| A bit of a digression, but...I strongly dislike dubbing and simply cannot enjoy a dubbed drama or film. First, you have the distracting mismatch between the actor's mouth movements and the dubbed dialogue. Second, the way an actor speaks in their native language is an intrinsic part of their performance. A dubbed performance will be different, but can never match the original (unless we're talking about a poorly acted, poor quality production). To give an example, the Scandinavian series The Bridge has won great praise for the performance of its lead (Sofia Helin). This has been a big international hit (in the UK it was shown subtitled). Can a dubbing actor really ever inhabit a character in the same way as the original performer? (Don't forget the dubbing actor also sits in a room performing the dub, not on location like the original actors). There is one scenario where I understand dubbing is necessary: children's films. But even here, you can notice a difference. When Disney dubbed the Japanese animated movie Spirited Away, they did a very good job with the American voice actors. However, if you listen to the original Japanese soundtrack, you come away with a different impression of the film because the Japanese language has a very different tone and inflection to English. |
The problem is that often the original screenplay contains cultural references that are not known in the audience that the dubbing is made for. So you have to replace the cultural references by ones that are understood by them. The same holds for puns, word plays, songs etc. These have to be rewritten.
In this sense a dubbing (at least in Germany) is much more than a rough translation of the original spoken text, but often a reinterpretation. Thus I wrote that there are even people who say that the German dubbing of some American movies is yet better than the English original, since the translators are even more creative in the wordings than the original screenplay writers.
To give one example: In Finding Nemo, the German names of the two sharks (besides Bruce) are Hammer (hammer) and Hart (hard) (in the English original they are "Anchor" and "Chum"). Now you have to know that in German "Ich bin voll der Hammer" ("I am full the hammer") is a very plebby way of saying "I'm the greatest". If you now keep in mind that Hammer and Art were dubbed by some German comedians which have a very turkish-plebby image you will understand why the German dubbing of these scenes is much more funny in German than in the English original.