Hacker News Reader

Comment by w1ntermute | Hacker News Reader

> while French TV has a lot of subtitling - in Germany foreign language movies and TV shows are generally voiced over

Can anyone explain why this is? I hate watching dubbed video, especially when it's live action.

A lot of subtitling in France? Nope. In fact, you'd be hard pressed to find any (by default that is, you can always turn them on). The overwhelming majority of shows are dubbed in France too.

The explanation is some form of ingrained linguistic pride and more pragmatic concerns: viewership would drop about 30% if they stopped dubbing.

http://www.slate.fr/story/18195/pourquoi-la-france-double-t-...

Agree, I moved to Luxembourg and started recently watching some French TV: almost everything is dubbed (while on Sat you can sometimes found the second audio track).

I would also add that while UK televisions are very good at subtitling (almost all the programs are accurately subbed with a 1:1 correspondence with what it is said), French TV are less scarse (not all the channels have subs available and some of those subs use different words)

And interestingly, even for non-dubbed films they'll still translate the title. So the original Star Wars with subtitles will still be announced as "La Guerre des étoiles"

Also interestingly, they will "translate" movie titles that are in English into a different title, also in English. So "The Hangover" becomes "Very Bad Trip".

Tradition and market demand, I guess. I'm not completely philosophically opposed to dubs, but the truth is that the vast majority of German dubs are awful. And I'm talking about major Hollywood films and popular TV series. It really sounds like a bunch of actors sitting in a studio, reading lines melodramatically with zero nuance.

I swear, German radio dramas (which are quite popular) have better voice acting.

Strange. I lived there for nearly 20 years and must say they have pretty much perfected the craft of dubbing movies. I personally still prefer some "alternative voices" over the originals, i.e. for Homer Simpson (sounds more like the fool that he is) or Arnold Schwarzenegger (who's English destroys any fourth wall the moment he opens his mouth).

For Arnold sure, but you are not allowed to prefer any Homer voice over Dan Castellaneta's. Also, don't forget that Homer is only 99% fool, the other 1% is sublime genius.

German dubs are so awful and widespread, that even porn in Germany is dubbed and often enough, even German porn is re-dubbed.

Dutch people prefer subtitles. German, Italian, Spanish and French people prefer dubbing. It's weird and I don't know why it is. Things just evolved to be like that.

The majority of English TV on French national tv is most definitely dubbed. As far as I know it's only the Dutch. Don't know about Scandinavia and Eastern Europe though.

In Scandinavia it's all subtitles.

Yes. Anglo-Saxon culture has permeated Scandinavian culture to a degree you don't find in Western Europe (which also means that most of the population is fluent in spoken English, which is definitely not the case in France, Germany or Spain). You don't find dubbed movies here, unless they are targeted at children.

Here in Portugal we mostly subtitle as well, even though our population is definitively not fluent in English. On the other hand, the older population watches disproportionately fewer shows in English, preferring national daytime talkshows and soap operas (national and imported from Brazil), so dubbing would probably be too expensive per watcher.

In the UK, foreign-language dramas and films are always subtitled.

Foreign language dramas are not common on British TV, but then a few years ago, the BBC broadcast the original Danish version of The Killing which gained a cult following. Since then we've had a whole raft of foreign-language dramas (mostly crime dramas, a lot of them Scandinavian).

I personally much prefer subtitles to dubbing. With dubbing, you get the distracting mismatch between the actors mouth movements and the dubbed dialogue. Plus, the dubbed language will have a different tone and inflection from the original language. At least if you watch with subtitles, the fluency of the dialogue (even when you don't understand it) will feel much more natural.

Where do you get this impression? I've lived in France my whole life and most people I know try to avoid subtitles as much as possible. Most of the foreign TV contents are dubbed anyway, except on a few channels (Arte).

This may be less true for the new generation accustomed to watching subtitled TV shows on the internet, instead of waiting for a few years to get them in French on TV.

This.

I grew up in Belgium, and there were two versions of films on - V.O. (Version Originale) which had two sets of subtitles (Flemish and French) and V.F. (Version Francaise).

The cinema usually had far more Flemish speaking people in the VO screenings than French speaking, so I assume they went to the VF ones.

This is definitely changing, but slowly, yes.

I think that this is at least partially attributable to the average understanding of English in those countries. When you are watching a movie with subtitles, but have absolutely no idea what is being said in the movie because the spoken language is unknown to you, it can be very distracting, because you are missing a certain amount of context. I believe an above-average amount of Dutch people is at least capable of comprehending basic English speech, which puts the movie's subtitles into context. In countries where English isn't as wide-spread, this is more problematic, which is why dubbing is more effective there. Similarly, even in the Netherlands movies which target family audiences are often shown dubbed by default in movie theatres, because the subtitles are just not as effective even if the children that are watching the movie can read them.

I'd guess it's the opposite: average understanding of english is lower _because_ the content is all translated.

Also, I do not know about germany/france/spain, but italian movies have basically always been dubbed, in the sense that italian actors were dubbed by other italian actors.

As a general rule the more speakers a language has the higher the chance of mostly dubbed content. High quality dubs are not cheap and it's easier to finance it when your target language has a 100 million speaker instead of just 5 million.

That's why Germany, France and Spain like to dubs, but not smaller countries like the Netherlands or Scandinavian countries. And medium sized countries like Poland often have really crappy dubs (sometimes one speaker for all characters).

For Italians it is easy explained: our average level of foreign languages' knowledge is ridiculous and if a movie is broadcasted in Original Version most of the people will not understand a bit.. Things are improving with newer generations (e.g. various MTV sort-of shows are subtitled - in Italian) but it will take time, and I'm not sure we will be ever be at the same level of Northern countries..

On the other hand I could say that many Italian dubbers are very good compared to other countries (sometimes they are italian actors as well)

It's true. Kids also learn to read subtitles at an early age (by the time they get 7 most can read subtitles). But Disney doesn't seem to understand: it dubs programs in Dutch, and you get Hanna Montana and others dubbed with an awful (to my Flemish ears) Dutch accent.

Majority of population preffers it that way for one reason or another (like old people having eye issues and people used to "listening" to TV and others just peeking at it at random while doing other activities), and minority watches movies in cinemas/dvds/bluerays/internet where stuff if subbed instead.

I got the feeling, that most Germans think subtitles are a sign of bad quality.

Many people I know also say, English (and reading) is hard for them and since they watch movies and TV-shows to relax, they prefer german dubbed stuff.

I understand English rather well, so I don't need subs. And if I watch stuff in English, I get it sooner than people who wait for the german dubs...

A huge majority isn't comfortable and completely unused to watching movies in English. I continue to be surprised to find people who dislike it even among my highly educated young^Hmiddle-aged peers. On the other hand there's a sizeable minority who is violently opposed to dubs -- I faintly hope Netflix will monetise on them.

In fairness, Scrubs is way funnier in German. [1]

Interestingly, when Elliot actually speaks German in the episode they dub that into Italian.

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5_AMLQ2QTA

Grimm is the most hilarious series - if you know German and watch the original seties. Dubbing a series that is full of 'weird' references in a language to just that language is.. a stupid move.

That reminds me of how when they show Fawlty Towers in Spain they dub Manuel into Italian.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com