As my regular readers know, I'm an Englishman who lives in Germany. When I watch American films in Netflix I watch them with the original English dialogue. That's the only way I can fully enjoy them. Today was a rare exception that I watched a film in German, because I was watching with a friend who hardly speaks any English. I wanted to watch the film in English with German subtitles, he wanted to watch the film dubbed into German, so we made a compromise: we watched the film dubbed into German with German subtitles as well. That's something strange that I've never done before. However, I'm glad that I did this, because I noticed something: the spoken dialogue in the German dubbing isn't the same as the written dialogue in the subtitles. The meaning is effectively the same, but there are subtle differences in style throughout the film. I'll quote the first three lines of dialogue in the film as examples.
English: Now he's not going to be happy.
Subtitle: Er wird nicht glücklich sein.
Dubbing: Es wird ihm ganz und gar nicht passen.
English: No, I suspect he won't.
Subtitle: Nein, ich vermute nicht.
Dubbing: Nein, ich schätze es wird es nicht.
English: Only you can decide what's best for you, Jesse.
Subtitle: Du entscheidest, was das beste für dich ist, Jesse.
Dubbing: Nur du kannst entscheiden, was am besten für dich ist, Jesse.
I can't say that one version is better than the other. As the film progresses, sometimes the subtitles are a more literal translation, sometimes the dubbing. In all cases, as far as I could tell, the alternative less literal translation always expressed the meaning of the original English language adequately. Obviously the dubbing and the subtitles were translated independently of one another, but I don't understand why. Isn't that a waste of money? Wouldn't it have been easier to transcribe the subtitles from the dubbed dialogue?
I think the film is good. It's difficult for me to say, because I was concentrating on the differences between the subtitles and the dubbing rather than trying to enjoy the film.
The film was given a limited cinema release, and is now only available on Netflix. The fact that it was released on Netflix only a few days after its cinema release is the reason for its low box office sales and the poor success ratio.
Success Rate: - 150.0
This isn't really an unusual workflow. First, there's a difference in the purpose of the translation for dubbing vs. for subtitles.
ReplyDeleteSubtitles are much more restricted by space, and subtitling translation is considered a skill in and of itself. The subtitle needs to know roughly how much content can be processed in what amount of time and leave out anything that isn't vital accordingly. They also 99% of the time don't have access to the actual footage, just a script.
Dubbing translation, on the other hand, is generally much more "complete". We can process more information audibly than we can from reading subtitles while also trying to keep with everything else that's going on visually. So dubbed translation will generally be much more content-focused, and is more likely to include greater detail or simply more elaborate phrasing. There's also a much greater chance that the dubbing translator has or would be allowed to have access to the footage to see what they are actually working with rather than just a script (this will usually be withheld from subtitling translators, mainly for concerns about footage leaking).
Anyway, from an industry perspective, it makes perfect sense to me why this is the case, and it's long been the established workflow. In the context of the budget of a film, it's no great extra expense to do it this way either.