The Good News Channel

[Opsa]

Almost got me new play (The Secret Garden) cast. Had auditions last weekend. Have been at the keyboard all the blessed day.

[Roland Deschain]

I could get theat from Austria too 

But unless it is horses coming to harm, UK DVDs are less likely to be cut. And I never encountered such madness like "Thai/Mandarin without subtitles or dubbed with (and no option to switch them off)" there (unlike here).

Ok, not seen DVDs for sale in England in a non-English language with no subtitle option. That's really odd.

Almost got me new play (The Secret Garden) cast. Had auditions last weekend. Have been at the keyboard all the blessed day.

The Secret Garden is a wonderful book. It's been so many years since I read it.

[Aggie]

I could get theat from Austria too 

But unless it is horses coming to harm, UK DVDs are less likely to be cut. And I never encountered such madness like "Thai/Mandarin without subtitles or dubbed with (and no option to switch them off)" there (unlike here).

Ok, not seen DVDs for sale in England in a non-English language with no subtitle option. That's really odd.

Ugh, thinking back to some of the double-dubbed bootlegs I've ran into over the years. It's not particularly distracting if it's languages that sound somewhat similar and I understand 0% of neither (Mandarin/Cantonese overdubs), but it still sounds bizarre. Two sets of dialogue overlaid, and even if you understood either it would be disconcerting, I suspect.

Worse yet is subtitles that have passed through a middleman language (especially a logographic one) and then have been re-translated into English.  I've yet to finish watching Dae Jang Geum as the copies I've been able to get my hands on switched to a translation from Korean to English via Chinese (of unknown dialect) part way through her medical training.  I was mystified by the recurrence of the word 'elephant', which was somehow inappropriately translated instead of 'pulse'.

I've also run into subtitles that have been copied from entirely different films, and correspond not at all with the action on the screen.

[Roland Deschain]

I have visions of a doctor checking someone's elephant, now.

[Swatopluk]

You have not seen German subtitles yet
Occasionally I get the impression that dyslexia is mandatory for subtitle makers.
That's another reason to go for (British*) English, if one does not undertstand the original language.

*Avoid American dubs and subtitles for anything anime or Japanese in general! Avoid American editions in the first place. Mutilations, idiotic recuts, blatantly and deliberately false translations and occasional 'new' material (like putting an American reporter into the original Godzilla).

[Griffin NoName]

Roland's been doing lots of posting which means there are lots of things to read............ great stuff !!

[Sibling DavidH]

In 1978 I saw Bonnie And Clyde in Berlin, dubbed into German.  It seemed perfectly natural to me, but subtitles would have ruined it, even good ones.  Same when I saw Blow-Up in Wesel.

[Swatopluk]

Dubbing is a mixed bag, there are superb dubs (occasionally topping the original) and dreadful ones. Not to forget changed dialogues that can alter the total meaning (e.g. infamously turning the Nazis into Soviets in Casablanca). Subtitles used to be adequate but, or so it seems to me, they are often done these days on the cheap with occasionally incredible mistakes and clear signs that the 'translators' have never seen the movie in question. Which could at least begin to explain stuff like confusing chair (furniture) and chair(man), although the context should have been unambiguous (chairmen are rarely made from wood or sat on).
What occasionally happens is that dub and subtitles contradict each other or at least say very different things (and my lack of e.g. Chinese prevents me from checking which one is actually correct). This should of course not be confused with deliberately false subtitles used for comical effects (in at least one case I know it goes meta and the actors complain on screen about errors or distortions in the subtitles).

[Opsa]

Thread drift, thread drift, over the bounding waves...

[Aggie]

You have not seen German subtitles yet
Occasionally I get the impression that dyslexia is mandatory for subtitle makers.

I suspect that much of the grammatical dyslexia is a case of using the original grammar and literally translating each word, without worrying about the destination-language grammar.

I find good subtitles to be less distracting that bad dubs.  I prefer to hear the inflection in the original dialogue.  The voice changes made in many dubs (especially, as Swato says, Americanized Japanese imports) are so far from the original that it defeats the purpose of simple translation and becomes full on Americanization.

That being said, I'm so used to subtitles that if closed captioning is put on for a movie in English, I'll compulsively follow the subtitles despite understanding the dialogue.  I read faster than the dialogue is presented, so I'm often out of phase with the speech.

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

I find good subtitles to be less distracting that bad dubs.  I prefer to hear the inflection in the original dialogue. 

^That. I simply can't stand dubs (I have to endure them in Spanish from time to time and those are abominable).

[Aggie]

Ayuh.  Some dubbed voice-overs are primarily translations without any real acting ability.  The original acted dialogue carries much more meaning even if you can't understand it literally, and can flavour even a bad subtitle job enough to understand the scene.

[Swatopluk]

I have a DVD of a Korean movie where the subtitles get farther and farther away from the dialogue they represent. It's already difficult when in an actual dialogue the delay is roughly equal to the length of the bits, so one gets the text for the person currently NOT speaking. And it becomes hopeless when the subtitles essentially belong to the last scene seen.

[Griffin NoName]

I greatly prefer subtitles. With French, I enjoy spotting when the translator has made a mistake (I have school French plus  Swiss friend who will only converse in French). I can spot a few mistakes when it's Italian, as I have some minimal italian. But the surprising thing is I can spot mistakes in Swedish and Danish even having no knowledge of those languages. (I have latin but no Greek).

[pieces o nine]

I find good subtitles to be less distracting that bad dubs.  I prefer to hear the inflection in the original dialogue.  The voice changes made in many dubs (especially, as Swato says, Americanized Japanese imports) are so far from the original that it defeats the purpose of simple translation and becomes full on Americanization.

I've seen a few comedians whose act includes out-of-synch American-English "dubbing" of Hong-Kong-style martial arts films. The facial expressions and gestures are correct for the film, but the fake dubbing never matches the length of the original speech, and often they are 'speaking' when the mouth is closed, or making the wrong shapes for the sounds. I always enjoy seeing this done well.