, different accent and some dialogue changes). The Lion King
The Lion King
The Lion King is a 1994 American animated film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and released by Walt Disney Pictures. It is the 32nd feature in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series...
was the first feature film to be dubbed in European Portuguese
European Portuguese
European Portuguese refers to the variety of Portuguese spoken in continental Portugal, as well as the Azores and Madeira islands...
rather than just Brazilian Portuguese alone. Nowadays all movies for children are dubbed in European Portuguese. Subtitles are preferred in Portugal, being used in every foreigner language documentaries, TV series and films, the exception being when children are the target public. While on TV children shows and movies are always dubbed, in cinema theaters films with a clear juvenile target can be found in two versions, one dubbed (identified by the letters V.P., meaning Versão Portuguesa - Portuguese Version) and other subtitled version (V.O., meaning Versão Original - Original Version). This duality applies only to juvenile films, others use subtitles only. While the quality of these dubs is recognized (some already got international recognition and prizes), original versions with subtitles are usually preferred by the grown public (Bee Movie
Bee Movie
Bee Movie is a 2007 computer animated family comedy film starring Jerry Seinfeld, Renée Zellweger, Matthew Broderick, Megan Mullally, John Goodman, Chris Rock, Kathy Bates, and Patrick Warburton. Produced by DreamWorks Animation, it is directed by Simon J...
as an example). It is not common practice to dub animation for adults (such as The Simpsons
The Simpsons
The Simpsons is an American animated sitcom created by Matt Groening for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series is a satirical parody of a middle class American lifestyle epitomized by its family of the same name, which consists of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie...
or South Park
South Park
South Park is an American animated television series created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone for the Comedy Central television network. Intended for mature audiences, the show has become famous for its crude language, surreal, satirical, and dark humor that lampoons a wide range of topics...
). When The Simpsons Movie debut in Portugal most cinemas showed both versions (V.O. and V.P.), but in some small cities, cinemas decided to offer only the Portuguese Version, decision that lead to the public protest. Nowadays, Live action series and movies are always shown in its original language format with Portuguese subtitles.
In Romania
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
, virtually all programmes intended for children and young adults are dubbed in Romanian
Romanian language
Romanian Romanian Romanian (or Daco-Romanian; obsolete spellings Rumanian, Roumanian; self-designation: română, limba română ("the Romanian language") or românește (lit. "in Romanian") is a Romance language spoken by around 24 to 28 million people, primarily in Romania and Moldova...
, including cartoons, live-action movies and TV series on Disney Channel
Disney Channel Romania
Disney Channel Romania is a Romanian language children's television channel that broadcasts in Romania and Moldova since September 19, 2009, after replacing Jetix ....
, Cartoon Network
Cartoon Network (Europe)
Cartoon Network is a pan-European digital television channel created by Turner Broadcasting, a unit of Time Warner and dedicated to showing animated programming...
, Minimax, Nickelodeon
Nickelodeon (TV channel)
Nickelodeon, often simply called Nick and originally named Pinwheel, is an American children's channel owned by MTV Networks, a subsidiary of Viacom International. The channel is primarily aimed at children ages 7–17, with the exception of their weekday morning program block aimed at preschoolers...
as well as those shown on generalist television networks, children-focused series like Power Rangers
Power Rangers
Power Rangers is a long-running American entertainment and merchandising franchise built around a live action children's television series featuring teams of costumed heroes...
, The New Addams Family
The New Addams Family
The New Addams Family is an American/Canadian sitcom that aired from October 1998 to August 1999 and aired on YTV in Canada and Fox Family in the United States. It was produced by Shavick Entertainment and Saban Entertainment as a new version of the 1960s series The Addams Family.-Synopsis:The new...
, The Planet's Funniest Animals
The Planet's Funniest Animals
The Planet's Funniest Animals is a United States television program featured on the Animal Planet cable channel.-Background:Following a similar format as America's Funniest Home Videos and others, the program shows a series of home movies on video submitted by viewers featuring humorous and odd...
or movies screened on children television. Animation movies are shown in theaters with Romanian dubbing, but usually those cinemas with more screening rooms also provide the original subtitled version; that was the case for movies like Babe, Atlantis: The Lost Empire
Atlantis: The Lost Empire
Atlantis: The Lost Empire is a 2001 American animated film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation. Written by Tab Murphy, directed by Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise, and produced by Don Hahn, it is the first science fiction film in the Disney animated features canon and the 41st overall. The film...
, Finding Nemo
Finding Nemo
Finding Nemo is a 2003 American comi-drama animated film written by Andrew Stanton, directed by Andrew Stanton and Lee Unkrich and produced by Pixar. It tells the story of the overly protective clownfish Marlin who, along with a regal tang called Dory , searches for his abducted son Nemo...
, Cars, Shrek the Third
Shrek the Third
Shrek the Third is a 2007 American animated film, and the third film in the Shrek series. It was produced by Jeffrey Katzenberg for DreamWorks Animation, and is distributed by Paramount Pictures. It was released in U.S. theaters on May 18, 2007...
, Ratatouille
Ratatouille (film)
Ratatouille is a 2007 American computer-animated comedy film produced by Pixar Animation Studios and distributed by Walt Disney Pictures. It is the eighth film produced by Pixar, and was directed by Brad Bird, who took over from Jan Pinkava in 2005...
, Kung Fu Panda
Kung Fu Panda
Kung Fu Panda is a 2008 American computer-animated action comedy film produced by DreamWorks Animation and distributed by Paramount Pictures...
or WALL-E
WALL-E
WALL-E, promoted with an interpunct as WALL•E, is a 2008 American computer-animated science fiction film produced by Pixar Animation Studios and directed by Andrew Stanton. The story follows a robot named WALL-E, who is designed to clean up a waste-covered Earth far in the future...
. Other foreign TV shows and movies are shown in the original language with Romanian subtitles. Usually subtitles are preferred in the Romanian market, except for programme intended for children. According to "Special Eurobarometer 243" of the European Commission (research carried out in November and December 2005), 62% of Romanians prefer to watch foreign films and programmes with subtitles, rather than dubbed; nonetheless 22% have a preference for dubbing, while 16% declined to answer. This is led by the assumption that watching movies in their original versions is very useful for learning foreign languages. However, according to the same Eurobarometer, virtually no Romanian found this method—watching movies in their original version—to be the most efficient way of learning foreign languages, compared to 53 percent who preferred language lessons at school.
In the Nordic countries
Nordic countries
The Nordic countries make up a region in Northern Europe and the North Atlantic which consists of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden and their associated territories, the Faroe Islands, Greenland and Åland...
, dubbing is used only in animated features and other films for young audiences. Some theaters in the major cities may also screen the original version, usually as the last showing of the day, or in a smaller auditorium in a multiplex. According to a survey, almost 95% of the population in these countries prefer the original version. In Finland
Finland
Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...
, for children of the 5% Swedish-speaking minority, the dubbed version from Sweden may also be available at certain cinemas, but only in cities/towns with a significant percentage of Swedish speakers. DVD releases usually only have the original audio, except for children's films which have both Finnish and Swedish language tracks, in addition to the original audio and subtitles in both languages. In movie theaters, films for grown-up audiences have both Finnish and Swedish subtitles, the Finnish printed in basic font and the Swedish printed below the Finnish in a cursive font. In the early ages of television, foreign TV shows and movies were dubbed by one actor in Finland, as in Russian Gavrilov translation
Gavrilov translation
Voice-over translation is an audiovisual translation technique in which, unlike in dubbing, actor voices are recorded over the original audio track which can be heard in the background....
. Later, subtitles became a practice on Finnish television. Dubbing of other than children's films is unpopular in Finland, as in many other countries. A good example is The Simpsons Movie
The Simpsons Movie
The Simpsons Movie is a 2007 American animated comedy film based on the animated television series The Simpsons. The film was directed by David Silverman, and stars the regular television cast of Dan Castellaneta, Julie Kavner, Nancy Cartwright, Yeardley Smith, Hank Azaria, Harry Shearer, Tress...
. While the original version was well-received, the Finnish dubbed version got poor reviews; some critics even calling it a disaster. On the other hand, many dubs of Disney animated features have been well received, both critically and by the public.
In Greece
Greece
Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....
, all films are released theatrically in their original versions and contain subtitles. Only cartoon films (for example, Finding Nemo
Finding Nemo
Finding Nemo is a 2003 American comi-drama animated film written by Andrew Stanton, directed by Andrew Stanton and Lee Unkrich and produced by Pixar. It tells the story of the overly protective clownfish Marlin who, along with a regal tang called Dory , searches for his abducted son Nemo...
, The Incredibles
The Incredibles
The Incredibles is a 2004 American computer-animated action-comedy superhero film about a family of superheroes who are forced to hide their powers. It was written and directed by Brad Bird, a former director and executive consultant of The Simpsons, and was produced by Pixar and distributed by...
, Ratatouille
Ratatouille (film)
Ratatouille is a 2007 American computer-animated comedy film produced by Pixar Animation Studios and distributed by Walt Disney Pictures. It is the eighth film produced by Pixar, and was directed by Brad Bird, who took over from Jan Pinkava in 2005...
and so on) are released in both original and Greek
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
dubbed versions, for children who cannot yet read quickly or not at all. Foreign TV shows are also shown in their original versions except for most cartoons. For example The Flintstones
The Flintstones
The Flintstones is an animated, prime-time American television sitcom that screened from September 30, 1960 to April 1, 1966, on ABC. Produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions, The Flintstones was about a working class Stone Age man's life with his family and his next-door neighbor and best friend. It...
and The Jetsons
The Jetsons
The Jetsons is a animated American sitcom that was produced by Hanna-Barbera, originally airing in prime-time from 1962–1963 and again from 1985–1987...
were always dubbed, while Family Guy
Family Guy
Family Guy is an American animated television series created by Seth MacFarlane for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series centers on the Griffins, a dysfunctional family consisting of parents Peter and Lois; their children Meg, Chris, and Stewie; and their anthropomorphic pet dog Brian...
and American Dad!
American Dad!
American Dad! is an American animated television series created by Seth MacFarlane and owned by Underdog Productions and Fuzzy Door Productions. It is produced in association with 20th Century Fox Television...
are always subtitled and contains the original English dialogue, since it is mostly for adults rather than children. Only Mexican
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
TV series like Rubí
Rubi
Rubi may refer to:* Ruby character, small, annotative characters that can be placed above or to the right of a Chinese character when writing logographic languages such as Chinese or Japanese to show the pronunciation* Rubí, Barcelona...
, La usurpadora
La usurpadora
La Usurpadora is a Mexican romantic drama telenovela produced by Salvador Mejia Alejandre and originally broadcast on Canal de las Estrellas from February 9, 1998 to July 24, 1998. It starred Gabriela Spanic and Fernando Colunga. This was one of the last telenovelas to feature Libertad Lamarque,...
, and teen series like Hannah Montana
Hannah Montana
Hannah Montana is an American television series, which debuted on March 24, 2006 on the Disney Channel. The series focuses on a girl who lives a double life as an average teenage school girl named Miley Stewart by day and a famous pop singer named Hannah Montana by night, concealing her real...
and The Suite Life of Zack & Cody are dubbed in Greek. Japanese Anime
Anime
is the Japanese abbreviated pronunciation of "animation". The definition sometimes changes depending on the context. In English-speaking countries, the term most commonly refers to Japanese animated cartoons....
like Dragon Ball
Dragon Ball
is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Akira Toriyama. It was originally serialized in Weekly Shōnen Jump from 1984 to 1995; later the 519 individual chapters were published into 42 tankōbon volumes by Shueisha. Dragon Ball was inspired by the classical Chinese novel Journey to the...
, Tokyo Mew Mew
Tokyo Mew Mew
, also known as Mew Mew Power, is a Japanese shōjo manga series written by Reiko Yoshida and illustrated by Mia Ikumi. It was originally serialized in Nakayoshi from September 2000 to February 2003, and later published in seven tankōbon volumes by Kodansha from February 2001 to April 2003...
, Sonic X
Sonic X
is an anime series based on the Sonic the Hedgehog video game series. It was produced in Japan by TMS Entertainment with the partnership of Sega and was created by Sonic Team and Sonic Project. In the United States, 4Kids currently owns and manages copyright and branding of the series.- Series 1 ...
Pokémon
Pokémon (anime)
, abbreviated from , is a children's TV anime series, which has since been adapted for the North and South American, Australian and European television markets...
and Sailor Moon
Sailor Moon
Sailor Moon, known as , is a media franchise created by manga artist Naoko Takeuchi. Fred Patten credits Takeuchi with popularizing the concept of a team of magical girls, and Paul Gravett credits the series with "revitalizing" the magical-girl genre itself...
are shown dubbed in Greek.
In Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
, only children's movies and TV programming are dubbed in Hebrew. In programs aimed at teenagers and adults, dubbing is rarely considered as a method of translation not only because of its high costs, but also because the audience is mainly multi-lingual. Most viewers in Israel speak at least one European language in addition to Hebrew, and there is also a large audience that speaks Arabic
Arabic language
Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...
. Therefore, most viewers prefer to hear the original soundtrack, aided by Hebrew subtitles. Another problem is that dubbing does not allow for translation into two different languages simultaneously, as is often the case in Israeli television channels that use subtitles in Hebrew and another language (like Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
) simultaneously.
In Serbia
Serbia
Serbia , officially the Republic of Serbia , is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeast Europe, covering the southern part of the Carpathian basin and the central part of the Balkans...
, Croatia
Croatia
Croatia , officially the Republic of Croatia , is a unitary democratic parliamentary republic in Europe at the crossroads of the Mitteleuropa, the Balkans, and the Mediterranean. Its capital and largest city is Zagreb. The country is divided into 20 counties and the city of Zagreb. Croatia covers ...
, and most other Serbo-Croat speaking parts of former Yugoslavia
Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was the Yugoslav state that existed from the abolition of the Yugoslav monarchy until it was dissolved in 1992 amid the Yugoslav Wars. It was a socialist state and a federation made up of six socialist republics: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia,...
, foreign films, TV series and TV news are always subtitled, while children's movies and cartoons are dubbed into Serbo-Croat. The dubbing of cartoon classics during the 1980s had a twist of its own: famous Belgrade actors provided the voices for Disney's, Warner Brothers', MGM's and other companies' characters, frequently using region specific phrases and sentences and thus adding a dose of local humor to the translation of the original lines. These phrases became immensely popular and are still being used for tongue-in-cheek
Tongue-in-cheek
Tongue-in-cheek is a phrase used as a figure of speech to imply that a statement or other production is humorously intended and it should not be taken at face value. The facial expression typically indicates that one is joking or making a mental effort. In the past, it may also have indicated...
comments in specific situations. Even though these dubbed classics are seldom aired nowadays, younger generations continue to use these phrases without knowing their true origin.
In Croatia
Croatia
Croatia , officially the Republic of Croatia , is a unitary democratic parliamentary republic in Europe at the crossroads of the Mitteleuropa, the Balkans, and the Mediterranean. Its capital and largest city is Zagreb. The country is divided into 20 counties and the city of Zagreb. Croatia covers ...
foreign films and TV series are always subtitled, while some children programs and cartoons are dubbed into Croatian
Croatian language
Croatian is the collective name for the standard language and dialects spoken by Croats, principally in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Serbian province of Vojvodina and other neighbouring countries...
. Recently, more efforts have been made to introduce dubbing, but public reception was poor. Regardless of language, Croatian audience prefers subtitling to dubbing. Some previously quite popular shows (for example, Sailor Moon
Sailor Moon
Sailor Moon, known as , is a media franchise created by manga artist Naoko Takeuchi. Fred Patten credits Takeuchi with popularizing the concept of a team of magical girls, and Paul Gravett credits the series with "revitalizing" the magical-girl genre itself...
) lost their appeal completely after dubbing started and were eventually taken off the program. The situation is similar with theater movies with only those intended for children being dubbed (Finding Nemo
Finding Nemo
Finding Nemo is a 2003 American comi-drama animated film written by Andrew Stanton, directed by Andrew Stanton and Lee Unkrich and produced by Pixar. It tells the story of the overly protective clownfish Marlin who, along with a regal tang called Dory , searches for his abducted son Nemo...
, Shark Tale
Shark Tale
Shark Tale is a 2004 American computer-animated comedy film produced by DreamWorks Animation. In the story, a young fish named Oscar falsely claims to have killed the son of a shark mob boss to win favour with the mob boss' enemies and advance his own community standing...
), but they are also regularly shown subtitled as well. Recently, there has been effort to impose dubbing by Nova TV with La Fea Más Bella
La fea más bella
La Fea Más Bella is a Mexican telenovela produced by Televisa. It is the second Mexican version of the popular Colombian telenovela: Betty la fea...
translated as Ružna ljepotica (lit. "The Ugly Beauty"), a Mexican telenovela, but it failed poorly. In fact they had only dubbed a quarter of the show, ultimately replacing it with the subtitled version due to lack of interest for the dubbed version.
In Slovenia
Slovenia
Slovenia , officially the Republic of Slovenia , is a country in Central and Southeastern Europe touching the Alps and bordering the Mediterranean. Slovenia borders Italy to the west, Croatia to the south and east, Hungary to the northeast, and Austria to the north, and also has a small portion of...
, all foreign films and television programmes are subtitled without exception. Traditionally, children's movies and animated cartoons used to be dubbed, but subtitling has gradually spread into that genre as well. Nowadays, only movies for pre-school children remain dubbed.
Generally dubbing countries
In the ItalianItalian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
, French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
, German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
, Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
, Turkish
Turkish language
Turkish is a language spoken as a native language by over 83 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Northern Cyprus with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo,...
, Hungarian
Hungarian language
Hungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....
, Czech
Czech language
Czech is a West Slavic language with about 12 million native speakers; it is the majority language in the Czech Republic and spoken by Czechs worldwide. The language was known as Bohemian in English until the late 19th century...
, Slovak
Slovak language
Slovak , is an Indo-European language that belongs to the West Slavic languages .Slovak is the official language of Slovakia, where it is spoken by 5 million people...
, Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
and Ukrainian
Ukrainian language
Ukrainian is a language of the East Slavic subgroup of the Slavic languages. It is the official state language of Ukraine. Written Ukrainian uses a variant of the Cyrillic alphabet....
language speaking markets of Europe, almost all foreign films and television shows are dubbed (the exception being only theatrical releases and high profile videos in Russia). There are few opportunities to watch foreign movies in their original versions, and even in the largest cities there are few cinemas that screen original versions with subtitles
Subtitle (captioning)
Subtitles are textual versions of the dialog in films and television programs, usually displayed at the bottom of the screen. They can either be a form of written translation of a dialog in a foreign language, or a written rendering of the dialog in the same language, with or without added...
, or without any translation. However, digital pay-TV programming is often available in the original language, including the latest movies. Prior to the rise of DVDs, which in these countries are mostly issued with multi-language audio tracks, original language films other than in the country's official language were rare, whether in theaters, on TV, or on home video, and subtitled versions were considered a product for small niche markets such as intellectual or art films.
In France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, movies and TV series are always released dubbed in French. Films are usually released theatrically in both dubbed and original versions in large cities' main street theaters, and a theater showing a subtitled movie typically has a sign on the poster advising moviegoers that the film is an original-language version (usually abbreviated VO [version originale] or VOST [version originale sous-titrée] as opposed to VF [version française]). Art house movies
Art film
An art film is the result of filmmaking which is typically a serious, independent film aimed at a niche market rather than a mass market audience...
are often available in their original version only due to limited distribution. Some voice talents, such as Alexandre Gillet, Roger Carel
Roger Carel
Roger Bancharel, better known by his stage name, Roger Carel, is a French actor and voice talent, best known for his recurring film roles as Asterix or the French voice of Star Wars C3PO and the French voice of Winnie the Pooh...
, Richard Darbois
Richard Darbois
Richard Darbois is a Canadian actor. He is especially known for his voice: he is the French dub voice of Harrison Ford in some of his films, Batman in the animated series, Captain Harlock, the Genie in Disney's Aladdin, etc...
, Edgar Givry, Jacques Frantz, Jacques Balutin Marc Alfos
Marc Alfos
Marc Alfos is a French actor who specializes in dubbing. He is the official dubover voice of Russell Crowe.-Television animation:*The Batman *Batman Beyond...
, Serge Faliu or Francis Lax, have achieved significant popularity.
The Germanophone dubbing market is the largest in Europe. Germany has the most foreign movie dubbing studios per capita and per given area in the world. In Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
and the German speaking part of Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
, practically all films, shows, television series and foreign soap opera
Soap opera
A soap opera, sometimes called "soap" for short, is an ongoing, episodic work of dramatic fiction presented in serial format on radio or as television programming. The name soap opera stems from the original dramatic serials broadcast on radio that had soap manufacturers, such as Procter & Gamble,...
s are shown in dubbed versions created for the German market. (In Switzerland however in every bigger town (10,000 and more inhabitants), both versions are shown, either in the same theatre at different hours/days or in different cinemas.) Even computer games and video games feature German text menus and are dubbed into the German language if there are any speaking parts in the games. However, in recent years, Swiss-German television, SF1 and SF2 have been showing increasing numbers of movies in "dual sound", which means the viewer can choose between the original language (usually English) or German. In addition, Swiss-French television shows many broadcasts available in either the original language or in French, as does the Swiss-Italian television channel RSI. A common example is the American detective series Columbo and other popular series-based broadcasts, such as Starsky and Hutch
Starsky and Hutch
Starsky and Hutch is a 1970s American cop thriller television series that consisted of a 90-minute pilot movie and 92 episodes of 60 minutes each; created by William Blinn, produced by Spelling-Goldberg Productions, and broadcast between April 30, 1975 and May 15, 1979 on the ABC...
.
Dubbing films has been and is still tradition and common practice in the German speaking area since subtitles are not accepted and used as much as in other European countries. According to a European study, Austria is the country with the highest rejection (more than 70 percent) with regard to using subtitles, followed by Italy, Spain and Germany.
Although voice actors play only a secondary role, they are still notable for providing familiar voices to well-known actors. Famous foreign actors are known and recognized for their German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
voice and the German audience is used to them, so dubbing is also a matter of authenticity. However, in larger cities there are theaters where movies can be seen in their original versions as English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
has become more popular, especially among younger viewers. On German TV, few movies are subtitled, although pay-per-view programming is often available in its original language.
German dubbed versions sometimes diverge greatly from the original, especially adding humorous elements to the original. In extreme cases, like The Persuaders!
The Persuaders!
The Persuaders! is a 1971 action/adventure series, produced by ITC Entertainment for initial broadcast on ITV and ABC. It has been called "the last major entry in the cycle of adventure series that had begun eleven years earlier with Danger Man in 1960", as well as "the most ambitious and most...
, the dubbed version was more successful than the English original. Often it also adds sexually explicit gags the U.S. versions might not be allowed to use, like in Bewitched, translating The Do-not-disturb sign will hang on the door tonight to The only hanging thing tonight will be the Do-not-disturb sign.
Some movies dubbed before reunification
German reunification
German reunification was the process in 1990 in which the German Democratic Republic joined the Federal Republic of Germany , and when Berlin reunited into a single city, as provided by its then Grundgesetz constitution Article 23. The start of this process is commonly referred by Germans as die...
exist in different versions for the east and the west. They use different translations, and often they are different in the style of dubbing.
In Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
the use of dubbing is systematic, with a long tradition going back to the 1930s in Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
, Milan
Milan
Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...
and Turin
Turin
Turin is a city and major business and cultural centre in northern Italy, capital of the Piedmont region, located mainly on the left bank of the Po River and surrounded by the Alpine arch. The population of the city proper is 909,193 while the population of the urban area is estimated by Eurostat...
. In Mussolini's fascist Italy, foreign languages were banned. Rome is the principal base of the dubbing industry, where major productions such as movies, drama, documentaries and some cartoons are dubbed. However, in Milan it is mostly cartoons and some minor productions which are dubbed. Practically every American film, of every genre, whether for kids or adults, as well as TV shows, are dubbed into Italian. In big cities original version movies can also be seen. Subtitles are usually available on late night programmes on mainstream TV channels, and on pay-TV all movies are available in English with Italian subtitles, and many shows feature the original English soundtrack. But for fans of dubbing, there are some little-known sites on the Internet that offer the free streaming of movies with their Italian soundtrack. Early in his career, Nino Manfredi
Nino Manfredi
Nino Manfredi was an Italian actor, one of the most prominent in the commedia all'italiana genre....
worked extensively as a dubbing actor. Furthermore, common practice at one point in Italian cinema was to shoot scenes MOS and dub the dialogue in post-production, a notable example being The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, in which even actors speaking English on screen had to dub in their own voices.
In the Czech Republic
Czech Republic
The Czech Republic is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Poland to the northeast, Slovakia to the east, Austria to the south, and Germany to the west and northwest....
and Slovakia
Slovakia
The Slovak Republic is a landlocked state in Central Europe. It has a population of over five million and an area of about . Slovakia is bordered by the Czech Republic and Austria to the west, Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east and Hungary to the south...
, virtually all foreign films and television programmes shown on television are dubbed, often by very well-known actors. In Slovakia often the Czech dub is shown instead of producing a local one. Some audiences prefer the Czech dubs because they are considered to be of higher quality. In both countries dubbing actors often "overact", causing audiences to express views that American films are of low intellectual quality. In cinemas, films are usually shown subtitled, unless they are intended for children of 12 years of age and younger; Slovak law requires that those films be dubbed or rated as MP-12 (roughly equivalent to PG-13, without a cautionary meaning in this case.). Cinemas sometimes offer both dubbed and subtitled screenings for either very major movie releases (for example, the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy
The Lord of the Rings film trilogy
The Lord of the Rings is an epic film trilogy consisting of three fantasy adventure films based on the three-volume book of the same name by English author J. R. R. Tolkien. The films are The Fellowship of the Ring , The Two Towers and The Return of the King .The films were directed by Peter...
) that would have otherwise not been dubbed, or conversely for children's films or family films that are expected to also attract mature viewers (for example, Shrek
Shrek
Shrek is a 2001 American computer-animated fantasy comedy film directed by Andrew Adamson and Vicky Jenson, featuring the voices of Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy, Cameron Diaz, and John Lithgow. Loosely based on William Steig's 1990 fairy tale picture book Shrek!...
) to maximize the potential audience. In the Czech republic it's also common that some actors are dubbed always by one Czech actor, for instance Louis de Funes was almost always dubbed by František Filipovský. In Slovakia, state-owned public broadcaster Slovenská televízia dubs programs that it acquires from foreign companies for its channels into Slovak. Markiza and TV JOJ also dub. In the Czech Republic, MiniMax, Animax, TV Prima
TV Prima
TV Prima is a Czech private television station. Its channel is broadcast from Prague. Its current owner is FTV Prima, spol. s r. o., general manager Marek Singer....
and other Czech language stations also impose dubbing. For example, Jan Maxián is the official Czech voice dubbing artist for high-profile actor, Elijah Wood
Elijah Wood
Elijah Jordan Wood is an American actor. He made his film debut with a minor part in Back to the Future Part II , then landed a succession of larger roles that made him a critically acclaimed child actor by age 9. He is best known for his high-profile role as Frodo Baggins in Peter Jackson's...
. But in the Slovak Dubbing markets, Elijah Wood's Slovak dubbing voice was provided by Michal Hallon.
In Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
, practically all foreign television programmes are shown dubbed in European Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
, as are most films. Some dubbing actors have achieved popularity for their voices, like Constantino Romero, who dubs Clint Eastwood
Clint Eastwood
Clinton "Clint" Eastwood, Jr. is an American film actor, director, producer, composer and politician. Eastwood first came to prominence as a supporting cast member in the TV series Rawhide...
, Darth Vader
Darth Vader
Darth Vader is a central character in the Star Wars saga, appearing as one of the main antagonists in the original trilogy and as the main protagonist in the prequel trilogy....
and Schwarzenegger
Schwarzenegger
Schwarzenegger is a German surname that means person from Schwarzenegg, which is both a town in Switzerland and a place in Land Salzburg in Austria...
's Terminator
The Terminator
The Terminator is a 1984 science fiction action film directed by James Cameron, co-written by Cameron and William Wisher Jr., and starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Michael Biehn, and Linda Hamilton. The film was produced by Hemdale Film Corporation and distributed by Orion Pictures, and filmed in Los...
, among others, and Óscar Muñoz
Oscar Munoz
Oscar Munoz is an American magician, 1999 winner of the "Gold Cups" award from the International Brotherhood of Magicians organization. He is also a charter member and past head of "Ring 269" in Texas.-Awards:* 1999, IBM "Gold Cups" winner...
who is the official European Spanish dub-over voice artist for Elijah Wood
Elijah Wood
Elijah Jordan Wood is an American actor. He made his film debut with a minor part in Back to the Future Part II , then landed a succession of larger roles that made him a critically acclaimed child actor by age 9. He is best known for his high-profile role as Frodo Baggins in Peter Jackson's...
and Hayden Christensen
Hayden Christensen
Hayden Christensen is a Canadian actor. He appeared in Canadian television programs when he was young, then diversified into American television in the late 1990s. He moved on to minor acting roles before being praised for his role of Sam in Life as a House, for which he was nominated for a Golden...
.
In Catalonia
Catalonia
Catalonia is an autonomous community in northeastern Spain, with the official status of a "nationality" of Spain. Catalonia comprises four provinces: Barcelona, Girona, Lleida, and Tarragona. Its capital and largest city is Barcelona. Catalonia covers an area of 32,114 km² and has an...
, the Valencian Community
Valencian Community
The Valencian Community is an autonomous community of Spain located in central and south-eastern Iberian Peninsula. Its capital and largest city is Valencia...
, the Balearic Islands
Balearic Islands
The Balearic Islands are an archipelago of Spain in the western Mediterranean Sea, near the eastern coast of the Iberian Peninsula.The four largest islands are: Majorca, Minorca, Ibiza and Formentera. The archipelago forms an autonomous community and a province of Spain with Palma as the capital...
, Galicia and the Basque Country
Basque Country (autonomous community)
The Basque Country is an autonomous community of northern Spain. It includes the Basque provinces of Álava, Biscay and Gipuzkoa, also called Historical Territories....
, many or most foreign programmes are also dubbed into their own official languages, different from European Spanish. Currently, with the spread of the Digital terrestrial television
Digital terrestrial television
Digital terrestrial television is the technological evolution of broadcast television and advance from analog television, which broadcasts land-based signals...
most movies and series can be listened to both in the original and in the dubbed version.
Mixed areas
In BulgariaBulgaria
Bulgaria , officially the Republic of Bulgaria , is a parliamentary democracy within a unitary constitutional republic in Southeast Europe. The country borders Romania to the north, Serbia and Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south, as well as the Black Sea to the east...
, television series are dubbed. But most television channels in Bulgaria use subtitles for the action and drama movies. AXN
AXN
AXN is a Pay television, cable and satellite television channel owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment, which was first launched on May 22, 1997. The network is now spread across several regions in the world, including Japan, Europe, other parts of Asia and Latin America...
uses subtitles for its series, but as of 2008 emphasizes dubbing. Only Diema
Diema
Diema is part of the Nova Television Group Bulgaria, a subsidiary of MTG.The channel airs mainly films, action series. Along with Nova Sport airs sports, including matches from the English FA Premier League, the FA Cup and the UEFA European Football Championship qualifications, as well as the...
channels dub all programmes. Movies in theaters, excepting films for children, use subtitles. Dubbing of television programs is usually done using voice-overs, but usually with at least four or five actors reading the lines and always trying to give each character a different voice and use appropriate intonations in each sentence. Dubbing with synchronized voices is rarely used, mostly for animated films (with Mrs. Doubtfire
Mrs. Doubtfire
Mrs. Doubtfire is a 1993 American comedy film starring Robin Williams and Sally Field and based on the novel Madame Doubtfire by Anne Fine. It was directed by Chris Columbus and distributed by 20th Century Fox. It won the Academy Award for Best Makeup...
being a rare example of a feature film dubbed this way on BNT Channel 1
BNT Channel 1
BNT 1 is a Bulgarian-language public television station founded in 1959. It began broadcasting on December 26 the same year. The headquarters are located in Sofia, Bulgaria. BNT 1 is run by the Bulgarian National Television....
, though a subtitled version is currently shown on other channels). Walt Disney Television
Walt Disney Television
Walt Disney Television was the former name of the television production division of The Walt Disney Company.-History:It was formed in 1983, as the Walt Disney Pictures Television Division, the name was later shortened to Walt Disney Television in the mid-1980s...
's animated series (for example, DuckTales
DuckTales
DuckTales is an American animated television series produced by Walt Disney Television Animation. Based on Carl Barks' Uncle Scrooge comic book series, it premiered on September 18, 1987 and ended on November 28, 1990 with a total of four seasons and 100 episodes...
, Darkwing Duck
Darkwing Duck
DarkWing Duck is an American animated television series produced by The Walt Disney Company that ran from 1991–1992 on both the syndicated programming block The Disney Afternoon and Saturday mornings on ABC. It featured the eponymous anthropomorphic duck superhero whose alter ego is mild-mannered...
, Timon and Pumbaa
Timon and Pumbaa
Timon and Pumbaa are an animated meerkat and warthog duo introduced in Disney's popular 1994 animated film The Lion King. Timon was portrayed through his many appearances by Nathan Lane , Max Casella , Kevin Schon , Quinton Flynn Timon and Pumbaa are an animated meerkat and warthog duo introduced...
) were only aired with synchronized Bulgarian voices on BNT Channel 1
BNT Channel 1
BNT 1 is a Bulgarian-language public television station founded in 1959. It began broadcasting on December 26 the same year. The headquarters are located in Sofia, Bulgaria. BNT 1 is run by the Bulgarian National Television....
until 2005, but then the Disney show was canceled. When airing of Disney series resumed on Nova Television
Nova Television
Nova Television is the first Bulgarian commercial television network launched on July 16, 1994....
and Jetix
Jetix (Central and Eastern Europe)
Jetix was a children's television channel owned by Disney-ABC Television Group broadcast in Russia, Romania, Bulgaria and other countries. It was previously known as Fox Kids. It was broadcast simultaneously in four languages : Romanian, Russian , English and Bulgarian...
in 2008, voice-over was used (but Disney animated movie translations still use synchronized voices). Voice-over dubbing is not used in theatrical releases. The Bulgarian Film Industry Law requires all children's films to be dubbed, not subtitled. Nova Television
Nova Television
Nova Television is the first Bulgarian commercial television network launched on July 16, 1994....
dubbed and aired Pokémon with synchronized voices now its airing on Disney Channel also in synchronized form.
In Hungary
Hungary
Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
, practically all television programmes are dubbed, as are about 50 percent of movies in theaters. In the socialist era, every one of them was dubbed with professional and mostly popular actors. Great care was taken to make sure the same voice actor would lend his voice to the same actor. In the early 1990s, as cinemas tried to keep up with showing newly released films, subtitling became dominant in cinema. This, in turn, forced TV channels to make their own cheap versions of dubbed soundtracks for the movies they presented, resulting in a constant degrading of dubbing quality. Once this became customary, cinema distributors resumed the habit of dubbing for popular productions, presenting them in a quality varying from very poor to average. However, every single feature is presented with the original soundtrack in at least one cinema in large towns and cities.
However, in Hungary most of documentary films and series (for example, on Discovery Channel
Discovery Channel
Discovery Channel is an American satellite and cable specialty channel , founded by John Hendricks and distributed by Discovery Communications. It is a publicly traded company run by CEO David Zaslav...
, National Geographic Channel
National Geographic Channel
National Geographic Channel, also commercially abbreviated and trademarked as Nat Geo, is a subscription television channel that airs non-fiction television programs produced by the National Geographic Society. Like History and the Discovery Channel, the channel features documentaries with factual...
) are made with voice-over. Also some old movies and series, or ones that provide non-translatable jokes and conversations (for example, Mr. Bean
Mr. Bean
Mr. Bean is a British comedy television programme series of 14 half-hour episodes written by and starring Rowan Atkinson as the title character. Different episodes were also written by Robin Driscoll, Richard Curtis and one by Ben Elton. The pilot episode was broadcast on ITV on 1 January 1990,...
television series), are shown only with subtitles.
There is a more recent problem arising from dubbing included on DVD releases. Many generations have grown up with an original, and by current technological standards outdated soundtrack, which is either technologically (mono or bad quality stereo sound) or legally (expired soundtrack licence) unsuitable for a DVD release. Many original features are released on DVD with a new soundtrack, which in some cases proves to be extremely unpopular, thus forcing DVD producers to include the original soundtrack. In some rare cases the Hungarian soundtrack is left out altogether. This happens notably with Warner Home Video Hungary, who ignored the existence of Hungarian soundtracks completely. This was because they did not want to pay the licensees for the soundtracks to be included on their new DVD releases, which appear with improved picture quality, but very poor subtitling.
Voice-over
In GeorgiaGeorgia (country)
Georgia is a sovereign state in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded to the west by the Black Sea, to the north by Russia, to the southwest by Turkey, to the south by Armenia, and to the southeast by Azerbaijan. The capital of...
, in TV series, original soundtracks are kept and Georgian text is spoken by a lector
Lector
Lector is a Latin term for one who reads, whether aloud or not. In modern languages the word has come to take various forms, as either a development or a loan, such as , , and . It has various specialized uses:...
. Film
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
s are always subtitled besides films broadcast on Global Media Group channels.
In Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
cinema releases for general audiences are almost exclusively subtitled, with the exception of children's movies, and television screenings of movies, as well as made-for-TV shows, are usually shown with voice-over, where the original soundtrack is kept, and translation is read by a voice talent. This method is similar to the so-called Gavrilov translation
Gavrilov translation
Voice-over translation is an audiovisual translation technique in which, unlike in dubbing, actor voices are recorded over the original audio track which can be heard in the background....
in Russia, with one difference - all the dialogues are translated with only one acute, and usually male voice, preferably deep and neutral which does not interfere with the pitch of voice of the original speakers in the background. To some extent it resembles live translation. Certain highly qualified lectors are traditionally assigned to a particular kind of production such as action or drama. Standard dubbing is not widely popular with most audiences, with the exception of cartoons and children's shows, which are dubbed also for TV releases.
Poland has long lasting dubbing traditions which reaches inter-war years. One of the first movies dubbed into Polish in 1931 were Dangerous Curves
Dangerous Curves
Dangerous Curves is the fifth studio album by British-American hard rock/heavy metal singer and guitarist Lita Ford, released in 1991. Though popular among her fans, the album failed to success as musical tastes were shifting towards alternative rock in late 1991...
(1929), The Dance of Life
The Dance of Life
The Dance of Life is the first of three film adaptations of the popular Broadway play Burlesque, the others being Swing High, Swing Low and When My Baby Smiles at Me . The Dance of Life was made with Technicolor sequences, directed by John Cromwell and A...
(1929), Paramount on Parade
Paramount on Parade
Paramount on Parade is a all-star revue released by Paramount Pictures, directed by several directors including Edmund Goulding, Dorothy Arzner, Ernst Lubitsch, Rowland V. Lee, A. Edward Sutherland, Victor Heerman, Lothar Mendes, Otto Brower, Edwin H...
(1930) and Darling of the Gods (1930). 1949 saw the opening of the first dubbing studio, located in Łódź. The first film dubbed the same year was Russkiy vopros (filmed 1948).
The Polish dubbing in the first post-war years did not have good opinion because of bad synchronization. The Polish dialogues were unclear, so people could not understand them. Cinemas had an old aperture which sometimes made a film more unclear than it was. In the 50's the Polish publicist discussed about the quality of Polish versions to foreign movies.
Both the number of dubbed movies and its quality had improved. In the 60's-80's the Polish dubbing had a golden age. In the cinemas were dubbed 1/3 of foreign movies. It was said about "Polish dubbing school" because of its high quality. In that time Poland had some of the best dubbing in the world. The most important person who initiated high quality dubbing versions was director Zofia Dybowska-Aleksandrowicz. Her works were as good as original and sometimes even better who admitted people connected with the original version (actors and directors). In that time dubbing in Poland was very popular. Polish television dubbed very popular films and TV series such as Rich Man, Poor Man
Rich Man, Poor Man
Rich Man, Poor Man is a novel written by Irwin Shaw in 1969. It is the last of the novels of Shaw's middle period before he began to concentrate, in his last works such as Evening In Byzantium, Nightwork, Bread Upon The Waters, and Acceptable Losses, on the inevitability of impending death...
, Fawlty Towers
Fawlty Towers
Fawlty Towers is a British sitcom produced by BBC Television and first broadcast on BBC2 in 1975. Twelve television program episodes were produced . The show was written by John Cleese and his then wife Connie Booth, both of whom played major characters...
, Forsyte Saga, Elizabeth R
Elizabeth R
Elizabeth R is a BBC television drama serial of six 85-minute plays starring Glenda Jackson in the title role. It was first broadcast on BBC2 from February to March 1971, through the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in Australia and broadcast in America on PBS's Masterpiece Theatre.- Episodes...
, I, Claudius
I, Claudius
I, Claudius is a novel by English writer Robert Graves, written in the form of an autobiography of the Roman Emperor Claudius. As such, it includes history of the Julio-Claudian Dynasty and Roman Empire, from Julius Caesar's assassination in 44 BC to Caligula's assassination in AD 41...
, I'll Take Manhattan
I'll Take Manhattan
For the song, see Manhattan .I'll Take Manhattan is a 1986 novel by Judith Krantz.The book was turned into a CBS television miniseries, I'll Take Manhattan, in 1987....
, Peter the Great
Peter the Great (TV Series)
Peter the Great is a 1986 NBC television mini-series starring Maximilian Schell as Russian leader Peter the Great, and based on the biography by Robert K. Massie. It won three Primetime Emmy Awards, including the award for Outstanding Miniseries....
.
In the 1980s due to low budget, the television did not have money for tapes so they used the actual record. After first emission dubbing was cancelled (they recorded on that tape something else). In the whole period of communism were dubbed almost 1000 films. In the 90's after democratic transformation Polish television (TVP
TVP
TVP may stand for:* Television Personalities, a rock music band* Telewizja Polska, Polish public television* Textured vegetable protein* Thames Valley Police, a police force in the United Kingdom...
) was still dubbing films and TV series. Unfortunately like in the 1980s it was a dubbing only for one emission.
In the year 1995 to Poland entranced Canal+ who at the first years dubbed 30% of schedule. They dubbed very ambitious films and popular TV series. One of the well known and popular dubbing were Friends. Unfortunately they stopped dubbing Friends in 2001 and films in 1999 although many people supported the idea of dubbing and bought the access only for dubbing versions of foreign productions. According to survey of public opinion dubbing in Canal+ supported 43,4% subscribers (almost 500,000 people). The other 50,2% preferred lectors and 8,1% with subtitles. In the 1990s dubbing was made also by television Wizja Jeden
Wizja Jeden
Wizja Jeden was a Polish television channel that was launched on April 1, 1998. The channel was available on Wizja TV and some cable networks. The channel showed comedy related programs...
. They dubbed mainly production of BBC such as very popular The League of Gentlemen
The League of Gentlemen
The League of Gentlemen are a group of British comedians formed in 1995, best known for their radio and television series.The League of Gentlemen may also refer to:* The League of Gentlemen ,...
, Absolutely Fabulous
Absolutely Fabulous
Absolutely Fabulous, also known as Ab Fab, is a British sitcom created by Jennifer Saunders, based on an original idea by her and Dawn French, and written by Saunders, who plays the leading character. It also stars Joanna Lumley and Julia Sawalha, along with June Whitfield and Jane Horrocks...
or Men Behaving Badly
Men Behaving Badly
Men Behaving Badly is a British comedy that was created and written by Simon Nye. It follows the lives of Gary Strang and his flatmates, Dermot Povey and Tony Smart It was first broadcast on ITV in 1992...
. Wizja Jeden was closed in 2001. In the same year TVP stopped dubbing TV series Frasier
Frasier
Frasier is an American sitcom that was broadcast on NBC for eleven seasons, from September 16, 1993, to May 13, 2004. The program was created and produced by David Angell, Peter Casey, and David Lee in association with Grammnet and Paramount Network Television.A spin-off of Cheers, Frasier stars...
although that dubbing was very popular.
Nowadays according to the recent survey of public opinion made by TVP, dubbing and voice-over is equally supported by 45% of society each. At present dubbing to films and TV series for teenagers is made by Nickelodeon
Nickelodeon (TV channel)
Nickelodeon, often simply called Nick and originally named Pinwheel, is an American children's channel owned by MTV Networks, a subsidiary of Viacom International. The channel is primarily aimed at children ages 7–17, with the exception of their weekday morning program block aimed at preschoolers...
and Disney's Channels
Disney Channel
Disney Channel is an American basic cable and satellite television network, owned by the Disney-ABC Television Group division of The Walt Disney Company. It is under the direction of Disney-ABC Television Group President Anne Sweeney. The channel's headquarters is located on West Alameda Ave. in...
. One of the major breakthroughs in dubbing was the Polish release of Shrek
Shrek
Shrek is a 2001 American computer-animated fantasy comedy film directed by Andrew Adamson and Vicky Jenson, featuring the voices of Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy, Cameron Diaz, and John Lithgow. Loosely based on William Steig's 1990 fairy tale picture book Shrek!...
, which contained many references to local culture and Polish humor. Since then, people seem to have grown to like dubbed versions more, and pay more attention to the dubbing actors. However, this seems to be the case only with animated films, as live-action dubbing is still considered a bad practice. In the case of DVD releases
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
, most discs contain both the original soundtrack and subtitles, and either lector or dubbed Polish track. The dubbed version is in most cases the one from the theater release, while voice-over is provided for movies which were only subtitled in theaters.
Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
television is generally dubbed with only a couple of voice actors, with the original speech still audible underneath. In the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
most foreign movies to be officially released were dubbed. However, with the fall of the regime many popular foreign movies, previously forbidden or at least questionable under communist rule, started to flood in, in the form of low-quality home-copied videos. Being unofficial releases, they were dubbed in a very primitive way, for example, the translator spoke the text directly over the audio of a video being copied, using primitive equipment. The quality of the resulting dub was very low, the translated phrases were off-sync, interfered with the original voices, background sounds leaked into the track, translation was inaccurate and most importantly, all dub voices were made by a single person and usually lacked the intonation of the original, making comprehension of some scenes quite difficult. In modern Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
, the overdubbing technique is still used in many cases, although with vastly improved quality and now with multiple voice actors dubbing different original voices.
In Ukraine
Ukrainian language
Ukrainian is a language of the East Slavic subgroup of the Slavic languages. It is the official state language of Ukraine. Written Ukrainian uses a variant of the Cyrillic alphabet....
television and cinema is generally dubbed with the overdubbing technique, with multiple voice actors dubbing different original voices. But for Russian films are possible subtitles. Russian language TV programs are usually not dubbed.
In Latvia
Latvia
Latvia , officially the Republic of Latvia , is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by Estonia , to the south by Lithuania , to the east by the Russian Federation , to the southeast by Belarus and shares maritime borders to the west with Sweden...
and Lithuania
Lithuania
Lithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the biggest of the three Baltic states. It is situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, whereby to the west lie Sweden and Denmark...
, voice-over dubbing is hugely popular on Television; almost all shows are voice-over dubbed. This dubbing method is similar to the Polish method which means that only one person reads the whole translated text while the original sound can be heard in the background in a lowered loudness, throughout the entire program. In cinemas, only children's animated (such as The Tale of Despereaux
The Tale of Despereaux (film)
The Tale of Despereaux is a 2008 computer-animated film directed by Sam Fell and Robert Stevenhagen. Loosely based on the 2003 fantasy book of the same name by Kate DiCamillo, the movie is narrated by Sigourney Weaver and stars Matthew Broderick and Emma Watson...
) and live action films (such as Charlotte's Web
Charlotte's Web (2006 film)
Charlotte's Web is a 2006 American live-action/computer-animated feature film, based on the popular book of the same name by E. B. White. It is directed by Gary Winick and produced by Paramount Pictures, Walden Media, The K Entertainment Company, and Nickelodeon Movies...
) is dubbed in Latvian
Latvian language
Latvian is the official state language of Latvia. It is also sometimes referred to as Lettish. There are about 1.4 million native Latvian speakers in Latvia and about 150,000 abroad. The Latvian language has a relatively large number of non-native speakers, atypical for a small language...
and Lithuanian
Lithuanian language
Lithuanian is the official state language of Lithuania and is recognized as one of the official languages of the European Union. There are about 2.96 million native Lithuanian speakers in Lithuania and about 170,000 abroad. Lithuanian is a Baltic language, closely related to Latvian, although they...
languages.
Americas
In the United StatesUnited States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and most of Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
outside of Quebec
Quebec
Quebec or is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking population and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level....
, foreign films shown in theaters such as Metropolis
Metropolis (anime)
Metropolis is a 2001 [anime] film and loosely based on the 1949 Metropolis manga created by the late Osamu Tezuka, itself inspired by the 1927 German silent film of the same name, though the two do not share plot elements. The anime, however, does draw aspects of its storyline directly from the...
and Doraemon: Nobita's Dinosaur 2006 are usually subtitled. The exceptions are Tokusatsu
Tokusatsu
is a Japanese term that applies to any live-action film or television drama that usually features superheroes and makes considerable use of special effects ....
and daikaiju films, which are dubbed when imported into the U.S.; the poor quality of the dubbing of these films has become the subject of much mockery. A small number of British films have been dubbed when released in America owing to dialects used that Americans are not familiar with (for example, Kes
Kes (film)
Kes is a 1969 British film from director Ken Loach and producer Tony Garnett. The film is based on the novel A Kestrel for a Knave, written by the Barnsley-born author Barry Hines in 1968...
, Trainspotting
Trainspotting (film)
Trainspotting is a 1996 British satirical/drama film directed by Danny Boyle based on the novel of the same name by Irvine Welsh. The movie follows a group of heroin addicts in a late 1980s economically depressed area of Edinburgh and their passage through life...
). In addition, British children shows (such as Bob the Builder
Bob the Builder
Bob the Builder is a British children's animated television show created by Keith Chapman. In the original series Bob appears as a building contractor specialising in masonry in a stop motion animated programme with his colleague Wendy, various neighbours and friends, and their gang of...
) are re-dubbed with American voice actors, making the series more understandable for American children. Televised Japanese anime
Anime
is the Japanese abbreviated pronunciation of "animation". The definition sometimes changes depending on the context. In English-speaking countries, the term most commonly refers to Japanese animated cartoons....
is almost always aired in its dubbed format regardless of its content or target age group, with the sole exceptions occurring either when an English dub has not been produced for the program (usually in the case of feature films) or when the program is being presented by a network that places importance on presenting it in its original format (as was the case when Turner Classic Movies
Turner Classic Movies
Turner Classic Movies is a movie-oriented cable television channel, owned by the Turner Broadcasting System subsidiary of Time Warner, featuring commercial-free classic movies, mostly from the Turner Entertainment and MGM, United Artists, RKO and Warner Bros. film libraries...
aired several of Hayao Miyazaki
Hayao Miyazaki
is a Japanese manga artist and prominent film director and animator of many popular anime feature films. Through a career that has spanned nearly fifty years, Miyazaki has attained international acclaim as a maker of animated feature films and, along with Isao Takahata, co-founded Studio Ghibli,...
's works, which were presented both dubbed and subtitled). Most anime
Anime
is the Japanese abbreviated pronunciation of "animation". The definition sometimes changes depending on the context. In English-speaking countries, the term most commonly refers to Japanese animated cartoons....
DVDs contain options for original Japanese, Japanese with subtitles, and English dubbed, except for a handful of series which have been heavily edited and/or Americanized. Also, Disney has a policy that makes its directors undergo stages to perfect alignment of certain lip movements so the movie looks believable.
For Spanish-speaking countries, all foreign language programs, films, cartoons and documentaries shown in free aired TV channels are dubbed into Neutral Spanish, while in cable and satellite pan-regional channels, films are either dubbed or subtitled. In theaters, only films made for children are dubbed into Neutral Spanish (usually with Mexican pronunciation) and sometimes dubbed into local Spanish. In Argentina
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
, all movies are shown in their original language, in addition to Spanish-dubbed versions of films for children.
In Mexico
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
, by law, films shown in theaters must be shown in their original version; films in languages other than Spanish are usually subtitled. Only educational documentaries and movies classified for a children's audience may be dubbed, but this is not compulsory and some animated films are shown in theaters in both dubbed and subtitled versions. Dubbing must be made in Mexico by Mexican nationals or foreigners residing in Mexico. Most of the movies released as DVD have the feature of Neutral Spanish. On broadcast TV foreign programs are dubbed. In pay TV
Pay TV
Pay television, premium television, or premium channels refers to subscription-based television services, usually provided by both analog and digital cable and satellite, but also increasingly via digital terrestrial and internet television...
most shows and movies are subtitled.
In Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
, foreign programs are invariably dubbed into Brazilian Portuguese
Brazilian Portuguese
Brazilian Portuguese is a group of Portuguese dialects written and spoken by most of the 190 million inhabitants of Brazil and by a few million Brazilian emigrants, mainly in the United States, United Kingdom, Portugal, Canada, Japan and Paraguay....
on broadcast TV, with only a few exceptions. Films shown at cinemas are generally offered with both subtitled and dubbed versions, although subtitling is preferential for adult movies and dubbing is preferential for children movies. Pay TV
Pay TV
Pay television, premium television, or premium channels refers to subscription-based television services, usually provided by both analog and digital cable and satellite, but also increasingly via digital terrestrial and internet television...
commonly offers both dubbed and subtitled movies, but subtitling is predominant. When released on DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
, all movies usually feature both dubbing and subtitling.
In Quebec
Quebec
Quebec or is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking population and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level....
, Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
, most films and TV programs in English are dubbed into Quebec French
Quebec French
Quebec French , or Québécois French, is the predominant variety of the French language in Canada, in its formal and informal registers. Quebec French is used in everyday communication, as well as in education, the media, and government....
(with an International French
Standard French
Standard French is an unofficial term for a standard variety of the French language...
accent for ease of comprehension and regional neutrality). Occasionally, the dubbing of a series or a movie, such as The Simpsons
The Simpsons
The Simpsons is an American animated sitcom created by Matt Groening for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series is a satirical parody of a middle class American lifestyle epitomized by its family of the same name, which consists of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie...
, is made using the more widely-spoken joual
Joual
Joual is the common name for the linguistic features of basilectal Quebec French that are associated with the French-speaking working class in Montreal which has become a symbol of national identity for a large number of artists from that area...
variety of Quebec French. This has the advantage of making child
Child
Biologically, a child is generally a human between the stages of birth and puberty. Some vernacular definitions of a child include the fetus, as being an unborn child. The legal definition of "child" generally refers to a minor, otherwise known as a person younger than the age of majority...
ren's films and TV series comprehensible to younger audiences, but many bilingual Québécois prefer subtitling since they would understand some or all of the original audio. In addition, all films are shown in English as well in certain theaters (especially in major cities and English-speaking areas such as the West Island
West Island
The West Island is the unofficial name given to the western cities and boroughs of the Island of Montreal, in Quebec, Canada...
), and in fact, some theatres, such as the Scotiabank Cinema Montreal, show only movies in English. Most American television series are only available in English on DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
, or on English language channels, but some of the more popular ones have French dubs shown on mainstream networks, and are released in French on DVD as well, sometimes separately from an English-only version.
Formerly, all French-language dubbed films in Quebec were imported from France, and to this day some still are. Such a practice was criticized by former politician Mario Dumont
Mario Dumont
Mario Dumont is a television personality and former politician in the province of Quebec. He was a Member of the National Assembly of Quebec , and the leader of the Action démocratique du Québec , from 1994 to 2009...
after he took his children to see the Parisian French dub of Shrek the Third
Shrek the Third
Shrek the Third is a 2007 American animated film, and the third film in the Shrek series. It was produced by Jeffrey Katzenberg for DreamWorks Animation, and is distributed by Paramount Pictures. It was released in U.S. theaters on May 18, 2007...
, which Dumont found incomprehensible. After Dumont's complaints and a proposed bill, Bee Movie
Bee Movie
Bee Movie is a 2007 computer animated family comedy film starring Jerry Seinfeld, Renée Zellweger, Matthew Broderick, Megan Mullally, John Goodman, Chris Rock, Kathy Bates, and Patrick Warburton. Produced by DreamWorks Animation, it is directed by Simon J...
, the following film from DreamWorks Animation
DreamWorks Animation
DreamWorks Animation SKG, Inc. is an American animation studio based in Glendale, California that creates animated feature films, television program and online virtual worlds...
, was dubbed in Quebec, making it the studio's first animated film to have a Quebec French dub, as all DreamWorks Animation films had previously been dubbed in France. In addition, because Canadian viewers usually find Quebec French more comprehensible than other dialects of the language, some older film series that had the French-language versions of previous installments dubbed in France have later ones dubbed in Quebec, often creating inconsistencies within the French version of the series' canon. Lucasfilm
Lucasfilm
Lucasfilm Limited is an American film production company founded by George Lucas in 1971, based in San Francisco, California. Lucas is the company's current chairman and CEO, and Micheline Chau is the president and COO....
's Star Wars
Star Wars
Star Wars is an American epic space opera film series created by George Lucas. The first film in the series was originally released on May 25, 1977, under the title Star Wars, by 20th Century Fox, and became a worldwide pop culture phenomenon, followed by two sequels, released at three-year...
and Indiana Jones
Indiana Jones
Colonel Henry Walton "Indiana" Jones, Jr., Ph.D. is a fictional character and the protagonist of the Indiana Jones franchise. George Lucas and Steven Spielberg created the character in homage to the action heroes of 1930s film serials...
series are examples. Both series had films released in the 1970s and 80s with no Québécois French dubbed versions; instead, the Parisian French versions with altered character and object names, terms, and so on, were distributed in the province. However, later films in both series released 1999 and later were dubbed in Quebec, using different voice actors and "reversing" name changes made in France's dubbings due to the change in studio. The French dub of Naruto
Naruto
is an ongoing Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Masashi Kishimoto. The plot tells the story of Naruto Uzumaki, an adolescent ninja who constantly searches for recognition and aspires to become the Hokage, the ninja in his village who is acknowledged as the leader and the strongest of...
that airs in Quebec is from France but uses a local opening.
Asia
ChinaChina
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
has a long tradition of generally dubbing foreign films into Mandarin Chinese which started in the 1930s. Beginning in the late 1970s, not only films, but popular TV series from the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
, Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
, and Mexico
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
were also dubbed. The Shanghai Film Dubbing Studio has been the most celebrated one in the film dubbing industry in China. In order to generate high-quality products, they divide each film into short segments, each one lasting only a few minutes, and then work on the segments one by one. In addition to the correct meaning in translation, they make tremendous effort to match the lips of the actors. As a result, viewers can hardly detect that the films they are seeing are actually dubbed. The cast of dubbers is acknowledged at the end of a dubbed film. Quite a few dubbing actors and actresses of the Shanghai Film Dubbing Studio became well-known celebrities, among whom are Qiu Yuefeng, Bi Ke, Li Zi, and Liu Guangning. In recent years however, especially in the larger cities on east and south coast, it has become increasingly common that movie theaters show subtitled versions with the original soundtrack intact. Taiwan
Taiwan
Taiwan , also known, especially in the past, as Formosa , is the largest island of the same-named island group of East Asia in the western Pacific Ocean and located off the southeastern coast of mainland China. The island forms over 99% of the current territory of the Republic of China following...
also dubs and shows foreign films and TV series in Mandarin Chinese.
In Hong Kong
Hong Kong
Hong Kong is one of two Special Administrative Regions of the People's Republic of China , the other being Macau. A city-state situated on China's south coast and enclosed by the Pearl River Delta and South China Sea, it is renowned for its expansive skyline and deep natural harbour...
, foreign television programmes, except for English and Mandarin television programmes, are dubbed in Cantonese Chinese, and Japanese programs, including anime
Anime
is the Japanese abbreviated pronunciation of "animation". The definition sometimes changes depending on the context. In English-speaking countries, the term most commonly refers to Japanese animated cartoons....
, are also dubbed in Cantonese Chinese. English and Mandarin programmes are generally shown in their original language with subtitles. Foreign films such as most live action films and animated films are also generally dubbed in Cantonese Chinese such as anime films and Disney animated films.
Almost all the time, Foreign films and TV programs, both Live action and animated, are generally dubbed in both Mandarin Chinese and Cantonese Chinese languages.
For example. In The Lord of the Rings film series, Elijah Wood's character: Frodo Baggins
Frodo Baggins
Frodo Baggins is a fictional character in J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium.He is the main protagonist of Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. He was a hobbit of the Shire who inherited Sauron's Ring from Bilbo Baggins and undertook the quest to destroy it in the fires of Mount Doom...
was given a Mandarin Chinese voice-over dubbed by Jiang Guangtao for China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
and Taiwan
Taiwan
Taiwan , also known, especially in the past, as Formosa , is the largest island of the same-named island group of East Asia in the western Pacific Ocean and located off the southeastern coast of mainland China. The island forms over 99% of the current territory of the Republic of China following...
. But for the Cantonese Chinese voice-over localization, His voice was given by: Bosco Tang for the Hong Kong
Hong Kong
Hong Kong is one of two Special Administrative Regions of the People's Republic of China , the other being Macau. A city-state situated on China's south coast and enclosed by the Pearl River Delta and South China Sea, it is renowned for its expansive skyline and deep natural harbour...
Market.
In Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
, foreign television programmes and films began to be shown dubbed in Japanese
Japanese language
is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
on TV since the 1950s. In the first stage, the lack of video software for domestic television, video software is imported from abroad, when it is televised, broadcast on commercial TV was mostly dubbed. This is the character limit for a small TV screen at a lower resolution and the initial response to their poor elderly and illiterate eye, as far as television was to be used for audio dubbing. Nowadays, TV shows and movies that are aimed either at all ages, or for adults-only are both shown Generally dubbed and shown with its original language with Japanese subtitles and contains the original language option when that film gets released on VHS
VHS
The Video Home System is a consumer-level analog recording videocassette standard developed by Victor Company of Japan ....
, DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
and Blu-Ray. Adult cartoons such as Family Guy
Family Guy
Family Guy is an American animated television series created by Seth MacFarlane for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series centers on the Griffins, a dysfunctional family consisting of parents Peter and Lois; their children Meg, Chris, and Stewie; and their anthropomorphic pet dog Brian...
and South Park
South Park
South Park is an American animated television series created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone for the Comedy Central television network. Intended for mature audiences, the show has become famous for its crude language, surreal, satirical, and dark humor that lampoons a wide range of topics...
are shown dubbed in Japanese on the WOWOW
WOWOW
WOWOW was the first private satellite broadcasting and pay TV station in Japan. It has its headquarters on the 21st floor of the Akasaka Park Building in Akasaka, Minato, Tokyo...
TV channel. But for: South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut, It was dubbed in Japanese, by different actors instead of the same Japanese dubbing-actors from the cartoon, due to the fact that it was handled by a different Japanese dubbing studio, and also marketed for the Kansai market. Foreign films usually contains multiple different Japanese-dubbing versions, but with a bunch of different original Japanese-dubbing voice actors depending whenever on which TV station it airs on. NHK
NHK
NHK is Japan's national public broadcasting organization. NHK, which has always identified itself to its audiences by the English pronunciation of its initials, is a publicly owned corporation funded by viewers' payments of a television license fee....
, Nippon TV, Fuji TV, TV Asahi
TV Asahi
, also known as EX and , is a Japanese television network headquartered in Roppongi, Minato, Tokyo, Japan. The company writes its name in lower-case letters, tv asahi, in its logo and public-image materials. The company also owns All-Nippon News Network....
and also TBS
TBS (TV channel)
TBS , stylized in the logo as tbs, is an American cable television channel owned by Time Warner that shows a variety of programming, with a focus on comedy. TBS was originally known as WTCG, a UHF terrestrial television station that broadcast from Atlanta, Georgia, during the late 1970s...
usually do this, and same for even on software releases such as being released on VHS
VHS
The Video Home System is a consumer-level analog recording videocassette standard developed by Victor Company of Japan ....
, DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
and Blu-Ray. There also exists: "Japanese Dub-over artists" for famous celebrities which for example:
- Kōichi YamaderaKoichi Yamaderais a Japanese voice actor, actor, tarento, narrator, master of ceremonies and impressionist from Shiogama, Miyagi Prefecture. He graduated from Tohoku Gakuin University's economics school, and is currently affiliated with Across Entertainment. Before that, he was affiliated with the Tokyo Actor's...
- Jim CarreyJim CarreyJames Eugene "Jim" Carrey is a Canadian-American actor and comedian. He has received two Golden Globe Awards and has also been nominated on four occasions. Carrey began comedy in 1979, performing at Yuk Yuk's in Toronto, Ontario...
and Eddie MurphyEddie MurphyEdward Regan "Eddie" Murphy is an American stand-up comedian, actor, writer, singer, director, and musician.... - Daisuke NamikawaDaisuke Namikawais a Japanese voice actor who is affiliated with Across Entertainment.He started acting in 1984. He is sometimes mistaken for fellow voice actor Daisuke Hirakawa, as their names only differ by one character when written in kanji. Despite his wide range of voice casting, he is usually cast as young,...
- Elijah WoodElijah WoodElijah Jordan Wood is an American actor. He made his film debut with a minor part in Back to the Future Part II , then landed a succession of larger roles that made him a critically acclaimed child actor by age 9. He is best known for his high-profile role as Frodo Baggins in Peter Jackson's...
and Hayden ChristensenHayden ChristensenHayden Christensen is a Canadian actor. He appeared in Canadian television programs when he was young, then diversified into American television in the late 1990s. He moved on to minor acting roles before being praised for his role of Sam in Life as a House, for which he was nominated for a Golden... - Hōchū ŌtsukaHochu Otsuka, also known by the his stage name , is a Japanese voice actor from Okayama Prefecture, affiliated with the talent management firm Crazy Box. He is the official Japanese dub-over artist for: Gary Oldman and Jean-Claude Van Damme....
- Gary OldmanGary OldmanGary Leonard Oldman is an English actor, voice actor, filmmaker and musician.A member of the 1980s Brit Pack, Oldman came to prominence via starring roles in British films Meantime , Sid and Nancy and Prick Up Your Ears , with his performance in the latter bringing him his first BAFTA Award...
and Jean-Claude Van DammeJean-Claude Van DammeJean-Claude Camille François Van Varenberg , professionally known as Jean-Claude Van Damme, is a Belgian martial artist and actor, best known for his martial arts action films, the most successful of which include Bloodsport , Kickboxer , Double Impact , Universal Soldier , Hard Target , Timecop ,... - Ben HiuraBen Hiurais a Japanese actor and voice actor affiliated with the Seinenza Theater Company. He is the Official Japanese dub-over voice artist for Robin Williams.-Television animation:*Master Keaton *Shin Lupin III...
- Robin WilliamsRobin WilliamsRobin McLaurin Williams is an American actor and comedian. Rising to fame with his role as the alien Mork in the TV series Mork and Mindy, and later stand-up comedy work, Williams has performed in many feature films since 1980. He won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance... - Kenshō OnoKensho Onois a Japanese actor and seiyū, born on October 5, 1989 in Fukuoka Prefecture. He is represented by Gekidan Himawari. In Japan, he is most well known for voicing Harry Potter in the Japanese dubs of the Harry Potter film series, and has also appeared in numerous anime and Japanese television drama...
- Daniel RadcliffeDaniel RadcliffeDaniel Jacob Radcliffe is an English actor who rose to prominence playing the titular character in the Harry Potter film series.... - Yumi SudōYumi Sudois a Japanese voice actress from Kanagawa Prefecture affiliated with Aoni Production. Yumi has been voice acting since she was 6 years old. She is best known as the official Japanese dub-over artist for Hilary Duff, Hayden Panettiere and Emma Watson...
- Emma WatsonEmma WatsonEmma Charlotte Duerre Watson is an English actress and model.Watson rose to prominence playing Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter film series. Watson was cast as Hermione at the age of nine, having previously acted only in school plays. From 2001 to 2011, she starred in all eight Harry Potter...
, Hilary DuffHilary DuffHilary Erhard Duff is an American actress, singer-songwriter, entrepreneur, and author. After working in local theater plays and television commercials in her childhood, she achieved fame playing the title role in the Disney Channel television series Lizzie McGuire. She also reprised her role in...
and Hayden PanettiereHayden PanettiereHayden Leslie Panettiere is an American actress and singer, best known as cheerleader Claire Bennet on the NBC television series Heroes. She began her acting career by playing Sarah Roberts on One Life to Live , and Lizzie Spaulding on Guiding Light , before starring at age 10 as Sheryl Yoast in... - Yūki Tokiwa - Rupert GrintRupert GrintRupert Alexander Lloyd Grint is an English actor, who rose to prominence playing Ron Weasley, one of the three main characters in the Harry Potter film series. Grint was cast as Ron at the age of 11, having previously acted only in school plays and at his local theatre group...
and Daryl SabaraDaryl SabaraDaryl Christopher Sabara is an American film and television actor. He is perhaps best known for playing Juni Cortez in the Spy Kids film series, as well as for a variety of television and film appearances, including Wizards of Waverly Place, Father of the Pride, The Polar Express, Keeping Up with... - Hiroki Tōchi - Sam WorthingtonSam WorthingtonSamuel Henry J. "Sam" Worthington is an English born, Australian actor. After almost a decade of roles in Australian TV shows and films, Worthington gained Hollywood's attention by playing Marcus Wright in Terminator Salvation and the lead role, Jake Sully, in James Cameron's science...
In Thailand
Thailand
Thailand , officially the Kingdom of Thailand , formerly known as Siam , is a country located at the centre of the Indochina peninsula and Southeast Asia. It is bordered to the north by Burma and Laos, to the east by Laos and Cambodia, to the south by the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia, and to the...
, foreign television programmes are dubbed in Thai
Thai language
Thai , also known as Central Thai and Siamese, is the national and official language of Thailand and the native language of the Thai people, Thailand's dominant ethnic group. Thai is a member of the Tai group of the Tai–Kadai language family. Historical linguists have been unable to definitively...
, but the original soundtrack is often simultaneously carried on a NICAM
NICAM
Near Instantaneous Companded Audio Multiplex is an early form of lossy compression for digital audio. It was originally developed in the early 1970s for point-to-point links within broadcasting networks...
audio track on terrestrial broadcast, and alternate audio tracks on satellite broadcast; previously, terrestrial stations simulcast
Simulcast
Simulcast, shorthand for "simultaneous broadcast", refers to programs or events broadcast across more than one medium, or more than one service on the same medium, at the same time. For example, Absolute Radio is simulcast on both AM and on satellite radio, and the BBC's Prom concerts are often...
ed the original soundtrack on the radio. On Pay-TV, many channels carry foreign language movies and television programmes with subtitles. Nearly all movie theaters throughout the country show both the subtitled version and the dubbed version of English-language movies. In Bangkok, the majority of theaters showing English-language movies are subtitled only. In big cities like Bangkok Thai-language movies have English subtitles. For English-language animated movies, Disney films like: The Lion King
The Lion King
The Lion King is a 1994 American animated film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and released by Walt Disney Pictures. It is the 32nd feature in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series...
, Mulan and Tangled are dubbed entirely in Thai. Chonnai Sukawat has provided the Thai-dubbing voice for the heroine Rapunzel in the film, Tangled. In Harry Potter, Hermione Granger
Hermione Granger
Hermione Jean Granger is a fictional character and one of the three protagonists in J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series. She initially appears in the first novel, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, as a new student on her way to Hogwarts...
was dubbed in Thai by Thai singer and actress known as: Bismillah Nana. Many English-language movies are sold on VCD
VCD
VCD is a three-letter abbreviation with multiple meanings, as described below:* VCD Athletic, semi-professional football team* Video CD* Voice command device* Value change dump * Vocal cord dysfunction* Visual Communication and Design...
s in Thailand, with the original English language with Thai subtitles as well as also being available with the Thai language dubbed version, such as Eragon
Eragon (film)
Eragon is a 2006 fantasy-adventure film based on the novel of the same name by author Christopher Paolini. The cast includes Edward Speleers in the title role, Jeremy Irons, Garrett Hedlund, Sienna Guillory, Robert Carlyle, John Malkovich, Djimon Hounsou, Alun Armstrong, Joss Stone, and the voice...
, Avatar, The Harry Potter film series
Harry Potter (film series)
The Harry Potter film series is a British-American film series based on the Harry Potter novels by the British author J. K. Rowling...
and The Lord of the Rings film series. Thai lakorn
Lakorn
Lakorn , while usually meaning play in the Thai language, is also the term for dramatic television serials . Lakorns are usually shown every night at primetime on Thai television channels and start at 20:30. An episode of a prime-time drama is usually two hours long...
s are with English subtitles if broadcast on international television channels, or sold as DVD abroad.
In Indonesia
Indonesia
Indonesia , officially the Republic of Indonesia , is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia is an archipelago comprising approximately 13,000 islands. It has 33 provinces with over 238 million people, and is the world's fourth most populous country. Indonesia is a republic, with an...
and Malaysia, South American telenovela
Telenovela
A telenovela is a limited-run serial dramatic programming popular in Latin American, Portuguese, and Spanish television programming. The word combines tele, short for televisión or televisão , and novela, a Spanish or Portuguese word for "novel"...
s are dubbed in Indonesian
Indonesian language
Indonesian is the official language of Indonesia. Indonesian is a normative form of the Riau Islands dialect of Malay, an Austronesian language which has been used as a lingua franca in the Indonesian archipelago for centuries....
and Malay
Malay language
Malay is a major language of the Austronesian family. It is the official language of Malaysia , Indonesia , Brunei and Singapore...
, while English language programmes are usually shown in the original language with Indonesian
Indonesian language
Indonesian is the official language of Indonesia. Indonesian is a normative form of the Riau Islands dialect of Malay, an Austronesian language which has been used as a lingua franca in the Indonesian archipelago for centuries....
and Malay
Malay language
Malay is a major language of the Austronesian family. It is the official language of Malaysia , Indonesia , Brunei and Singapore...
subtitles, respectively. However, this has recently changed in Malaysia, and South American telenovelas now retain their original language, with Malay subtitles. Most but not all Korean and Japanese dramas are still dubbed in Mandarin
Standard Mandarin
Standard Chinese or Modern Standard Chinese, also known as Mandarin or Putonghua, is the official language of the People's Republic of China and Republic of China , and is one of the four official languages of Singapore....
with Malay subtitles on terrestrial television channels. Cantonese, Mandarin, Tamil
Tamil language
Tamil is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by Tamil people of the Indian subcontinent. It has official status in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu and in the Indian union territory of Pondicherry. Tamil is also an official language of Sri Lanka and Singapore...
and Hindi
Hindi
Standard Hindi, or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi, also known as Manak Hindi , High Hindi, Nagari Hindi, and Literary Hindi, is a standardized and sanskritized register of the Hindustani language derived from the Khariboli dialect of Delhi...
programmes are shown in original language all this while, usually with Malay subtitling (and in some cases, multilingual subtitling). Cartoons and anime are also dubbed as well, such as Kekkaishi
Kekkaishi
is a supernatural manga series written and illustrated by Yellow Tanabe. It was serialized in Japan by Shogakukan in the manga magazine Shōnen Sunday from 2003 to 2011 , and licensed for an English-language release in North America by Viz Media. It was adapted as a fifty-two episode anime series by...
, Megas XLR
Megas XLR
Megas XLR is an American animated television series that aired on the Toonami block on Cartoon Network and is produced by Cartoon Network Studios. It was created by Jody Schaeffer and George Krstic...
, Spheres
Spheres (anime)
Spheres is a Korean animated television series. It is a product of the major broadcaster Munhwa Broadcasting Corporation, and the animation was done by Studio Kaab, which would later animate the series Nalong.-Story:...
(Korea
Korea
Korea ) is an East Asian geographic region that is currently divided into two separate sovereign states — North Korea and South Korea. Located on the Korean Peninsula, Korea is bordered by the People's Republic of China to the northwest, Russia to the northeast, and is separated from Japan to the...
), dubbed by young soundman Mohamad Nor Aliff Abd Majid a.k.a Aliff JJ, and others like Crayon Shin Chan, Doraemon
Doraemon
is a Japanese manga series created by Fujiko F. Fujio which later became an anime series and an Asian franchise...
, Bleach
Bleach (manga)
is a Japanese shōnen manga series written and illustrated by Noriaki "Tite" Kubo. Bleach follows the adventures of Ichigo Kurosaki after he obtains the powers of a —a death personification similar to the Grim Reaper—from another Soul Reaper, Rukia Kuchiki...
, and Naruto
Naruto
is an ongoing Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Masashi Kishimoto. The plot tells the story of Naruto Uzumaki, an adolescent ninja who constantly searches for recognition and aspires to become the Hokage, the ninja in his village who is acknowledged as the leader and the strongest of...
. Although English-language cartoons are normally not dubbed, and some anime do retain their original Japanese language. In Indonesia English-language daytime cartoons are mostly dubbed, however on some pay-tv channels like Nickelodeon cartoons are not dubbed and do not have subtitles. Feature animations are either dubbed or subtitled depending on which television-channel it is shown on.
In Malaysian news program, it is broadcast in several languages for twenty minutes each language for minor languages and international languages, including dialects of Chinese, the languages of news to broadcast by law is Malay
Malay language
Malay is a major language of the Austronesian family. It is the official language of Malaysia , Indonesia , Brunei and Singapore...
, English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
, Mandarin Chinese, Min Nan
Min Nan
The Southern Min languages, or Min Nan , are a family of Chinese languages spoken in southern Fujian, eastern Guangdong, Hainan, Taiwan, and southern Zhejiang provinces of China, and by descendants of emigrants from these areas in diaspora....
and Thai
Thai language
Thai , also known as Central Thai and Siamese, is the national and official language of Thailand and the native language of the Thai people, Thailand's dominant ethnic group. Thai is a member of the Tai group of the Tai–Kadai language family. Historical linguists have been unable to definitively...
.
In the Philippines
Philippines
The Philippines , officially known as the Republic of the Philippines , is a country in Southeast Asia in the western Pacific Ocean. To its north across the Luzon Strait lies Taiwan. West across the South China Sea sits Vietnam...
, Japanese anime are more often than not dubbed in Tagalog
Filipino language
This move has drawn much criticism from other regional groups.In 1987, a new constitution introduced many provisions for the language.Article XIV, Section 6, omits any mention of Tagalog as the basis for Filipino, and states that:...
or another Philippine regional language. The channel HERO TV, which focuses on anime and Tokusatsu shows, has all its foreign programs dubbed in Tagalog. Animax
Animax
is a Japanese anime satellite television network, dedicated to broadcasting anime programming. A subsidiary of Japanese media conglomerate Sony, it is headquartered in in Minato, Tokyo, Japan, with its co-founders and shareholders including Sony Pictures Entertainment and the noted anime studios...
, meanwhile, have their anime programs dubbed in English. Also popular in the Philippines are Chinese, Korean, and Mexican dramas which are termed Chinovelas, Koreanovelas, and Mexicanovelas, respectively, and all these are also dubbed in Tagalog or another Philippine regional language, with its unique set of Filipino-speaking voice actors. The prevalence of media needing to be dubbed has resulted in a talent pool that is very capable of syncing voice to lip, especially for shows broadcast by the country's three largest networks. It is not uncommon in the Filipino dub industry to have most of the voices in a series dubbed by only a handful of voice talents. Normally, English language programs are usually not dubbed, because Filipinos can understand English. Notable exceptions are a number of Nickelodeon
Nickelodeon (TV channel)
Nickelodeon, often simply called Nick and originally named Pinwheel, is an American children's channel owned by MTV Networks, a subsidiary of Viacom International. The channel is primarily aimed at children ages 7–17, with the exception of their weekday morning program block aimed at preschoolers...
cartoons shown on TV5
Associated Broadcasting Company
The Associated Broadcasting Company, Inc is a television network in the Philippines, with main broadcast facilities and transmitter located at 762 Quirino Highway, San Bartolome, Novaliches, Quezon City. The network was previously known as the , Associated Broadcasting Company remains the legal...
which are dubbed in Tagalog or another Philippine regional language. TV5
Associated Broadcasting Company
The Associated Broadcasting Company, Inc is a television network in the Philippines, with main broadcast facilities and transmitter located at 762 Quirino Highway, San Bartolome, Novaliches, Quezon City. The network was previously known as the , Associated Broadcasting Company remains the legal...
is also the only television channel in the country that airs English-language movies dubbed in Tagalog.
In Mongolia
Mongolia
Mongolia is a landlocked country in East and Central Asia. It is bordered by Russia to the north and China to the south, east and west. Although Mongolia does not share a border with Kazakhstan, its western-most point is only from Kazakhstan's eastern tip. Ulan Bator, the capital and largest...
, most television dubbing uses the Russian method, with only a few voice actors, and the original language audible underneath. In movie theaters, foreign films are shown in their original language with Mongolian
Mongolian language
The Mongolian language is the official language of Mongolia and the best-known member of the Mongolic language family. The number of speakers across all its dialects may be 5.2 million, including the vast majority of the residents of Mongolia and many of the Mongolian residents of the Inner...
subtitles underneath.
In India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
, where "foreign films" are synonymous with Hollywood films, dubbing is done mostly in Hindi
Hindi
Standard Hindi, or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi, also known as Manak Hindi , High Hindi, Nagari Hindi, and Literary Hindi, is a standardized and sanskritized register of the Hindustani language derived from the Khariboli dialect of Delhi...
, and languages like Tamil
Tamil language
Tamil is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by Tamil people of the Indian subcontinent. It has official status in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu and in the Indian union territory of Pondicherry. Tamil is also an official language of Sri Lanka and Singapore...
and Telugu
Telugu language
Telugu is a Central Dravidian language primarily spoken in the state of Andhra Pradesh, India, where it is an official language. It is also spoken in the neighbouring states of Chattisgarh, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Orissa and Tamil Nadu...
. The finished works are released into the towns and lower tier settlements of the respective states (where English penetration is low), often with the English language originals being released in the metropolitan areas. In all other states, the English originals are released along with the dubbed versions where often the dubbed version collections are outstanding than original. The most recent dubbing of Spider-Man 3
Spider-Man 3
Spider-Man 3 is a 2007 American superhero film written and directed by Sam Raimi, with a screenplay by Ivan Raimi and Alvin Sargent. It is the third film in the Sam Raimi Spider-Man trilogy based on the fictional Marvel Comics character Spider-Man...
was also done in Bhojpuri, a language popular in northern India. Ami Trivedi
Ami Trivedi
Ami Trivedi is an Indian television and theatre artist. She has done Gujarati theatre for many years. She has appeared in number of Hindi serials also. Her father is a well-known theatre actor, Tushar Trivedi who has been involved in Gujarati plays for over 20 years...
has done the Hindi voice for Harry Potter
Harry Potter (character)
Harry James Potter is the title character and main protagonist of J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series. The majority of the books' plot covers seven years in the life of the orphan Potter who, on his eleventh birthday, learns he is a wizard...
in the first Harry Potter film
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (film)
Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, released in the United States and India as Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, is a 2001 fantasy film directed by Chris Columbus and based on the novel of the same name by J. K. Rowling. The film is the first instalment in the Harry Potter film series,...
, but her older brother, Karan Trivedi
Ami Trivedi
Ami Trivedi is an Indian television and theatre artist. She has done Gujarati theatre for many years. She has appeared in number of Hindi serials also. Her father is a well-known theatre actor, Tushar Trivedi who has been involved in Gujarati plays for over 20 years...
took over as the second Permanent Hindi dubbing voice for Harry Potter in the rest of the trilogy, since the second film. Rajshree Nath
Rajshree Nath
Rajshree Nath is an Indian voice actress.She originally did the Hindi dubbing for Emma Watson's character Hermione Granger in the first two Harry Potter films after which Parignya Pandya voiced Hermione for the rest of the sequels.She has also voiced Barbie in some of the Hindi dubs of Barbie...
originally did the Hindi dubbing voice for Hermione Granger
Hermione Granger
Hermione Jean Granger is a fictional character and one of the three protagonists in J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series. She initially appears in the first novel, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, as a new student on her way to Hogwarts...
in the first two Harry potter films, But since the third film, Hermione's second and permanent Hindi dubbing voice was done by: Parignya Pandya
Parignya Pandya
Parignya Pandya is an Indian voice actress.She has dubbed over Emma Watson's character Hermione Granger in Hindi for the Harry Potter film series, in the third film , after it was passed from Rajshree Nath...
. Nachiket Dighe has done Ron Weasley
Ron Weasley
Ronald Bilius "Ron" Weasley is a fictional character and one of the three protagonists in the Harry Potter book series written by J. K. Rowling. His first appearance was in the first book of the series, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone as the best friend of Harry Potter and Hermione Granger...
's Hindi dubbing voice, throughout the entire series. Pinky Rajput and Rajshree Nath
Rajshree Nath
Rajshree Nath is an Indian voice actress.She originally did the Hindi dubbing for Emma Watson's character Hermione Granger in the first two Harry Potter films after which Parignya Pandya voiced Hermione for the rest of the sequels.She has also voiced Barbie in some of the Hindi dubs of Barbie...
both voiced the all time favorite Barbie character in the Hindi dubs of the Barbie films.
In Pakistan
Pakistan
Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...
, almost 60% of the population speaks Punjabi
Punjabi language
Punjabi is an Indo-Aryan language spoken by inhabitants of the historical Punjab region . For Sikhs, the Punjabi language stands as the official language in which all ceremonies take place. In Pakistan, Punjabi is the most widely spoken language...
as their mother tongue. Therefore, Punjabi films have more business than Urdu films. The film companies produced Punjabi films and re-record all films in Urdu and released the result as a "Double Version" film.
Also in Pakistan
Pakistan
Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...
, where "foreign films" are synonymous with Hollywood films, dubbing is done mostly in Urdu , which is the national language, and the finished works are released in the major cities throughout country.
In Vietnam
Vietnam
Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...
, foreign-language films and programs are subtitled on television in Vietnamese
Vietnamese language
Vietnamese is the national and official language of Vietnam. It is the mother tongue of 86% of Vietnam's population, and of about three million overseas Vietnamese. It is also spoken as a second language by many ethnic minorities of Vietnam...
, and previously (until 1985) are not dubbed, but are brief translated with a speaker before commercial breaks. RiO was considered to be the very first American Hollywood film to be entirely dubbed in Vietnamese
Vietnamese language
Vietnamese is the national and official language of Vietnam. It is the mother tongue of 86% of Vietnam's population, and of about three million overseas Vietnamese. It is also spoken as a second language by many ethnic minorities of Vietnam...
.
In multilingual Singapore
Singapore
Singapore , officially the Republic of Singapore, is a Southeast Asian city-state off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, north of the equator. An island country made up of 63 islands, it is separated from Malaysia by the Straits of Johor to its north and from Indonesia's Riau Islands by the...
, English language programmes on the free-to-air terrestrial channels are usually subtitled in Chinese or Malay, while Chinese, Malay and Tamil programmes are almost always subtitled in English. Dual sound programs like Korean and Japanese dramas offer sound in the original languages with subtitles, Mandarin dubbed and subtitled, or English dubbed. The deliberate policy to encourage Mandarin
Speak Mandarin Campaign
The Speak Mandarin Campaign is an initiative by the government of Singapore to encourage the Singaporean Chinese population to speak Mandarin, one of the four official languages of Singapore...
among citizens made it required by law for programmes in other Chinese dialects (Hokkien
Min Nan
The Southern Min languages, or Min Nan , are a family of Chinese languages spoken in southern Fujian, eastern Guangdong, Hainan, Taiwan, and southern Zhejiang provinces of China, and by descendants of emigrants from these areas in diaspora....
, Cantonese and Teochew) to be dubbed into Mandarin, exceptions being traditional operas. Cantonese and Hokkien shows from Hong Kong and Taiwan respectively are nevertheless available on VCD and DVD. In a recent development, news bulletins are subtitled.
In South Korea
South Korea
The Republic of Korea , , is a sovereign state in East Asia, located on the southern portion of the Korean Peninsula. It is neighbored by the People's Republic of China to the west, Japan to the east, North Korea to the north, and the East China Sea and Republic of China to the south...
, several English-speaking (mostly American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
) live-action films were dubbed in Korean
Korean language
Korean is the official language of the country Korea, in both South and North. It is also one of the two official languages in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in People's Republic of China. There are about 78 million Korean speakers worldwide. In the 15th century, a national writing...
, but they were not shown in theaters. Instead they were only broadcast on South Korean television networks (KBS
KBS
Korean Broadcasting System is the biggest of four major Korean television networks.- Structure :KBS is a 'public organization' that, by law, receives public funding from the Korean Government but is independently managed. As mentioned on the Korean Constitution, the president of KBS is...
, MBC
MBC
-Broadcasting:* Munhwa Broadcasting Corporation, Public broadcasting company located in Seoul, South Korea* Malawi Broadcasting Corporation, a state-run radio company in Malawi, Africa* Manila Broadcasting Company, Inc., in the Philippines...
, SBS
SBS
-Banking:* Swiss Bank Corporation, previously one of the major Swiss banks, now merged into UBS* SBS Bank, a building society in the Southland region of New Zealand that is now registered as a bank* Skipton Building Society* Scarborough Building Society...
), while DVD import releases of these films were shown with Korean subtitles. This may be due to the fact that the six American major film studios may not own any rights to the Korean dubs of their live-action films, currently to this point, that the Korean television networks have dubbed and aired. Even if they don't own the rights, Korean or Non-Korean viewers can record off Korean dubbed live action films from Television broadcasting onto DVDs with DVR
DVR
The initialism "DVR", when used by itself, can refer to:* Digital video recorder* Discrete valuation ring* Distance-vector routing* Direct volume rendering* Derwent Valley Railway * Devco Railway...
s.
Middle East
In IranIran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
, dubbing started in 1946 with the advent of movies and cinemas in the country. Since then, foreign movies have always been dubbed for the cinema and TV. Using various voice actors and adding local hints and witticisms to the original contents, dubbing played a major role in attracting people to the cinemas and interesting them in other cultures. The dubbing art in Iran reached its culminant point during the 1960s and 1970s with the inflow of American, European and Hindi movies. The most famous musicals of the time, such as My Fair Lady
My Fair Lady (film)
My Fair Lady is a 1964 musical film adaptation of the Lerner and Loewe stage musical, of the same name, based on the 1938 film adaptation of the original stage play Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw. The ballroom scene and the ending were taken from the previous film adaptation , rather than from...
and The Sound of Music
The Sound of Music
The Sound of Music is a musical by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II and a book by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse. It is based on the memoir of Maria von Trapp, The Story of the Trapp Family Singers...
were translated, adjusted and performed in Persian
Persian language
Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...
by the voice talents. Since the 1979 revolution
Iranian Revolution
The Iranian Revolution refers to events involving the overthrow of Iran's monarchy under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and its replacement with an Islamic republic under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the...
in Iran, the dubbing industry has declined, with movies dubbed only for the state TV channels. During recent years DVDs with Persian subtitles have found a market among the educated, but most people still prefer Persian-spoken versions.
The Maghreb
In AlgeriaAlgeria
Algeria , officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria , also formally referred to as the Democratic and Popular Republic of Algeria, is a country in the Maghreb region of Northwest Africa with Algiers as its capital.In terms of land area, it is the largest country in Africa and the Arab...
and Morocco
Morocco
Morocco , officially the Kingdom of Morocco , is a country located in North Africa. It has a population of more than 32 million and an area of 710,850 km², and also primarily administers the disputed region of the Western Sahara...
, most foreign movies (especially Hollywood productions) are shown with French dubbing. These movies are usually imported directly from French film distributors. The choice of movies dubbed into French can be explained by the colonization past of these countries by France and the widespread use of the French language (among the intellectual elite), in addition to the marginalization of one national language (that is, the Berber
Berber languages
The Berber languages are a family of languages indigenous to North Africa, spoken from Siwa Oasis in Egypt to Morocco , and south to the countries of the Sahara Desert...
language). Another important factor is that local theaters and private media companies do not dub in local languages to avoid high costs, but also because of the lack of both expertise and demand. Starting from the 1980s, dubbed series and movies for children in Modern Standard Arabic became a popular choice among most TV channels, cinemas and VHS/DVD stores. But it should be noted that dubbed films are still imported and dubbing is performed in Arab countries with strong tradition of dubbing and subtitling (mainly Syria
Syria
Syria , officially the Syrian Arab Republic , is a country in Western Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the West, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south, and Israel to the southwest....
, Lebanon
Lebanon
Lebanon , officially the Republic of LebanonRepublic of Lebanon is the most common term used by Lebanese government agencies. The term Lebanese Republic, a literal translation of the official Arabic and French names that is not used in today's world. Arabic is the most common language spoken among...
and Jordan
Jordan
Jordan , officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan , Al-Mamlaka al-Urduniyya al-Hashemiyya) is a kingdom on the East Bank of the River Jordan. The country borders Saudi Arabia to the east and south-east, Iraq to the north-east, Syria to the north and the West Bank and Israel to the west, sharing...
). The evolution of movies targeting the adult audience was different. After the satellite boom in the Arab World
Arab world
The Arab world refers to Arabic-speaking states, territories and populations in North Africa, Western Asia and elsewhere.The standard definition of the Arab world comprises the 22 states and territories of the Arab League stretching from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to the Arabian Sea in the...
and the emergence of Pan-Arab channels, the use of subtitles, which was already popular in the Middle-East, was highly popular among local viewers in Algeria and Morocco.
In Tunisia
Tunisia
Tunisia , officially the Tunisian RepublicThe long name of Tunisia in other languages used in the country is: , is the northernmost country in Africa. It is a Maghreb country and is bordered by Algeria to the west, Libya to the southeast, and the Mediterranean Sea to the north and east. Its area...
, theaters usually show French dubbed movies, but cinema attendance in the country for such movies is in continuous decline compared to Tunisian and Arab movies. This decline can be traced to the huge popularity of free-to-air Pan-Arab movie channels offering mainly subtitled content and the government's reduced efforts to limit piracy. Tunisia National Television (TNT), the public broadcaster of Tunisia, is not allowed to show any content in any language other than Arabic, which forced it to broadcast only dubbed content (this restriction was lately removed for commercials). During the 1970s and 1980s, TNT (known as ERTT at the time) started dubbing famous cartoons in Tunisian and Standard Arabic. This move was highly successful locally, but was not able to compete with mainstream dubbing companies (especially in the Middle East). In the private sector, television channels are not subject to the language rule and sometimes broadcast foreign content dubbed into French (excluding children content), although some of them, such as Hannibal TV started adopting subtitling in Arabic instead, which proved to be more popular than simply importing French dubbed content.
South Africa
In South AfricaSouth Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
, many television programmes, including The Six Million Dollar Man
The Six Million Dollar Man
The Six Million Dollar Man is an American television series about a former astronaut with bionic implants working for the OSI...
, were dubbed in Afrikaans
Afrikaans
Afrikaans is a West Germanic language, spoken natively in South Africa and Namibia. It is a daughter language of Dutch, originating in its 17th century dialects, collectively referred to as Cape Dutch .Afrikaans is a daughter language of Dutch; see , , , , , .Afrikaans was historically called Cape...
, with the original soundtrack (usually in English, but sometimes Dutch or German) "simulcast
Simulcast
Simulcast, shorthand for "simultaneous broadcast", refers to programs or events broadcast across more than one medium, or more than one service on the same medium, at the same time. For example, Absolute Radio is simulcast on both AM and on satellite radio, and the BBC's Prom concerts are often...
" in FM stereo on Radio 2000. However, this practice has declined as a result of the reduction of airtime for the language on SABC TV, and the increase of locally produced material in Afrikaans on other channels like KykNet
KykNet
kykNET is a South African television channel, which broadcasts in Afrikaans. Owned by pay-TV operator M-Net, it was launched on the DStv satellite service in October 1999.-Programs:Some of the programs broadcast on kykNET:*DKNT*Trompie...
and MK. Similarly, many programmes, such as The Jeffersons
The Jeffersons
The Jeffersons is an American sitcom that was broadcast on CBS from January 18, 1975, through June 25, 1985, lasting 11 seasons and a total of 253 episodes. The show was produced by the T.A.T. Communications Company from 1975–1982 and by Embassy Television from 1982-1985...
, were dubbed into Zulu
Zulu language
Zulu is the language of the Zulu people with about 10 million speakers, the vast majority of whom live in South Africa. Zulu is the most widely spoken home language in South Africa as well as being understood by over 50% of the population...
, but this has declined as local drama production has increased.
Oceania
In common with other English-speaking countries, there has traditionally been little dubbing in AustraliaAustralia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
, with foreign language television programmes and films being shown (usually on SBS
Special Broadcasting Service
The Special Broadcasting Service is a hybrid-funded Australian public broadcasting radio and television network. The stated purpose of SBS is "to provide multilingual and multicultural radio and television services that inform, educate and entertain all Australians and, in doing so, reflect...
) with subtitles. This has also been the case in New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...
, but the Maori Television Service
Maori Television Service
The Māori Television Service is a state sector organisation in New Zealand that was established on 7 May 2003 under the Māori Television Service Act 2003 to replace the Te Reo Māori Television Trust ...
, launched in 2004, has dubbed animated films, like Watership Down
Watership Down (film)
Watership Down is a 1978 English adventure drama animated film written, produced and directed by Martin Rosen and based on the book by Richard Adams. It was financed by a consortium of British financial institutions...
, into Maori
Maori language
Māori or te reo Māori , commonly te reo , is the language of the indigenous population of New Zealand, the Māori. It has the status of an official language in New Zealand...
. However, some TV commercials which originated from foreign countries are dubbed, even if the original commercial came from another English-speaking country.
Insistence on subtitling
SubtitlesSubtitle (captioning)
Subtitles are textual versions of the dialog in films and television programs, usually displayed at the bottom of the screen. They can either be a form of written translation of a dialog in a foreign language, or a written rendering of the dialog in the same language, with or without added...
can be used instead of dubbing, as different countries have different traditions regarding the choice between dubbing and subtitling. In most English-speaking
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
countries, dubbing is comparatively rare. In Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
, some programmes need to be comprehensible to speakers of both Hebrew
Hebrew language
Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...
and Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
. This cannot be accomplished with dubbing, so subtitling is much more commonplace—sometimes even with subtitles in multiple languages, with the soundtrack remaining in the original language, usually English. The same also applies to certain television shows in Finland
Finland
Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...
, where Finnish
Finnish language
Finnish is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland Primarily for use by restaurant menus and by ethnic Finns outside Finland. It is one of the two official languages of Finland and an official minority language in Sweden. In Sweden, both standard Finnish and Meänkieli, a...
and Swedish
Swedish language
Swedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish...
are both official languages.
In the Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
, Flanders
Flanders
Flanders is the community of the Flemings but also one of the institutions in Belgium, and a geographical region located in parts of present-day Belgium, France and the Netherlands. "Flanders" can also refer to the northern part of Belgium that contains Brussels, Bruges, Ghent and Antwerp...
, Nordic countries
Nordic countries
The Nordic countries make up a region in Northern Europe and the North Atlantic which consists of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden and their associated territories, the Faroe Islands, Greenland and Åland...
and Estonia
Estonia
Estonia , officially the Republic of Estonia , is a state in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea, to the south by Latvia , and to the east by Lake Peipsi and the Russian Federation . Across the Baltic Sea lies...
, films and television programmes are shown in the original language (usually English) with subtitles, and only cartoons and children movies and programs are dubbed, such as the Harry Potter
Harry Potter
Harry Potter is a series of seven fantasy novels written by the British author J. K. Rowling. The books chronicle the adventures of the adolescent wizard Harry Potter and his best friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, all of whom are students at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry...
series, Finding Nemo
Finding Nemo
Finding Nemo is a 2003 American comi-drama animated film written by Andrew Stanton, directed by Andrew Stanton and Lee Unkrich and produced by Pixar. It tells the story of the overly protective clownfish Marlin who, along with a regal tang called Dory , searches for his abducted son Nemo...
, Shrek
Shrek
Shrek is a 2001 American computer-animated fantasy comedy film directed by Andrew Adamson and Vicky Jenson, featuring the voices of Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy, Cameron Diaz, and John Lithgow. Loosely based on William Steig's 1990 fairy tale picture book Shrek!...
, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (film)
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is a 2005 film adaptation of the 1964 book of the same name by Roald Dahl. The film was directed by Tim Burton. The film stars Freddie Highmore as Charlie Bucket and Johnny Depp as Willy Wonka...
, and so on. Cinemas usually show both a dubbed version and one with subtitles for this kind of movie, with the subtitled version shown later in the evening.
In Portugal
Portugal
Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...
this has traditionally also been the case (at least for live-action material), but one terrestrial channel, TVI
TVI (Portugal)
Televisão Independente is Portugal's fourth terrestrial television channel, launched in 1993. It has been leading audience ratings since 2005. It competes directly with SIC and RTP1.-History:...
, dubs U.S. series like Dawson's Creek
Dawson's Creek
Dawson's Creek is an American teen drama television series which debuted on January 20, 1998, on The WB Television Network and was produced by Sony Pictures Television. The show is set in the fictional seaside town of Capeside, Massachusetts, and in Boston, Massachusetts, during the later seasons...
into Portuguese
Portuguese language
Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
. RTP also transmitted Friends
Friends
Friends is an American sitcom created by David Crane and Marta Kauffman, which aired on NBC from September 22, 1994 to May 6, 2004. The series revolves around a group of friends in Manhattan. The series was produced by Bright/Kauffman/Crane Productions, in association with Warner Bros. Television...
in a dubbed version, but it was poorly received and later re-aired in a subtitled version. Cartoons, on the other hand, are usually dubbed, sometimes by well-known actors, even on TV. Animated movies are usually released to the cinemas in both subtitled and dubbed versions.
On DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
s with higher translation budgets, the option for both types will often be provided to account for individual preferences; purist
Purist
A purist is one who desires that an item remains true to its essence and free from adulterating or diluting influences. The term may be used in almost any field, and can be applied either to the self or to others. Use of the term may be either pejorative or complimentary, depending on the context...
s often demand subtitles. For small markets (small language area or films for a select audience) subtitling is more suitable because it is cheaper. For films for small children who cannot yet read, or do not read fast enough, dubbing is necessary.
In Argentina
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
and Venezuela
Venezuela
Venezuela , officially called the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela , is a tropical country on the northern coast of South America. It borders Colombia to the west, Guyana to the east, and Brazil to the south...
, terrestrial channels air films and TV series in a dubbed version, as demanded by law. However, those same series can be seen on cable channels at more accessible timeslots in their subtitled version, and usually before they are shown on open TV. In contrast, the series The Simpsons
The Simpsons
The Simpsons is an American animated sitcom created by Matt Groening for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series is a satirical parody of a middle class American lifestyle epitomized by its family of the same name, which consists of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie...
is aired in its Mexican dubbed version both on terrestrial television and on the cable station Fox, which broadcasts the series for the area. Although the first season of the series appeared with subtitles, this was not continued for the following seasons.
Apart from airing dubbed TV series (for example, Lost
Lost (TV series)
Lost is an American television series that originally aired on ABC from September 22, 2004 to May 23, 2010, consisting of six seasons. Lost is a drama series that follows the survivors of the crash of a commercial passenger jet flying between Sydney and Los Angeles, on a mysterious tropical island...
, ER
ER (TV series)
ER is an American medical drama television series created by novelist Michael Crichton that aired on NBC from September 19, 1994 to April 2, 2009. It was produced by Constant c Productions and Amblin Entertainment, in association with Warner Bros. Television...
and House
House (TV series)
House is an American television medical drama that debuted on the Fox network on November 16, 2004. The show's central character is Dr. Gregory House , an unconventional and misanthropic medical genius who heads a team of diagnosticians at the fictional Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital in...
) the Argentinian open TV station Canal 13 (Argentina)
Canal 13 (Argentina)
El Trece is an Argentine television network and the flagship station of the same network, located in the capital of Argentina, Buenos Aires.- Foundation :...
has bought the rights to produce and air a "ported version" of Desperate Housewives
Desperate Housewives
Desperate Housewives is an American television comedy-drama series created by Marc Cherry and produced by ABC Studios and Cherry Productions. Executive producer Cherry serves as Showrunner. Other executive producers since the fourth season include Marc Cherry, Bob Daily, George W...
in Argentina, with local actors and actresses.
Use in video games
With recent video games placing a heavy emphasis on dialogue, many video games, when translated into another language for the foreign markets of North AmericaNorth America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...
, Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
and/or PAL
PAL
PAL, short for Phase Alternating Line, is an analogue television colour encoding system used in broadcast television systems in many countries. Other common analogue television systems are NTSC and SECAM. This page primarily discusses the PAL colour encoding system...
countries such as Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
and Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
, are also dubbed into the market's main languages. Because characters' mouth movements are often part of the game's code, lip sync
Lip sync
Lip sync, lip-sync, lip-synch is a technical term for matching lip movements with sung or spoken vocals...
is often achieved by re-coding the mouth movements to match the dialogue in the new language, when translated to a new one. The Source engine
Source engine
Source is a 3D game engine developed by Valve Corporation. It debuted in June 2004 with Counter-Strike: Source and shortly thereafter Half-Life 2, and has been in active development ever since...
is known for automatically generating lip-synch data, making it easier for games to be localised.
For the European version of a game, the text of the game is available in various languages, and in many cases, the dialogue is dubbed into the respective languages as well.
The North American version of any game is always available in English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
with translated text and dubbed dialogue if necessary, as well as in other languages in some cases, especially if the North American version of the game contains the same data as the European version. Because the English voice casts of many Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
ese games are perceived negatively, some Japanese games, such as those in the Sonic the Hedgehog, Dynasty Warriors and Soulcalibur
Soul (series)
The is a weapon-based historical fantasy fighting game series by Namco Bandai Games. The series revolves around a sword that, after years of bloodshed and hatred, gained a soul of its own, the Soul Edge, and the sword forged to counter it, Soul Calibur. The series is special in that each character...
series, include the original Japanese audio as well as an English translated version.
Other uses
Dubbing is occasionally used on network television broadcasts of films which have dialogue that the network executives or censorsCensorship
thumb|[[Book burning]] following the [[1973 Chilean coup d'état|1973 coup]] that installed the [[Military government of Chile |Pinochet regime]] in Chile...
have decided to replace; this is usually done to remove profanity
Profanity
Profanity is a show of disrespect, or a desecration or debasement of someone or something. Profanity can take the form of words, expressions, gestures, or other social behaviors that are socially constructed or interpreted as insulting, rude, vulgar, obscene, desecrating, or other forms.The...
. In most cases, the original actor does not perform this duty; instead, an actor with a similar voice is called in. The results are sometimes seamless, but in many cases the voice of the replacement actor sounds nothing like the original performer, which becomes particularly noticeable when extensive dialogue needs to be replaced. Also, often easy to notice, is the sudden absence of background sounds in the movie during the dubbed dialogue. Among the films considered notorious for using substitute actors that sound very different from their theatrical counterparts are the Smokey and the Bandit
Smokey and the Bandit
Smokey and the Bandit is a 1977 American film starring Burt Reynolds, Sally Field, Jackie Gleason, Jerry Reed, Pat McCormick, Paul Williams, and Mike Henry. It inspired several other trucking films, including two sequels, Smokey and the Bandit II, and Smokey and the Bandit Part 3...
and the Die Hard
Die Hard series
The Die Hard series is a series of four action films beginning with Die Hard in 1988. All four films are centered around the character of John McClane , a New York City police detective who finds himself fighting a group of terrorists in each episode...
film series as shown on broadcasters such as TBS. In the case of Smokey and the Bandit, extensive dubbing was done for the first network airing on ABC Television
ABC Television
ABC Television is a service of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation launched in 1956. As a public broadcasting broadcaster, the ABC provides four non-commercial channels within Australia, and a partially advertising-funded satellite channel overseas....
in 1978, especially for Jackie Gleason
Jackie Gleason
Jackie Gleason was an American comedian, actor and musician. He was known for his brash visual and verbal comedy style, especially by his character Ralph Kramden on The Honeymooners, a situation-comedy television series. His most noted film roles were as Minnesota Fats in the drama film The...
's character, Buford T. Justice
Buford T. Justice
Sheriff Buford T. Justice is the fictional character played by Jackie Gleason in the movies Smokey and the Bandit , Smokey and the Bandit II and Smokey and the Bandit Part 3...
. The dubbing of his phrase "Sombitch" became the more palatable (and memorable) "Scum Bum", which became a catchphrase of the time.
Dubbing is commonly used in science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
television as well. Sound generated by effects equipment such as animatronic puppets or by actors' movements on elaborate multi-level plywood sets (for example, starship bridges or other command centers) will quite often make the original character dialogue unusable. Stargate
Stargate
Stargate is a adventure military science fiction franchise, initially conceived by Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin. The first film in the franchise was simply titled Stargate. It was originally released on October 28, 1994, by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Carolco, and became a hit, grossing nearly...
and Farscape
Farscape
Farscape is an Australian-American science fiction television series filmed in Australia and produced originally for the Nine Network. The series was conceived by Rockne S. O'Bannon and produced by Jim Henson Productions and Hallmark Entertainment...
are two prime examples where ADR is used heavily to produce usable audio.
Since some anime series contain some amount of profanity, the studios recording the English dubs often re-record certain lines if a series or movie is going to be broadcast on Cartoon Network
Cartoon Network (United States)
Cartoon Network is an American cable television network owned by Turner Broadcasting which primarily airs animated programming. The channel was launched on October 1, 1992 after Turner purchased the animation studio Hanna-Barbera Productions in 1991...
, removing references to death
Death
Death is the permanent termination of the biological functions that sustain a living organism. Phenomena which commonly bring about death include old age, predation, malnutrition, disease, and accidents or trauma resulting in terminal injury....
and hell
Hell
In many religious traditions, a hell is a place of suffering and punishment in the afterlife. Religions with a linear divine history often depict hells as endless. Religions with a cyclic history often depict a hell as an intermediary period between incarnations...
as well. Some companies will offer both an edited and an uncut version of the series on DVD, so that there is an edited script available in case the series is broadcast. Other companies also edit the full-length version of a series, meaning that even on the uncut DVD characters say things like "Blast!" and "Darn!" in place of the original dialogue's profanity. Bandai Entertainment's
Bandai
is a Japanese toy making and video game company, as well as the producer of a large number of plastic model kits. It is the world's third-largest producer of toys . Some ex-Bandai group companies produce anime and tokusatsu programs...
English dub of G Gundam is infamous for this, among many other things, with such lines as "Bartender, more milk".
Dubbing has also been used for comedic purposes, replacing lines of dialogue to create comedies from footage that was originally another genre. Examples include the Australian shows The Olden Days and Bargearse, redubbed from 1970s Australian drama and action series, respectively, and the Irish show Soupy Norman
Soupy Norman
Soupy Norman was a nine-part Irish television programme broadcast by RTÉ. It was aired weekly on Thursday nights at 23:05 on the RTÉ Two channel, in ten-minute segments. The series ran from 24 May to 24 July 2007...
, redubbed from Pierwsza miłość, a Polish soap opera.
Dubbing into a foreign language does not always entail the deletion of the original language; in some countries, a performer may read the translated dialogue as a voiceover. This often occurs in Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
and Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
, where "lektories" or "lektors" read the translated dialogue into Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
and Polish
Polish language
Polish is a language of the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages, used throughout Poland and by Polish minorities in other countries...
. In Poland, a single person reads all parts of the performance, both male and female. However, this is done almost exclusively for the television and home video markets, while theatrical releases are usually subtitled. Recently, however, the number of high-quality, fully dubbed films has increased, especially for children's movies. If a quality dubbed version exists for some film, it is shown in theaters (however, some films, such as Harry Potter
Harry Potter
Harry Potter is a series of seven fantasy novels written by the British author J. K. Rowling. The books chronicle the adventures of the adolescent wizard Harry Potter and his best friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, all of whom are students at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry...
or Star Wars
Star Wars
Star Wars is an American epic space opera film series created by George Lucas. The first film in the series was originally released on May 25, 1977, under the title Star Wars, by 20th Century Fox, and became a worldwide pop culture phenomenon, followed by two sequels, released at three-year...
, are shown in both dubbed and subtitled versions varying with the time of the show) as well as on TV (although some channels drop it and do standard one narrator translation) and VHS/DVD. In other countries, like Vietnam
Vietnam
Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...
, the voiceover technique is also used for theatrical releases.
In Russia, the reading of all lines by a single person is referred to as a Gavrilov translation
Gavrilov translation
Voice-over translation is an audiovisual translation technique in which, unlike in dubbing, actor voices are recorded over the original audio track which can be heard in the background....
, and is generally found only in illegal copies
Copyright infringement
Copyright infringement is the unauthorized or prohibited use of works under copyright, infringing the copyright holder's exclusive rights, such as the right to reproduce or perform the copyrighted work, or to make derivative works.- "Piracy" :...
of films and on cable television
Cable television
Cable television is a system of providing television programs to consumers via radio frequency signals transmitted to televisions through coaxial cables or digital light pulses through fixed optical fibers located on the subscriber's property, much like the over-the-air method used in traditional...
. Professional copies always include at least two actors of opposite gender translating the dialogue. Some titles in Poland have been dubbed this way, too, but this method lacks public appeal so it is very rare now.
On special occasions, such as film festival
Film festival
A film festival is an organised, extended presentation of films in one or more movie theaters or screening venues, usually in a single locality. More and more often film festivals show part of their films to the public by adding outdoor movie screenings...
s, live interpreting
Interpreting
Language interpretation is the facilitating of oral or sign-language communication, either simultaneously or consecutively, between users of different languages...
is often done by professionals. See also dubtitle
Dubtitle
Dubtitle is a term for a show recorded in which the subtitles are merely transcriptions of the new alternative dialogue spoken on the dubbed soundtrack rather than a translation of the original dialogue and was popularized by anime and kung fu film fans to refer to this practice....
.
Contra dubbing
Dubbing has been criticized in several ways, particularly in countries where it is not common practice.Those who dislike dubbing sometimes claim that it devalues films or TV programs, as original soundtracks are closer to what the director intended. The humorous effect of Inspector Clouseau
Inspector Clouseau
Chief Inspector Jacques Clouseau is a fictional character in Blake Edwards' The Pink Panther series. In most of the films, he was played by Peter Sellers, with one film in which he was played by Alan Arkin and one in which he was played by an uncredited Roger Moore...
's accent is, of course, entirely lost if dubbed in French. Some consider that the body language
Body language
Body language is a form of non-verbal communication, which consists of body posture, gestures, facial expressions, and eye movements. Humans send and interpret such signals almost entirely subconsciously....
of Italian
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
actors make their performances particularly ill-suited to dubbing, as foreign post-synchronization often destroys much of the original Italian language's feeling. Comedy performers such as Peter Sellers
Peter Sellers
Richard Henry Sellers, CBE , known as Peter Sellers, was a British comedian and actor. Perhaps best known as Chief Inspector Clouseau in The Pink Panther film series, he is also notable for playing three different characters in Dr...
, Louis de Funès
Louis de Funès
Louis Germain David de Funès de Galarza was a very popular French actor who is one of the giants of French comedy alongside André Bourvil and Fernandel...
, Steve Martin
Steve Martin
Stephen Glenn "Steve" Martin is an American actor, comedian, writer, playwright, producer, musician and composer....
or Roberto Benigni
Roberto Benigni
Roberto Remigio Benigni, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI is an Italian actor, comedian, screenwriter and director of film, theatre and television.- Early years :...
are considered to lose much of their impact when dubbed into foreign languages, as the humorous effect resulting from the interaction between their voices and bodies is partially lost. Some feel that dubbing can make the film or program less authentic. For example, German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
officers in WWII
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
movies can be distracting to some if not speaking German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
, while in the German-dubbed versions of these films, the contrast between Germans and speakers of other languages is lost. The best example here is from the Indiana Jones
Indiana Jones
Colonel Henry Walton "Indiana" Jones, Jr., Ph.D. is a fictional character and the protagonist of the Indiana Jones franchise. George Lucas and Steven Spielberg created the character in homage to the action heroes of 1930s film serials...
movies, where the German characters had to be dubbed by native Germans for the German release. For the later re-release of the movies for television and DVD, the dubbed lines were retained in the soundtrack to make it sound more authentic. In films (usually English films) in which an actor is originally speaking German, the original German speaking actor is often dubbed into other German dialects
German dialects
German dialect is dominated by the geographical spread of the High German consonant shift, and the dialect continuum that connects the German with the Dutch language.-German dialects in relation to varieties of standard German:...
; for example, Eastern German dialects, Austro-Bavarian German
Austro-Bavarian
Bavarian , also Austro-Bavarian, is a major group of Upper German varieties spoken in the south east of the German language area.-History and origin:...
, or Swiss German
Swiss German
Swiss German is any of the Alemannic dialects spoken in Switzerland and in some Alpine communities in Northern Italy. Occasionally, the Alemannic dialects spoken in other countries are grouped together with Swiss German as well, especially the dialects of Liechtenstein and Austrian Vorarlberg...
, as was done with Üter Zörker from The Simpsons
The Simpsons
The Simpsons is an American animated sitcom created by Matt Groening for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series is a satirical parody of a middle class American lifestyle epitomized by its family of the same name, which consists of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie...
, who is a German in the English version, but a Swiss in the German version.
Likewise, some claim it is distracting in English dubbed anime
Anime
is the Japanese abbreviated pronunciation of "animation". The definition sometimes changes depending on the context. In English-speaking countries, the term most commonly refers to Japanese animated cartoons....
when many characters speak in North American accents, which may not match their ethnicity and nationality or the time and setting of the story. Similarly, in dubbed versions the different accents of the protagonists may be important to the story (for example in Upstairs, Downstairs
Upstairs, Downstairs
Upstairs, Downstairs is a British drama television series originally produced by London Weekend Television and revived by the BBC. It ran on ITV in 68 episodes divided into five series from 1971 to 1975, and a sixth series shown on the BBC on three consecutive nights, 26–28 December 2010.Set in a...
, portraying the lives of an upper-class London family and their servants in the early 20th century) but cannot always be adequately reproduced in certain languages. In addition, a significant part of an actor's performance consists of his vocal inflections. Very often, memorable lines from popular films are frequently quoted, not for their substance, but for the way they were spoken; a good example is a famous sentence uttered by Jack Nicholson
Jack Nicholson
John Joseph "Jack" Nicholson is an American actor, film director, producer and writer. He is renowned for his often dark portrayals of neurotic characters. Nicholson has been nominated for an Academy Award twelve times, and has won the Academy Award for Best Actor twice: for One Flew Over the...
in the film A Few Good Men
A Few Good Men (film)
A Few Good Men is a 1992 drama film directed by Rob Reiner and starring Tom Cruise, Jack Nicholson, and Demi Moore. It was adapted for the screen by Aaron Sorkin from his play of the same name. A courtroom drama, the film revolves around the trial of two U.S...
: "You can't handle the truth!" For these reasons, some may feel they miss part of a film's artistic value when watching it dubbed into another language. Also, lip synchronization is normally lost when dubbing, even with quality dubbing between closely related languages. There are examples of films which have been reshot or reanimated to remedy this problem. The dubbing of many television series is often criticized: the French dubbing of Dynasty
Dynasty (TV series)
Dynasty is an American prime time television soap opera that aired on ABC from January 12, 1981 to May 11, 1989. It was created by Richard & Esther Shapiro and produced by Aaron Spelling, and revolved around the Carringtons, a wealthy oil family living in Denver, Colorado...
and many American soap operas was and still is considered especially poor and ill-synchronized, and in addition it sometimes appears as if the dubbing was filmed with the camera on a different setting.
Dubbing performers are occasionally known to take liberties with some works they do not hold in particular esteem, or consider to be exploitation films. The French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
dubbing of the anime Fist of the North Star
Fist of the North Star
is a Japanese manga series written by Buronson and drawn by Tetsuo Hara that was serialized in Weekly Shōnen Jump from 1983 to 1988, spanning 245 chapters, which were initially collected in a 27-volume tankōbon edition by Shueisha...
is notorious, as the performers disliked the violence of the series so much that, after post-synchronizing a few episodes, they only agreed to continue their work if they could turn the show into a spoof. This resulted in episodes full of idiotic puns, absurd dialogue and extreme overacting by everybody. This dubbing has gathered a cult following in France for that precise reason, although many anime
Anime
is the Japanese abbreviated pronunciation of "animation". The definition sometimes changes depending on the context. In English-speaking countries, the term most commonly refers to Japanese animated cartoons....
fans consider it highly disrespectful to the original work.
Another example is the German dub of Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Monty Python and the Holy Grail is a 1974 British comedy film written and performed by the comedy group Monty Python , and directed by Gilliam and Jones...
. The people responsible for the dub deemed Monty Python's humour unsuitable for a German audience (which was disproven by the huge success of Monty Python in Germany up to the present day, the group having even produced a German-language TV show and actually speaking the language in it) and introduced a lot of awkward puns into the dialogue, whereby they often completely killed the original humour. However, this practice was a success with The Persuaders!
The Persuaders!
The Persuaders! is a 1971 action/adventure series, produced by ITC Entertainment for initial broadcast on ITV and ABC. It has been called "the last major entry in the cycle of adventure series that had begun eleven years earlier with Danger Man in 1960", as well as "the most ambitious and most...
, where Tony Curtis
Tony Curtis
Tony Curtis was an American film actor whose career spanned six decades, but had his greatest popularity during the 1950s and early 1960s. He acted in over 100 films in roles covering a wide range of genres, from light comedy to serious drama...
' and Roger Moore
Roger Moore
Sir Roger George Moore KBE , is an English actor, perhaps best known for portraying British secret agent James Bond in seven films from 1973 to 1985. He also portrayed Simon Templar in the long-running British television series The Saint.-Early life:Moore was born in Stockwell, London...
's suddenly very humorous dialogue generated a cult following in Germany, whereas the series was not as well received in its original country, the UK.
A growing lobby in Europe cites dubbing as hindrance to multilingualism. In countries where subtitling is the preferred option, English literacy and comprehension is statistically far higher than in countries where television and films are routinely dubbed. Of course, this could be a "chicken or egg came first" situation. It could be that the films are routinely dubbed because of the illiteracy.
Occasionally, dubbing teams can show some disregard for the meaning and setting of the movies, regardless of their perceived quality. The French version of Gunfight at the O.K. Corral
Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957 film)
The film was based on a real event which took place on October 26, 1881. It was directed by John Sturges and featuring a screenplay written by novelist Leon Uris, and the movie's supporting cast included Rhonda Fleming, John Ireland, Jo Van Fleet, Martin Milner, Dennis Hopper, Jack Elam, Lee Van...
renames Wyatt Earp
Wyatt Earp
Wyatt Berry Stapp Earp was an American gambler, investor, and law enforcement officer who served in several Western frontier towns. He was also at different times a farmer, teamster, bouncer, saloon-keeper, miner and boxing referee. However, he was never a drover or cowboy. He is most well known...
"Edward Thorpe", as Earp's name is difficult to pronounce in French. Since Wyatt Earp is not familiar to French audiences as a historical figure, the adapters did not feel bound to retain his name.
Dubbing can also induce censorship issues, especially if a film's topic is uncomfortable for the country where it is going to be released. For instance, in the '50s and '60s in Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
it was usual to conceal any mentioning of Nazis in popular movies: in the 1952 version of Casablanca (film)
Casablanca (film)
Casablanca is a 1942 American romantic drama film directed by Michael Curtiz, starring Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman and Paul Henreid, and featuring Claude Rains, Conrad Veidt, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre and Dooley Wilson. Set during World War II, it focuses on a man torn between, in...
shown in Germany, all the Nazi characters were cut out and dialogues were replaced in order to remove any mention of them (most notably, the freedom fighter Victor László has been renamed to a Norwegian scientist Victor Larsen who was hunted by a crime syndicate because of his invention). Latter examples include the first Die Hard
Die Hard
Die Hard is a 1988 American action film and the first in the Die Hard film series. The film was directed by John McTiernan and written by Jeb Stuart and Steven E. de Souza. It is based on a 1979 novel by Roderick Thorp titled Nothing Lasts Forever, itself a sequel to the book The Detective, which...
film where the names of the originally German terrorists have been changed to English-sounding ones, and Starship Troopers (film)
Starship Troopers (film)
Starship Troopers is a 1997 American military science fiction film, written by Edward Neumeier , directed by Paul Verhoeven, loosely adapted from Starship Troopers, a science fiction novel by Robert A. Heinlein. It is the only theatrically released film in the Starship Troopers franchise...
, where dialogues were rewritten in the dub in order to soften down the fascist society depicted in the film.
Pro dubbing
Defenders of dubbing maintain that subtitling interferes with the visual experience, as it obscures part of the picture. Some people also find that the act of reading itself is distracting, especially in pictures that rely on subtle motion: one would be too busy reading the subtitles to pay attention to what everyone is doing. In other cases, viewers may not consider subtitling (and alternate forms of translation) to be distracting or inadequate; rather, they simply chose to listen to dubbed versions as a matter of personal preference. These people sometimes argue that as long as dubbing does not prevent others from viewing programs in the language format that they chose, it has its merit simply because there are people who enjoy dubbing. Another defense for dubbing is that it works better in action movies, in particular scenes involving special effects with occasional dialog, since subtitles distract from the action or effects.In many European countries, Hollywood movies are regularly dubbed and some people maintain that a creative translation (not necessarily faithful to the original English words) can occasionally bring additional fun and depth to films. English-language series such as The Persuaders!
The Persuaders!
The Persuaders! is a 1971 action/adventure series, produced by ITC Entertainment for initial broadcast on ITV and ABC. It has been called "the last major entry in the cycle of adventure series that had begun eleven years earlier with Danger Man in 1960", as well as "the most ambitious and most...
and Starsky and Hutch
Starsky and Hutch
Starsky and Hutch is a 1970s American cop thriller television series that consisted of a 90-minute pilot movie and 92 episodes of 60 minutes each; created by William Blinn, produced by Spelling-Goldberg Productions, and broadcast between April 30, 1975 and May 15, 1979 on the ABC...
are highly popular in France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
for their talented dubbing. The French version of The Persuaders! was in fact a translation of the German version instead of the English original—and was also successful. It also frequently included remarks about the series itself like "Junge, lass doch die Sprüche, die setzen ja die nächste Folge ab!" ("Stop those jokes, or they'll cancel the series!") or about the dubbing: "Du musst jetzt etwas schneller werden, sonst bist du nicht synchron" ("Talk faster, or you won't be in sync any more").
In Hungary
Hungary
Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
, it is common for translators to create a Hungarian
Hungarian language
Hungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....
text which rhymes for comedies and cartoons, using well-known local actors to provide the reading voices. The most famous example is perhaps the The Flintstones
The Flintstones
The Flintstones is an animated, prime-time American television sitcom that screened from September 30, 1960 to April 1, 1966, on ABC. Produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions, The Flintstones was about a working class Stone Age man's life with his family and his next-door neighbor and best friend. It...
, with its entire Hungarian text in rhymes.
In many cases, dubbing of films or series involves the addition of dialogue where there previously was none. This often happened during the dubbing of anime
Anime
is the Japanese abbreviated pronunciation of "animation". The definition sometimes changes depending on the context. In English-speaking countries, the term most commonly refers to Japanese animated cartoons....
for television. Extended silent scenes with no dialogue are often used for dramatic effect in anime, as in live action. This is typically considered too slow-paced for North American children's cartoons where dialogue is considered the most important element. This was commonly seen in early anime dubs such as Robotech
Robotech
Robotech is an 85-episode science fiction anime adaptation produced by Harmony Gold USA in association with Tatsunoko Production Co., Ltd. and first released in the United States in 1985...
or Voltron
Voltron
Voltron is the titular super robot of an anime series that features a team of young pilots, known as the Voltron Force. The team’s individual vehicles join together to form the giant super robot, with which they defend the galaxy from evil...
, where narration or character voiceovers (an animated equivalent to "thought balloons" in comics
Comics
Comics denotes a hybrid medium having verbal side of its vocabulary tightly tied to its visual side in order to convey narrative or information only, the latter in case of non-fiction comics, seeking synergy by using both visual and verbal side in...
) would fill in silence. American cartoons are known for rarely having scenes without background music due to the same concerns over slow pacing. Therefore, in anime dubs, background music would also be edited into scenes that previously contained no background music.
Dubbed films can also be regarded as a second edited version of a film since the film is narrated and acting once more and several dubbed versions could be considered as an additional film next to the original one as it offers more scope in spoken language and text content and has not to be translated uninspiredly word by word. On DVDs you even have the choice to choose the language you better like but which is not possible with subtitled films where you are forced to watch the only existing version.
One more advantage of dubbing films is the opportunity to improve the original film by adding regional phrases, hints or some simple side noises like coughing, laughing, buzzing and so on, which would be considered as more natural in another language while such noises are missing in the original for example.
Dubbing films affords also the opportunity to change the original text or meaning which was originally made and intended for only one group or a few groups of audience but would be regarded kind of weird or would not be understood in the same way as it actually should when it would be translated literally into another language.
In this case the text or the meaning would get confusing or it would reduce or even lose its fun factor. Dubbed versions do have the advantage to use a proper imaginative translated counterpart of a word or a phrase and enriches so the comprehension of the audience watching the dubbed version.
Subtitled versions, in contrast, could be confusing because there is the problem of how to translate the phrase analogously or literally, and it should please the audience as well.
Dubbing the same language several times
In the case of languages with large communities (like English, Chinese, German, Spanish or French), a single translation may sound foreign to some groups, or even all of them. This is why a film may be translated to a certain language more than once: for example, the animated movie The IncrediblesThe Incredibles
The Incredibles is a 2004 American computer-animated action-comedy superhero film about a family of superheroes who are forced to hide their powers. It was written and directed by Brad Bird, a former director and executive consultant of The Simpsons, and was produced by Pixar and distributed by...
was translated to European Spanish, Mexican Spanish
Mexican Spanish
Mexican Spanish is a version of the Spanish language, as spoken in Mexico and in various places of Canada and the United States of America, where there are communities of Mexican origin....
, Venezuelan Spanish
Venezuelan Spanish
Venezuelan Spanish is a dialect of the Spanish language spoken in Venezuela.Spanish was introduced in Venezuela by the conquistadors. Most of them were from Andalusia, Galicia, Basque Country, and the Canary Islands...
and Rioplatense Spanish
Rioplatense Spanish
Rioplatense Spanish or River Plate Spanish is a dialectal variant of the Spanish language spoken mainly in the areas in and around the Río de la Plata basin of Argentina and Uruguay, and also in Rio Grande do Sul, although features of the dialect are shared with the varieties of Spanish spoken...
. However, people from Chile
Chile
Chile ,officially the Republic of Chile , is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far...
and Uruguay
Uruguay
Uruguay ,officially the Oriental Republic of Uruguay,sometimes the Eastern Republic of Uruguay; ) is a country in the southeastern part of South America. It is home to some 3.5 million people, of whom 1.8 million live in the capital Montevideo and its metropolitan area...
clearly noticed a strong porteño
Porteño
Porteño in Spanish is used to refer to a person who is from or lives in a port city, but it can also be used as an adjective for anything related to those port cities....
accent from most of the characters of the Rioplatense Spanish translation. Another example is the French dubbing of The Simpsons
The Simpsons
The Simpsons is an American animated sitcom created by Matt Groening for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series is a satirical parody of a middle class American lifestyle epitomized by its family of the same name, which consists of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie...
, which is entirely different in Quebec
Quebec
Quebec or is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking population and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level....
and France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, the humor being highly different for each audience (see Non-English versions of The Simpsons
Non-English versions of The Simpsons
The animated TV show The Simpsons is an American English language animated sitcom which has been broadcast in the United States since 1989 on FOX...
). Audiences in Quebec are generally critical of France's dubbing of The Simpsons, which they often do not find amusing. The French-language Télétoon network once aired the Quebec Simpsons dub, as well as Parisian French dubs of Futurama
Futurama
Futurama is an American animated science fiction sitcom created by Matt Groening and developed by Groening and David X. Cohen for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series follows the adventures of a late 20th-century New York City pizza delivery boy, Philip J...
and Family Guy
Family Guy
Family Guy is an American animated television series created by Seth MacFarlane for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series centers on the Griffins, a dysfunctional family consisting of parents Peter and Lois; their children Meg, Chris, and Stewie; and their anthropomorphic pet dog Brian...
, which were both similar to the Parisian Simpsons dub. The two latter shows have since been taken off the network (probably due to a lack of popularity), while The Simpsons continues its run on Télétoon. The Quebec French
Quebec French
Quebec French , or Québécois French, is the predominant variety of the French language in Canada, in its formal and informal registers. Quebec French is used in everyday communication, as well as in education, the media, and government....
dubbing of films, while generally made in accent-less Standard French
Standard French
Standard French is an unofficial term for a standard variety of the French language...
, often sounds peculiar to audiences in France, because of the persistence of some regionally neutral expression which may not sound quite natural to all audiences, and because Quebec French performers pronounce Anglo-Saxon names with an American accent, while French performers do not. Occasionally, for reasons of cost, American direct-to-video
Direct-to-video
Direct-to-video is a term used to describe a film that has been released to the public on home video formats without being released in film theaters or broadcast on television...
films, such as the 1995 film When the Bullet Hits the Bone, are released in France with a Quebec French dubbing, sometimes resulting in what some members of French audiences perceive as unintentional humor.
Portugal
Portugal
Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...
and Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
also use different versions of dubbed films and series. Because dubbing has never been very popular in Portugal
Portugal
Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...
, for decades children films and television series were distributed using the good-quality Brazilian dub. Only in the 1990s dubbing began to gain importance in Portugal, thanks to the popularity of dubbed series like Dragon Ball
Dragon Ball
is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Akira Toriyama. It was originally serialized in Weekly Shōnen Jump from 1984 to 1995; later the 519 individual chapters were published into 42 tankōbon volumes by Shueisha. Dragon Ball was inspired by the classical Chinese novel Journey to the...
. The Lion King
The Lion King
The Lion King is a 1994 American animated film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and released by Walt Disney Pictures. It is the 32nd feature in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series...
became the first Disney feature film to be completely dubbed into European Portuguese
European Portuguese
European Portuguese refers to the variety of Portuguese spoken in continental Portugal, as well as the Azores and Madeira islands...
, and subsequently all major animation films and series gained European Portuguese versions. In recent DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
releases, most of these Brazilian-dubbed classics were released with new Portuguese dubs, eliminating the predominance of Brazilian Portuguese dubs in Portugal.
The German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
speaking area which includes Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
, the German speaking part of Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
and Liechtenstein
Liechtenstein
The Principality of Liechtenstein is a doubly landlocked alpine country in Central Europe, bordered by Switzerland to the west and south and by Austria to the east. Its area is just over , and it has an estimated population of 35,000. Its capital is Vaduz. The biggest town is Schaan...
share together one common German dubbing version. Although there are sometimes some differences concerning some local words or the pronunciation of some words, there's no need to dub into their own versions because all films, shows and series are still dubbed into one single German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
version made for the German speaking audience irrespective of any geographical borders. Most voice actors are primarily Germans
Germans
The Germans are a Germanic ethnic group native to Central Europe. The English term Germans has referred to the German-speaking population of the Holy Roman Empire since the Late Middle Ages....
and Austrians
Austrians
Austrians are a nation and ethnic group, consisting of the population of the Republic of Austria and its historical predecessor states who share a common Austrian culture and Austrian descent....
since here there has been a long tradition of dubbing films. Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
which has four official languages (German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
, French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
, Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
, Romansh) generally use the dubbed versions made in its respective countries (except for Romansh). Liechtenstein
Liechtenstein
The Principality of Liechtenstein is a doubly landlocked alpine country in Central Europe, bordered by Switzerland to the west and south and by Austria to the east. Its area is just over , and it has an estimated population of 35,000. Its capital is Vaduz. The biggest town is Schaan...
uses German-dubbed versions only.
Sometimes films are also dubbed into several German dialects
German dialects
German dialect is dominated by the geographical spread of the High German consonant shift, and the dialect continuum that connects the German with the Dutch language.-German dialects in relation to varieties of standard German:...
for example, (Berlinerisch
Berlinerisch
Berlinerisch, Berlinisch, or Berliner Schnauze is a dialect of Berlin Brandenburgish spoken in Berlin. It originates from a Mark Brandenburgish variant...
, Kölsch, Saxonian, Austro-Bavarian or Swiss German
Swiss German
Swiss German is any of the Alemannic dialects spoken in Switzerland and in some Alpine communities in Northern Italy. Occasionally, the Alemannic dialects spoken in other countries are grouped together with Swiss German as well, especially the dialects of Liechtenstein and Austrian Vorarlberg...
) which concerns especially animated films or Disney films. It's rather made for amusement and as an additional "special feature" for making the audience buying it. Popular animated films which were dubbed into German dialects were Asterix
Asterix
Asterix or The Adventures of Asterix is a series of French comic books written by René Goscinny and illustrated by Albert Uderzo . The series first appeared in French in the magazine Pilote on October 29, 1959...
films (in addition to its standard German version, every film has a particular dialect version), The Little Mermaid
The Little Mermaid (1989 film)
The Little Mermaid is a 1989 American animated film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and based on the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale of the same name. Distributed by Walt Disney Pictures, the film was originally released to theaters on November 14, 1989 and is the twenty-eighth film in...
, Shrek 2
Shrek 2
Shrek 2 is a 2004 American computer-animated fantasy comedy film, produced by DreamWorks Animation and directed by Andrew Adamson, Kelly Asbury and Conrad Vernon. It is the second installment in the Shrek film series and the sequel to 2001's Shrek...
, Cars
Cars (film)
Cars is a 2006 American animated family film produced by Pixar and directed by John Lasseter and co-directed by Joe Ranft. It is the seventh Disney·Pixar feature film, and Pixar's final, independently-produced motion picture before its purchase by Disney...
(+ Austrian German
Austrian German
Austrian German , or Austrian Standard German, is the national standard variety of the German language spoken in Austria and in the autonomous Province of South Tyrol...
) or Up
Up (2009 film)
Up is a 2009 American computer-animated comedy-adventure film produced by Pixar, distributed by Walt Disney Pictures and presented in Disney Digital 3-D. The film premiered on May 29, 2009 in North America and opened the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, becoming the first animated and 3D film...
(+ Austrian German
Austrian German
Austrian German , or Austrian Standard German, is the national standard variety of the German language spoken in Austria and in the autonomous Province of South Tyrol...
).
But there are also live-action films or TV-series which have an additional German dubbing: Babe
Babe (film)
Babe is a 1995 Australian-American film directed by Chris Noonan. It is an adaptation of the 1983 novel The Sheep-Pig, also known as Babe: The Gallant Pig in the United States, by Dick King-Smith and tells the story of a pig who wants to be a sheepdog...
and its sequel Babe: Pig in the City
Babe: Pig in the City
Babe: Pig in the City is a 1998 sequel to the 1995 film Babe. It occurs in the fictional city of Metropolis. Due to the unexpected darker and more mature subject matter , the film was not received as well as the first Babe film was, as it flopped at the box office and reviews were generally...
(Germany German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
, Austrian German
Austrian German
Austrian German , or Austrian Standard German, is the national standard variety of the German language spoken in Austria and in the autonomous Province of South Tyrol...
, Swiss German
Swiss German
Swiss German is any of the Alemannic dialects spoken in Switzerland and in some Alpine communities in Northern Italy. Occasionally, the Alemannic dialects spoken in other countries are grouped together with Swiss German as well, especially the dialects of Liechtenstein and Austrian Vorarlberg...
); Rehearsal for Murder
Rehearsal for Murder
Rehearsal for Murder is a 1982 television movie of the thriller genre directed by David Greene from a script written by Richard Levinson and William Link, who won a 1983 Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for their work.-Plot:...
, Framed
Framed (TV series)
Framed is a television series on the IFC network. It is a celebrity interview program that features athletes being interviewed by music and film stars. Shoemaker Reebok is producing the series in a partnership with the IFC network and all the athletes featured have endorsed Reebok products. Six...
(+ Austrian German
Austrian German
Austrian German , or Austrian Standard German, is the national standard variety of the German language spoken in Austria and in the autonomous Province of South Tyrol...
).
TV-series: The Munsters
The Munsters
The Munsters is a 1960s American family television sitcom depicting the home life of a family of monsters. It starred Fred Gwynne as Herman Munster and Yvonne De Carlo as his wife, Lily Munster. The series was a satire of both traditional monster movies and popular family entertainment of the era,...
, Serpico
Serpico
Serpico is a 1973 American crime film directed by Sidney Lumet. It is based on the true story of New York City policeman Frank Serpico, who went undercover to expose the corruption of his fellow officers, after being pushed to the brink at first by their distrust and later by the threats and...
, Rumpole (+ Austrian German
Austrian German
Austrian German , or Austrian Standard German, is the national standard variety of the German language spoken in Austria and in the autonomous Province of South Tyrol...
); The Thorn Birds
The Thorn Birds
The Thorn Birds is a 1977 best-selling novel by Colleen McCullough, an Australian author.In 1983 it was adapted as a television mini-series that, during its television run 27–30 March, became the United States' second highest rated mini-series of all time behind Roots; both series were produced by...
(only Austrian German
Austrian German
Austrian German , or Austrian Standard German, is the national standard variety of the German language spoken in Austria and in the autonomous Province of South Tyrol...
dubbing).
Before the German reunification
German reunification
German reunification was the process in 1990 in which the German Democratic Republic joined the Federal Republic of Germany , and when Berlin reunited into a single city, as provided by its then Grundgesetz constitution Article 23. The start of this process is commonly referred by Germans as die...
, East Germany also made its own particular German version. For example: Olsen Gang
Olsen Gang
The Olsen Gang is a fictional Danish criminal gang in the movies of the same name. The gang's leader is the criminal genius and habitual offender Egon Olsen. The other members of the gang are Benny and Kjeld . The gang members are harmless and never use violence...
or the Hungarian
Hungary
Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
animated series The Mézga Family
The Mézga Family
The Mézga Family is a fictional family from three animated TV series shot by PannóniaFilm studios, Hungary between 1968 and 1978....
were dubbed twice. So you got the opportunity to see a quality comparison.
The many martial arts movies from Hong Kong
Hong Kong
Hong Kong is one of two Special Administrative Regions of the People's Republic of China , the other being Macau. A city-state situated on China's south coast and enclosed by the Pearl River Delta and South China Sea, it is renowned for its expansive skyline and deep natural harbour...
that were imported under the unofficial banner Kung Fu Theater were notorious for their seemingly careless dubbing which included poor lip sync and awkward dialogue. Since the results were frequently unintentionally hilarious, this has become one of the hallmarks that endear these films to part of the 1980s culture.
While the voice actors involved usually bear the brunt of criticisms towards poor dubbing, other factors may include script translation and audio mixing. A literal translation of dialogue typically contains speech patterns and sentence structure that are native to the foreign language but would appear awkward if translated literally. English dubs of Japanese animation, for example, must rewrite the dialogue so that it flows smoothly and follows the natural pattern of English speech. Voice actors in a dubbing capacity typically do not have the luxury of viewing the original film with the original voice actor and thus have little idea on how to perform the role. Also, on some occasions, voice actors record their dialogue separately, which lacks the dynamics gained from performing as a group.
New technology
It is now becoming possible to overcome some of the problems associated with dubbing using new technology. An application developed at New York UniversityNew York University
New York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...
, known as Video Rewrite, uses computer animation to match lip movements with the new voice track. In a video clip made using this technology, John F. Kennedy
John F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy , often referred to by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963....
appears to be saying "Video Rewrite gives lip-synced movies".
Media Movers, Inc., a dubbing company, has developed a piece of proprietary software
Proprietary software
Proprietary software is computer software licensed under exclusive legal right of the copyright holder. The licensee is given the right to use the software under certain conditions, while restricted from other uses, such as modification, further distribution, or reverse engineering.Complementary...
which can automatically sync ADR/dubbed tracks with pre-defined algorithms.
TM Systems received Emmy awards
Technology & Engineering Emmy Award
A Technology and Engineering Emmy Award is given by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for outstanding achievement in technical or engineering development...
in 2002 and 2007 for their dubbing and subtitling software.
Further reading
- Di Fortunato E. e Paolinelli M. (a cura di), "La Questione Doppiaggio - barriere linguistiche e circolazione delle opere audiovisive", Roma, AIDAC, 1996 - (available on website: www.aidac.it)
- Castellano A. (a cura di), "Il Doppiaggio, profilo, storia e analisi di un'arte negata", Roma, AIDAC-ARLEM, 2001
- Di Fortunato E. e Paolinelli M., "Tradurre per il doppiaggio - la trasposizione linguistica dell'audiovisivo: teoria e pratica di un'arte imperfetta", Milano, Hoepli, 2005
- ASINC online magazine on criticism of the art of dubbing