Meredith McMinn wrote: Someone wrote about listening to their favorite actors being dubbed into another language, and someone else wrote about reading white subtitles while all the actors wore white shorts. These are typical critisims of both sytems however the actors won't be wearing white shorts throughout the complet film and so little of the dialogue will probably lost. What voice comes out of the actors mouth is also part of our preconceived judgements of how a particular person should sound. No one can deny they once heard someone speaking - in a possibley one on one conversation - and that persons voic did not match what they thought their voice should sound like. More than anythig else these are annoyances. The real problem with dubbing is when the original dialogue is still below the the dubbed version. If the dubbed version is your second (third, forth or fifth) language, and the original is your first you still won't understand a lot of what is said. The distraction of the orginal dialogue lying under the second although barely audible it is still audible - case in point - the Academy Awards, Emmmys in a non English speaking country. Are the jokes on these understood? Yes simultanous translations are different but the same hold true for many films shown. The end result is after concentrating on listening for 100 min the viewer is exhausted and again visuals have been missed. What should have been a more relaxing viewing (due to not having to read) has become an audio nightmare and the viewer will probalbly leave with a headache. This will still hold true not matter how true the translation of the dubbed version. Dubbing however can't be eliminated. We can't forget that one of film's objectives it to entertain and unfortunately not everyone is literate in the subtitled language. That is of course is socially oriented point rather than an aesthetic one. > > On Wed, 11 Dec 1996, David Desser wrote: > (I do wish they'd also translate song lyrics and the > like, which are usually left out.) Disney has their own translation department and all of its animated films are cast with the same requirements of the English version. All the songs are translated and sung by the voice performers in the other than English version. I've always liked Luis Miguel's voice (Mexican singer) and was glad Disney is using him in the Spanish version of Hunchback. I was asked a couple of years ago to translate a film for video release and the songs were included in the material to translate. Be patient David, things are changing. ---- To signoff SCREEN-L, e-mail [log in to unmask] and put SIGNOFF SCREEN-L in the message. Problems? Contact [log in to unmask]