Subtitles

Cactus Col

Was watching a film Wasabe recently, and I was watching it on DVD and had the English dubbed version on, but due to some of the accents being pretty thick found it hard to catch everything being said, so had the subtitles on at times too, and what I noticed was that the spoken dialogue on the dubbed over voices is very different to the subtitles .... I had not noticed this previously on foreign language films, and was wondering if this was the norm

..... and if so ... should I assume that the dubbed version is closer to the orignal script.

Jim

this happens in most films, not just dubbed ones.
ive seen it a few times, the actor might phrase the sentance differently than what the subtitles read,

id say the sub's are taken from the original script.

Karl Hungus

Subtitles can be extremely poor at times, and badly translated.

To be quite honest, you're going to be at a loss with either badly translated subtitles, or horrid dubbing.

A good dub can sometimes be quite watchable, and a lot of actors these days Dub their own voices, such as in Brotherhood Of The Wolf where Vincent Cassel and Monica Bellucci did their own voices for the english version. Or in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon where all the original actors did the dubbing, under the supervision of the director, Ang Lee.

I will mostly watch a film Subtitled, rather than Dubbed however... Poor dubbing can seriously destroy a film altogether.

echomadman

I much prefer subtitles, even though on occasions where i understand the language being spoken I can hear the differences. For me its about the tone of voice in the dialogue, the actors who are doing the dubbing never convey the same tone, and as they have to make some token effort to lip synch, they have to radically alter dialogue in some cases.
tbh i often dont even notice that a film is subtitled, i "hear" what is being written in the voice of the actor.

SweetBirdOfTruth

I prefer subbed to dubbed, the dubbed voices just don't fit properly.

Subs aren't added from the script, they're a translator's take on the spokne dialogue. They don't follow everything said, there's a limit to how much can be put on screen and read by a viewer, but they're generally still good enough.

lili

i prefer subbed, because voice is a part of acting performance.
and also because there is some languages like the spanish one, who lose charm when it's translated.
i wouldn't watch an amoldovar film in a dubbed version.

Cactus Col

But how much of the dialogue are you missing, imagine watching Clerks, or Spinal Tap, or what ever and missing out on many of the classic lines, after been cut to bits and replaced for subtitles