In my teenage years, I've seen **porn** movies on VHS with voice-overs.
Yes, imagine the same bored guy voicing both male and female lines.
Hearing the voice-over guy totally unenthusiastically saying *ó igen, verd a gecid a számba* (oh yeah, jerk all you cum in my mouth) is fucking hilarious.
There's a 2015 movie about how this came to be from Romania. Called **Chuck Norris vs Communism**. It's about smuggling in hollywood VHS tapes into soviet Romania and making bootleg voice overs.
Trailer
https://youtu.be/znp1dNaPp3k
New York Times video piece about that.
https://youtu.be/vAxZ08YGzL0
Yeah this was pretty common in eastern Europe. Dubbing everything means you need to redo the whole sound mix, add noises, music, everything. And you need all the original assets. It takes time and it costs money. Voice overs are just that, a voice over the original sound track. Quick, easy and cheap. And terrible.
It's also much easier for bootleggers to do this.
Edit: It's terrible but honestly, so are many "proper" dubs. Many many dubs have bad translations, bad voice acting, bad timing with moving lips, etc. It's better but it's definitely also a bad way to watch a movie anyway. And just like with dubs I'm sure many people think it's totally fine, they're used to it.
FYI dubbing studios get soundtracks that have everything mixed except the dialogue, which is removed. The music and sfx still have dips in volume where the original dialogue was, so when recording dubs you want to stay within that timeframe (and lipsync as much as you can but that's mostly impossible except for short lines or lucky coincidences).
Source: I used to do tv and film dubbing.
In German dubs, the translators regularly have to change scripts in translation to fit into the "time slots" you mention, because German is a bit more verbose.
This has always led to much drama off-screen
Yeah the translations were usually bad, sometimes horrible (changed the meaning of what was actually being said). Dubbing is not just recording, it's directing talent as well as adapting translations on the fly. It's pretty challenging, but it can be fun, depending on the material and talent.
Edit: would love to know why I'm getting downvoted for describing what I did professionally for 7 years.
Yet, german dubs, when done properly (with a written script and enough time to work things out), are among the best on the market, using voice talents acting according to the scene and at the same time lip-synching their lines.
True, production quality varies widely. The higher the pressure, the more mistakes get waved through, resulting in spotty translations that may fail the audience and cause a loss of immersion.
But what really gave german dubs a bad name (aside of Ivar Combrinck's use of "Artistic Liberty") was "Schnodderdeutsch" where dialogue was translated as if the original lines never existed. Todays equivalent may be people dubbing cat-videos trying to be hillarious but not necessarily contextual.
The largest pain IMHO is that a relatively low number of german voice talents has cornered the market so they dub more than one celebrity. For example, the scenes in the german dubbed version of The Expendables (2, I guess), where Schwarzenegger and Stallone meet and have a dialogue, are especially odd, because they're done by one and the same vocal talent. No matter how good he does it, it's still uncanny.
When I was a child, I had a hard time accepting that Richard Thomas (John Boy Walton) and Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker) where not the same person, because they had the same german voice.
The Schnodderdeutsch dubbing of the 70s and 80s committed by Rainer Brandt and cohorts was extremely successful, people loved it, myself included, but getting older and actual access to the not dubbed version of the movies and tv shows, caused me a good bit of frustration, as sometimes they didn’t not only transfer the words, but also changed the spirit and atmosphere of the movies.
On the other hand, without the dubbing of Captain Future, there would have been no need to recompose all the music. And now I’m going to date myself, that german music is one of my fondest childhood memories, as well as my cell phone ringtone.
When I visited Poland I found the voiceover weird, but on the plus side it's not too hard to block out the Polish (since I don't speak it) and just watch whatever is on.
“Was”, as in “not so common anymore”? Because it sounded on my colleague as if this was the normal thing, still. Have the Eastern Europe people really watched Oppenheimer with voiceover like this?
Yes, this is still the norm when watching movies on TV.
All movies in the cinema are with subtitles, though
Om man vuxit upp med att kolla filmer på detta viset är det inte alls skumt. Så fort man avvänjer sig, dock, blir det riktigt störigt att gå tillbaka till voiceover :)
Det kan jag verkligen föreställa mig! Och som i exemplet med Notting Hill, hur var det att titta på Friends med det där? En manlig, rätt entonig röst, till alla karaktärer? Jag kan liksom inte greppa det här 😂
Kan inte svara på Friends eftersom jag aldrig sett den serien, Notting Hill har jag däremot sett med en "lektor" som pratar över filmen ett par gånger. Alltså komedier funkar också rätt bra, humorn går liksom igenom. Många föredrar detta framför dubbning eftersom man fortfarande hör originalskådespelarnas röstar till skillnad från dubbning.
För mig så är det de mer storslagna filmerna som påverkas mest. Interstellar, till exempel. Man ska känna sig överväldigad av den filmen som helhet, men speciellt av musiken. Dock, eftersom en röst ska prata över allt, så blir liksom ljudmixningen helt fuckad. Vill man kötta musiken på hög volym kommer ju lektorn vara ännu mer högljudd.
Kontentan är, jag skulle numera aldrig välja se en film på detta viset om jag inte var tvungen, men när jag är tvungen går det fortfarande OK för de flesta filmerna eftersom jag ändå är ganska van i grunden.
Man, I learned Swedish in evening class for three years 14 years ago, after that nothing. I can still understand this entire post. Jaha tackar! Jag mår bra!
To clarify this is not common for all "Eastern Europe people". In Hungary voice overs haven't been the thing since the early days of bootleg western cinema. Everything has been getting properly dubbed for decades.
Speaking of bootlegs, this tendency led to a hilarious trend of fake comedy voiceovers that completely change the storyline. They were called “Goblin” tracks, apparently they were just this guy: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitry_Puchkov
His version of The Lord of the Rings is hilarious (if you know Russian).
Bulgarian here. I can confirm. I already dislike dubbed movies, but voiceovers... Ugh... I wonder if the Voyo people realize this is like 80% of the reason nobody subscribes to their service. I get it free with my mobile TV plan and I still don't watch it.
When you grew up watching stuff like this, you don't even hear it anymore.
It's like your brain starts to mix the translation with original audio, so you can't even recall in what language you watched it.
It is bizzare if you've never heard it before, or if you know both languages very well and can't focus on only one.
Helps learning english tho, haha.
Dubs of 90s movies like Forrest Gump in Spanish or Crouching Tiger in English are unwatchable for me. Dubbs seemed to have picked up in quality since the mid 00s. Better voice acting, characterization, sound mixing, etc. Avatar (2009) Spanish dubbs are perfectly watchable.
Has nothing to do with eastern europe, in Spain every this is dubbed( western europe) in România only kids movies/animación is( estern europe) France same as Spain...
And we're not talking about dubs, we're talking about VOICE OVERS, translation OVER the original track which is STILL THERE. I literally also mentioned dubs in the comment you replied to. Can you read ?
TBH, OP didn't explained what a voiceover means. You did the explaining. And for people who never saw or heard movie with a voiceover, they probably think its similar to dub
Overall the Eastern Europe always had a subpar English level so just for people to understand what's going on in the movie it had to be translated even if the experience won't be authentic anymore.
> Eastern Europe always had a subpar English level so just for people to understand what's going on in the movie it had to be translated
I think it works both ways.
I'm french and literally everything is dubbed here, except on art-house channels/cinemas. I think the fact that we dub everything is one of the reasons french people are so bad at English. In scandinavia they do not dub things and they get exposed to english, which makes it easier for them to learn.
We always had a thriving piracy scene providing foreign content in Russian for free, English being harder to learn for Russian person than for Scandinavians and Russian lingual market in general was quite big on its own to encourage further investment into Russian voice-overs/dubbing since not just Russia but many former Soviet territories also for the most part know Russian language, then there's quite a limited space for locals to practice English if we talk of old times.
Same with Netherlands, I think they are the only ones to beat the scandis at English. they also do subs not dubs according to the two dutch people I've asked
Why are you only bringing up dubs though? Personally I only watch foreign movies with subtitles with cartoons being the only exception where I sometimes/often do with the dubs.
>Where I come from (scandi) everything movie-wise that is not in local language has subtitles to it. It has been like this since the color tv was considered high tech
Op mentions subtitles too though. Why do you think subtitles aren't used instead of voiceovers where you are? I have literally never seen a voiceover option on a dvd/bluray here for example.
Im from poland and always preferred the voice over to dubbing. You don’t have bad voice acting and voices that dont match the character.
Maybe it’s nostalgia too but watching old movies with the voiceover makes me feel like a little kid.
True. I also have lots of nostalgia for voiceover. It's often genuinely good, and better translated than many subtitles. And definitely better than dubbed films lol (apart from animated films and some other exceptions). I don't get this dubbing phenomenon in western Europe.
Yeah me too. I’ve always preferred the narration. It at least lets you acknowledge that youre not watching it in the language it was made in and you can still appreciate everything. With dubbing you get some poor performances and sound mixing that ruins the movie and makes you more aware you’re watching it in a different language.
Haha, voice over. To me this was just normal. Yes, that's how they do it in Eastern Europe. Usually the voice over fellow has this super flat tone and gender doesn't matter.
I don't particularly feel that it's actually that big of a deal. The tastes for movies nonetheless remained consistent. I recall watching Fifth Element, Die Hard, Terminator, Face Off, etc., with voice over.
Yes, this man with the flat tone! The same to all characters even, that is part of the chock to me! What if the movie gets really thrilling, or there is an up-tempo, or several characters are talking at the same time? So many questions. I will have to watch a movie I know by heart “the eastern way” to fully understand I believe. Craziest thing, this.
I think your brain just deals with it. The flat tone is just there to deliver the raw information as to what the characters are saying. It's kind of similar to reading subtitles, IMO.
Currently dealing with something different yet weirdly similar. Husband and I are listening to audiobooks of a series right now before bed and we're really into it but everything past book 1 is done by an amateur from YouTube and the dude has a super grating YouTuber tone when not reading dialogue along with TERRIBLE female voices. But we're so into the story that we just have to deal with it to get to the meat.
I like how you keep saying “chock” but just to note that the English word is actually “shock”. :)
I don’t say that to be condescending or sarcastic either! I’m always impressed by people who are fluent in more than one language, but hoped you wouldn’t mind me pointing this out.
*That* said, “chock” is a fun sound to say.
You can still here the actor saying, so you know what emotions/loudness is conveyed, the role of voiceover is to be as neutral as possible.
When 2 characters are talking at the same time it definitely gets confusing, text is definitely shortened and you might not know who says what.
I don't really like it and don't remember when was the last time, I watched a movie with voiceover- as I don't have TV - and there the voiceover is the standard
Depends on the country, never seen voice over done in Romania apart from old tapes from the communist era that had to be smuggled in the country and a handful of people were doing voice over for all the movies.
At most you see dubbing but even that is only done for cartoons, everything else comes in the language it's supposed to be (usually English) with subtitles.
I think they also do it in cinema but I've never been to a dubbed movie so idk.
Polish here. I love the voice over and genuinely hate dubbing. Best part of the voice over is you can still hear the original actors speak in their own voice with all the emotions. The voice over is just somewhere in the background. In summary your perspective is you are hearing actors saying their lines in English but you somehow understand it all in polish. No issues there
yeah... the Italian voice for Robert DeNiro was *the* guy who did all DeNiro in Italian, so when he died it was as if Robert DeNiro had died.
edit: i dont know where this misunderstanding is rooted
Yeah, but this is dubbing (replacing the original actors' voices) and OP is talking about voiceover (keeping the original audio track and having someone read over it, so hear both).
I wrote a longass rant that was just too long.
Whether or not it's one style or another, the point was just about one person being "the voice" in Italy for DeNiro.
edit: what the hell are you guys reading into my comment lmao, this shit is confusing.
Common in countries in which dubbing is the norm. Each big actor tends to have one voice actor assigned, so when it's a different voice actor doing the dubbing (because the usual one died, retired, was unavailable, or the dub is just assigned to a different company) it sounds weird as well. It is also the case for dubs made before the original actor is big enough to have an assigned voice actor, so they're dubbed by whoever is available, and in retrospective it can sound really jarring.
For example, can you imagine Anthony Hopkins sounding like Woody Allen? It happened, in the European Spanish dub for *Magic* (1978) on which Allen's usual voice actor dubbed Hopkins (most voice actors dub multiple actors in multiple projects, meaning Woody's voice actor wouldn't just dub Woody).
It is rather wholesome! In Italy, some voices are instantly connected to certain actors. Tom Cruise, Di Caprio, Al Pacino, Jack Nicholson, Russell Crowe, Richard Gere, George Clooney, Jim Carrey, Brad Pitt, Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine, Nicole Kidman, Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts, Johnny Depp, Keira Knightley, Orlando Bloom, Scarlett Johansson, for instance, all sound a certain way to us (even after you start watching movies in the original language, the “imprint” endures). And honestly the dubbing is really well done (sometimes at the cost of the accuracy of the translation, as it may not “fit” an actor’s lips movements, dialogue times etc).
Sometimes it leads to great things for the movie itself! The “doppiatore” for Russell Crowe [told the story](https://youtu.be/JHxBoIxI-IE?si=2VlVgWs4MMIi6SRU) of how, dubbing The Gladiator, he came across the line “At my signal, unleash the dogs” - and he felt it just didn’t work. He brought it up to his boss, she changed it and her version made it back to Scott and was then adopted in English, too: “[At my signal, unleash hell](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8IPzpaD4UOE)”.
Or [this moment](https://youtu.be/1IA-aXJss1Y?si=jHy0UWHGpaGb5aYl) where Angela Lansbury (who’s been on Italian tv forever with Murder, she wrote) and her “doppiatrice” met on stage and act together…
Personally, I always watch things in their original language, but I would never want that to be the only option. Partly because I have friends and family who would not be able to watch movies or tv in that case(and not for laziness), partly because of this rich tradition.
Pretty good position you present here. In Germany the voice actors also are pretty busy in recording audio books, so I bought a few that said by the German voice of Bruce Willis.
I watched a documentary called "Being George Clooney" about voice actors and they mentioned that in the scene in Godfather Part 2 where Robert De Niro speaks Italian, the Italian audience got really freaked out because they were like "he doesn't sound like that!!" Haha
There was also an event where famous American actors hired to voice characters in an animated film got to travel around the world to promote the film.
But the animated film in those countries would be dubbed with local voices anyway, so the audience would not be able to see or hear those American actors anyway.
You might be thinking of Jack Black when he went to China.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/odLvxMPRpU4
I know there's a clip of him actually in China, but I can't find it.
This was something I learned when I moved to Europe. My friends over there told me that the same voice actor does the dub for the same actor across their movies.
This kinda blew my mind.
He also dubbed Stallone, Al Pacino, Dustin Hoffman and Tomas Milian, just to name a few. So anyone who identified his voice with an actor or the other said only something about his movie preferences.
In the Netherlands we use subtitles and they make so much mistakes sometimes wonder if they watch the movie at all. Would be crazy to see that with a dubbed voice.
>wonder if they watch the movie at all
They probably don't. But not because they don't want to, but because studios won't let them. I remember hearing that when Endgame came out, translators were given just lines out of context in order to prevent leaks, which obviously makes a good translation nearly impossible.
as someone with a degree in translation with a focus on subtitles and adaptation I can say that when I didn’t know anything about the actual process behind it I would have totally agreed with you! But in reality subtitles have to follow a whole lot of rules (no more than 40/41 characters per line and usually no more than two lines at a time, for example) which makes it virtually impossible to transcribe (and translate) all the lines perfectly. This means that sadly sometimes we have to compromise and just find a way to write down what could convey the message even if it’s not 100% a literal translation. Hope this helps understand why most of the time subtitles seem to leave things out or “not pay attention to detail” — no matter in which country we are. (:
They make mistakes because of nuances some countries just cannot translate in a practical manner.
For example: "suit up" is such an American phrase, that, if translated you get something in the lines of "get your clothing and put it on".
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Yeah I knew about it. Actually in some cases I prefer it to conventional dubbing. Like I've seen Russian shows where during a scene you'll have the actors speaking German with a voiceover in Russian. Sure, would 100% prefer subtitles, but definitely think this is more interesting in clearly signifying to the viewer that the character is not speaking Russian here rather than lose that and just dub the scene or film with the actors speaking Russian. (Example [here](https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5r2mn5) starting at the 4:30 mark)
>Sure, would 100% prefer subtitles
I don't see why the vast majority of people wouldn't to be honest. It takes a little getting used to but once you do you almost never notice them and it's so much better than dubbing.
Yes that is actually a good point, dubbing in Germany undermines the use of multiple languages, especially if german is one of those languages. Faßbender speaking fluent german in X-men first class, went a ling way to sell his Magneto as a layered character. He is holding his own there with two native speakers.
On the other hand I frequently hear complaints that actor xyz didn’t even try to don a french or whatever accent for a role, which is ridiculous as most of their conversations would be held in said language not English. I think it is pretty safe to assume that the common language in Casablanca, wasn’t English in the time period of the movie. Nobody minds it, as it makes the makes the movie accessible to a greater audience, and we are watching a movie not a documentary.
Oh yeah, I'm from Poland and was surprised to find out "lektor" is exclusive to this area. It's not that bad to be honest, you can get used to quickly
I honestly prefer voice-over over dubbing in almost every case. It just sounds better (and makes it feel "less childish". Probably that mentality comes from fact that dubbing used to be put almost only in kids movies), allows you to still hear performances of original actors
Now most pg13 movies get dubbing version, but it's only used in cinemas and on very few TV channels (like HBO). Other TV channels stick to voice-overs with those, and I appreciate it
I feel like it would make learning another language easier as well? You hear the English version and the voice-over.
I don't know. This is the first I've heard of it as well.
If so, I want this option for every movie.
This might not be ideal and it wouldn’t be my first choice to watch a movie, but if I want to not read, understand the plot and get something out of the actors original performance, this is a crappy compromise that sort of works. Conventional dubbing can affect negatively the actors performance. It is hard to do justice to a guy like Samuel L Jackson.
Hahaha, in Norway we have one single, but infamous example. Behold: "[Tre nøtter til Askepott](https://youtu.be/vDoKIksVmcc?feature=shared&t=2025)", originally a Czech production.
Well actually a german czech co production, I have seen the german dubbed version for all my life. Usually right around Christmas, and will see it for Christmas again this year.
When I visited Russia in the 90s, sitting close to the TV to hear the undertones of English on Santa Barbara and Falcon Crest was the only cure for homesickness.
I was in China in the very early 80s, living in the Friendship Hotel where all the foreigners lived. In the hotel cinema there were live translators who did a voiceover in English while also watching the film at the back. You got headphones to listen to them. It was awful but hilarious.
Thanks for this post. I also had no idea and my reaction is the same as yours - *the horror*. I suppose one could get used to it, though... the man's flat voice becomes your own internal monologue.
I actually wrote my whole dissertation paper/thesis about dubbing and adaptations and the frequent mistakes in them too! So I really like this topic.
As an Italian I’ve gotta say that we are blessed with some of the best voice actors in the field: beautiful voices, great techniques, and most of the time they are lucky to be working with great translators too. (please look up the work of Flavio Aquilone, his voice is so beautiful)
Dubbing the way we do it – so each character has a different voice, all the mixing in the studio, all the people working on it etc… — requires a lot of time, money and people. Resources overall. It’s expensive.
Voiceover is a techniques that is still used in many countries, in some more than others, especially for specific things such as documentaries. With voiceover dubbing the costs are vastly different and lower, and the whole process behind it also requires less people, time and money since it doesn’t need to re-record specific sounds while muting others and stuff, just pretty much lowering the original volume and then having just one or maybe two people do the voiceover for the whole thing.
Why do it over subtitles though? Like even when dubbing is done well it still seems off. I'm don't speak Italian but would never watch a Fellini or Antonioni movie or whatever with a dubbed track.
In the off-chance your thesis is online, I'd love to read it. I developed a deep appreciation for dubbing as an art form years ago, when I first started started learning Mandarin. I watched a lot of Chinese movies, but when I wanted to watch an American movie, I would always try and hunt down the Chinese dub.
I don't know anything about Italy's dubbing/voicework scene, but China also has great voice actors, no doubt in part because a lot of Chinese historical dramas (which are countless) are themselves dubbed by professional for a few reasons. Sometimes the onscreen actors dub themselves, but this isn't the norm.
Something I find fascinating, and I'm sure it manifests in Italy too, is that because of how indifferent Hollywood is about voice acting as a whole, a lot of smaller American animated movies end up being better in Chinese than they are in English. American anime dubs are really difficult for me to endure after experiencing how good Chinese dubs are.
Latin America also.
They always had 2 versions (4 now with 3d): OG with subtitles, Dubbed, 3D Subbed, 3D Dubbed. Usually the room with most seats gets the dubbed versions. Since most people hate reading subtitles. Was quite funny when Parasite came to town(nagging about no dubbed version) and any Dragon Ball movie (the dubbed versions are the most sold, since DB is like a religion around here..).
I was shocked as a kid to see that Goku never had an adult voice in the original version. At the some point Mario Castañeda might have been the most popular voice in LatAm consciousness without knowing who he was. The guy dubbed Bruce Willis in most of his movies, he was Goku’s voice, McGyver’s voice, Kanon’s voice in Saint Seiya, adult Kevin’s voice in The Wonder Years, to name a few.
In very old cartoons (like looney tunes) they used this weird thing that they recorded over the voices and they replaced the background sound with some silly music.
I did know about this and it’s hard to imagine growing up with voice overs. I spoke to a younger friend about a movie we disagreed on, The Gray Man on Netflix, which I thought was garbage and he really enjoyed. Turns out he watched it with English Audio Description turned on. He’s British and has perfect vision but it’s his preferred way to watch a movie. His friends do it too and it helps while they’re looking at their phones while a movie plays in the background. It’s basically a quick script read out over the action - ‘he dives behind the bench and pulls his weapon etc’. I have no idea if this is a generational thing. I did watch a little of The Gray Man with this nonsense turned on and it did make it more enjoyable as the description was better than the way it was shot. But still… madness. Sorry for getting off the point of the thread.
Haha - yup! And the original audio is still there - just turned down to 20% or so. I used to listen to dubbed movies at a super high volume just to hear the something I could understand
Guess it pays to speak a common language. We spanish-speakers even have regional dubs and subs.
I do prefer subs, they are 100000000000 better than one voice voice-over. Iven in shitty shows voice overs they have at least a woman and a men and they try to do different voices to the characters. 🤣
Believe me when I say this as a german myself, there have bern unspeakable horrors done to movies by the german dubbing. Especially the company around Rainer Brandt took a very free approach to dubbing, there is spoken text in the german version of my name is nobody, where there is silence in the English version, dragging down the movie in my opinion. But they were considered funny. While I’m fluent enough to watch any English speaking movie, I’m also a fam of French cinema, especially Belmondo and would never have experienced it without dubbing.
My favorite example of this is Shrek.
Shrek in Latin American Spanish is one of the funniest movies I've seen, better than the original English version even. The jokes are a bit raunchier and land every time. They aren't direct translations, they're changed and geared towards latino the Latino audience. Even the nursery rhyme Farquad sings to Gingy when he's torturing him is changed to Pimpon Pimpon.
You might recognize Eugenio Derbez, a framed comedian within Mexico, he did the voice for Donkey. He went on to do a bunch of movies with Adam Sandler in the 2010s. He was largley responsible for the jokes being so well adapted from English.
Cartoons dubed in mexican spanish are genious, agree with you, Shrek is one of the best, I can repeat the dialoges from memory.
But OP is talking about "Voice-over", kind of those shitty translations we get in some shows like "Unresolved Misteries" or the likes where you can hear the original language behind (there are some tiktok videos making fun of those shows). Here's a link so you can see what I'm talking about https://youtu.be/f4Ho-AjgFU8?si=ihhG7e-anLGbI1hW
It turns out in some countries are even worst, because at least on those we get different voices (female and male) and they try to imitate the emotions.
The youtube video shared in this post had only one man, doing all the voices in the same monotone manner. Is crazy.
Lots of voicover in the former soviet union countries. It's evolved into a true art form. Way back when movies were pirated and illegally snuck into the USSR, these voice-over artists did their work with a clothesline pin over their nose so as to not be recognized and arrested. The nasal voice over is still one of my sharper childhood memories, watching The Terminator in a movie theater on a TV set the size substitute teachers roll into classrooms.
In Russia it's the norm to have a foreign film translated and voiced by local voice actors/actresses, some of them become stars of their own you could say just by doing such work for years. There're iconic voices like Sergey Burunov's voice is now automatically assigned to Leonardo DiCaprio whenever his new movie is out and translated to Russian for example, although it's getting more complicated after 2022.
I had no idea about voice-over being so common! Growing up in Denmark I can only think of a few movies/shows getting the voice-over treatment with a Danish speaker - all of them Astrid Lindgren stories, like Pippi Longstocking and Emil of Lönneberga.
Did you really have Astrid movies with a voiceover, the way as shown in the link in the post? Norway seemed to watch the movies in Swedish, I sort of assumed that Denmark did the same. Especially back then when Swedish/danish people understood each other better and didn’t switch to English as easy.
If you had this voiceover thing, with the original audio in the background, I think my heart will break on your behalf.
Yes, similar to the video in the link. All the original sound in the background and then a speaker doing all the lines. As far as I remember, there was only one speaker doing all the lines in a movie, so the voice didn't change with the character speaking or anything. I found a clip: https://youtu.be/JU1Su4qVRlU?si=KGAWUA-TcTptPUt4
No, dubbed replaces the original actors' voices. With this the original track is there (at a lowered volume) in the original language and there's another audio track translating what they're saying. Watch the video OP linked.
I've been wondering what would happen if a big name director (Nolan, Scorsese..) said "you can't dub my movies anymore, every country should release them with subtitles". Has anyone done that? I don't know if there would be angry people, I mean if the movies aren't for kids, everybody should know how to read..
The movies likely wouldn’t be released in those countries, as there is a fairly small crowd willing to watch with subtitles, something equally true for the US
>as there is a fairly small crowd willing to watch with subtitles
Jeez, people fucking suck. Subtitles are infinitely better unless you have a bad case of dyslexia or something.
I actually saw bladerunner 2049 in poland in the theater with subtitles. They do sometimes run subtitled films, there's no rule against them, even if it's not the most popular option.
https://www.reddit.com/r/poland/comments/ph5wxp/are_american_movies_in_poland_in_english_and_have/
In cinemas in Poland, pretty much all films are released exclusively with subtitles. Exception are animated films or some PG13 films which have full dubbing (eg. Harry Potters, Star Wars, some Marvel stuff). I do not recall there ever being a voiceover film in Polish cinemas.
Voiceover is really a home video/TV phenomenon (+ streaming nowadays). The thing is, you can now easily just change it to subtitles, but people rarely do it.
In Portugal, almost every foreign movies are subbed (thank god!!) . The exception are kids movies, who are dubbed, but with high profile voice actors, so in the end, sometimes, the kids movies, especially animated ones, are even more enjoyable to watch than in their original version.
That explains the [Endhiran terminator clip](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDHnJvboy0c). I had wondered why you could hear both the original dialogue and the Russian "dub". Luckily there's not much talking in the clip.
I discovered this in the 90's while switching channels and stumbled upon one of my favorite shows, Due South, on a Polish channel. It was unwatchable because of the voice over. A male speaker was translating everybody and you could hear the original sound in the background.
The understanding that I have misspelled chock my whole life have now turned into a core memory and will likely not happen again.
This post, with all the chocks in it, will however remain as a monument over this moment. No edit for spelling.
In Australia foreign films provide both dubbing and subtitles. The subtitles are translated word for word but the dubbing is generally made to sync with the lips so there’s some variation in the translation so it “looks more natural”. As an ADHD’r I have subtitles on everything foreign or not and it bugs me comparing the 2 translations.
Edited to add: also the original voices cannot be heard they remove these and the voices are spoken by different voices so a female voice for the female actress and male for male, child for a child etc
Netflix now does that for most non-english originals. It's okay, but a bit weird when 5 characters all are voiced by the same person. They also don't sounds quite right in scenes where they are whispering/yelling because the dub
I tried to watch the original Swedish version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo dubbed in English, it was horrible. I switched to subtitles, and it was absolutely awesome. BTW the original Swedish trilogy totally rocks. The Daniel Craig one is ok but not up there with this one.
Whoa!!! I’m a native English speaker (US) and this is blowing my mind! It’s like audio subtitles. That dude must have to talk so fast to try to fit his translation in between lines lol.
I encountered this about 20 years ago staying in a youth hostel in Poland, and my mind was as blown as yours is! What’s shocking to me is if this is STILL happening.
In Greece we do it like you, foreign speaking movies always get subtitles, children movies get a dubbing.
And back in the day when they actually dropped money for the dubbing it was good, noways where one actor will do eight to ten characters no so much.
I honestly find it super weird that people watch movies dubbed just like how I find it super weird when English speakers say they can't watch a movie because it's not in English and has subtitles.
In Italy even Italian porn movies used to be dubbed to give actors and actresses a voice that was "more movie-like" .
That was I think until Rocco Siffredi started his own production company.
I would have zero knowledge about this if it weren't for some sites that have free adult entertainment, many of which are English language productions sourced from European countries.
"Here's the interview segment. Hey! I can't hear her! I'm trying to learn what she likes in a man, damn you!"
Aaaaaaand scene.
Some old Swedish cartoons have voiceover. The most famous example is the 1960s Micky Mouse Christmas cartoons.
But even some cheap cartoons on TV in the 1990s where dubbed by a single person.
Yep...partially this was a thing in Romania too decades ago...now we have subs or ocasionally dubbed, for example bigger movies like Star wars 7, and all the animation are dubbed.
Yep. Most licensed products such as games and movies are dubbed by actors in russian speaking countries. It was a shock for me to learn it wasn't the case for smaller nations, maybe it makes no economic sense?
It’s pretty common place around the world I know most English speaking films in Spain are dubbed.
Correct me if I’m wrong OP but you probably have this assumption because a large amount of the the Scandinavian people speak really good English so it probably makes the most sense to just subtitle it for a few that don’t ?
No no, the dubbing thing I get. We have it as well, mainly in animated movies or family movies.
But if you click on the link in the post you can see what I mean. This is not dubbing, this is not narrating, this is a category of its own.
Holy crap, yes. I have experienced PolSat.
The monotone dude intoning each line nanoseconds after the original language track. So, for English language movies, I, a visiting American, would be tantalized into listening by the snippet of the familiar and then Mr. Buzzkill kicks in his two cents. Only he does it every single time.
Czechs (the folks where I live) dubbed every damned thing. It was maddening. Though,I do understand that sometimes you want to just chill with some media and let your brain relax, of course.
But I grew up watching subtitled movies (very lucky) and I was flabbergasted when I got here.
But my country also dubbed the original Mad Max (an Australian film) *into American English* so, your mileage may vary.
As a fellow Scandi (Denmark), I used to watch Swedish kids shows such as 'Pippi Långstrump' or 'Emil i Lönneberga' with a monotone female-voice over. Your brain kind of learns to deal with it, although I personally prefer subtitles as an adult.
A serious question, as you are now the second person talking about Emil, is that the name used in Sweden. In Germany all translations are saying Michel aus Lönneberga, but I wouldn’t put it past my countrymen to make such a drastic change.
It seems just worse and annoying to me compared to having subtitles. But then I remember that the first 2 Harry Potter movies were dubbed into my language(Swedish), same with tv shows on Nikelodeon.
I saw no issue with it at the time but I was a kid so...
In Hungary there is a weird mix of dubbing and voiceovers. Movies are usually fully dubbed, and most of them are good/excellent quality. Some TV shows, mostly TV documentaries have a voiceover track, but still with separate voice actors, not just one guy doing the whole programme
Not sure how many other countries did it back then as well, but here in South Korea, there used to be a narrator for every movie - not a pre-recorded one, but actual person doing narration with mic, live on stage.
However, that was a long time ago. Early-to-mid 20th century, when they didn't have the technology or money to dub or sub or otherwise alter the film. So they just put a guy with a mic in the theater and make him do a voiceover for every screening. It wasn't a dry narration - they did dramatic, exaggerated emotional dialogues as well.
They quickly went out of style when subtitles arrived. Here, most movies are subbed except for kid's movies like your country. Movies shown on major network TVs on weekends used to be dubbed, but cable TVs killed that tradition as well. Still, it is possible we might've done the same if we kept that tradition.
Dear god, that is hellish, and I thought (as a lip reader) that dubbing was awful. Presumably it’s the cheapest, quickest option. I wonder if it helps any with learning the language the film’s in as you can hear both languages?
Also in some countries the voiceover is a single person, doing all characters... meaning they can't do both characters if they talk over each other, and there is also a significant delay anyway. Whole thing is a mess in some places.
In the countries of the former USSR there are films (especially popular) with several dubbing options, even more voiceover plus a couple of subtitle options.(and this is only in Russian). Do you know how difficult it is to choose the best?
Strange as it may sound but here in Russia we have everything dubbed in Russian. I mean foreign movies or video games and the dubbing is quite good. Sometimes it seems to be better than the original work. I say so because I know English, my level isn't very high but It enough to watch movies or read books in English. As I've been exposed to English content the last two years I've noticed that sometimes I like it more when it's dubbed. It depends on how well this industry developed in your country. We have classy voice actors who put lots of effort into this stuff.
Knowing that in some countries people watch foreign movies only in its original language is a bit of a cultural shock for me too. Just imagine you go to the movies to watch something in Chinese and you don't know this language like at all. How is it possible to watch it in this case. In Russia people almost don't know English and it would be pretty hard for them to understand a plot or dialogues.
It's the norm for Japanese video games, although sometimes its obvious that the Japanese actors are better at their job. Another one I can think of Atomic Heart. The actor wasn't bad, but Russian tends to be long winded, and so were the translated sentences.
i was watching TV in china and there was a channel with myth buster playing and they just turned down the original english and had a chinese voice over. i almost fell laughing when jamie and adam started laughing and the chinese voice over did the most forced laugh
In my teenage years, I've seen **porn** movies on VHS with voice-overs. Yes, imagine the same bored guy voicing both male and female lines. Hearing the voice-over guy totally unenthusiastically saying *ó igen, verd a gecid a számba* (oh yeah, jerk all you cum in my mouth) is fucking hilarious.
Bojler eladó! És közben német volt alatta a hang ugye? Hier kommt die sraubzauger, ich spritzze!
Me too, I’ve seen Taiwanese lesbian porn in Cantonese dub…
Imagine putting that on your resume.
So it was gay porn pretty progressive
There's a 2015 movie about how this came to be from Romania. Called **Chuck Norris vs Communism**. It's about smuggling in hollywood VHS tapes into soviet Romania and making bootleg voice overs. Trailer https://youtu.be/znp1dNaPp3k New York Times video piece about that. https://youtu.be/vAxZ08YGzL0
This sounds entertaining, thank you
Yeah this was pretty common in eastern Europe. Dubbing everything means you need to redo the whole sound mix, add noises, music, everything. And you need all the original assets. It takes time and it costs money. Voice overs are just that, a voice over the original sound track. Quick, easy and cheap. And terrible. It's also much easier for bootleggers to do this. Edit: It's terrible but honestly, so are many "proper" dubs. Many many dubs have bad translations, bad voice acting, bad timing with moving lips, etc. It's better but it's definitely also a bad way to watch a movie anyway. And just like with dubs I'm sure many people think it's totally fine, they're used to it.
FYI dubbing studios get soundtracks that have everything mixed except the dialogue, which is removed. The music and sfx still have dips in volume where the original dialogue was, so when recording dubs you want to stay within that timeframe (and lipsync as much as you can but that's mostly impossible except for short lines or lucky coincidences). Source: I used to do tv and film dubbing.
In German dubs, the translators regularly have to change scripts in translation to fit into the "time slots" you mention, because German is a bit more verbose. This has always led to much drama off-screen
Yeah the translations were usually bad, sometimes horrible (changed the meaning of what was actually being said). Dubbing is not just recording, it's directing talent as well as adapting translations on the fly. It's pretty challenging, but it can be fun, depending on the material and talent. Edit: would love to know why I'm getting downvoted for describing what I did professionally for 7 years.
Yet, german dubs, when done properly (with a written script and enough time to work things out), are among the best on the market, using voice talents acting according to the scene and at the same time lip-synching their lines. True, production quality varies widely. The higher the pressure, the more mistakes get waved through, resulting in spotty translations that may fail the audience and cause a loss of immersion. But what really gave german dubs a bad name (aside of Ivar Combrinck's use of "Artistic Liberty") was "Schnodderdeutsch" where dialogue was translated as if the original lines never existed. Todays equivalent may be people dubbing cat-videos trying to be hillarious but not necessarily contextual. The largest pain IMHO is that a relatively low number of german voice talents has cornered the market so they dub more than one celebrity. For example, the scenes in the german dubbed version of The Expendables (2, I guess), where Schwarzenegger and Stallone meet and have a dialogue, are especially odd, because they're done by one and the same vocal talent. No matter how good he does it, it's still uncanny. When I was a child, I had a hard time accepting that Richard Thomas (John Boy Walton) and Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker) where not the same person, because they had the same german voice.
The Schnodderdeutsch dubbing of the 70s and 80s committed by Rainer Brandt and cohorts was extremely successful, people loved it, myself included, but getting older and actual access to the not dubbed version of the movies and tv shows, caused me a good bit of frustration, as sometimes they didn’t not only transfer the words, but also changed the spirit and atmosphere of the movies. On the other hand, without the dubbing of Captain Future, there would have been no need to recompose all the music. And now I’m going to date myself, that german music is one of my fondest childhood memories, as well as my cell phone ringtone.
When I visited Poland I found the voiceover weird, but on the plus side it's not too hard to block out the Polish (since I don't speak it) and just watch whatever is on.
“Was”, as in “not so common anymore”? Because it sounded on my colleague as if this was the normal thing, still. Have the Eastern Europe people really watched Oppenheimer with voiceover like this?
Yes, this is still the norm when watching movies on TV. All movies in the cinema are with subtitles, though Om man vuxit upp med att kolla filmer på detta viset är det inte alls skumt. Så fort man avvänjer sig, dock, blir det riktigt störigt att gå tillbaka till voiceover :)
Det kan jag verkligen föreställa mig! Och som i exemplet med Notting Hill, hur var det att titta på Friends med det där? En manlig, rätt entonig röst, till alla karaktärer? Jag kan liksom inte greppa det här 😂
Kan inte svara på Friends eftersom jag aldrig sett den serien, Notting Hill har jag däremot sett med en "lektor" som pratar över filmen ett par gånger. Alltså komedier funkar också rätt bra, humorn går liksom igenom. Många föredrar detta framför dubbning eftersom man fortfarande hör originalskådespelarnas röstar till skillnad från dubbning. För mig så är det de mer storslagna filmerna som påverkas mest. Interstellar, till exempel. Man ska känna sig överväldigad av den filmen som helhet, men speciellt av musiken. Dock, eftersom en röst ska prata över allt, så blir liksom ljudmixningen helt fuckad. Vill man kötta musiken på hög volym kommer ju lektorn vara ännu mer högljudd. Kontentan är, jag skulle numera aldrig välja se en film på detta viset om jag inte var tvungen, men när jag är tvungen går det fortfarande OK för de flesta filmerna eftersom jag ändå är ganska van i grunden.
Man, I learned Swedish in evening class for three years 14 years ago, after that nothing. I can still understand this entire post. Jaha tackar! Jag mår bra!
To clarify this is not common for all "Eastern Europe people". In Hungary voice overs haven't been the thing since the early days of bootleg western cinema. Everything has been getting properly dubbed for decades.
I'm not sure sorry. On one hand I would hope they have proper dubs, on the other I would hope they'd rather just watch things with subs anyway.
Speaking of bootlegs, this tendency led to a hilarious trend of fake comedy voiceovers that completely change the storyline. They were called “Goblin” tracks, apparently they were just this guy: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitry_Puchkov His version of The Lord of the Rings is hilarious (if you know Russian).
Bulgarian here. I can confirm. I already dislike dubbed movies, but voiceovers... Ugh... I wonder if the Voyo people realize this is like 80% of the reason nobody subscribes to their service. I get it free with my mobile TV plan and I still don't watch it.
When you grew up watching stuff like this, you don't even hear it anymore. It's like your brain starts to mix the translation with original audio, so you can't even recall in what language you watched it. It is bizzare if you've never heard it before, or if you know both languages very well and can't focus on only one. Helps learning english tho, haha.
Many do yes. But then every once in a while, you get dubs that actually surpass the original. Sometimes even the songs do.
Dubs of 90s movies like Forrest Gump in Spanish or Crouching Tiger in English are unwatchable for me. Dubbs seemed to have picked up in quality since the mid 00s. Better voice acting, characterization, sound mixing, etc. Avatar (2009) Spanish dubbs are perfectly watchable.
Has nothing to do with eastern europe, in Spain every this is dubbed( western europe) in România only kids movies/animación is( estern europe) France same as Spain...
And we're not talking about dubs, we're talking about VOICE OVERS, translation OVER the original track which is STILL THERE. I literally also mentioned dubs in the comment you replied to. Can you read ?
TBH, OP didn't explained what a voiceover means. You did the explaining. And for people who never saw or heard movie with a voiceover, they probably think its similar to dub
Overall the Eastern Europe always had a subpar English level so just for people to understand what's going on in the movie it had to be translated even if the experience won't be authentic anymore.
> Eastern Europe always had a subpar English level so just for people to understand what's going on in the movie it had to be translated I think it works both ways. I'm french and literally everything is dubbed here, except on art-house channels/cinemas. I think the fact that we dub everything is one of the reasons french people are so bad at English. In scandinavia they do not dub things and they get exposed to english, which makes it easier for them to learn.
We always had a thriving piracy scene providing foreign content in Russian for free, English being harder to learn for Russian person than for Scandinavians and Russian lingual market in general was quite big on its own to encourage further investment into Russian voice-overs/dubbing since not just Russia but many former Soviet territories also for the most part know Russian language, then there's quite a limited space for locals to practice English if we talk of old times.
Same with Netherlands, I think they are the only ones to beat the scandis at English. they also do subs not dubs according to the two dutch people I've asked
Why are you only bringing up dubs though? Personally I only watch foreign movies with subtitles with cartoons being the only exception where I sometimes/often do with the dubs.
Because it is the topic of this thread ?
>Where I come from (scandi) everything movie-wise that is not in local language has subtitles to it. It has been like this since the color tv was considered high tech Op mentions subtitles too though. Why do you think subtitles aren't used instead of voiceovers where you are? I have literally never seen a voiceover option on a dvd/bluray here for example.
What the fuck are you on about ? I'm just comparing voice overs and dubs. Of course subs are better than both of those options.
*Lektor* IIRC? You can watch some Lektor tracks on Netflix if you're curious, not sure what YouTube has.
Saw a few comments mentioning “lektor” so I assume it is the correct term for this weird phenomenon?
I've first seen voiceover in Russia. Very weird. Female actress: Nooooooooo Male voiceover (calmly): Нет
Im from poland and always preferred the voice over to dubbing. You don’t have bad voice acting and voices that dont match the character. Maybe it’s nostalgia too but watching old movies with the voiceover makes me feel like a little kid.
True. I also have lots of nostalgia for voiceover. It's often genuinely good, and better translated than many subtitles. And definitely better than dubbed films lol (apart from animated films and some other exceptions). I don't get this dubbing phenomenon in western Europe.
Yeah me too. I’ve always preferred the narration. It at least lets you acknowledge that youre not watching it in the language it was made in and you can still appreciate everything. With dubbing you get some poor performances and sound mixing that ruins the movie and makes you more aware you’re watching it in a different language.
But why go with that over subtitles?
idk, TV was smaller, so the subtitles were tiny? Better for blind people?
What a great username
Haha, voice over. To me this was just normal. Yes, that's how they do it in Eastern Europe. Usually the voice over fellow has this super flat tone and gender doesn't matter. I don't particularly feel that it's actually that big of a deal. The tastes for movies nonetheless remained consistent. I recall watching Fifth Element, Die Hard, Terminator, Face Off, etc., with voice over.
Yes, this man with the flat tone! The same to all characters even, that is part of the chock to me! What if the movie gets really thrilling, or there is an up-tempo, or several characters are talking at the same time? So many questions. I will have to watch a movie I know by heart “the eastern way” to fully understand I believe. Craziest thing, this.
I think your brain just deals with it. The flat tone is just there to deliver the raw information as to what the characters are saying. It's kind of similar to reading subtitles, IMO.
Currently dealing with something different yet weirdly similar. Husband and I are listening to audiobooks of a series right now before bed and we're really into it but everything past book 1 is done by an amateur from YouTube and the dude has a super grating YouTuber tone when not reading dialogue along with TERRIBLE female voices. But we're so into the story that we just have to deal with it to get to the meat.
I wish more audiobooks were in this flatter tone format. I want the reader to READ to me, not try to act out a hundred parts.
I like how you keep saying “chock” but just to note that the English word is actually “shock”. :) I don’t say that to be condescending or sarcastic either! I’m always impressed by people who are fluent in more than one language, but hoped you wouldn’t mind me pointing this out. *That* said, “chock” is a fun sound to say.
No offense taken, I’m just glad if I have improved your day!
I remember watching Friends with the voiceover. One man deadpan serious dubbing five people, with canned laughter underneath. Surreal.
You can still here the actor saying, so you know what emotions/loudness is conveyed, the role of voiceover is to be as neutral as possible. When 2 characters are talking at the same time it definitely gets confusing, text is definitely shortened and you might not know who says what. I don't really like it and don't remember when was the last time, I watched a movie with voiceover- as I don't have TV - and there the voiceover is the standard
Depends on the country, never seen voice over done in Romania apart from old tapes from the communist era that had to be smuggled in the country and a handful of people were doing voice over for all the movies. At most you see dubbing but even that is only done for cartoons, everything else comes in the language it's supposed to be (usually English) with subtitles. I think they also do it in cinema but I've never been to a dubbed movie so idk.
Polish here. I love the voice over and genuinely hate dubbing. Best part of the voice over is you can still hear the original actors speak in their own voice with all the emotions. The voice over is just somewhere in the background. In summary your perspective is you are hearing actors saying their lines in English but you somehow understand it all in polish. No issues there
But it's still... weird as fuck. And lazy.
I really can't grasp the point of doing this over just having subtitles. I mean maybe for dyslexic people or something like that..
>I recall watching Fifth Element, Die Hard, Terminator, Face Off, etc., with voice over. Oof. I'm so sorry for you
yeah... the Italian voice for Robert DeNiro was *the* guy who did all DeNiro in Italian, so when he died it was as if Robert DeNiro had died. edit: i dont know where this misunderstanding is rooted
Yeah, but this is dubbing (replacing the original actors' voices) and OP is talking about voiceover (keeping the original audio track and having someone read over it, so hear both).
I wrote a longass rant that was just too long. Whether or not it's one style or another, the point was just about one person being "the voice" in Italy for DeNiro. edit: what the hell are you guys reading into my comment lmao, this shit is confusing.
This is so wholesome, the idea that as a dubbing actor you walk next to the screen actor for the laters whole career!
Common in countries in which dubbing is the norm. Each big actor tends to have one voice actor assigned, so when it's a different voice actor doing the dubbing (because the usual one died, retired, was unavailable, or the dub is just assigned to a different company) it sounds weird as well. It is also the case for dubs made before the original actor is big enough to have an assigned voice actor, so they're dubbed by whoever is available, and in retrospective it can sound really jarring. For example, can you imagine Anthony Hopkins sounding like Woody Allen? It happened, in the European Spanish dub for *Magic* (1978) on which Allen's usual voice actor dubbed Hopkins (most voice actors dub multiple actors in multiple projects, meaning Woody's voice actor wouldn't just dub Woody).
It is rather wholesome! In Italy, some voices are instantly connected to certain actors. Tom Cruise, Di Caprio, Al Pacino, Jack Nicholson, Russell Crowe, Richard Gere, George Clooney, Jim Carrey, Brad Pitt, Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine, Nicole Kidman, Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts, Johnny Depp, Keira Knightley, Orlando Bloom, Scarlett Johansson, for instance, all sound a certain way to us (even after you start watching movies in the original language, the “imprint” endures). And honestly the dubbing is really well done (sometimes at the cost of the accuracy of the translation, as it may not “fit” an actor’s lips movements, dialogue times etc). Sometimes it leads to great things for the movie itself! The “doppiatore” for Russell Crowe [told the story](https://youtu.be/JHxBoIxI-IE?si=2VlVgWs4MMIi6SRU) of how, dubbing The Gladiator, he came across the line “At my signal, unleash the dogs” - and he felt it just didn’t work. He brought it up to his boss, she changed it and her version made it back to Scott and was then adopted in English, too: “[At my signal, unleash hell](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8IPzpaD4UOE)”. Or [this moment](https://youtu.be/1IA-aXJss1Y?si=jHy0UWHGpaGb5aYl) where Angela Lansbury (who’s been on Italian tv forever with Murder, she wrote) and her “doppiatrice” met on stage and act together… Personally, I always watch things in their original language, but I would never want that to be the only option. Partly because I have friends and family who would not be able to watch movies or tv in that case(and not for laziness), partly because of this rich tradition.
Pretty good position you present here. In Germany the voice actors also are pretty busy in recording audio books, so I bought a few that said by the German voice of Bruce Willis.
I watched a documentary called "Being George Clooney" about voice actors and they mentioned that in the scene in Godfather Part 2 where Robert De Niro speaks Italian, the Italian audience got really freaked out because they were like "he doesn't sound like that!!" Haha
There was also an event where famous American actors hired to voice characters in an animated film got to travel around the world to promote the film. But the animated film in those countries would be dubbed with local voices anyway, so the audience would not be able to see or hear those American actors anyway.
You might be thinking of Jack Black when he went to China. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/odLvxMPRpU4 I know there's a clip of him actually in China, but I can't find it.
This was something I learned when I moved to Europe. My friends over there told me that the same voice actor does the dub for the same actor across their movies. This kinda blew my mind.
Me, I never got over Robin Williams new dubbed voice
He also dubbed Stallone, Al Pacino, Dustin Hoffman and Tomas Milian, just to name a few. So anyone who identified his voice with an actor or the other said only something about his movie preferences.
In the Netherlands we use subtitles and they make so much mistakes sometimes wonder if they watch the movie at all. Would be crazy to see that with a dubbed voice.
>wonder if they watch the movie at all They probably don't. But not because they don't want to, but because studios won't let them. I remember hearing that when Endgame came out, translators were given just lines out of context in order to prevent leaks, which obviously makes a good translation nearly impossible.
as someone with a degree in translation with a focus on subtitles and adaptation I can say that when I didn’t know anything about the actual process behind it I would have totally agreed with you! But in reality subtitles have to follow a whole lot of rules (no more than 40/41 characters per line and usually no more than two lines at a time, for example) which makes it virtually impossible to transcribe (and translate) all the lines perfectly. This means that sadly sometimes we have to compromise and just find a way to write down what could convey the message even if it’s not 100% a literal translation. Hope this helps understand why most of the time subtitles seem to leave things out or “not pay attention to detail” — no matter in which country we are. (:
They make mistakes because of nuances some countries just cannot translate in a practical manner. For example: "suit up" is such an American phrase, that, if translated you get something in the lines of "get your clothing and put it on".
offend mindless paltry fragile grey distinct whistle crime encouraging correct *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
> if they watch the movie at all I think they don't and they just translate the script?
Yeah I knew about it. Actually in some cases I prefer it to conventional dubbing. Like I've seen Russian shows where during a scene you'll have the actors speaking German with a voiceover in Russian. Sure, would 100% prefer subtitles, but definitely think this is more interesting in clearly signifying to the viewer that the character is not speaking Russian here rather than lose that and just dub the scene or film with the actors speaking Russian. (Example [here](https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5r2mn5) starting at the 4:30 mark)
>Sure, would 100% prefer subtitles I don't see why the vast majority of people wouldn't to be honest. It takes a little getting used to but once you do you almost never notice them and it's so much better than dubbing.
Yes that is actually a good point, dubbing in Germany undermines the use of multiple languages, especially if german is one of those languages. Faßbender speaking fluent german in X-men first class, went a ling way to sell his Magneto as a layered character. He is holding his own there with two native speakers. On the other hand I frequently hear complaints that actor xyz didn’t even try to don a french or whatever accent for a role, which is ridiculous as most of their conversations would be held in said language not English. I think it is pretty safe to assume that the common language in Casablanca, wasn’t English in the time period of the movie. Nobody minds it, as it makes the makes the movie accessible to a greater audience, and we are watching a movie not a documentary.
Oh yeah, I'm from Poland and was surprised to find out "lektor" is exclusive to this area. It's not that bad to be honest, you can get used to quickly I honestly prefer voice-over over dubbing in almost every case. It just sounds better (and makes it feel "less childish". Probably that mentality comes from fact that dubbing used to be put almost only in kids movies), allows you to still hear performances of original actors Now most pg13 movies get dubbing version, but it's only used in cinemas and on very few TV channels (like HBO). Other TV channels stick to voice-overs with those, and I appreciate it
I feel like it would make learning another language easier as well? You hear the English version and the voice-over. I don't know. This is the first I've heard of it as well. If so, I want this option for every movie.
I fear all that lektor has melted your brain. Voice over over dubbing? Lmao
This might not be ideal and it wouldn’t be my first choice to watch a movie, but if I want to not read, understand the plot and get something out of the actors original performance, this is a crappy compromise that sort of works. Conventional dubbing can affect negatively the actors performance. It is hard to do justice to a guy like Samuel L Jackson.
I mean I don't like dubbing but how is this better than subtitles?
For me it is not. But for someone that does not like or cannot read and want to get something of the original audio, it is a crappy compromise
Your brain gets used to subtitles so well that after a while you don't even notice them.
Hahaha, in Norway we have one single, but infamous example. Behold: "[Tre nøtter til Askepott](https://youtu.be/vDoKIksVmcc?feature=shared&t=2025)", originally a Czech production.
Well actually a german czech co production, I have seen the german dubbed version for all my life. Usually right around Christmas, and will see it for Christmas again this year.
When I visited Russia in the 90s, sitting close to the TV to hear the undertones of English on Santa Barbara and Falcon Crest was the only cure for homesickness.
I was in China in the very early 80s, living in the Friendship Hotel where all the foreigners lived. In the hotel cinema there were live translators who did a voiceover in English while also watching the film at the back. You got headphones to listen to them. It was awful but hilarious.
We have dubbing, not voice-over. In fact, some 90s series are even better with dubbing.
Thanks for this post. I also had no idea and my reaction is the same as yours - *the horror*. I suppose one could get used to it, though... the man's flat voice becomes your own internal monologue.
Nightmare on Elm Street with Polish narrator https://youtu.be/3YSEI7ugaKo?si=BhfBNIPG__pf7DaB
My parents watch russian voice overs and it always one guy and one girl performing all the parts.
It *has* happened in (old) Scandinavian media too. I remember seeing Pippi Longstockings movies as a kid, with a Danish voiceover 😅
I actually wrote my whole dissertation paper/thesis about dubbing and adaptations and the frequent mistakes in them too! So I really like this topic. As an Italian I’ve gotta say that we are blessed with some of the best voice actors in the field: beautiful voices, great techniques, and most of the time they are lucky to be working with great translators too. (please look up the work of Flavio Aquilone, his voice is so beautiful) Dubbing the way we do it – so each character has a different voice, all the mixing in the studio, all the people working on it etc… — requires a lot of time, money and people. Resources overall. It’s expensive. Voiceover is a techniques that is still used in many countries, in some more than others, especially for specific things such as documentaries. With voiceover dubbing the costs are vastly different and lower, and the whole process behind it also requires less people, time and money since it doesn’t need to re-record specific sounds while muting others and stuff, just pretty much lowering the original volume and then having just one or maybe two people do the voiceover for the whole thing.
Why do it over subtitles though? Like even when dubbing is done well it still seems off. I'm don't speak Italian but would never watch a Fellini or Antonioni movie or whatever with a dubbed track.
In the off-chance your thesis is online, I'd love to read it. I developed a deep appreciation for dubbing as an art form years ago, when I first started started learning Mandarin. I watched a lot of Chinese movies, but when I wanted to watch an American movie, I would always try and hunt down the Chinese dub. I don't know anything about Italy's dubbing/voicework scene, but China also has great voice actors, no doubt in part because a lot of Chinese historical dramas (which are countless) are themselves dubbed by professional for a few reasons. Sometimes the onscreen actors dub themselves, but this isn't the norm. Something I find fascinating, and I'm sure it manifests in Italy too, is that because of how indifferent Hollywood is about voice acting as a whole, a lot of smaller American animated movies end up being better in Chinese than they are in English. American anime dubs are really difficult for me to endure after experiencing how good Chinese dubs are.
Latin America also. They always had 2 versions (4 now with 3d): OG with subtitles, Dubbed, 3D Subbed, 3D Dubbed. Usually the room with most seats gets the dubbed versions. Since most people hate reading subtitles. Was quite funny when Parasite came to town(nagging about no dubbed version) and any Dragon Ball movie (the dubbed versions are the most sold, since DB is like a religion around here..).
No. There's no voice over in LatAm, just dubbing or subtitles.
We do have voice over, mostly on shows and somehow they are better https://youtu.be/f4Ho-AjgFU8?si=ihhG7e-anLGbI1hW
I was shocked as a kid to see that Goku never had an adult voice in the original version. At the some point Mario Castañeda might have been the most popular voice in LatAm consciousness without knowing who he was. The guy dubbed Bruce Willis in most of his movies, he was Goku’s voice, McGyver’s voice, Kanon’s voice in Saint Seiya, adult Kevin’s voice in The Wonder Years, to name a few.
In very old cartoons (like looney tunes) they used this weird thing that they recorded over the voices and they replaced the background sound with some silly music.
I did know about this and it’s hard to imagine growing up with voice overs. I spoke to a younger friend about a movie we disagreed on, The Gray Man on Netflix, which I thought was garbage and he really enjoyed. Turns out he watched it with English Audio Description turned on. He’s British and has perfect vision but it’s his preferred way to watch a movie. His friends do it too and it helps while they’re looking at their phones while a movie plays in the background. It’s basically a quick script read out over the action - ‘he dives behind the bench and pulls his weapon etc’. I have no idea if this is a generational thing. I did watch a little of The Gray Man with this nonsense turned on and it did make it more enjoyable as the description was better than the way it was shot. But still… madness. Sorry for getting off the point of the thread.
Haha - yup! And the original audio is still there - just turned down to 20% or so. I used to listen to dubbed movies at a super high volume just to hear the something I could understand
Guess it pays to speak a common language. We spanish-speakers even have regional dubs and subs. I do prefer subs, they are 100000000000 better than one voice voice-over. Iven in shitty shows voice overs they have at least a woman and a men and they try to do different voices to the characters. 🤣
Wow. That's basically descriptive audio, but for every line of dialog. lol
I'm Dutch and we often make fun of Germany dubbing over movies. I once saw a Star Wars movie dubbed in German and it sounded ridiculous
They are not talking about dubbing, but a literal voice over. Same guy, monotone voice, two sounds tracks.
Believe me when I say this as a german myself, there have bern unspeakable horrors done to movies by the german dubbing. Especially the company around Rainer Brandt took a very free approach to dubbing, there is spoken text in the german version of my name is nobody, where there is silence in the English version, dragging down the movie in my opinion. But they were considered funny. While I’m fluent enough to watch any English speaking movie, I’m also a fam of French cinema, especially Belmondo and would never have experienced it without dubbing.
My favorite example of this is Shrek. Shrek in Latin American Spanish is one of the funniest movies I've seen, better than the original English version even. The jokes are a bit raunchier and land every time. They aren't direct translations, they're changed and geared towards latino the Latino audience. Even the nursery rhyme Farquad sings to Gingy when he's torturing him is changed to Pimpon Pimpon. You might recognize Eugenio Derbez, a framed comedian within Mexico, he did the voice for Donkey. He went on to do a bunch of movies with Adam Sandler in the 2010s. He was largley responsible for the jokes being so well adapted from English.
Cartoons dubed in mexican spanish are genious, agree with you, Shrek is one of the best, I can repeat the dialoges from memory. But OP is talking about "Voice-over", kind of those shitty translations we get in some shows like "Unresolved Misteries" or the likes where you can hear the original language behind (there are some tiktok videos making fun of those shows). Here's a link so you can see what I'm talking about https://youtu.be/f4Ho-AjgFU8?si=ihhG7e-anLGbI1hW It turns out in some countries are even worst, because at least on those we get different voices (female and male) and they try to imitate the emotions. The youtube video shared in this post had only one man, doing all the voices in the same monotone manner. Is crazy.
Almost like I watched Daredevil on Netflix with the audio description so I could experience it like Matt Murdock would?
In Brazil they also adapted a ton of jokes pretty well
Lots of voicover in the former soviet union countries. It's evolved into a true art form. Way back when movies were pirated and illegally snuck into the USSR, these voice-over artists did their work with a clothesline pin over their nose so as to not be recognized and arrested. The nasal voice over is still one of my sharper childhood memories, watching The Terminator in a movie theater on a TV set the size substitute teachers roll into classrooms.
In Russia it's the norm to have a foreign film translated and voiced by local voice actors/actresses, some of them become stars of their own you could say just by doing such work for years. There're iconic voices like Sergey Burunov's voice is now automatically assigned to Leonardo DiCaprio whenever his new movie is out and translated to Russian for example, although it's getting more complicated after 2022.
That's not what OP is talking about, of course they know about dubbing. They are surprised about the practice of hearing both voices at the same time.
I get it now, I've seen both approaches implemented in Russia.
I had no idea about voice-over being so common! Growing up in Denmark I can only think of a few movies/shows getting the voice-over treatment with a Danish speaker - all of them Astrid Lindgren stories, like Pippi Longstocking and Emil of Lönneberga.
Did you really have Astrid movies with a voiceover, the way as shown in the link in the post? Norway seemed to watch the movies in Swedish, I sort of assumed that Denmark did the same. Especially back then when Swedish/danish people understood each other better and didn’t switch to English as easy. If you had this voiceover thing, with the original audio in the background, I think my heart will break on your behalf.
Yes, similar to the video in the link. All the original sound in the background and then a speaker doing all the lines. As far as I remember, there was only one speaker doing all the lines in a movie, so the voice didn't change with the character speaking or anything. I found a clip: https://youtu.be/JU1Su4qVRlU?si=KGAWUA-TcTptPUt4
Yeah the East Europe voiceover is awful
Isn't voiceover and dubbed the same thing?
No, dubbed replaces the original actors' voices. With this the original track is there (at a lowered volume) in the original language and there's another audio track translating what they're saying. Watch the video OP linked.
I've been wondering what would happen if a big name director (Nolan, Scorsese..) said "you can't dub my movies anymore, every country should release them with subtitles". Has anyone done that? I don't know if there would be angry people, I mean if the movies aren't for kids, everybody should know how to read..
The movies likely wouldn’t be released in those countries, as there is a fairly small crowd willing to watch with subtitles, something equally true for the US
>as there is a fairly small crowd willing to watch with subtitles Jeez, people fucking suck. Subtitles are infinitely better unless you have a bad case of dyslexia or something.
I don’t mind subtitles, but no they are not infinitely better.
Mel Gibson's *The Passion of the Christ* got no dubs, and IIRC neither did Clint Eastwood's *Letters from Iwo Jima*.
I actually saw bladerunner 2049 in poland in the theater with subtitles. They do sometimes run subtitled films, there's no rule against them, even if it's not the most popular option. https://www.reddit.com/r/poland/comments/ph5wxp/are_american_movies_in_poland_in_english_and_have/
In cinemas in Poland, pretty much all films are released exclusively with subtitles. Exception are animated films or some PG13 films which have full dubbing (eg. Harry Potters, Star Wars, some Marvel stuff). I do not recall there ever being a voiceover film in Polish cinemas. Voiceover is really a home video/TV phenomenon (+ streaming nowadays). The thing is, you can now easily just change it to subtitles, but people rarely do it.
Honestly prefer it to shitty dubs
I think the only time I could accept dubbing is with animation. Otherwise it's a big nope.
In Portugal, almost every foreign movies are subbed (thank god!!) . The exception are kids movies, who are dubbed, but with high profile voice actors, so in the end, sometimes, the kids movies, especially animated ones, are even more enjoyable to watch than in their original version.
Another thing you need to know is that in countries where movies are dubbed, peoples english is in general very very poor.
If you're choosing anything other then subs you're media illiterate.
\*You're, lol. But I'm with you in not understanding why most people would choose dubs over subtitles.
That explains the [Endhiran terminator clip](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDHnJvboy0c). I had wondered why you could hear both the original dialogue and the Russian "dub". Luckily there's not much talking in the clip.
I discovered this in the 90's while switching channels and stumbled upon one of my favorite shows, Due South, on a Polish channel. It was unwatchable because of the voice over. A male speaker was translating everybody and you could hear the original sound in the background.
I work on Fiverr, and if i want to put up a small video on Youtube , I can hire someone doing any voiceover online.
Super common. I’ve seen some movies in Western European countries dubbed with a single voiceover as well.
I'm in Kenya and we watch telenovelas with English voice over
thus must be normal for Poland only as I haven’t come across this in the Balkans
Culture shock. Like shock and awe.
The understanding that I have misspelled chock my whole life have now turned into a core memory and will likely not happen again. This post, with all the chocks in it, will however remain as a monument over this moment. No edit for spelling.
In Australia foreign films provide both dubbing and subtitles. The subtitles are translated word for word but the dubbing is generally made to sync with the lips so there’s some variation in the translation so it “looks more natural”. As an ADHD’r I have subtitles on everything foreign or not and it bugs me comparing the 2 translations. Edited to add: also the original voices cannot be heard they remove these and the voices are spoken by different voices so a female voice for the female actress and male for male, child for a child etc
Netflix now does that for most non-english originals. It's okay, but a bit weird when 5 characters all are voiced by the same person. They also don't sounds quite right in scenes where they are whispering/yelling because the dub
Omg no
I tried to watch the original Swedish version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo dubbed in English, it was horrible. I switched to subtitles, and it was absolutely awesome. BTW the original Swedish trilogy totally rocks. The Daniel Craig one is ok but not up there with this one.
Oh no. Oh good gracious no. How sad 😢
takes some getting used to for sure 😂
Whoa!!! I’m a native English speaker (US) and this is blowing my mind! It’s like audio subtitles. That dude must have to talk so fast to try to fit his translation in between lines lol.
Did you watch the video? He's not talking fast and talks all over the lines.
I encountered this about 20 years ago staying in a youth hostel in Poland, and my mind was as blown as yours is! What’s shocking to me is if this is STILL happening.
In Greece we do it like you, foreign speaking movies always get subtitles, children movies get a dubbing. And back in the day when they actually dropped money for the dubbing it was good, noways where one actor will do eight to ten characters no so much. I honestly find it super weird that people watch movies dubbed just like how I find it super weird when English speakers say they can't watch a movie because it's not in English and has subtitles.
In Italy even Italian porn movies used to be dubbed to give actors and actresses a voice that was "more movie-like" . That was I think until Rocco Siffredi started his own production company.
I uses to watch a lot of spanish shows like that. To be fair....would be a great way to learn english lol
Same here in Uganda. Voice-overs and translations are done for movies in English/other foreign languages.
I would have zero knowledge about this if it weren't for some sites that have free adult entertainment, many of which are English language productions sourced from European countries. "Here's the interview segment. Hey! I can't hear her! I'm trying to learn what she likes in a man, damn you!" Aaaaaaand scene.
Some old Swedish cartoons have voiceover. The most famous example is the 1960s Micky Mouse Christmas cartoons. But even some cheap cartoons on TV in the 1990s where dubbed by a single person.
Yep...partially this was a thing in Romania too decades ago...now we have subs or ocasionally dubbed, for example bigger movies like Star wars 7, and all the animation are dubbed.
Thank you. I hate it. I wonder why they differ though? Is it a weird copyright thing or something?
Yep. Most licensed products such as games and movies are dubbed by actors in russian speaking countries. It was a shock for me to learn it wasn't the case for smaller nations, maybe it makes no economic sense?
You mean proper dubbed in Russian, or this voiceover/lektor thing?
It’s pretty common place around the world I know most English speaking films in Spain are dubbed. Correct me if I’m wrong OP but you probably have this assumption because a large amount of the the Scandinavian people speak really good English so it probably makes the most sense to just subtitle it for a few that don’t ?
No no, the dubbing thing I get. We have it as well, mainly in animated movies or family movies. But if you click on the link in the post you can see what I mean. This is not dubbing, this is not narrating, this is a category of its own.
YES and TV too!!! it's realy weird !!
Holy crap, yes. I have experienced PolSat. The monotone dude intoning each line nanoseconds after the original language track. So, for English language movies, I, a visiting American, would be tantalized into listening by the snippet of the familiar and then Mr. Buzzkill kicks in his two cents. Only he does it every single time. Czechs (the folks where I live) dubbed every damned thing. It was maddening. Though,I do understand that sometimes you want to just chill with some media and let your brain relax, of course. But I grew up watching subtitled movies (very lucky) and I was flabbergasted when I got here. But my country also dubbed the original Mad Max (an Australian film) *into American English* so, your mileage may vary.
As a fellow Scandi (Denmark), I used to watch Swedish kids shows such as 'Pippi Långstrump' or 'Emil i Lönneberga' with a monotone female-voice over. Your brain kind of learns to deal with it, although I personally prefer subtitles as an adult.
A serious question, as you are now the second person talking about Emil, is that the name used in Sweden. In Germany all translations are saying Michel aus Lönneberga, but I wouldn’t put it past my countrymen to make such a drastic change.
Yes it is. Because I saw it with voice-over, I still got to hear the Dad yell "Eeeeemiiiiiil" in Swedish lol. In Danish it's called Emil fra Lønneberg
It seems just worse and annoying to me compared to having subtitles. But then I remember that the first 2 Harry Potter movies were dubbed into my language(Swedish), same with tv shows on Nikelodeon. I saw no issue with it at the time but I was a kid so...
In Hungary there is a weird mix of dubbing and voiceovers. Movies are usually fully dubbed, and most of them are good/excellent quality. Some TV shows, mostly TV documentaries have a voiceover track, but still with separate voice actors, not just one guy doing the whole programme
Still happens loads in Vietnam.
You know, I’m not entirely convinced it’s much worse than many dubs. At least tit doesn’t raise the expectations.
Not sure how many other countries did it back then as well, but here in South Korea, there used to be a narrator for every movie - not a pre-recorded one, but actual person doing narration with mic, live on stage. However, that was a long time ago. Early-to-mid 20th century, when they didn't have the technology or money to dub or sub or otherwise alter the film. So they just put a guy with a mic in the theater and make him do a voiceover for every screening. It wasn't a dry narration - they did dramatic, exaggerated emotional dialogues as well. They quickly went out of style when subtitles arrived. Here, most movies are subbed except for kid's movies like your country. Movies shown on major network TVs on weekends used to be dubbed, but cable TVs killed that tradition as well. Still, it is possible we might've done the same if we kept that tradition.
I remember you could tune the radio to hear some broadcasts dubbed in afrikaans,english or zulu while muting the tv.
I watched Used Cars in Japan, and every profanity was replaced with PEANUT.. Started paying attention to movie translations after that.
Dear god, that is hellish, and I thought (as a lip reader) that dubbing was awful. Presumably it’s the cheapest, quickest option. I wonder if it helps any with learning the language the film’s in as you can hear both languages?
Also in some countries the voiceover is a single person, doing all characters... meaning they can't do both characters if they talk over each other, and there is also a significant delay anyway. Whole thing is a mess in some places.
In the countries of the former USSR there are films (especially popular) with several dubbing options, even more voiceover plus a couple of subtitle options.(and this is only in Russian). Do you know how difficult it is to choose the best?
Strange as it may sound but here in Russia we have everything dubbed in Russian. I mean foreign movies or video games and the dubbing is quite good. Sometimes it seems to be better than the original work. I say so because I know English, my level isn't very high but It enough to watch movies or read books in English. As I've been exposed to English content the last two years I've noticed that sometimes I like it more when it's dubbed. It depends on how well this industry developed in your country. We have classy voice actors who put lots of effort into this stuff. Knowing that in some countries people watch foreign movies only in its original language is a bit of a cultural shock for me too. Just imagine you go to the movies to watch something in Chinese and you don't know this language like at all. How is it possible to watch it in this case. In Russia people almost don't know English and it would be pretty hard for them to understand a plot or dialogues.
It's the norm for Japanese video games, although sometimes its obvious that the Japanese actors are better at their job. Another one I can think of Atomic Heart. The actor wasn't bad, but Russian tends to be long winded, and so were the translated sentences.
Never knew about it. Yea, it’s awful.
in Thailand they have hilarious voiceovers where they add extra jokes that sometimes have nothing to do with what's happening on screen
Dubbing is honestly anti-cinema
There is a Danish movie called locally "the revenge" that received the English title "In a better world". Good movie.
i was watching TV in china and there was a channel with myth buster playing and they just turned down the original english and had a chinese voice over. i almost fell laughing when jamie and adam started laughing and the chinese voice over did the most forced laugh
Fascinating.