I can’t have subs on as I find myself reading rather than watching.
Generally, for me it’s subs for live action and dubs for animated unless the dub is known to be terrible (but I don’t watch foreign language animated stuff that often). I’ve also taken to using subs with English live action more often as my basement TV watching is not always the best listening environment if the HVAC or laundry is running. Even without the background noise, you do often catch a lot of stuff in subs more accurately than the audio like names or fantasy language (Hi, The Expanse!) and such.
Hahaha.
For some of us 90+% of entertainment is foreign language. If I kept to the pretty fantastic bar I would watch very little TV/film indeed.
Anyway, subs all the way. Spanish dub industry in the 60-80s was top of the line (with even some dub actors being familiar because of their dubbing) and even then it pales in comparison to the original version.
I doubt any dub from a non-dubbing country (and the US is not) can be bearable. Only exception I can think of is animation. While I prefer subs there, there’s a disconnect between image and voice even in the original material and it’s conceivable a dub can be as good (or even better) than the original. But outside of animation I can’t stand dubs anymore.
I’m trying to remember when the last time was that I even saw a live action dub. I honestly can’t remember. That’s not a very common thing here in the United States, I don’t think.
Probably Jackie Chan movies from the 1980s? That’s the only thing that comes to mind.
I find dubs distracting for live action, but with anime I typically prefer dubs simply because it makes multitasking easier. A sub requires my complete focus, but I’m often playing a game, on my phone or otherwise dividing my attention when watching TV.
The only movie I have watched with subs was in Portugal, and the subs were in Portuguese. The movie was in English.
I think Netflix’s The Woods had an English dub. We managed it for one episode then swapped to subtitles for the rest of it. Miles better…
Subs rule, dubs drool.
I would only watch dubbed for something like animated movies. I’m currently watching Babylon Berlin with subs and I think it would be ridiculous to have it dubbed.
Subtitles were a huge help with The Wire.
Only subtitles, I can’t stand dubbed media.
I prefer dubbed but my hearing is not the best either, so I always put on closed captioning if possible. But so often the dub does not match the captions - for instance one will say “I feel very sick” and the other will say “I think Im going to throw up”. I just can’t deal with two options for dialog and generally end up turning it off unless Im really interested - them Ill go back to sub titles if I can.
That’s what I came here to say, I’m subs all the way except for the later Chan stuff, the English was good enough and Chan was able to emote and pull off the language well enough (or was just flat speaking English) that I appreciated it more. I’m trying to remember how dubbed Bruce Lee films were (again, the later ones) or Kung-fu Hustle, I think I preferred Lee’s dubs (since he spoke English very well) but subs on Chow’s. Oh, and original Cowboy BeBop, I first saw it dubbed and the dubs were fantastic, so that’s my preference.
I guess I’m a subs unless the main character can do the dubs, scrubs.
I feel like dubs take something away from the original performance. I live next to Germany and they used to dub absolutely everything, so if you ever bought a German game it would say stuff like “With the German voice of Bruce Willis” on the box.
That always just seemed weird to me. You’re watching an actor pretending to be someone else, while listening to someone else pretending to be that actor pretending to be someone else.
It’s also fun to pick up little snippets of foreign languages. You can usually suss out how people say “Hello” or “Wait”. Maybe even swear words or exclamations if you’re lucky.
It depends on how silly the movie is though. With goofy stuff like spaghetti westerns, I feel like it adds a little extra camp to watch the dub.
I think for people who grew up reading subtitles it feels less distracting than for those who grew up with everything available in their native language. Most movies/TV shows are made in a certain language and a translation is inevitably going to lose something of the original. With subtitles we at least keep the actors’ vocal acting as they were intended. Dubbing also often seems to take more liberty with the dialog than the subtitles, which can be good or bad.
For the old Hong-Kong and Italian movies it’s a different issue because they never had “original” voices in the way we generally think of them. The scripts were written in multiple languages at once, actors from different countries spoke different languages on set, sometimes characters were dubbed by a different voice actor even in their own language. For those I try and find the language that feels the least weird in the specific movie.
This is very true for me.
Why do you say HK movies were designed for multiple languages? Hong Kong movies were made in Cantonese. It’s only after 1997 that they started showing them in Mandarin. They did always subtitle films (not tv) in both English and Chinese.
I occasionally hear Mandarin-dubbed HK films and it’s awful. It’s obvious after a few seconds it’s dubbed, and I don’t even speak Mandarin.
I was lumping together Italian and Hong-Kong movies, and with the HK movies mostly thinking about about action movies of the late 70’s to the 80’s, when you had things like Cynthia Rothrock Dubbed into Cantonese, or Wheel on Meals with its multi national cast. I don’t speak any Chinese language and am certainly not an expert, so aside from overly generalizing, I may be talking out of my ass here.
I’m watching Wheels on Meals at the moment, and because it’s set in Spain I was curious about the dub. It’s hilarious (and the writing seems better than the subs). Everyone apart from the Chinese characters is making really strong choices. One guy does a straight up Peter Lorre. This guy with the awesome hairdo is apparently German:
I subscribed to Netflix, mostly just to be able to watch Squid Game, a Korean show.
So I started watching last night, and much to my surprise, this famously Korean show is dubbed in English! What? After listening to the English actors for a couple of minutes in the opening scene between the man and his mother/grandmother, I found the language menu and switched to Korean. And immediately there was a huge difference. The English voice actor was much more playful, with just his voice inflections, you could tell he was just being kind of playful when saying terrible things to his mother/grandma. But in the Korean, he sounded so serious! What an ASSHOLE! I decided I actually preferred the more whimsical character as played by the English voice actor.
What’s interesting is that I left the English subtitles on, and there’s quite a few differences between the voice acting and the subtitles, and its consistently sounds “meaner” in the subtitles. So I’m really happy with the dubbing in that I really agree with the dubbing choices being a better fit for the show than the original for me. But I’m leaving the subtitles on because it’s kind of fascinating to see the differences.
Then you can search for videos on how the subtitles for squid game “neuter” some of the characters!
Example: (blurred to avoid spoilers!) [not a video, but there are some on the tubers]