How do you feel about subtitles?

I didn't know where to put this topic, but I hope it's okay having it here.

I have this kind of bias that english speaking people need to have everything dubbed or remaked, becuase they can't live with seeing a movie with just subtitles. Actually not only english speaking people, just people who's first language is a very wide spread one, because I recently talked to a Russian, who was very surprised to hear how in Denmark (Where I'm from) we rarely dub anything, unless it's for children. She thought ít would be weird to see a movie like that, how do you feel about it? And how much truth do you think there is to my prejudice? (Is it a trope?)

Personally I really don't like dubs, which is probably because there's so few Danish Voice Actors, and therefore also very few who are actually good at it. I still have some very Hammy sentences from the Danish Harry Potter dub that I can't get out of my head. But I can see that if people is actually good at dubbing, there isn't anything wrong with it.

In Finland they to aired The Bold and The Beautiful dubbed for a week and it received tons of complaints. I don't it was ever meant to be a permanent change anyway but obviously it didn't stop the outrage from fans. It didn't help that the dub actors were already well known live-action actors.

I brought this anecdote up, because some people think Jackie Chan movies or other "low-brow" movies should only be watched with dubs, because of their "added comedy" value, whereas in Finland people want to watch any foreign language shows or movies with subtitles, whether it's a cheap soap opera or an HBO series.

I tend to find that subtitles can detract from the overall experience of a film or television program. I'm especially annoyed when people claim they need them to watch things in the same language but a different dialect to their own, a certain HBO show especially.

Decent dubs distract me much less for some reason; a bad dub actor or mistranslation can be forgiven just as easily as one bad actor or bad dialouge in any film, as long as there is something good in there.

Remakes in many cases aren't too different from translating a book or other medium into a film. They don't replace the original work and can often generate new interest towards it.

I tend to watch films with the subtitles on even in English and even though I'm not hearing impaired. Sometimes I've found I've missed things without them, and it never bothers me with a foreign language.

Axis Powers Hetalia is the only thing I prefer the dub for.

It depends. If what I'm watching isn't in English, then subtitles are fine, but if I'm watching (or playing) something that's in English, I prefer to have them off unless it's hard to hear. I find that if subtitles are on, my eyes focus on them even if I can hear just fine, and it sometimes spoils what's about to be said if I can read it before I hear it.

My thoughts re: subtitles for English-language works.

I don't watch dubs of animated works (barring some truly stellar dubs), let alone live-action ones, which will invariably have more noticeable issues with lip-voice synchronisation (thus detracting from the experience). So for me, a foreign film means subtitles, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

I prefer watching a good dub to watching subtitles.

Some people say they're so used to watching subtitles that they don't detract from the experience at all, but I doubt that's a common feeling in any country. Otherwise, why does no one make silent films anymore? Surely the filming process is easier if you don't have to record the actors' speaking, and certain kinds of bad acting can be more easily concealed? So why don't we see a lot of movies recorded without sound, then having music, sound effects, and subtitles put in later?

edited 29th Jul '12 11:14:49 PM by RavenWilder

I understand what you mean, sometimes it feels like my eyes just want to focus on the subtitles even when I can understand/hear fine, though I believe it's mostly about getting used to it, as I'm much better at ignoring them now than I used to be.

There's a big diffrence between a silent film and a film with subtitles. In a film with subtitles, if it's a language you understand or mostly understand, you get the original meaning and subtitles to explain something you didn't understand or if you weren't able to hear it. And it's a language you don't understand, a lot of feelings is still conveyed through voices. In a silent movie, you only have subtitles. And I'd say that is pretty normal where I'm from.

I think it's mostly about where you have lived most of your life. In the Nordic countries and The Netherlands and some other countries people have used to watching tv series and movies from a very young age, because the film industries are relatively small and the demographics weren't big enough to support dubbing, when either subtitling or dubbing became the norm.

General audiences in the USA don't watch that many foreign movies and even literary translations are more domesticated than in countries with smaller demographies, like Finland. Because the general American audiences aren't used to hearing foreign languages or seeign other cultures in movies, foreign movies are often either remade or dubbed.

Many European countries have different reasons for dubbing, most common probably the big enough audience to justify the added cost. If I remember correctly, during Franco's reign in Spain, only Spanish language was allowed in the theatres.

Honestly, the only area in which I've ever felt dubbing was needed is in cartoons or media aimed at young children who can't read yet. I think dubs, especially of live action works, detract much more from the experience of a film than any subtitles could. When I watch dubs of live-action films, I just find myself wishing I could listen to the voices of the actual on-screen actors instead.

I don't follow your logic at all. Some people are okay with subtitles, and that means they don't like hearing voices in the film at all? There's a huge difference between watching a subtitled film in a language you don't speak and watching a film with no dialogue at all.

Subtitled versions of films/anime are often if not always better than the dubbed version. For example, "Akira", whose first dubbed version which I had the misfortune to watch, was notoriously bad and was actually translated differently from the subtitled version.

But the one that really nails dubbed versions in their coffin was the travesty that became known as "Cardcaptors". I actually liked that the first time I watched it. I didn't know any better. When I did, I wanted to burn Nelbaka to the ground and urinate on the ashes.

...

I'm not trolling. If you don't understand the language an actor is speaking, then their dialogue might as well be gibberish, conveying emotion only through tone, volume, pitch, pacing, etc. And if that's the case, why not just replace the dialogue with instrumental music for the same effect?

I personally enjoy listening to languages I don't necessarily understand. I'm not saying watching movies could make you a professor in any language but for me It's interesting to learn new phrases from movies.

Raven, do you think the gangster dialogue in The Wire should be replaced by gibberish or should have been spoken in a more standard register, because some people might not understand what 'sammich' means?

Perhaps instrumental music is less universal an indicator than tone of voice? Anecdotal evidence would suggest this to be the case. Yes, I know, anecdotal evidence is the least useful of evidences.

Not understanding a few words or phrases is different; those you can try and figure out from context. But if every word out of the actors' mouths is unfamiliar, phrased using unfamiliar grammar, then that's not something you can puzzle out from watching an hour long episode.

Music and voice is completely different and acting as though they are the same is disingenuous at best. When someone talks in a language you don't understand, it's still dialogue, a human voice that communicates emotion. A specific actor also has a specific voice, which you would loose by using music, which is related to why I don't like dubs.

When an actor performs in a movie that performance is a whole, you can't just divide it into visual and vocal performance. So when you dub over an actor's performance, you are removing a part of the whole and adding a voice that was neither part of the original performance nor does it fit with the voice of the physical actor on screen. An actor has an intrinsic voice that belongs to that person and dialogue is an important part of their overall performance, which cannot simply be cut out and given to someone else, without it being jarring. On top of that, making a dub fit the mouth movements of the original actors is often hard, if you want natural-sounding dialogue in the language to which is being translated.

All of this is extremely distracting and makes it all but impossible to watch dubbed movies for me.

Comparing music and dialogue in a language you don't understand doesn't even make sense in the first place, because dialogue is a part of the actor's performance, music is generally added later for emotional effect.

As for there being no country where “not being distracted by subtitles“ is a common feeling, I would say that it is indeed the common feeling amongst adults over here (also Denmark). I'd say it's simply a case of being used to reading subtitles in movies from around the time you learned to read.

Obviously it's better if you don't need subtitles, but if you don't understand the language in question, subtitles are the lesser of two evils. And from personal experience, I can say that while I get a little more out of English movies now that I understand English, than I did before I could, it's not that big of a leap in enjoyment. I can say the same for Japanese movies, though in this case there is a somewhat bigger difference seeing as the two languages are so different, whereas English and Danish is pretty close. But that difference has more to do with linguistics than the subtitle discussion.

edited 30th Jul '12 11:55:11 PM by Mathias

Saying that dialogue can be replaced with music as long as the audience understands what is being said is like saying that in action movies, you can replace all the action scenes with text cards that explain who won the fight. I mean, as long as the audience knows what's going on, everything else is superfluous, right?

Not all movies record dialogue while they're filming, though. Some will film the actors saying their lines, then have the actors repeat those lines later on in a studio, then dub that over the earlier footage.

And my general point is that, if you're not familiar with the language being spoken, then you're not going to notice or care whether the words you're hearing are a real language or just random gibberish. So if having to rely on subtitles to understand a movie doesn't impair audiences' enjoyment of it, why not just use gibberish in the place of dialogue?

Because some people, unlike you apparently, enjoy listening to foreign languages. Besides, even as a child I could understand some phrases from Chip & Dale: Rescue Rangers or some other American cartoon after watching it long enough.

I can enjoy listening to a language I don't understand, but since I don't understand the words, my enjoyment is purely on an auditory level, like with music, not on a linguistic level.

I'm fairly certain it's harder to act in gibberish than an actual language that one understands. Besides, what would be the point of doing so? After all a movie is most often directed at an audience who speaks the language first, at foreign audiences second. Subtitles don't really distract me from a movie, but I'd obviously rather understand every language in the world, however that isn't anywhere near feasible.

So the point isn't about how to make movies when targeting your primary audience, it's about how you translate movies from one language to another. Obviously it would be better if you didn't need subtitles, my point is that compared to translating via dubs it's the better option. The whole idea of creating a movie in gibberish or only with music is really not related to which way it's best to translate already existing movies, aside from some attempt at reductio ad absurdum.

And considering that most people in countries where one is used to watching subtitles are not particularly distracted by them, it suggests to me that whether one is distracted or not is simply a case of being used to it. I am, so are most of my countrymen. But people from big countries, where everything is dubbed, aren't and thus I guess a lot of people from said countries really are distracted by subtitles.

edited 31st Jul '12 4:21:22 AM by Mathias

But you're contradicting yourself. You say subtitles don't distract you from the movie or hurt your enjoyment of it, but then you say that you would prefer it if you could understand the language being spoken in the movie. Both can't be true.

Not really, I'm saying that I'm not distracted much by subtitles, not that I'm not distracted at all. Well, what I should say is probably rather than being distracted, it's more that it just annoys me that I cannot understand the original language and get all the linguistic nuances of the original, because it is simply impossible to completely translate from one language to another, be that through subtitles or dubs.

Anyway, compared to whatever small distraction I get from subtitles, dubs distract me a hell of a lot more due to the before-mentioned reasons. I cannot watch a dubbed movie without constantly being consciously aware of the dub actor and being permeated by a feeling of fakeness and a sense of what could have been if the movie just had the original fucking audio. That is really all there is to it, dubs are way more distracting to me.

And that's all I've been arguing about, which way is best to translate a pre-existing movie into another language, dubbed or subbed. The best option is obviously to know that language, so that you don't need a translation in the first place, but that's not what I'm comparing subtitles to, aside from stating that they are indeed inferior to this option.

edited 31st Jul '12 4:50:45 AM by Mathias

What about movies where there isn't a non-dubbed version, though? It's more common in animation than live-action, but there are movies where all the footage is filmed first, without audio, and all the dialogue is recorded afterwards. In those cases, do you still prefer to listen to the original language track, even though it's also a dub?