The French love dubbed movies, but personally, I can't stand them - I'd much rather read subtitles for any language I don't speak. What about you? Do you have a strong preference for one or the other?
Can’t tell you how much I agree with you. You lose all the subtleties of the acting performance with dubbing, it’s a shame.
June 18, 2011 at 6:26 pm
(2) kevinisawally says:
Subtitles every time. My version of 37.2 Le Matin started with subtitles together with the dubbed voices and yet the translations were so different. Plus – voices speaking French, subtitles in English helps my knowledge of French. My dream though, is to watch Amélie with no subtitles and follow what they’re saying!
June 21, 2011 at 10:20 am
(3) Tom says:
I’m with you on this, Laura. I love movies especially French movies, but to me, they always seem surreal when dubbed. It’s hard to understand this from the French, the arbiters of taste, but we must remember that they also like Jerry Lewis.
Tom
June 19, 2011 at 9:01 am
(4) Halapande says:
Version original with ideally French subtitles. If these cannot be found / provided, than the subs in my language or English would work.
June 19, 2011 at 10:33 am
(5) IssaGalvan says:
While in France for the summer, Ive been introduced to dubbed movies, and honestly I prefer subtitles as well-especially if I know the actor who’s coming out and I know how they are suppose to sound. You lose the emotion and everything when you dub movies. The french should either just put subtitles on their movies or leave them in French. If we want to watch a french movie we can, even if its without subtitles. I guess the whole point of it is to attract a larger audience by dubbing the movies but I believe they’re loosing an audience by doing so. They should work on better using dubbing or just keep it simple with subtitles.
June 19, 2011 at 1:32 pm
(6) Anonyme says:
One of the great secrets in learning French that teachers never tell you about is the massive amounts of intermediate-to-advanced-level French dialogue you can find on the French audio tracks of American DVDs. French-dubbed American TV is much, much simpler than trying to understand French film: the level of language is usually very simple, the cultural references aren’t obscure, the accents generally aren’t strong and the sound is usually very distinct.
If you’re at the level of “I know the grammar but I can’t understand the spoken language at all”, try watching a season of an American TV series in French. You’ll be stunned at how much you understand and how quickly your comprehension improves. It’s much more useful than watching French material with subtitles.
June 21, 2011 at 9:45 am
(7) Jim Green says:
Perhaps the French like dubbed films, but Parisians seem to take a pride in preferring the version originale.
June 21, 2011 at 9:54 am
(8) Penny says:
Can’t stand dubbing. It always sounds so phony because, guess what, it is. Subtitles are infinitely better!!!
June 21, 2011 at 11:18 am
(9) TonyCJ says:
It’s useful to watch American television that has been dubbed; there is much simple and useful dialogue. Also, if the show is culturally American, one can learn what a French person might say in this or that situation. Dubbing is not simply a translation of words, but rather a translation of ideas.
That said, my brother is an actor (American). His voice has a very distinctive quality and rhythm that is integral to his acting performance. It is disappointing to watch him and listen someone else’s “dubbed” voice. My brother doesn’t have anything to say about this person that has been chosen to more or less ruin or marginalize his performance.
As a cinephile, I detest French movies dubbed into English. I want to hear a certain actor’s delivery of the part as it was conceived…discovering through French intonation, etc., the characteristics of the character in the context of that plot, and that actor’s style; why was that person cast? You can’t expect someone sitting in a dubbing booth to deliver “the moment” with the same quality or intensity as the actor did, who was interacting with other actors, surrounded by a set, and responding to “ACTION.” A big American star often has a dedicated “dubber” who sounds much like the actor’s real voice. i.e, Woody Allen & Robert De Niro may get to choose their “French voice.”
June 21, 2011 at 11:22 am
(10) hdosr says:
It’s about ten thousand times better to have the film in the original language because then you can hear the original vocal expressiveness of the actors. Also, no matter how good the dubbing is, it is never feels localized in space the same way the sound engineers did it in the original version. Old Italian films are notorious for dubbing that sounds like it was done with a monaural microphone in an overcrowded closet, and even with pretty good modern dubbing techniques the voices still sound too “close” somehow. Admittedly it gets to be a pain reading subtitles for a couple of hours, but that might be a good inducement to learn the language so well as to not need subtitles any more, and just have the film in the plain original.
June 21, 2011 at 12:43 pm
(11) Sara E says:
J’adore les films français, en français, mais parceque la traduction m’intéresse, je suis contente d’aussi lire les sous-titres. S’il n’y en a pas, pas de problème.
June 21, 2011 at 3:12 pm
(12) Katrina says:
Children’s movies/cartoons (eg UP, Rapunzel, Rio) are actually quite well-dubbed with famous french actors chosen to add character to the visuals. I much prefer VO for adult movies though.
June 21, 2011 at 11:10 pm
(13) Gary RODAN says:
Dubbed of course. I remember seeing “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” in France. At the end of the movie Burl Ives comes down the steps of his house with one epithet for every step. Don’t remember the exact quote, but something like <SHUT Your cotton-pickin, slick lying, etc , etc, etc, MOUTH (at the bottom of the staircase.) This was dubbed "Ta Gueule". Imagine what a loss if you could not see and hear the original!GNR
. . . . . . . . . .
Bonjour Gary – I think you might be mixing up the terms. “Dubbed” means that there’s a voice-over, while “sub-titled” means that you hear the original voice and the translation is typed on the bottom of the screen. From your description, it sounds like you prefer sub-titles, not dubbing.
Obviously subtitles help learning the language, but in many cases the dubbed voices are better than the original voice of the actor, with a very positive result for the videoperfomance.
I.e. Italian Woody Allen or 007 had a voice much better than the original.
May 14, 2012 at 4:00 pm
(16) Rex says:
This is not as simple as it seems. Obviously most foreign language students will want the original soundtrack with subtitles, but this may not be so with native French speakers simply watching a film for entertainment. Why?
In the 60′s especially, low budget French films were shot with the actors simply mouthing random lines and then dubbed with the actual dialogue later.
Also low noise, constant speed cameras were very expensive and the original sound tracks were simply unusable. – i.e. Un homme et une femme
Some actors simply didn’t speak very good French – i.e. Claudia Cardinale was always overdubbed because of her heavy Tunisian accent.
May 15, 2012 at 6:49 am
(17) Sarah says:
Whatever a persons opinion on the subject, it is undeniable that to dub or not to dub has a massive impact on the community of the country. The Scandinavian countries, in particular Sweden have subtitles for all English shows and I believe that Holland does also. Both these countries are extremely well known for their high national level of English as a foreign language.
I enjoy dubbed movies, I think the level of skill on the part of the voice actors (particularly in the children’s films that my daughter watches) has increased tremendously over the last decade.
May 15, 2012 at 12:00 pm
(18) Margaret Fieland says:
I vastly prefer subtitles. Even if I have to read the words, the tone of voice and intonation of the original actor are there for me to hear and process. I hate dubbing — I feel it’s robbing me of the original actor’s “voice,” both literal and figurative.
May 15, 2012 at 12:30 pm
(19) Paul Gottlieb says:
I much prefer subtitles! The original voice of the actor is an important part of the performance and even the best dubbing is always the tiniest bit out of sync with the mouth movement, which is distracting.
But the translations in the subtitles could be better! My french is mediocre at best, but even I can spot some really clumsy translations in the subtitles. Sometimes important nuance in the dialog is completely missed
May 15, 2012 at 12:46 pm
(20) Charles says:
I must confess that I prefer dubbed with subtitles. I am trying to learn French. (When watching French movie/tv DVDs then having the subtitles for the hearing impaired is very helpful. I tend to like the police shows which seem to have a lot of slang!) I am watching “The Killing,” the popular TV series from Denmark. I purchased the DVDs from Amazon.fr and they are dubbed in French and then have French subtitles. Great! I had not thought about an American series as suggested by Tony CJ, thanks!
Of course for aesthetic purposes, subtitles only is best. I do understand that! However, when I watched one of the Donna Leon, Inspector Brunetti, TV series dubbed in French, I preferred Brunetti speaking French than when I heard him in German, which I understand much better! (It is a German series.)
May 15, 2012 at 12:54 pm
(21) Carlos says:
The fact that dubbing into Spanish is such a huge industry means that ALL English-language films get dubbed. This acts as a powerful brake on the learning of English by native Spanish speakers and surely takes a large part of the blame for the very poor level of English here in Spain, despite 10 or 12 years of compulsory study.
I expect the same applies (to a lesser extent) in France. Compare to other European countries where films are rarely dubbed, and the level of English is much higher.
May 15, 2012 at 12:59 pm
(22) Wayne says:
Remember the western where the cowboy comes to town after months on the trail? He dusts himself off and walks into a saloon, pounds the bar, and demands: “gimme a shot of red eye.” In a dubbed French version,he does all the same things of course, but says: “donnez moi une dubonnet, s’il vous plait.” A case of everything lost in translation, but proof perhaps that the French don’t make good cowboys.
May 15, 2012 at 2:11 pm
(23) John says:
With modern blurays, there are often 5 or 6 audio tracks, and up to 15 subtitle tracks. This is ideal for someone studying languages. For example, in the bluray verson of The Matrix, you can listen in English, French, Spanish, German, Italian and Portuguese. There are subtitles for all of these, plus other languages. I’m studying Spanish, French, Italian and German, and can watch the movie repeatedly to learn. The level of dubbing these days is far superior to what they did in the 70′s, and can be quite an enjoyable experience. At least in Spanish, my most fluent language after English, the movies are fully as exciting, and funny, as in English. Still, I recognize that the original language is probably best. If I’m watching a French film, I definitely want them speaking in French. But it’s great to have the resource of American shows dubbed in other languages, for study purposes.
May 15, 2012 at 3:01 pm
(24) Ralph says:
I prefer subtitles at all… Many movies lost sound quality when dubbed and some jokes are meaningless also.
May 15, 2012 at 3:09 pm
(25) Jan says:
I dislike dubbing, which really prevents one from learning so many different things. I find myself concentrating on how things are not quite in synch. Honestly, that can be very annoying. Language is culture and learning a language is learning how another culture thinks, in a way. I admit to liking subtitles, although I wish they were better done, as in having them in a separate strip below and clearly written out so they can be read quickly. If they were isolated, one could cover them up and then watch the movie in the original form.
May 15, 2012 at 3:42 pm
(26) Janet Aldrich says:
Les sous-titres every time… if I hear the french and can read the English so I have some idea of what’s being said, I can often understand the French, so I learn something, whether it’s a phrase or pronunciation of something I’ve always read. Besides, quite often, the dubbed voices are a poor match for the actor they’re dubbing, or they get in the way of losing yourself in the movie (sound levels don’t match other sounds in the film, etc.)
May 15, 2012 at 5:06 pm
(27) Phyllis says:
Subtitles always! I learn the language that way. What is hard to find though is English speaking movies with French subtitles. It would be nice to learn that way as well.
May 16, 2012 at 4:14 am
(28) Liz says:
Hi all, I work for a subtitling company in Belgium, our HQ is based in Stockholm. Here in Belgium we definitely have a subtitling culture, as do the Scandinavian countries and the Netherlands. As Sarah already mentioned, the fact that we subtitle all foreign spoken broadcasts, is a major factor in to why Belgians generally have a high level of English.
I watch quite a lot of French series and films and I must say I learn a lot just by listening to the original language and reading the subtitles in my own language or another for that matter. I highly recommend it!
May 17, 2012 at 7:39 am
(29) George says:
I’ve watched a couple of English movies dubbed into french and enjoyed them e.g Hitch. I find the dubbed french much easier to understand than movies shot originally in french….strange!
May 18, 2012 at 8:30 am
(30) Suvrojit says:
This is one reason I started learning french to understand a french art film without its subtitles. I have watched other films too in my language & with english subtitles on…you lose the emotion in the dialogue & also some there are somethings which can’t be translated like native phrases & songs…
June 13, 2012 at 9:46 am
(31) Fred says:
I would love to see French films subtitled in French so I can train my ears to hear what is being said. I is difficult for me to make out the individual words from a rapidly spoken phrase. Probably a common lament for beginners.
January 12, 2013 at 7:27 pm
(32) Kasper says:
A lot of European films are produced with funding from the EU, yet this subsidy doesn’t seem to come with any obligations in terms of subtitle requirements – neither in the native language and certainly not in foreign languages.
This means that film distributors with larger home markets (France, Germany, Span, Italy) tend to leave out subtitles completely from the majority of their film releases, since their home audience is also accustomed to only watch foreign films with voice dubbing even when they have been subsidised by the EU Media Fund.
The consequence: Hundreds of millions euros from the European tax payers are spent on film productions that never make it across the border of the home market, which is of course completely against the whole idea of having a European Media Fund to promote European films across national borders.
My experience is that finding subtitles for particularly French films is often impossible. And bear in mind that unlike American releases that are often released without subtitles for the home market (Region 1), but WITH subtitles for foreign markets, there aren’t any additional releases for most European films, as they are automatically labelled as ‘arthouse’.
Without subsidies, many great European films would never have been made, so I fully support the idea of public financing of film productions. But the EU Media funding should be reclaimed, if a film is released without English subtitles.
In fact, many Asian films are released with at least 4-5 different languages. Neither German, French, Italian or even Spanish can be considered a “world language” these days. But old fashioned national arrogance still seem to prevail in … certain countries.
Comments
Can’t tell you how much I agree with you. You lose all the subtleties of the acting performance with dubbing, it’s a shame.
Subtitles every time. My version of 37.2 Le Matin started with subtitles together with the dubbed voices and yet the translations were so different. Plus – voices speaking French, subtitles in English helps my knowledge of French. My dream though, is to watch Amélie with no subtitles and follow what they’re saying!
I’m with you on this, Laura. I love movies especially French movies, but to me, they always seem surreal when dubbed. It’s hard to understand this from the French, the arbiters of taste, but we must remember that they also like Jerry Lewis.
Tom
Version original with ideally French subtitles. If these cannot be found / provided, than the subs in my language or English would work.
While in France for the summer, Ive been introduced to dubbed movies, and honestly I prefer subtitles as well-especially if I know the actor who’s coming out and I know how they are suppose to sound. You lose the emotion and everything when you dub movies. The french should either just put subtitles on their movies or leave them in French. If we want to watch a french movie we can, even if its without subtitles. I guess the whole point of it is to attract a larger audience by dubbing the movies but I believe they’re loosing an audience by doing so. They should work on better using dubbing or just keep it simple with subtitles.
One of the great secrets in learning French that teachers never tell you about is the massive amounts of intermediate-to-advanced-level French dialogue you can find on the French audio tracks of American DVDs. French-dubbed American TV is much, much simpler than trying to understand French film: the level of language is usually very simple, the cultural references aren’t obscure, the accents generally aren’t strong and the sound is usually very distinct.
If you’re at the level of “I know the grammar but I can’t understand the spoken language at all”, try watching a season of an American TV series in French. You’ll be stunned at how much you understand and how quickly your comprehension improves. It’s much more useful than watching French material with subtitles.
Perhaps the French like dubbed films, but Parisians seem to take a pride in preferring the version originale.
Can’t stand dubbing. It always sounds so phony because, guess what, it is. Subtitles are infinitely better!!!
It’s useful to watch American television that has been dubbed; there is much simple and useful dialogue. Also, if the show is culturally American, one can learn what a French person might say in this or that situation. Dubbing is not simply a translation of words, but rather a translation of ideas.
That said, my brother is an actor (American). His voice has a very distinctive quality and rhythm that is integral to his acting performance. It is disappointing to watch him and listen someone else’s “dubbed” voice. My brother doesn’t have anything to say about this person that has been chosen to more or less ruin or marginalize his performance.
As a cinephile, I detest French movies dubbed into English. I want to hear a certain actor’s delivery of the part as it was conceived…discovering through French intonation, etc., the characteristics of the character in the context of that plot, and that actor’s style; why was that person cast? You can’t expect someone sitting in a dubbing booth to deliver “the moment” with the same quality or intensity as the actor did, who was interacting with other actors, surrounded by a set, and responding to “ACTION.” A big American star often has a dedicated “dubber” who sounds much like the actor’s real voice. i.e, Woody Allen & Robert De Niro may get to choose their “French voice.”
It’s about ten thousand times better to have the film in the original language because then you can hear the original vocal expressiveness of the actors. Also, no matter how good the dubbing is, it is never feels localized in space the same way the sound engineers did it in the original version. Old Italian films are notorious for dubbing that sounds like it was done with a monaural microphone in an overcrowded closet, and even with pretty good modern dubbing techniques the voices still sound too “close” somehow. Admittedly it gets to be a pain reading subtitles for a couple of hours, but that might be a good inducement to learn the language so well as to not need subtitles any more, and just have the film in the plain original.
J’adore les films français, en français, mais parceque la traduction m’intéresse, je suis contente d’aussi lire les sous-titres. S’il n’y en a pas, pas de problème.
Children’s movies/cartoons (eg UP, Rapunzel, Rio) are actually quite well-dubbed with famous french actors chosen to add character to the visuals. I much prefer VO for adult movies though.
Dubbed of course. I remember seeing “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” in France. At the end of the movie Burl Ives comes down the steps of his house with one epithet for every step. Don’t remember the exact quote, but something like <SHUT Your cotton-pickin, slick lying, etc , etc, etc, MOUTH (at the bottom of the staircase.) This was dubbed "Ta Gueule". Imagine what a loss if you could not see and hear the original!GNR
You are right – My mistake – subtitles it is!
Obviously subtitles help learning the language, but in many cases the dubbed voices are better than the original voice of the actor, with a very positive result for the videoperfomance.
I.e. Italian Woody Allen or 007 had a voice much better than the original.
This is not as simple as it seems. Obviously most foreign language students will want the original soundtrack with subtitles, but this may not be so with native French speakers simply watching a film for entertainment. Why?
In the 60′s especially, low budget French films were shot with the actors simply mouthing random lines and then dubbed with the actual dialogue later.
Also low noise, constant speed cameras were very expensive and the original sound tracks were simply unusable. – i.e. Un homme et une femme
Some actors simply didn’t speak very good French – i.e. Claudia Cardinale was always overdubbed because of her heavy Tunisian accent.
Whatever a persons opinion on the subject, it is undeniable that to dub or not to dub has a massive impact on the community of the country. The Scandinavian countries, in particular Sweden have subtitles for all English shows and I believe that Holland does also. Both these countries are extremely well known for their high national level of English as a foreign language.
I enjoy dubbed movies, I think the level of skill on the part of the voice actors (particularly in the children’s films that my daughter watches) has increased tremendously over the last decade.
I vastly prefer subtitles. Even if I have to read the words, the tone of voice and intonation of the original actor are there for me to hear and process. I hate dubbing — I feel it’s robbing me of the original actor’s “voice,” both literal and figurative.
I much prefer subtitles! The original voice of the actor is an important part of the performance and even the best dubbing is always the tiniest bit out of sync with the mouth movement, which is distracting.
But the translations in the subtitles could be better! My french is mediocre at best, but even I can spot some really clumsy translations in the subtitles. Sometimes important nuance in the dialog is completely missed
I must confess that I prefer dubbed with subtitles. I am trying to learn French. (When watching French movie/tv DVDs then having the subtitles for the hearing impaired is very helpful. I tend to like the police shows which seem to have a lot of slang!) I am watching “The Killing,” the popular TV series from Denmark. I purchased the DVDs from Amazon.fr and they are dubbed in French and then have French subtitles. Great! I had not thought about an American series as suggested by Tony CJ, thanks!
Of course for aesthetic purposes, subtitles only is best. I do understand that! However, when I watched one of the Donna Leon, Inspector Brunetti, TV series dubbed in French, I preferred Brunetti speaking French than when I heard him in German, which I understand much better! (It is a German series.)
The fact that dubbing into Spanish is such a huge industry means that ALL English-language films get dubbed. This acts as a powerful brake on the learning of English by native Spanish speakers and surely takes a large part of the blame for the very poor level of English here in Spain, despite 10 or 12 years of compulsory study.
I expect the same applies (to a lesser extent) in France. Compare to other European countries where films are rarely dubbed, and the level of English is much higher.
Remember the western where the cowboy comes to town after months on the trail? He dusts himself off and walks into a saloon, pounds the bar, and demands: “gimme a shot of red eye.” In a dubbed French version,he does all the same things of course, but says: “donnez moi une dubonnet, s’il vous plait.” A case of everything lost in translation, but proof perhaps that the French don’t make good cowboys.
With modern blurays, there are often 5 or 6 audio tracks, and up to 15 subtitle tracks. This is ideal for someone studying languages. For example, in the bluray verson of The Matrix, you can listen in English, French, Spanish, German, Italian and Portuguese. There are subtitles for all of these, plus other languages. I’m studying Spanish, French, Italian and German, and can watch the movie repeatedly to learn. The level of dubbing these days is far superior to what they did in the 70′s, and can be quite an enjoyable experience. At least in Spanish, my most fluent language after English, the movies are fully as exciting, and funny, as in English. Still, I recognize that the original language is probably best. If I’m watching a French film, I definitely want them speaking in French. But it’s great to have the resource of American shows dubbed in other languages, for study purposes.
I prefer subtitles at all… Many movies lost sound quality when dubbed and some jokes are meaningless also.
I dislike dubbing, which really prevents one from learning so many different things. I find myself concentrating on how things are not quite in synch. Honestly, that can be very annoying. Language is culture and learning a language is learning how another culture thinks, in a way. I admit to liking subtitles, although I wish they were better done, as in having them in a separate strip below and clearly written out so they can be read quickly. If they were isolated, one could cover them up and then watch the movie in the original form.
Les sous-titres every time… if I hear the french and can read the English so I have some idea of what’s being said, I can often understand the French, so I learn something, whether it’s a phrase or pronunciation of something I’ve always read. Besides, quite often, the dubbed voices are a poor match for the actor they’re dubbing, or they get in the way of losing yourself in the movie (sound levels don’t match other sounds in the film, etc.)
Subtitles always! I learn the language that way. What is hard to find though is English speaking movies with French subtitles. It would be nice to learn that way as well.
Hi all, I work for a subtitling company in Belgium, our HQ is based in Stockholm. Here in Belgium we definitely have a subtitling culture, as do the Scandinavian countries and the Netherlands. As Sarah already mentioned, the fact that we subtitle all foreign spoken broadcasts, is a major factor in to why Belgians generally have a high level of English.
I watch quite a lot of French series and films and I must say I learn a lot just by listening to the original language and reading the subtitles in my own language or another for that matter. I highly recommend it!
I’ve watched a couple of English movies dubbed into french and enjoyed them e.g Hitch. I find the dubbed french much easier to understand than movies shot originally in french….strange!
This is one reason I started learning french to understand a french art film without its subtitles. I have watched other films too in my language & with english subtitles on…you lose the emotion in the dialogue & also some there are somethings which can’t be translated like native phrases & songs…
I would love to see French films subtitled in French so I can train my ears to hear what is being said. I is difficult for me to make out the individual words from a rapidly spoken phrase. Probably a common lament for beginners.
A lot of European films are produced with funding from the EU, yet this subsidy doesn’t seem to come with any obligations in terms of subtitle requirements – neither in the native language and certainly not in foreign languages.
This means that film distributors with larger home markets (France, Germany, Span, Italy) tend to leave out subtitles completely from the majority of their film releases, since their home audience is also accustomed to only watch foreign films with voice dubbing even when they have been subsidised by the EU Media Fund.
The consequence: Hundreds of millions euros from the European tax payers are spent on film productions that never make it across the border of the home market, which is of course completely against the whole idea of having a European Media Fund to promote European films across national borders.
My experience is that finding subtitles for particularly French films is often impossible. And bear in mind that unlike American releases that are often released without subtitles for the home market (Region 1), but WITH subtitles for foreign markets, there aren’t any additional releases for most European films, as they are automatically labelled as ‘arthouse’.
Without subsidies, many great European films would never have been made, so I fully support the idea of public financing of film productions. But the EU Media funding should be reclaimed, if a film is released without English subtitles.
In fact, many Asian films are released with at least 4-5 different languages. Neither German, French, Italian or even Spanish can be considered a “world language” these days. But old fashioned national arrogance still seem to prevail in … certain countries.