What do you prefer, subtitled or dubbed movies?
Most Scandinavian countries tend to subtitles everything, except for movies and series for little children who cannot read yet, which I absolutely love.
I like subtitles a lot. Having the original dub / sound just means a lot to me and having it dubbed into some other language mostly takes something away from the experience instead of adding to it. This is especially true for "exotic" languages. The more different a language sounds originally, the sillier a dub sounds in the end.
Of course, subs tend to get annoying sometimes when some subbers haven't learned yet about proper positioning, coloring and size of subtitles. Also, subtitles generally tend to take away a bit of attention from the main action, esp. for those who aren't really fast readers.
Dubs recently have been getting excellent.
For example, Duo Maxwells voice from Gundam Wing. Or the English dub of Hellsing with the British-sounding actors/actresses.
Depends on the subject matter and the quality of the dub. If it's a movie is something like Princess Mononoke, I'd prefer Japanese. But if it were something like Hellsing, English.
I take it you are an American. You probably haven't seen that many non-anime subbed movies, right?
I prefer subtitled. Anime is one thing, but in a live action movie, the mouths don't fit and it looks terrible.
Dubs of Asian fighting movies (Jackie Chan movies, for instance) have almost always sucked the wang with dubs. Though the problem is that subtitles distract the eye from the fighting, which ruins the whole point in watching a fight movie in the first goddamn place.
Then again, things like "Monkey Magic" were always quite damn humourous to watch with the un-synced dub.
Subs for me too. Mainly because I prefer to watch things as close to the original version as possible (though me groing up in an subtitle society might have something to do with it as well)
>Though the problem is that subtitles distract the eye from the fighting
That's just due to lack of practice.
I guess if you have seen the movie two times already, you don't have to read the subtitles anymore. Still, even for very fast readers like me, the subtitles take a non-marginal ratio of attention and time to read.
> Dubs of Asian fighting movies (Jackie Chan movies, for instance) have almost always sucked the wang with dubs.
I know of some awesome German Jackie Chan dubs.
Jackie Chan movies dubs can be both so bad you want to throw up, or watchable. Since he knows English and can dub his own voice, at least the sound of his voice fits. But when he doesn't dub himself, it's usually terrible.
I agree with >>6, I can watch something subtitled without getting distracted. I watched subbed movies since 3rd grade, never had trouble reading fast enough or looking at the text and image at the same time. But some people do have trouble with it, despite reading speeds, so I guess it depends on something else.
As for Anime, I prefer subs, but thats maybe because most of the dubs i have seen are just crap.. :p
I also dont really like those high pitched voices in another language than japanese. Those dubs are scary.
As for Jackie Chan Movies i only know dubbed ones but as far as i can remember they were okay for me
>Then again, things like "Monkey Magic" were always quite damn humourous to watch with the un-synced dub.
Monkey is fucking awesome. I'll forgive you for getting the name wrong, because the theme is awesome too.
Also, note to people who worked on the new dubs - the credits font is Klang, you bastards.
I always prefer the sub if it's live acction and the dub for anime.
German anime dubs are the worst! but dubs of movies and series are all very very good! in germany we got professionel speaker for everything that comes from other countrys and they are all excelent. a lot of voice actors are way better than the original in my opinion.
> and they are all excelent.
While this is generally true, they have been getting a lot worse in the last decades. Whenever I watch an old movie, dubbed in German, say, a Hitchcock classic for instance, I marvel at the quality of the voice actors when compared to today's generation. Must be having something to do with growing up in a generation where rhetorics were much more important in general than today.
yeah that's true. but i think that the new dubs are going with the time.
maybe it is a good thing. because the language in the dub goes with the time it is authentic...
Subbed all the way!!!! ('cept Hellshing....BLECK!)
ALWAYS subs.
Even Cowboy Bebop?
sub
>>20
ALWAYS subs.
>>1
Dubbing rots. Just watch something like Crouching Tiger with dubbing, and you'll see how lame and uninvolved English voice acting can be.
( ^^)// Hooray for subs. The emotional quality of being "in" the scene comes through in the native voices, and you don't have that disconcerting problem of lips moving to different sounds.
dubbing is inherently horrible. allow me to convince you of this with a horrible dub.
they call this kind of thing a "straw man". look it up.
What if every dub you have listened to sounds horrible? What if every dub everyone you know has listened to sounds horrible? Is it safe to say that it could be that most dubs are horrible, or should we adhere to LOGIC and be like "STARW MAN"
I think dubs are ok when they play it straight, like in Cowboy Bebop or Macross Plus. In translating staples like high pitched female voices that sounds cute in Japanese("oni-sama", "neko mimi mode", "kimochii!"), they're still way off. Most voice actors don't have the experience and/or skill to pull it off without sounding like an 80's Valley Girl.
What about dubs that keep some of the japanese wording like suffixes? In theory I thought it would work as well as it does in manga. Seeing it in action it sounded like a fandub, although it may have been the actor's fault in delivery.
>>25
neither you, nor anybody you know, has listened to a good dub. most dubs ARE in fact horrible, but your statement has more to do with what you and your friends have seen than the existence of good dubs. the guy in that post made the statement that ALL dubs were total shit, and proved his point with (get this) one shitty dub. yeah, that's a bad argument. sorry.
honorifics are always a sticking point in translation. on one side of things, if i'm going to read/hear an English translation, i'd much rather read on that's actually in english as opposed to english/japanese. especially if i hear honorifics in a dub, it's hard to not feel like i'm listening to anime fans talking, not characters. but the alternative isn't too great either. using diminutives is rarely an adequate substitute for "-chan", for example, and there are a lot of untranslatable little things that are hard to execute without putting notes onscreen, or something.
I prefer subtitles for both live action and cartoons. To me it just doesn't seem like the dubbing actor doesn't quite get into the role as much as the original actor did.
Even when they do, there are some vocal characterisations that come off wierd when done by a second person.