International Lip Synching

Funny story, on the subject of lip synching.

I saw Star Wars: A New Hope (the re-release) in Israel.

The film was in English, with Hebrew subtitles -- including what the aliens said.

So when Greedo and, later, Jabba spoke with Han Solo, I had to ask the Israeli friend next to me what they'd said.

Even funnier, she was initially surprised I'd ask because she was so used to tuning out the dialogue that she didn't even notice that it wasn't English being spoken.

Digressing, I think subtitles beat out dubbing any day, unless it's a black-and-white film where the text is white-on-white half the time.

Joe

P.S. Why can't they just have separate audio tracks for the dialogue and the special effects? That way you'd only need to substitute one when dubbing foreign versions.

>>Anil said: It has me wondering if there's an entire generation of European kids growing up never having seen lips move in tandem with dialogue on screen.

Anil, this statement is proof positive of your 'Americanness". I grew up in Puerto Rico which, technically is part of the US but culturally miles away from it. All US shows are dubbed in a hideous pseudo standard Latin American Spanish that sounds like a Venezuelan trying to pass for Mexican (if there are Latinos out there reading your blog, they'll know what I mean). I was shocked when I lived in Spain because the US shows had Spanish accents, not the pseudo standard Latin American I grew up with.

>>Anil said: I can't help but wonder if some of the resentment of American culture's global dominance comes from the sheer schlocky crapness of the product they get.

Culturally, it's what I call second-hand culture. It's like getting hand-me downs from obscenely rich neighbors --not even family. It is a love/hate relationship nonetheless.

Sadder than that is the sobering fact that even dubbed, those shows are better than the locally produced crap you get in our countries. El juego de la oca (Spain)?! Sabado Gigante (US) ?! Any telenovela?! BLEAH!

>>Anil said: Even the worst British sitcoms, which are at least nominally in the English language already, are completely revamped, recast with Americans, and brutally gutted of their humor before being foisted on the United States.

It gives me great pleasure to know that the US version of Absolutely Fabulous was never produced and that the US version of Coupling was dead on arrival.

>>Anil said: And my experience in software leads me to believe that the thought and care that it takes to make an experience palatable and appropriate for a global audience requires a slightly higher level of pre-planning and thought during the creative process, which improves the end result for everyone, including the residents of the work's culture of origin.

Thoughtful design and usability are part of human nature --that's why we don't use tree stumps for parking our greatness but use chairs. Now, when language is involved in the selling of a product, that's where the problems begin.

Take 'Huevos' from Ranchero. Not that it is a big product or anything but, did the people at Ranchero know of the possible consequences of calling their product Huevos? Huevos is eggs but it also means testicles in Spanish. To be mining data with testicles, any testicles is just, well, wrong.

Obviously they never thought of South of the border as a market. Still, for this former college Spanish teacher I just can't even consider using the thing. It's ... just ... wrong ;-)

I had an interesting conversation with some coworkers who live in Spain and Italy about this. On the one hand you have the "handed down"-ness of this sort of thing, which is definitely bad and does help to promote the anti-American sentiments across the world ... but I reckon that's the least of the US's worries in the current political climate.

On the other hand, the situation ends up being that a select number of voice actors end up doing *all* the voice-overs. And once you've played Bruce Willis in the first Die Hard film, you're guaranteed to play him in the others and probably anything else he's ever in. So a voice actor's career ends up linked to that of the actor he usually voices for. The plus for them is that their voice is associated with the actor in public too ... so it doesn't matter what you *look* like, you *sound* like George Clooney!

I would agree that subtitles are infinitely better than dubbing, but I think there's a lot of pressure to still dub things. When I was growing up, in South Africa, the "official national" language was Afrikaans. So on the TV you'd always see everything dubbed into Afrikaans.

But there was still a significant English-speaking population who were white enough to matter (I don't *agree* with that AT ALL, but that's how it was in those days) so they brought in simulcast. Essentially this meant that if you muted your TV and tuned in to a particular radio station, you got to hear the (usually original) English version.

Of course it all fell down a bit if, like my parents, you had the hifi in the other room and time delays meant that it was almost as bad as dubbing anyway ::rolleyes::

Like Meri said, one voice ends up doing all the voice-overs. Not too sure if you were trying to say that, but that one voice not only does all the Bruce Willis voices, but also the voices of lead actors in at least ten other tv programs, ad voice-overs, other films etc.

Very disturbing.

On Anil's comment that an entire generation of Europeans might have grown up to lip synced films ... I don't know about that. I find that hard to believe. I'm just thinking of the richness of French films, Spanish films, and Austrian films. These languages would cover a lot of Europe - but I suppose as soon as you start focusing on Eastern Europe you might run into the lip sync problem.

>>Anil said: Even the worst British sitcoms, which are at least nominally in the English language already, are completely revamped, recast with Americans, and brutally gutted of their humor before being foisted on the United States.

Painfully true. The American version of Men Behaving Badly was awful; censored and devoid of any real character. I shudder at the thought of what will happen to The Office when it gets americanised.

Hang on a minute, Anil. You're missing half the equation! Sure, we Yanks sell the junk to the foreigners... but how come they don't resent their compatriots for buying it, or themselves for watching it? What's wrong with saying "No, we'd rather make/watch our own stuff"? Nobody's stopping them. Where's the individual responsibility?

Damn, do I sound like a Republican or what?

I just want to point out that the lip synching is a lot different from country to country (as you know Europe is not easy to lump together).

Here in Denmark, and the rest of the Scandinavian countries, there is a long tradition for subtitles instead of lip synching. Unless it's something specifically aimed at kids of course. I don't know if this is why Scandinavians generally are better at English or not though :o)

There have been one (1) succesfull Danish sitcom based on the American model. And that one worked because it wasn't politically correct like everything that comes out from the major US networks these days. The tv here have different ways of serving humour (satirical news like 'the daily show' being more and more popular).

Having worked in both TV and film, and having seen the people who make the decisions and how the decisions are made, to expect quality of any kind is utterly amazing to me.

Yes, I'm mad as hell and not going to take it any more...

Non-American programs face a problem with production costs when compared to American shows. Here in Canada you can ALWAYS tell which is a Canadian show, and language isnt the problem.

In Hollywood, more money is spent on sets and salaries, slicker production values, more diverse camera shots, special effects, teams of writers. Never mind that the actual content can be worse, packaging (and world-wide buzz) make the shows a force. America knows how to hype & package better than anyone, which can be a little off-putting.

As for movies, I refuse to watch dubbed movies. Sub-titled only and it better be letter-box. Stupid pan-and-scan.

A couple questions. What was the last foreign language movie shown on American network t.v.? Or has there been one? Was it dubbed?

My 2 (euro) cents...

First, a stupid technicallity... Nemo hasn't opened in Barcelona yet. Can't wait to see it in a big silver screen ;-P

And second... There's quite a lot more reasons for not liking Americans when you go see a movie. Take Mission Impossible 2 (guilty: I saw it). That's a *very* expensive movie. And then, there's the scene in Sevilla, and then some Valencia typical costumes all over the place. People at the cinema were laughing out loud at the silly mistake. They spent millions in FX, not a cent in checking the facts. Having that kind of things all wrong is far worse than dubbing and bad lip syncing and foreign culture (wich is culture, after all).

And finally, everybody should go see *good* movies with subtitles, no matter they're originally in English or Russian, but *bad* acting gets slightly less bad with good dubbing by good actors...

The worst part is the timing of the syndicated television. Not only do they get every American show, they get every American show that got cancelled in two episodes, too. When I was in Israel, I remember seeing shows on for a week or two (every day) that I barely remember ever making a blip on the radar in the US.

Even better were American soap operas. In the evening, right before prime time, they'd be showing Young and the Restless from last year. During the day, they'd be showing Y&R from 3 years ago. Terribly bizarre.

At least there, most prime time American television was subtitled. Some of the other language channels (like Russian) dubbed, and most of the kids television was dubbed. You could find subtitles or dubbing in any number of languages, though. I remember watching French soaps with Hebrew subtitles, too, so it's not all American culture being rammed down their throats.

regarding "Not to mention the fact that entire soundtracks have to be dubbed, so you tend to get long silent spots when there's no talking, or really fake-sounding car doors and bird chirps." and "P.S. Why can't they just have separate audio tracks for the dialogue and the special effects? That way you'd only need to substitute one when dubbing foreign versions.":

standard practice for hollywood sound design is to have different stems of audio. Typically, the music, the dialogue, and the sound effect and everything else are on three separate stems (which may each have multiple tracks or channels, to support surround sound and stuff). That way, when it comes time to dub into another language, they can make a new dialogue stem and then mix it back with the music stem and the FX stem. Sometimes, due to cost cutting, less time and effort (and therefore money) is spent getting an artistic mix of the three elements in the dubbed version, so the overall quality is not as polished compared to the original. Plus the lips don't match up, which ruins the illusion that we are seeing those people talk. Most dialogue in big-budget movies (especially if shot on location) is replaced later in a recording studio by having the actors lip-synch. If you listen for it, you can hear it sometimes, but if the lips are moving in a different language than the audio, you're never gonna fall for it, so you become more aware of the bird chirps and see how fake it all is.

I think good sound design is fascinating.

Dubbing isn't always bad - the French voice actor for Keanu in the first Matrix movie made him sound a lot more intelligent.

Regarding Joerg's post above - as subtitling is generally cheaper, all but kids' movies are subtitled in E.Europe when they are in the theatres, and when they get transferred to video/ TV they often have one bored-sounding male 'reader' reading out the script totally out of synch with the action (for all parts).

It's true. Germany is much more oriented towards the U.S. then it is to Europe. In culture. In politics. And in economy. This might astonish some americans. This fact was one of the important issues discussed when Germany decided not to follow the Americans into the war against Iraq.

notice how most if not all news shows and documentaries, schlockumentaries, re-enactments and interviews on US televison is .. ahem, wait for it... dubbed!
all the world may suffer from hand-me-downitis on film, but US can't STAND having actual japanese talking about iwo jima and stuff and it sounding japanese, u got to have an american fake a japanese-american accent and overdub the poor jap (or gorbachev or whomever) if the show is anything based on facts (or politics or superstition or whatever).
dubbing for movies is an old hand-me-down from the silent age (different language interstitial cards) but the dubbed newsshow and interviews is pure american new invention.

besides the interview broadcaster gets to very viciously slant the dub or oversimplify the answer to fit the broadcaster's owner's tastes.

how about that.

I can't believe I hadn't thought to mention that, Honda. That's one of the things that annoys me the most about watching CNN (it's even CNN Europe).

I'm bleased to be living in the country where each foreign movie is subtitled (movies, TV, everywhere...all but cartoons for kids)...actually, that is one of the few blessings of living in Serbia.

When I first encountered dubbed movie, I was stunned. It practically destroys the movie, since only a handfull of characters are dubbed, rest of them (side kicks) are usually left in original.

And you should here the dubbing in some of the former eastern block countries, like Bulgaria - one (and I mean one) person is reading all the dialogs in a rather flat tone. It is probably dead boring for him too, not too mention the audience. I always wondered what those people think of such movies...Then again, it might be better now, I went there decade ago.

I have spent plenty of time abroad and yes, it does amaze me too seeing the movies dubbed over. Bad actors aren't so bad anymore, but having seen most of the actors in action in English, you long to hear them speak in English!

It's always interesting hearing foreign people singing along to english songs.

There are a lot of language barriers that we North Americans do not realize exist, spend some time abroad and it really hits home. Liza makes some great point above.

Dubbing is by default for audience who enjoy the "product" in their localized language of communication.Some countries have strict laws for dubbing foreign language films.Like any product Dubbing too suffers quality loss sometimes.
Extensive Pre-Planning is done only by few studios (20th CenturyFox,Warner,Paramount,Disney, Dreamworks) whereby they have a specialized "foreign language superivisor" who visits each country to personally supervise entire activity & ensure a certain level of quality at all times.
Sometimes due to budget contraints the films are randomly dubbed by any studio just for the sake of sounding it "local".The percentage of such works is always more than the quality dub releases which mostly leaves the English understanding audiences with a "foreign" attitude towards dubbing.
Subtitling is popular in some European countries & again its takes equal effort to deliver a quality work.

We will be speaking on this at an International forum on Dubbing/Subtitling in Germany in December '04.

Lawrence
CEO
www.media-movers.com