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I'm personally interested in the reception of (translated, presumably) English-language media in places where English isn't most people's first language, but feel free to talk about any sort. Books, films, tv, whatever. What about non-fiction books, do those even get translated where you are?
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Jun 1, 2015 00:02
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Translation are aways awful and the more I learned about English the more I would notice stuff that just can't be translated. Nowadays I only read, listen to and watch stuff on english if that's the original languange. But I'm an exception as far as I know, and as far as anecdotal evidence counts, I'm the only one I know that do that, including my nerdish friends. Everyone I know buy translated stuff. My brother bought recently an entire collection of the Game of Thrones books to my father (translated). We do get a lot of stuff translated here in Brazil, I'm not sure what you want to know exactly, there is a big publisher that translates and publish super-hero comics and some mangas (panini) along with other several smaller publishers. There is stuff coming out all of the time like new editions (with new translations) of Willian Gibson books, and Isaac Asimov. Recent technical books for computer science are not a problem as far as I remember. Edit: also we love american and english media and people are elitist about it since the ones that consume brasilian stuff are generally associated with the unwashed masses, not everything, but a lot of stuff. program666 fucked around with this message at 01:16 on Jun 1, 2015 |
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Jun 1, 2015 01:12
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Here in Germany most people primarily consume american media, at least as far as movies and TV series go. Pretty much everything gets dubbed and while the voice acting quality for high profile releases is pretty good on average, you'll always lose something. I recently heard Better Call Saul's german dub at my dad's place and I was surprised how good it was, (Breaking Bad's dub was terrible.) but even then the voice track is noticably out of place compared to all the other noise and music. Most people don't care though and watch it dubbed, with quite a few people even maintaining that the dub version is often legitimatly better than the original audio. (Usually those people barely speak any english, so I dunno about that...) Two and a Half Men, Big Bang Theory, etc. are pretty popular on TV, lowest common denominator and all that.
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Jun 1, 2015 10:24
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John Luebke posted:Here in Germany most people primarily consume american media, at least as far as movies and TV series go. When you say "primarily", do you mean "more than local stuff" or just "more than any other import"? Because I don't think the former is true even here in the UK (maybe?) where it doesn't even have to be translated.
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Jun 1, 2015 22:26
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Dzhay posted:When you say "primarily", do you mean "more than local stuff" or just "more than any other import"? Because I don't think the former is true even here in the UK (maybe?) where it doesn't even have to be translated. Depends on the age group. Younger people tend to American media, while older people are more likely to watch German stuff. There are a lot more older people in Germany. In 2010 amongst the 50 most popular TV series nine were American, one was Scandinavian, one British (all were completely dubbed) and the rest was German or Austrian. The top 10 were all German. This is TV audience only, though. Younger people often watch their stuff online, but on average they prefer their media to be dubbed, too.
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Jun 2, 2015 09:12
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Regarding videogames in Mexico, we like to have the option to choose between spanish and english. In a perfect world, the game will come in the original language and we can enable spanish subs for people that don't understand english. Most videogame spanish dubs are terrible (I'm looking at you Blizzard) and are made in studios in Spain, where they have that accent that we mock here in latin america, and use a set of words and phrases in the dub that we sometimes don't understand. Newer releases are dubbing the game in Mexico studios for latinamerica, but I don't know if that's better for the rest of the countries as we have our own accent. Example: When Starcraft 2 was released, there was outrage here in Mexico because first: the dub was made in Spain and you couldn't change the language. Second, the hotkeys were all changed in the keyboard, which made pro gamers angry IIRC. A few months later, Blizzard had to add the option to install the english language pack to the Latin American version of the game because of all the complains.
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Jun 2, 2015 16:43
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Norway: Movies and shows for children are dubbed, everything else is subtitled (thank god). I've yet to have a single subject at University where all the curriculum was in Norwegian. Lots of fiction books are translated, but you'll frequently find the original version next to it - provided the original is in English. "Everone" speaks passable English, but far fewer people speak Spanish, French or German well enough to read a whole book. American blockbusters hit cinemas here as well with great success, and our TVs are filled with American and British shows, but also a lot of Swedish and Danish stuff. There are quite a few film festivals concerned with movies from across the world, and there will always be at least one foreign (as in "not American, British or Scandinavian") movie running in the theatres. To be honest, British and American books, movies and music hardly registers as "foreign" to most people, especially young people. It's everywhere.
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Jun 2, 2015 21:20
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Also, Norwegian newspapers will often use translated articles from Anglophone publications as filler. This often turns out pretty strange in practice, with articles about public figures that are completely unknown in our country (like Jimmy Savile) or using English-style place names (like writing "Danube" when we call that river "Donau"). Also, journalists are rarely able to read any foreign languages other than Danish/Swedish/English, so they tend to rely on Anglophone sources even for events that occured outside the English-speaking world.
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Jun 3, 2015 06:01
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I've always felt that dubbing done poorly was really just incredibly stupid. Like, is this a fop to people who can't read or something? I'll give it that the very best dubs are better for native speakers than subs, but subs are just kinda better nine times out of ten, maybe more. If I'm watching a foreign film, I just default to subs. The problem is compounded when the language doesn't even map well onto the original language, because then the meaning gets butchered in an attempt to have words fit the mouth movements. Just seems moronic.
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Jun 3, 2015 15:35
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I like dubs as a sort of listening exercise when I'm practicing another language, but I would prefer subtitles if I were watching media in a language I didn't understand.
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Jun 3, 2015 16:01
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Jeza posted:I've always felt that dubbing done poorly was really just incredibly stupid. Like, is this a fop to people who can't read or something?  El Chingon posted:Regarding videogames in Mexico, we like to have the option to choose between spanish and english. In a perfect world, the game will come in the original language and we can enable spanish subs for people that don't understand english. Most videogame spanish dubs are terrible (I'm looking at you Blizzard) and are made in studios in Spain, where they have that accent that we mock here in latin america, and use a set of words and phrases in the dub that we sometimes don't understand. Newer releases are dubbing the game in Mexico studios for latinamerica, but I don't know if that's better for the rest of the countries as we have our own accent.
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Jun 3, 2015 22:32
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The diversity of dialects in the English language is quite low compared to many other languages, yeah. Even in comparably small language areas like the German language you will find people who won't be able to understand each other and if there is an interview with, for example, a Swiss guy it's highly likely that they have to sub it for a northern German audience.
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Jun 3, 2015 22:45
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A bit of a derail, but: dialects are becoming less distinguished now that people move about more and everyone has access to various common media channels, but there are several dialects alive in Norway that, when spoken "properly" are virtually unintelligible to everyone else. In Norwegian dialects the difference isn't just in pronunciation - pronouns frequently differ, the grammar is different, and there is an abundance of local words used. A simple example: "I'm going to the store." In a generic accent from Eastern Norway that would be: "Jeg skal dra på butikken." In my accent, from the north of Norway, it's "Æ ska fær på butikken." The pronoun "I", officially written "jeg", can be /jei/, /æ/, /je/, /i/, /ei/ and /eg/ , depending on where in the country you're from. Also we have two official written languages, both of which are Norwegian  (god drat this, I'm supposed to be writing a paper on a subject not even vaguely related to this) Edit: To make it less of a derail, we love our dialects and make a point of using them in public broadcasting. Dubbed childrens programmes will go out of their way to feature a variety of dialects, which can be pretty hilarious when you get a very obviously all-American character speaking like she comes from the rear end-end of a long-forgotten fjord. Sockmuppet fucked around with this message at 23:08 on Jun 3, 2015 |
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Jun 3, 2015 23:04
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Sockmuppet posted:Edit: To make it less of a derail, we love our dialects and make a point of using them in public broadcasting. Dubbed childrens programmes will go out of their way to feature a variety of dialects, which can be pretty hilarious when you get a very obviously all-American character speaking like she comes from the rear end-end of a long-forgotten fjord. The German version of the original Baldur's Gate did this and it was comically horrible to hear Saxonian dwarves.
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Jun 3, 2015 23:18
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Ooo, speaking of dwarves, a translation of Lord of the Rings was published here a few years back where the different races spoke suitable dialects - the Elves spoke a very high-brow and old-fashioned version of New Norwegian, the Orcs spoke like they did in the slums of Oslo at the turn of the century, and the hobbits spoke the Norwegian equivalent of a West Country-accent. It was awesome!
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Jun 3, 2015 23:33
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English dialects used to be significantly less homogeneous, but that's been going away since, well, radio. I'd kind of assumed that was the case with most other major languages.
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Jun 4, 2015 00:00
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Dzhay posted:English dialects used to be significantly less homogeneous, but that's been going away since, well, radio. I'd kind of assumed that was the case with most other major languages. It generally is the case with most languages. But sometimes a language can drift apart while the separate dialects themselves again perceive a centralisation. This is happening with Swiss German, which has been moving away from Standard German for the last decades while the regional variations of Swiss German are disappearing*. It's a thing you can also see in Swiss media, where you see more and more content in Swiss German every year. I guess a similar thing has been going on with regards to European vs. American Spanish. *Austrian German on the other hand is moving towards the German spoken in Germany, so it's not a thing you can really predict.
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Jun 4, 2015 00:12
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I'm curious to what extent verisimilitude is taken into account for a lot of dubs (I'm sure this varies by country, quality of the dub, etc.). For example, for a medieval fantasy film dubbed in Spanish for a Latin American audience, would there be an attempt made to have an older form of Spanish for the dialogue? Or have them speak Castilian Spanish and leave it at that (the way Hollywood tends to just default to a simple English accent for a lot of its historical fantasy set in a European-inspired setting)? Spanish with an English accent? Or is it just like "gently caress it" and just use the standard modern Spanish for the region since presumably the audience is aware the dialogue is being translated anyway? I'm curious about how dubs are handled with varying settings in general, doesn't have to be that specific example.
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Jun 9, 2015 22:25
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lizardman posted:I'm curious to what extent verisimilitude is taken into account for a lot of dubs (I'm sure this varies by country, quality of the dub, etc.). For example, for a medieval fantasy film dubbed in Spanish for a Latin American audience, would there be an attempt made to have an older form of Spanish for the dialogue? Or have them speak Castilian Spanish and leave it at that (the way Hollywood tends to just default to a simple English accent for a lot of its historical fantasy set in a European-inspired setting)? Spanish with an English accent? Or is it just like "gently caress it" and just use the standard modern Spanish for the region since presumably the audience is aware the dialogue is being translated anyway? When I was watching dubbed Big Bang Theory in Spain, one of the jokes that used Spanish in the English version used French in the Spanish dub. That's all I can think of at the moment.
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Jun 9, 2015 22:29
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Similarly, in the French dub of Spiderman 3 when they were in the restaurant with Bruce Campbell as the waiter he was French in the English version but Italian in the French version.
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Jun 9, 2015 22:41
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I've always been amused by the idea that when Fawlty Towers went to Spain, Manuel becomes Italian or Mexican (depending on if you're watching in Catalunya or not).
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Jun 9, 2015 23:24
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lizardman posted:I'm curious to what extent verisimilitude is taken into account for a lot of dubs (I'm sure this varies by country, quality of the dub, etc.). For example, for a medieval fantasy film dubbed in Spanish for a Latin American audience, would there be an attempt made to have an older form of Spanish for the dialogue? Or have them speak Castilian Spanish and leave it at that (the way Hollywood tends to just default to a simple English accent for a lot of its historical fantasy set in a European-inspired setting)? Spanish with an English accent? Or is it just like "gently caress it" and just use the standard modern Spanish for the region since presumably the audience is aware the dialogue is being translated anyway? When the it's english being translated to portuguese and it has stuff like thy or thou or whatever we kind of have personal pronouns that we don't use anymore here in Brazil (Tu, Vós) so they are used in the text. A lot of Thor comics are like that for example but I think I've seen it in other medias.
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Jun 10, 2015 03:26
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I had a co-worker say they visiting family in Italy They watched Inglorious Basterds and said it was completely dubbed in Italian. Aren't movies like that suppose to retain their different languages?
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Jun 10, 2015 06:55
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Soviet Commubot posted:Similarly, in the French dub of Spiderman 3 when they were in the restaurant with Bruce Campbell as the waiter he was French in the English version but Italian in the French version. That happens a lot, in Italian but also in German (Danielle Rousseau from Lost, Archie Leach in A Fish Called Wanda) Sometimes however they just leave it like that, generally when it's not relevant.
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Jun 10, 2015 08:44
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afterhours posted:I had a co-worker say they visiting family in Italy They watched Inglorious Basterds and said it was completely dubbed in Italian. Aren't movies like that suppose to retain their different languages? What happened to the bit where someone speaks Italian really badly?
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Jun 10, 2015 10:47
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afterhours posted:I had a co-worker say they visiting family in Italy They watched Inglorious Basterds and said it was completely dubbed in Italian. Aren't movies like that suppose to retain their different languages? I had a question about another Tarintino movie. I watched some of the German dub of Django Unchained in a hotel in Berlin, but didn't finish it. What do they do during the scene where Christoph Waltz speaks German with Django's wife?
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Jun 10, 2015 21:30
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lizardman posted:I'm curious to what extent verisimilitude is taken into account for a lot of dubs (I'm sure this varies by country, quality of the dub, etc.). For example, for a medieval fantasy film dubbed in Spanish for a Latin American audience, would there be an attempt made to have an older form of Spanish for the dialogue? Or have them speak Castilian Spanish and leave it at that (the way Hollywood tends to just default to a simple English accent for a lot of its historical fantasy set in a European-inspired setting)? Spanish with an English accent? Or is it just like "gently caress it" and just use the standard modern Spanish for the region since presumably the audience is aware the dialogue is being translated anyway? Sort of a funny case is the Breton language dub of the French language film "L'Affaire Seznec" where the British characters all speak in a Gwened accent and everyone else speaks in one of the other three dialects. There's no real rhyme nor reason for this other than for the British characters to be "not from 'round these parts", although I imagine people who speak the Gwened dialect thought it was weird. There was one episode of Columbo dubbed into Breton where a waiter in London spoke with an English accent in Breton which was kinda nice.
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Jun 10, 2015 23:27
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I hail from in the USSR, and the relationship with foreign media was strenuous at best. You could get Polish stuff easily enough, but to get anything Western, you basically had to know a guy who knows a guy, and if you were very lucky, you'd get a stack of typewritten carbon copies (unless you had really good contacts, it would be really blurry, these things were typed up ten at a time) for one night only. If you were lucky, it would be an actual genuine translation instead of effectively fanfiction. Now, in the 90s, this all changed. TV was flooded with Western media, but with very questionable quality. I remember watching Terminator 2 three times, with three different translations. They usually got the message across, but the subtleties were gone. The worst part was the voice quality. A lot of the time, there would only be one voice actor. Big time TV channels could afford several, but if you had a bootleg re-re-re-copied VHS tape, get used to hearing just one guy narrating every character in monotone. Cartoons were lower budget, even big channels had at most three voice actors. The same thing happened with video games. Due to the traditionally lax respect for intellectual property, you could get a disk of PC games for next to nothing. The degree of Russification was anyone's guess. Some games were flat out in English, some had a Russian installer, some were almost completely translated. Some disks had mod collections in addition to the games, which was nice in the era of having to go down to the nearest kiosk for dial-up cards whenever you ran out of time. The quality of all of these got a lot better, but you can still find a granny in the subway with a tray full of Grand Theft Auto disks.
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Jun 13, 2015 00:55
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Dubbing is realyl dumb on every level, and the only reason it still exists is because it's a huge industry with considerable lobbying power.
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Jun 14, 2015 07:48
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afterhours posted:I had a co-worker say they visiting family in Italy They watched Inglorious Basterds and said it was completely dubbed in Italian. Aren't movies like that suppose to retain their different languages? This is an interesting example. Here in Germany, all the english dialogue was dubbed, while the French parts were left completly untouched. Christoph Waltz dubbed his originally English speaking parts himself, but he mentioned in interviews that he considered it to be an incredibly dumb decision for the movie. The movie's publisher over here insisted that the majority of the audience wouldn't want it any other way though. Unfortunatly, they were probably right. They actually redubbed Fassbender's German dialogue in the tavern scene. They still mention his "weird accent", yet there's no trace left of his british accented German in the dub. It's also really jarring to hear German VA right next to German live action acting, (Most of the originally German dialogue that was left untouched.) regardless of quality, live action acting always has a very different tone to voice acting. John Luebke fucked around with this message at 17:31 on Jun 22, 2015 |
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Jun 22, 2015 17:25
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The fact that you could still find people selling bootleg dics in TYOL 2010 blew my mind. Speaking from Lithuanian experience... at first, after the Union fell (freedom! Glorious, Glorious freedom) basically everything had subtitles. At least I remember Cybernet (the best gaming show of all time) and Air Wolf had subtitles. Then they started dubbing poo poo on TV - except for the Russian stuff, which still gets subtitled till this very day. A lot of adults know Russian, and there some local Russians that have not learned Lithuanian in 50 years or so. Back in the day, the only pirated VHS were in Russian and it was horrible - it was VHS quality video, with what seemed like one guy dubbing EVERY MOVIE EVER. Don't know about the market these days, but you can download Lithuanian subs and dubs for your torrents. Their quality isn't that good. Neither is it good on TV or in cinema. While the translations aren't all out and about retarded, you're missing a lot on TV dubbing. In cinema, the movies are subtitled, but Lithuanian isn't really space ergonomic language and the subbers aren't English majors. They know English, but they don't know English. Any subtlety is lost on them. Books... well, books translations are varied. For example, Lord of the Rings translation is awesome! OK now, for reception: anything not made in America or at least Britain is weird. Even lovely German soap operas feel like watching something... other. You watch all the major American TV series the TV get their hands on, or torrent that poo poo wholesale. Only a few "foreign" (that's how you separate shows and movies: Lithuanian, American, Russian and Foreign) shows made a big splash, like Alarm Fur Kobra 11 and Comissar Rex (or was it Austrian). Books... nobody really cares where the book comes from, really, as long as it's good. There's not much Lithuanian literature to go around (especially in fun subjects like Sci-fi or fantasy), so people who read books readily consume anything they can. As for the press... I'd say for people who care BBC is gold standard and Al-Jazeera is the acceptable alternative. Nobody would watch Russia today, since if you're supporting Russia, you're likely already watching Russian channels.
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Jun 22, 2015 20:00
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My wife grew up in Ukraine in the 90's. Somehow American soap operas were very popular and that's how she thought all Americans looked, lived, and acted. Imagine her surprise when she arrived and found out we aren't all pretty and living in mansions with interesting lives.
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Jun 22, 2015 20:05
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JcDent posted:Books... well, books translations are varied. For example, Lord of the Rings translation is awesome! Lucky you. We had a joke in Russia that went like this: An orc, a goblin, and a troll walk into a bar. The bartender asks "who are you?" They reply "we're hobbits from different Lord of the Rings translations!" It was rather representative of the quality of the works.
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Jun 22, 2015 22:40
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