Subbing Versus Dubbing - Television Tropes & Idioms

alt title(s): Dubbing Versus Subbing; Dubbing Vs Subbing; Subbing Vs Dubbing

One of the oldest Internet Backdrafts for fans of imported foreign films and TV shows — especially anime fans — is the argument over whether to subtitle the program or dub it into the audience's native language.

Subtitling has many advantages: It allows for an extremely accurate translation (including quirks of the original language that play a role in the plot), while allowing you to hear the original actors' performances. People bilingual in or learning the original language will be able to benefit as well, since they can enjoy at least parts of the film/TV show in the original while their friends can still know what's going on. In addition, it's much less expensive than creating a new Automated Dialogue Recording and dodges Lip Lock; fans have been capable of producing serviceable Fansubs using home computers for decades, and it's possible to subtitle a program with literally nothing more than a time-coded script. Hence, subtitled anime has a much wider potential reach simply because it is easier to produce and the licensor can turn a much larger profit on the smaller cost.

On the other hand, dubbing a program means that the audience doesn't have to read the dialogue while watching the show. While this is frequently used as an insult to the intelligence of dub-watchers, subtitlers in some languages (including English) do trim dialogue due to subbing line-length restrictions. (This is not just a translation problem - turn on the native language subtitles for a DVD, and you'll often witness subtitle abbreviation, spanning from a noticable to a horrendously significant degree. If an example is necessary, try 'Real Genius'.) Viewers whose thought processes are more speech-oriented than word-oriented may simply find dubs easier to comprehend and process, especially when in works that are heavy on meaningful dialogue or exposition. For many viewers hearing the dialogue in their native language makes it easier to immerse themselves in the media and feel a sense of familiarity with the story and characters that is much harder to obtain when hearing dialogue in a foreign language while reading subtitles. (Of course, this can also be the work's undoing - hearing the dialogue spoken in one's own language may make the viewer realize just how nonsensical or over-the-top it really is.) Hearing actors speaking one's native language also allows the audience to catch subtle non-verbal parts of a performance, which many times is part of the "authentic" viewing experience the original was shooting for. Subtitles can cover important parts of the image or switch too fast to be read by everyone, especially if the show is extremely fast-paced, dialogue heavy, or aimed at younger audiences. In addition, subtitles are sometimes criticized for being too literal; a well-made dub can preserve the spirit of a joke or reference, even while replacing the actual joke. Occasionally a dub may even have better actors, performances and/or writing than the original, though of course this is highly subjective. Commercially, dubs also have a much wider range and a foreign show or film without a dub has a significantly smaller reach despite being more expensive to produce simply because dubs have far more venues open to them. A dub can often make or break a show's success.

Although the debate is very heated for fans of foreign independent/art films, it's the American anime fan community that's made this debate infamous. This is because, in the days before DVDs, companies releasing translated anime could only release either a subtitled or a dubbed version of a program on a single VHS tape. Because the market for dubbed anime was larger than that for subtitled releases, sub tapes almost always cost twice as much as an equivalent dub tape—if a company ever released a subtitled version to begin with. Furthermore, access to subtitled tapes was significantly limited and many anime fans in an era before e-commerce struggled to find retailers that carried any anime in the first place. And since this was also the era when Carl Macek made himself synonymous with rewritten dubs, the sub versus dub war often took on the appearance of a holy war in the eyes of more serious fans, with a surprising amount of Fan Dumb gathering on both sides of the debate. DVDs allowed companies to include multiple language and subtitle tracks on a single disc, and single-handedly took most of the fire out of the debate.

Nevertheless, pure aesthetic concerns, along with backlash against the airing of dubbed shows on analog cable TV, have kept the Sub vs. Dub debate simmering in the background of anime fandom. Its most prevalent present-day descendant replaces "subbing" with fansubs and "dubbing" with officially-translated subtitles. Under the frame of the new debate, fansubs take the role of the culturally pure/faithful version, with official subs being the Bowdlerized version watered-down for mass audiences.

On a purely simplistic level, sometimes it just comes down to quality of casting. For example, Bandai's dub of Cowboy Bebop is frequently heralded as equal or superior to its Japanese production, and the Japanese producers of El Hazard have stated they prefer the English voices for the characters.

Of course, the fact that the vast majority of video games still choose to be dub only keeps this debate burning brightly now that so many of them are fully voiced. When you have the critically acclaimed dubs of Metal Gear Solid and Disgaea on one side and the abysmally poor dubs of Xenogears and Baten Kaitos on the other, it's no wonder that this rages on. However, even if a bilingual track is provided, flamewars will still erupt because the mere existence of a choice means that you can still choose wrong.

More recently, the dire straits of the anime industry have forced several major licensors to no longer produce a dub track on titles that are perceived to sell to a niche audience, due to several companies taking heavy losses on titles like this (including Geneon and ADV, both of which have shut down) and finding that the existence of a dub track is not enough of a sales boost to cover the cost of commissioning one. This has single-handedly lit the fire in the sub vs. dub wars all over again, though ironically it is now dub fans that are seeing a lack of releases instead. This has led to a strange reversal in the old debate - dub fans insist that all shows should have a dub or they will not support them, sub fans will tell them to either accept that shows with smaller appeal will get sub-only releases or they aren't going to be licensed at all.

Another interesting thing to note is that because a lot of fans from English-speaking countries engage in the wars, they won't realize the fact that most English dubs actually have it better than other countries, especially even in more recent years. Many dubs in other countries such as Mexico, Brazil, Spain, and France are often far worse on average in terms of translation or voice acting in the dubs. The So Bad Its Horrible dub of Cyborg 009 is often used to illustrate this point, as the entire cast was played by one man, half the characters sound exactly the same (Which is incredibly awkward since other dubbers of Cyborg 009 at least think a female should be playing the female characters) and the translation sounds like it was done by someone who had a very elementary-level understanding of the Swedish Language. And this isn't just limited to Anime... there exist extremely low budget Spanish dubs of old shows produced in the U.S. or Canada where the characters compensate for the movement by speaking very very quickly or pausing mid-sentence. But that also doesn't mean it can't work the other way. The 1959 Mexican Spanish dub of Sleeping Beauty has often been called the best version, rumours even state that Walt Disney himself even liked that version better than the original version.

While this article was written with an America/Europe-centric point of view, do note that the debate can also occur in Japan too