Subtitled (not dubbed; dubbing is a sin) is the best. Then again, for me all Hollywood cinema is subtitled. I wouldn't have it any other way, I love hearing the original actors speaking.

I hear in some countries like Spain, dubbing is the norm. And they are quite proud of it. I find that puzzling.

In France the dubbing is very well done and some movies are even better when dubbed. I still watch movies in the original language with subtitles but some 90's movies like Back to the Future are even better dubbed in French. There are even YouTube channels dedicated to dubbed movies where they invite dubbing actors, etc.

9 of 10 times dubbing doesn't fit with natural situational space(echo, reverb, any time based post processing in general). It's almost always out of space, stands out for me annoyingly which I find breaking the immersion. I wonder french dubbing is different.

I found that as a result, dialog was clearer. I really hate how loud everything other than dialog is in most movies for the sake of 'immersion'. I eventually gave up and settled on using subtitles when I don't want to miss any parts of a conversation.

FWIW, I'm way more fluent in English than French.

Probably not, but he's used to it since childhood.

Movies cannot be better dubbed. I want to watch and hear the original actors act. Voice is an essential part of acting.

What you're saying is effectively "our voice actors are better than the original actors", which I simply cannot stand behind.

Isn't there a lot of Dubbing / ADR in movies by the original actors? Such as when the original audio recording wasn't that great?

Movies can absolutely be better dubbed. It's incredibly rare in live action, but not so much with animation

I will agree with you animation is a special case where it can happen. But in general and in my experience, it's not common even in this case.

Spanish dubs of animé are sometimes good. All English dubs I've heard are atrocious. I remember one of the first dubs that was lauded was the English dub of Princess Mononoke... and it's hilariously bad, even if it has big names doing the voices. The Japanese version is the best, but even the Spanish dub is better.

Doesn't this happen all the time though? How many cover songs out there are better than the originals?

I think this both misses the point and is incredibly insightiful at the same time. A cover of a known song may be better (it happens!), but you'd never claim you heard the original song if all you listened to is the cover.

A dub is like a cover, agreed. Almost always, a terrible cover. I can always tell when I incorrectly set the language on Netflix to something other than the original -- you can immediately tell it's a dub because of the drop in voice acting quality. English dubs are particularly terrible, it's like the voice actors are emotionless drones, and when they try emotion, they use it in all the wrong places.

Besides, it's disrespectful. An actor/actress is not just their face and mannerisms. It's their voices, too. The voices are an essential part of their acting (if you are deaf, you can't help missing them, but if you are not, unless it's a scene without speech, you're missing a key ingredient). Saying "ok, I'll replace his voice with this other voice, and his face with with this other face I like better.. you know what? I'll just edit him out of the movie and replace him with this other actor I like better!" is way too scifi and post-cyberpunk dystopia for me. It's just disrespectful.

I cannot honestly say I watched a movie if I watched it dubbed. I watched a cover instead.

>but some 90's movies like Back to the Future are even better dubbed in French.

what do you mean by this, that the French language is so much better that it renders the movie better by using it? Or is it that the writers translating the English to French are better and make the movies more interesting by their choices?

>There are even YouTube channels dedicated to dubbed movies where they invite dubbing actors, etc.

Or is it that the dubbing actors are better speakers than the original actors, for example most actors when they do voiceovers suck because they aren't trained for it I guess, and maybe a dubbed actor is trained for it or... I guess I am just confused by how a dubbing could improve a really good movie although I might suppose it would be possible to improve a really bad movie in this way.

So how does this work?

If it is a replicable aesthetic phenomenon you might expect people to aesthetically choose to make movies in this way, to make better movies.

I despise subtitles, I watch films for the visual medium when I turn on subtitles they distract me from watching the actual film. I know I’m uncultured etc but I can’t help the way I feel about it.

I'm ok with turning off subtitles, but then I can only watch English language (or Spanish) films. Only subtitles let me watch French, Japanese, Korean, Italian, etc.

Dubbing is out of the question because I do not hate actors and cinema.

> not dubbed; dubbing is a sin

People without enough usable vision to read subtitles would disagree.

Well, obviously it was a generalization and there are special conditions. People who are deaf can only watch with close captions, so...

Sure. Normally I find quibbling annoying, but I hope you can understand why I want to highlight accessibility on a site that many of the world’s best software engineers frequent. I care about accessibility on all dimensions not just visual. At the end of the day accessible design is good design.

Actually dubbed content is one of the few areas where I would say Netflix has stolen a march on its competitors with some innovative practices.

Through Netflix I've been exposed to a huge back catalog of great content just because they were the first ones to invest in having it dubbed (I assume). Even though the dubbing is often pretty crude it's surprisingly watchable still and definitely better watching first tier dubbed content than second or third tier native language content.

You're not interested because of the dubbing? Then just switch to subtitles. Or do you not have the patience to put up with subtitles?

Despite what Hollywood would have you believe, there's considerable high-quality content coming out of other countries. I love that Netflix brings that to the U.S., otherwise I'd never know of it or be able to watch it.

It's funny because I used to sound just like you. But now I am much more sympathetic to the above comment. I spent a lot of my youth enjoying films by a bunch of foreign filmmakers including:

Ozu Bergman Fellini Suzuki Clouzot Bresson Kurosawa Mizoguchi Costa-Gavras Herzog Renoir and on and on

I especially loved the films of Jean Pierre Melville, Masaki Kobayashi and Anrei Tarkovsky. And yet, when I am done with a long day of work and chores, I cannot stomach anything with subtitles. Exhaustion plays a part in it. It just feels like work after a long day. And I wouldn't want to have that experience of any of the movies I loved back then, seeing them as a chore to be tolerated.

As someone not from an English-speaking country, most of the things I watch anywhere are subtitled.

I'm really puzzled by people with no stomach for subtitles or who would only watch stuff in their native language. Subtitles + original language of other cultures is so much better.

It's not tiring at all, either.

Yeah this is it. At the end of the day I just want some background noise that’s entertaining not to have to focus entirely on what I’m watching. It’s rare that I have the time and energy to sit down and watch a show or movie just to take in the plot. That is usually reserved for the theater where I’m forced to not distract myself.

I have wached a bunch of stuff with subtitles, mostly anime. But more recently even movies, esp. recent movies(I find the sound balance off, effects are too loud and voices too soft).

That said, subtitles can be very distracting. You end up focusing on the word and missing things in the scene/shot as well as the background.

Also the subtitles are not always faithful to the dialog. A good example of this is watching One Piece in English w/ Subs on Netflix. The spoken dialog will be one thing, the written will be another. I have some Japanese knowledge and can tell you that the subs(and the dubs) definitely do not reflect the feeling in some scenes.

My barely literate 75 year old grandma could watch soaps with Romanian subtitles in the evening :-))

It's just a matter of practice. And of watching on a big screen, I'd say.

I agree neither dubs nor subtitles are 100% faithful to the original. By necessity, they cannot be. There's no such thing as a perfect translation even with books, but with TV/cinema you also have to keep the pace, which makes things doubly difficult.

Even then, just hearing the original language, even if you don't understand the words, conveys essential emotion. I like to hear the original voice actors, which are essential for the cartoon/anime (even more with live action movies, of course).

I was referring less to films and more to TV.

At the end of a long day of work and chores I cannot stomach a 90-120 minute film, regardless of what language it's in. I much prefer 30-60 minute content. At that length subtitles are much more digestible.

When I turn on subtitles I spend the whole time reading, so I’m not a fan of doing it that way. I’ve no doubt that the quality of the plot acting etc is great (I did watch squid games) but I only really watch TV at the end of the day and I’m usually browsing on my tablet as well.

Watch it with subtitles instead then—most non-English content has English subtitles in my experience. Many of many favorite shows of recent years have been non-English Netflix shows that I watch with subtitles: Fauda, Dogs of Berlin, A Very Secret Service, Lupin, etc.