Following on from the subject of subtitles, which I talked about in Words on a screen, must surely come the topic of dubbing.
Here in Spain, almost everything on TV is dubbed. One or two channels used to use “dual” where, if you had a stereo TV, you could listen to the original on one channel and to the Spanish version on the other. This was fun – with a stereo TV and headphones I could watch in English while my partner watched in Spanish – but it’s years since I noticed whether this option is still available. As for cinemas, there are only a few in Madrid which show VO (original version) films, though I imagine that down on the coast the situation might be different.
The thing about dubbing, though, is that the Spaniards do it well: they choose the right kind of voice for an actor and then match that same pair again and again. So, although I don’t know who I’m actually listening to, even with my back to the TV I can tell that it’s Sean Connery speaking as I can hear the voice I am used to associating with his screen presence.
I don’t know if there are only a limited number of good voice actors, but a slight problem occurs when that same Spanish actor gets to dub other originals; so you hear Connery’s voice coming from the mouth of an entirely different actor which is quite disconcerting. Why this should be worse than seeing the same actor play different roles, I’m not quite sure, but somehow it is.
As I said, the voices are generally well matched. I’d watched MacGyver in Spanish for ages (I was practising listening comprehension, honest!) and then finally saw it for the first time in English. It came as a shock. Richard Dean Anderson’s own voice doesn’t suit him half as well as his Spanish counterpart’s does.
It’s true the acting doesn’t improve, but I think a voice can make a huge difference to the enjoyment of a film or TV programme. I was a fan of the X-files for ages – watching in Spanish – before I saw the original. And, rudimentary as my Spanish was 15 years ago, it was a lot easier to understand the dubbed version than the closed American accents of Duchovny and Anderson. Indeed, I might never have got hooked on it if the dubbing hadn’t been so good.
They say a good translator can make hack writing into a best seller in another language. I wonder how much of a film or TV programme’s success abroad is attributable to good script translation and appropriate dubbing actor selection.
don't confuse the narrator 