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Do dubs help you? | ||
 Language Learning Forum : Music, Movies, TV & Radio |  | |
| sillygoose1 Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 4635 days ago 566 posts - 814 votes  Speaks: English*, Italian, Spanish, French Studies: German, Latin | Message 1 of 25 12 November 2012 at 2:44am | IP Logged | ||
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I can't get over the fact that dubbed shows are just too unnatural in most cases. I can see how they would be a great help to an intermediate-intermediate high learner, but once you break the intermediate stage do you think dubbed shows help a lot?
I mean, surely there is bound to be a new phrase or word you could learn but as far as the voice acting is concerned it just seems like they don't speak like they would in a normal conversation. Not to mention that the voices don't match up with the mouths. So, what do you think? Do dubbed series/movies help you a lot or do you prefer solely native material? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6702 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 2 of 25 12 November 2012 at 10:28am | IP Logged | ||
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I quite generally hate dubbing in all its forms (even with languages I don't understand), and the type where the original voice is running at the same time as the dubber's voice is particularly irritating. So for instance listening to an English or American documentary with German voice-over on just about any German TV station is simply unbearable - no program can survive that treatment whatever its theme. In those few cases where people can't be expected to read subtitles (i.e. programs for small children or visually impaired or analphabets) the least one could do would be to offer a 'clean' sound channel with the dubbed voices and ONLY them and another with ONLY the original voices plus subtitles if needed. I sometimes wonder how people with hearing problems fare with those mixed voices - the only choice for them would be to turn the sound totally down and hope that there are subtitles available on request. And that is absolutely not something you can reckon with.
However there is another angle to this (and sillygoose1 does address it): are native speakers with 'normal' intonation more difficult to understand than 1) good second language speakers? 2) native speakers who have been told to speak clearly? The answers are probably yes and definitely yes. And one problem here is that film instructors may be more interested in creating some kind of authentic atmosphere in their films than they are in catering for language learners. But here in my country even native Danes have lamented over the mumbling and slurredness and broken syntax produced by actors and TV program participants alike. They say that "in the good old days" people spoke more clearly on the canvas and on TV, and when I listen to legacy programs I have to agree. Clarity and 'authenticity' don't combine easily. Edited by Iversen on 12 November 2012 at 2:00pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4706 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 3 of 25 12 November 2012 at 12:11pm | IP Logged | ||
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I watched the first two parts of the Lord of the Rings dubbed in French.
It was hilarious, but only because most of it sounded really stupid. VOUS NE PASSEREZ PAS! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5531 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 4 of 25 12 November 2012 at 1:25pm | IP Logged | ||
I've been extremely happy with Buffy contre les vampires, which is well-dubbed and well-acted. The lips line up surprisingly well, there's lots of perfectly ordinary conversational French, and they speak fast. Difficulty-wise, let's compare it to Engrenages, a rather good French police drama. The dialog in Buffy is certainly easier to understand than the conversations between criminals in Engrenages, and maybe slightly easier than the casual conversations between police officers. Anyone who's getting 95%+ of the hardest Buffy episodes is a solid C1 in listening comprehension. Now, if by "dubs" you mean the Latin American soap operas dubbed for French Caribbean release on France Ô, then that's a different matter. Those are often so badly dubbed it's hilarious. But I have no problem at all with high-quality dubbing aimed at native speakers, even if it's sometimes slightly easier. I wish my listening comprehension was good enough that I could afford to look down on a series like Buffy as way too easy! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| sillygoose1 Tetraglot Senior Member United States Joined 4635 days ago 566 posts - 814 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, Spanish, French Studies: German, Latin | Message 5 of 25 12 November 2012 at 1:49pm | IP Logged | ||
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Iversen - Yeah that's a good point. If people with hearing problems would have trouble matching up the words to the mouth, then that's probably a sign that it wouldn't be the best to learn
tarvos - That actually does sound really hilarious. That makes me want to watch it now haha. emk - Engrenages is incredibly difficult. I'm not sure if its because of the vocab they use or what. And when I made this thread, my experience with dubs were Seinfeld, The Simpsons, That 70's Show, and Harry Potter. I didn't mean to say that some are easier than others because I haven't watched everything. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6581 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 6 of 25 12 November 2012 at 2:18pm | IP Logged | ||
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Dubs have helped me though the intermediate stages in both French and Cantonese. I don't need them so much now, but during a certain stage in my French learning I watched a lot of dubbed movies, because original French movies were too hard. Same thing with Cantonese. Mandarin dramas dubbed into Cantonese are super easy when compared to the often slang-heavy and slurred Hong Kong movies. I can now get by without them, but for the language learner they fill a gap between lesson material and original native material.
They also increase the amount of media availible in a language. Since many countries, such as France and Sweden, watch more American TV series and movies than natively produced ones, dubbing can increase the availible stuff. I wouldn't want to be studying Swedish seeing the meagre offerings in the media. Shows in Swedish are in the minority here. Recently a Swedish newspaper checked the TV shows during a week to find out the proportions. They found 38 percent of programs were produced in Sweden, compared to 44 percent American and a significant part (not specified) from the UK. And those 38 percents were mostly from the Public Service channel, which has 85% Swedish programming. The other (more popular) channels were cited with percentages like 12 and 14% Swedish. The Comedy Channel didn't have a single Swedish show all week, despite being a completely Swedish channel. Looking at those numbers, if I were studying Swedish I'd be lamenting the fact that we don't do dubbing here. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4706 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 7 of 25 12 November 2012 at 2:29pm | IP Logged | ||
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The Netherlands mirrors Ari's observations in that respect. What I do is simply order
Swedish books and things from Swedish websites and import them. And I really don't want to watch my favourite TV shows dubbed into Swedish, since I hate dubbing with a passion (and only did the French thing for the lulz). (That, and I do not watch a lot of TV at all) Edited by tarvos on 12 November 2012 at 2:30pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| stifa Triglot Senior Member Norway lang-8.com/448715 Joined 4872 days ago 629 posts - 813 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, EnglishC2, German Studies: Japanese, Spanish | Message 8 of 25 12 November 2012 at 2:33pm | IP Logged | ||
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I tried to watch an episode of Death Note in German, and while the voice acting was
decent, the translation was so faithful to the original Japanese. Kinda hilarious when Light was asked to translate a passage into Japanese, and then reads it out in German. :p The Mass Effect (video game) dub is also decent, but still simpler than most "real" German stuff. Edited by stifa on 12 November 2012 at 2:33pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
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