Frame By Frame: Subtitles v. Dubbing

Wheeler Winston Dixon Author

09/12/2012 Added

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UNL Film Studies professor Wheeler Winston Dixon compares foreign-language film dubbing to subtitles.

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[00:00:13.027]Hi. I'm Wheeler Winston Dixon, James Ryan professor of Film Studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln,
[00:00:18.035]and I'm going to speak today about subtitles versus dubbing.
[00:00:22.032]It should come as no surprise that I come down in favor of subtitles.
[00:00:27.006]Dubbing has been referred to by the brilliant critic, Geoffrey O'Brien as "post-syncronese," and he's absolutely right.
[00:00:35.023]If you take a film, and you strip out the actor's voice, and you get someone else to dub it,
[00:00:40.067]what you get is sort of an automaton on screen with someone else's voice speaking the language,
[00:00:45.077]and as a result it's just completely unconvincing.
[00:00:48.068]PUT IT DOWN! IT IS EMOWI'S SWORD!
[00:00:52.038]COME TAKE IT IF YOU THINK YOU CAN.
[00:00:55.052]Dubbing came to prominence in the 1960s, with the Italian wave of films...
[00:01:02.072]horror films, spaghetti westerns, and things like that...
[00:01:05.039]where people would show up on the set and speak four or five different languages...
[00:01:09.010]so they would just shoot it all silently, and then dub in everybody's voices later for the various different countries.
[00:01:14.024]AND THIS ONE, SHOWING THE SCARS, WAS GIVEN TO ME AT THE CLINIC THAT SENT HER AWAY DISFIGURED FOREVER.
[00:01:18.034]For example, Sergio Leon's spaghetti westerns... when Clint Eastwood was first hired to act in them..
[00:01:24.008]He very famously went over to Italy, looked at the script and said to the director, "Sergio, why is there all this dialog?"
[00:01:30.042]"If you cut it out, it'll be easier to dub." And Sergio said, "You're right!"
[00:01:34.049]So that's why there's no characterization. He just shows up and starts killing people, and it's just all action.
[00:01:41.003]But dubbing basically ruins a film. Subtitles really... people complain sometimes that that's giving you double-work.
[00:01:49.077]But if you just think about it for a moment or two, you really get the entire presence of the actors...
[00:01:55.011]You get their speech patterns. And if you're striping away the actual dialog and the actual speech patterns of the actors...
[00:02:01.068]you're really removing a great deal of their performance.
[00:02:04.069]So, dubbing versus subtitles... dubbing may be more universal and attract a larger audience...
[00:02:10.059]but if you want to experience the true film as it was actually made, you need to go for subtitles.
[00:02:15.090]I'm Wheeler Winston Dixon, and this is Frame By Frame.

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Frame By Frame: Subtitles v. Dubbing

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