LanguageSponge Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5700 days ago 1197 posts - 1487 votes Speaks: English*, German, French Studies: Welsh, Russian, Japanese, Slovenian, Greek, Italian
| Message 1 of 5 12 December 2011 at 1:27pm | IP Logged |
Hi,
Last night I watched Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 with German dubbing -
no subtitles. I watched it in German not with a view to gaining anything from a German
perspective (I understood all but about three words without any problems) but just
because I felt like it. But this got me thinking about the benefits we can or cannot
gain from watching dubbed films that we already know well in the original language. Is
it worth it? I found myself able to translate back pretty much every line of the whole
film back into English - and that made me feel like it was a different thing entirely,
more like a translation exercise than watching the film, almost.
So my question, as I'm not sure I've made it entirely clear, is: Is watching a film
that you already know well in the original dubbed into another language worth it from a
language-learning perspective?
Thanks for your opinions,
Jack
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Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6531 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish
| Message 2 of 5 12 December 2011 at 8:06pm | IP Logged |
Hehe I watched the fifth part in Italian yesterday, my first movie in Italian ever. Hadn't seen it before though, only read some parts of the book. Theoretically I'd think it's more useful at an intermediate level, and I'm sure there must be a way to avoid thinking of the original lines? Now that I think of it, I haven't watched any movie that many times. And when watching a movie in my native language I often have music on, or I feel guilty. When possible it should also be a good idea to watch the movie in various languages from the beginning, rather than watch it in the same one many times.
Perhaps L-R'ing some of the passages from the book can also help with getting in the L2 mode and not thinking of L1. Also, at least if you're fluent anyway, maybe the L1 subtitles can be helpful. It must've been more of a memory exercise than a translation one, y/y? When the L1 lines are already there there's nothing to remember and you can relax... maybe...
Not quite your original question, heh. IDK at least I'm building my collection of LOTR movies and audiobooks (+other by Tolkien) and I hope it'll be both enjoyable and useful. So far it has certainly been :)
(Damn now I feel like watching the third part too... seen it on TV once but I started watching late)
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fiziwig Senior Member United States Joined 4799 days ago 297 posts - 618 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish
| Message 3 of 5 13 December 2011 at 1:19am | IP Logged |
I find this technique very helpful. I've watched every one of the Harry Potter movies dubbed in Spanish. I'm even more familiar with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, so watching that has been very useful too. Each time I watch I get more out of it. (Unfortunately my season one through season three disks don't have Spanish soundtracks, so I can only watch seasons four through seven in Spanish.)
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Takato Tetraglot Senior Member HungaryRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4982 days ago 249 posts - 276 votes Speaks: Hungarian*, EnglishB2, GermanB2, Japanese
| Message 4 of 5 28 December 2011 at 12:40pm | IP Logged |
If one considers the dubbers non-noob, then one should assume that they did a great job. So it should be considered fully indifferent whether or not it's the original dub.
I watched Death Note (which is originally in Japanese) fully in Hungarian, some episodes in English and many (maybe 34 out of 37) in German. Approximately 1,5 months ago I watched some episodes in Spanish, and I found that I understand roughly two third of it. My favorite episodes were useful, since I found out how to say this and that word in Spanish because of the know-by-heart thingy which I partially possessed of the episodes. Therefore, if in one's opinion an audio visual media is regarded as rewatchable, one will most likely have benefits of it. However, it'd be the best if you just watched never watched films/series in German according to your liking. At least I most often watch media in Spanish which I never watched before, rather than already watched material, since I mostly consider a waste of time rewatching anything.
Edit: I forgot to mention that if I have insufficient knowledge of a language (e.g. Dutch), I watch in a dub which I can't comprehend (e.g. Chinese) with the subtitle of the language I wanna learn (Dutch), just when I can get the gist of an episode dubbed in Dutch, then will I consider watching a whole serie in Dutch dub. Of course I never watch comprehendible dub with comprehendible sub, since then I'd either not care reading the subtitles or I'd just read the subtitles missing some scenes and dubbed language because of it, choosing which I find easier.
Edited by Takato on 28 December 2011 at 12:54pm
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Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5700 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin
| Message 5 of 5 29 December 2011 at 12:41am | IP Logged |
The mouths freak me out. And at least for German dubs, the speech is somewhat unnatural, you can hear the original language shining through just from the pace and prosody the voice actors use.
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