Subs versus Dubs for foreign distribution

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epplegacks

Active member
While reading this thread: http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=61912, dude discusses the necessity of a M&E or music and effects track seperate from the dialogue so that it can be dubbed for foreign distribution. I work in the adult industry and even we have to provide these.

But the conversation I want to get into is myself personally I watch lots of anime and hong kong films and it has gotten to the point where I refuse to watch anything that has the original language dubbed over with, in my case english, because I feel it breaks all mood or meaning or artistic qualities the writer/director were going after. I much prefer well done subtitles as I find I get into a state where I quickly glane at the subtitle when it changes and then eyes back to things in the scene and it feels much more natural.

I personally cringe at the thought of any of my work being dubbed over by voice actors who either don't care or haven't gotten a decent translation by someone who doesn't care and after all that they have to deal with lips that will never sync up or sound mixing to incorporate the new dialogue recordings that again is done without caring.

With films such as Crouching Tiger and A Tale of Two Sisters doing well on the festival and indie circuit as well as indie darlings like El Mariache doing extremely well with foreign language tracks and subtitles, is there room in this industry for distribution deals that specifically forbid dub versions and mandate any world-wide distro would use the original soundtrack with subtitles?

At the very least, what do you guys prefer and why? I don't want to label all voice actors as bad (I personally find the dub for Tales of Symphonia for nintendo gamecube an amazing job that works really well) and I also am not so naive to think that everyone cares about this. I know that I grew up on bad dubs of John Woo and Bruce Lee films and thought they were the coolest movies ever.
 
Dubbed films definately take me out of the film. 9 times out of 10 no matter how good the dubbing may be it will irritate me.

One of the few exceptions of acceptable dubbing i can think of would be in the Dollars trilogy.

But the rest of the time give me the text.

Watch enough subtitled films and they eye gets used to reading and viewing at the same time.
 
You know, it depends on how good the dubbing is, really. Since EVERY movie here gets dubbed for theatrical release (the only exception I can remember is Constant Gardener, which was subbed) and has been for many years, they've polished the job to near perfection. Seriously. Some of the voice acting is simply awesome - and they also tend to hire high profile russian actors lately to do it (i.e. Willis came here for the premiere of Over the Hedge, where his character was dubbed by the guy from Night Watch... sounds stupid, eh? But they met and became friends or something...). Would you believe it if I said that I enjoy dubbed Jack Sparrow almost as much as the real one? And it's true - spot-on, hilarious performance and very very close to Depp's own.

That said, on DVD I prefer to watch movies in their native language. Without subtitles, if it's in english - I get distracted by those. I believe I only turned 'em on a few times during Firefly, because Mal mumbles like #%$&@!#% (but man, isn't he damn cool).
 
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