Poll: Subtitled Movies: Yea or Nay

[brenflood]

I took an Italian Film course in college and I thoroughly enjoyed each film except the one that was dubbed into English. Dubbing a film into English gives it this awful goofy quality. I think the voice actors always go way over the top, or they have bad accents themselves. The only live action films that work as dubs are the funny Kung Fu movies like Drunken Master.

While I usually prefer subs to dubs in anime, a lot of more recent dubs are at least decent. They don't have that dreadful comical quality found in live action dubs.
Here are some dubs that I thought were plenty good:
Trigun
Cowboy Bebop
Evangelion

I'm not saying they were better than the orignals, but they weren't crappy or retarded sounding, and the voice acting was very well done. In some cases, I'll prefer the dub over the original Japanese voice work because I heard it first and it wasn't bad. The most obvious example of this is DBZ. I saw it on Cartoon Network first, and only a long time later did I hear it in Japanese. Goku still sounds weird to me with a high voice. He sounds awesome in Spanish, though.
Btw, I voted yea

 

[zana bonanza]

Yeah, I'd rather have a sub than a dub. I know it's been brought up already, but anime is good example. A lot of things are changed for dubs, because they try to get the words to match the mouth movements and sometimes, the actual context is changed due to cultural differences or whatever. (4kids is a big offender of this. I remember watching Pokemon as a kid, and in the English dub, they called rice balls "donuts" because they didn't expect American kids to know what a rice ball was. And they were right, I've never heard of them before. But instead of learning about it, I went on to believe for the longest time that those were just what Japanese donuts looked like. If they had just kept "rice ball", I would have been able to figure out that it was a ball made of rice.) And by watching anime in its original language, I've learned some of that language and about how it works. Granted, I'm no where near fluent, but if for some reason I found myself lost in Japan without a guide, I would be able to communicate on at least a basic level and get help. So there's an educational bonus to it. My French teacher even did this: any movies we watched in class were French with English subtitles.

Also, I love the sound of most foreign languages. English, especially American English, is pretty messy. Other languages tend to sound a lot nicer. x3 And I have no problem reading subtitles and watching the scene simultaneously. It doesn't bother me at all.

Slightly off topic, but what does bother me is when subtitles are inconsistent. And by that, I mostly mean Inglorious Basterds. For example, in one scene they're speaking French, and when they said words like "merci" or "oui", they remained untranslated in the subtitle. Of course, those words are commonly known even to non-French speakers, but that's besides the point. And other times those words were translated. It just seemed so random to me.

 

[Arisato-kun]

I kindly direct you to Baccano!, Cowboy Bebop, Genshiken, FLCL and any Miyazaki movie. Dubs are infinitely superior to subs in all of em.

Wrong. The Cowboy bebop dub was alright, and especially good considering some other dubs, but they weren't as good as the original Japanese voices. No idea on the others though.

I'm quite sure the vast majority of Cowboy Bebop fans would disagree with you, including the creator himelf, but to each his own.

I'm surprised to find someone that hasn't seen Fooly Cooly though....

 

[sln333]

Foreign countries make excellent movies, and voice dubs are stupid, so yay.

 

[SantoUno]

I have no problem with subtitles, I love them, I can easily read the subtitles while still watching the people talking so it's cool.

This is the reason why I enjoyed Run Lola Run.

 

[Assassin Xaero]

I find it distracting. :/

 

[Layz92]

Nightwatch and Daywatch were better in Russian imo. But i just love Russian so I'm biased. Most of the movies I watch in other languages (thank you SBS) don't have a dub version.

 

[Orcus The Ultimate]

when the movie is in english yea, cause i would understand the language but i wouldn't understand the voices and accents ; if it's in a more familiar language like spanish or french then no need 4 subtitles.

 

[Pimppeter2]

I love subtitles. I put them on my games even when its in English.

I got no beef with foreign films.

 

[Caligulove]

Seen a lot of films like that, some good- most though seem a little too artsy or just don't have enough going on to keep my interest. It's the difference between being, say Ingmar Bergman- keeping me with him all the time or being a David Lynch... who had a good movie then just became too hacky arthouse (not that he is subtitled)

I'm getting off track. But I guess a point I should make is that if there are subtitles for the original audio track that a film was made in for whatever language that was... then that is the way it is meant to be seen. It feels weird when I watched something dubbed.

 

[brunothepig]

Ong Bak and Pan's Labyrinth were both awesome and, though I don't watch much, anime is actually painful to listen to in english dubs. But I subtitle almost everything I watch. Since I usually only watch movies with friends or my girlfriend, we're usually talking or laughing through a lot of it.

 

[Zorg Machine]

I generally have subtitles though I remove them when I feel that they're breaking the flow (not very often).
Also, as I never never watch dubs, subtitles are often necessary

 

[The Man Who Is Thursday]

I don't mind subtitled films. Obviously it's not as good as speaking the language, and you lose a lot of the emotions of the characters, but you take what you can get. It seems to me, though, that good subtitling is almost an art form. Translating is hard enough, trying to do it so that a foreigner can watch a movie with (potentially) lightning fast dialogue would be...hard. To say the least.

And subtitles are good because they give us Pan's Labyrinth, Amelie, and--most importantly--the scene with Greedo in Mos Eisley cantina.

 

[SturmDolch]

Dubbed pisses me off; I can't watch dubbed movies. I don't understand how people can't keep up with subtitles, or feel they detract from the movie. You read them quick, then watch the actor and get this sense of understanding what they're saying without reducing the quality of the acting. Plus, it makes the whole movie more believable... I disliked Enemy at the Gates for this reason; the Russians all talk English, wtf?

 

[Floppertje]

yea. it's great for people whose english isn't good enough to watch the whole movie without subtitles. and do you have any goddamn idea how mindblowingly awful dutch voiceovers are? seriously, it ruins the entire movie. besides, if it wasn't for subs I would've missed out on taxi.

 

[kawaiiamethist]

I grew up watching the SBS (australia's multicultural station), so I was conditioned from an early age to see subs as normal. One of my fave fantasy movies is still Italy's Fantaghiro, and I wouldn't have seen it had I been anti-sub.

 

[Shaegor]

I always take subs over dubs. Mainly because dubs always screw it up somehow.

 

[Sven und EIN HUND]

There are some brilliant foreign films, in which case I don't mind subtitles at all. Some anime series' are better with subtitles (samurai champloo), some are better with english dubbing (cowboy bebop).

[sub]You should make an "it depends" option[/sub]

 

[Falseprophet]

Depends, really. Subs are usually better, but I can only watch foreign films if I completely devote my attention to them. I obviously can't read subs while doing something else, so foreign films are no good for running in the background while I check email or whatnot.

When I watch English-language TV/films, I generally turn on subtitles anyway, so if I'm washing dishes or something else drowns out sound I can still follow the story. If a group of friends wants to give a movie the MST3K treatment, then subs are a necessity.

For anime, I used to be a sub purist when I was a big otaku about 10 years ago, but that was helped by the fact almost all dubs of that era were utter shite. Not that subs were much better: I watched the late 80s release of Appleseed which featured dull yellow subtitles on mostly light grey backgrounds--practically unreadable. Even so, there were a few companies bucking the trend back then--Pioneer dubs were fantastic and ADV and U.S. Manga Corps seemed to be trying, at least.

I don't watch much anime these days, but when I do I prefer dubs and subs running simultaneously, because a) dubbing (at least in North America) is done way better now, b) I realized most anime has the same 6 types of Japanese voices over and over again and they irritate me--especially those annoying yandere/tsundere girls, c) I don't have to give it my undivided attention.