Movies in foreign languages

[Conrad]

Er, as someone in the UK, do American films count as foreign language?  Probably not.  The reverse may be true - I understand some US viewers found the slang in Dog Soldiers hard to follow.

I prefer subtitles and the original language.  No matter what the translation a dubbed version may come up with, it cannot approach the poetry of another tongue - "Solaris" being a case in point.  Russian is an interesting language to listen to (a bugger to learn, though!),  and someone reciting even a shopping list in Russian sounds interesting.  

How about Welsh?  One of the most disorientating film experiences I ever underwent was seeing a film made in Wales, where the characters spoke in Welsh.  Having missed the start, I was completely wrong-footed.  "That's a British road sign," I realised.  "Where is this set?"  More weird dialogue.  "That looks like a British high street?  WHERE is this set!"  Conrad speaks to fellow audience member.  Ah.  Yes.  I see!

[AndyC]

Reminds me of a movie I saw recently about a Scottish kid who becomes a drug dealer. We were laughing at the subtitles at first, because it was in English, but once the dialogue got going, they did come in handy. It was a little distracting reading subtitles while listening to dialogue I could at least partially understand. Forces the mind to go in two directions at once, I guess. With completely foreign dialogue it's easier to tune out the spoken words while reading.

[Flangepart]

I prefer to watch Japanese films in the original language. Good subs are fine, as long as they don't blend into the background, and they stay long enough to get the gist of the thought across.
AndyC : Try RED DWARF. Lister (Craig Charles) Can be hard to follow, but after a while, it settles in for me, and i can get the gist of the insults...useualy at Rimmer's expence!...although it did help to finaly find out what a Veruca was!
Never....ever!...listen to the Americanised version of Dwarf. Its just does NOT translate! The Brit style of verbal abuse is  part of the fun, and a Yankee equivilant, would be hard to imagin.

[FearlessFreep]

The Brit style of verbal abuse is part of the fun, and a Yankee equivilant, would be hard to imagine.

I've been thinking about British humor and why Americans like it and I think a lot of it really has to do simply with the dissonance between our own caricature of British people and what comes out in the humor.  I mean, an Americanized version of Fawlty Towers would not work because, well..watching an American hotel owner beat up on a Hispanic worker would not be nearly as funny  as watching Basil Fawlty beat up on Manual because Basil Fawlty strikes against our stereotype of the British as being proper and dignified and slighty stuffy.

Similar  with Red Dwarf.  It's funny in it's own right but it's funny to Americans because the accents reminds us it's British and the dialog is out-of-type for what we expect so that contrast makes it more humorous.

[peter johnson]

Definitely subtitles always -- they sometimes create unusual juxtapositions!
I first watched "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" when it first came out in Luxembourg -- There were 2 sets of subtitles on the screen:  French and German.  Obviously, neither of them were any good at all, as I was laughing out loud in many places wherein the theatre was dead silent.
If you watch the subtitled version of "Smiles of a Summer's Night" by Ingmanr Bergman, there are numerous places wherein the English subtitling is saying things like "everything about him is false", and what is actually being said in Swedish is "He uses a dildo when making love!".
Dubbing can be funny if really really bad -- I always love all the extra grunts and "hey!  Hey!"'s in various Kung-Fu flicks, in order to make the mouth movements work.
peter johnson

[dean]

are people telling me there is an american dubbed version of Red Dwarf?

that's a travesty if it's true!

also i like the nifty special feature on my Snatch dvd which allows you to subtitle brad pitts character and co.  its bloody hard to understand them at parts, but it's all part of the fun [its just a funny extra they just added in]

[AndyC]

Half the fun of the Pikeys is that you can just barely understand what they're saying.

As for red Dwarf, I had no idea anyone had trouble understanding Lister. He has a thick Liverpool accent, but he speaks clearly enough. A bit of the slang might be unfamiliar, but the context usually provides a clue.

[trekgeezer]

Back in the 70's when I was a young lad,  I happened to be stationed in a place called Edzell , Scotland.  Watched a lot of Brit comedies. Never  figured out why they find the cross-dressing thing so damned hilarious.

Anyway  to the point, I was reading the BBC  Radio Times and they had  published a translation guide for a French program they were airing. One of the readers had written in asking them  if they could publish one for Kojak which they were airing at the time.  

Americans seem to love or hate British  comedies (I guess they don't get the humor).  I  really love Red Dwarf  and Doctor Who (have seen all eight if you count  the Americanized tv movie Doctor).

[Neon Noodle]

dean wrote:

> also i like the nifty special feature on my Snatch dvd which
> allows you to subtitle brad pitts character and co.  its bloody
> hard to understand them at parts, but it's all part of the fun
> [its just a funny extra they just added in]

This is EXACTLY why I watch movies with captioning & subtitles. I would have had no earthly idea what Pitt was saying unless the captions were there.

[Eirik]

5.  No.

4.  Italian is the coolest when spoken by a woman, German when spoken by a man.  Any inflected East Asian language is the most irritating, to me at least.  Inflected languages rely on the way you say a syllable (a rising or declining, or up-then-down tone etc) to convey its meaning.  To a Westerner, this can sound really dissonant.

3.  Yeah - this does bug me, but it seems to be a rare problem.  Another thing that bugs me is when all hell is breaking loose on screen (an air raid, a rhino stampede, werewolf on a crowded elevator, etc.) and the director feels the need to drop a subtitle into the movie to translate something like "Look out!" or "Hang on!"

2.  Never tried this.  I have watched American movies dubbed into German (which I speak - or at least I used to be pretty good) - which can be funny.  Example:  In Pulp Fiction dubbed into German, the Germans don't have a direct translation for "Bad Mutherf**ker," so Jules' wallet is the one that says (translated from German) "Evil Black Man."

1.  Depends on the type of movie.  Anything with any kind of action on the screen (or an exceptionally beautiful actress I don't want to look away from) then I say dub it.  Otherwise I guess subtitles are fine.

[Flangepart]

Dean : should have been more clear. There was an attempt at an american Red Dwarf, but by all accounts, it vaccumed, big time.
So Craig Charles is a "Liverpudlian", Eh? Thought so. I've just gotten so used to the cast and their style, its no that big a problim following the diologue.

[trekgeezer]

Actually there were two American pilots made.  One had Terry Farrell of Star Trek and  Becker cast as a female version of Cat.  

Cat, you can't help but love a guy in a Gold Lame' spacesuit.

[dean]

"Dean : should have been more clear. There was an attempt at an american Red Dwarf, but by all accounts, it vaccumed, big time"

thank god! that would been awful!  the great thing about it is listening to lister say 'smeghead' over and over again, i can't imagine that working in an american version.

that and cat being female? it could work, but i don't like it, it's so much better having a guy be a cat for once and be vain and all that stuff, and not go with the female stereotype.

[trekgeezer]

Here is  a link to a page about the pilots and cast (with picture).  Note: Robert Llewellyn appears as Kryton in both US pilots.

http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Zone/9548/redwarf.html

[Jayson]

I Much prefer Subtitles to dubbing. A great example of this is "Ran" in Japanese with english subtitles. I think Japanese is a great language to listen to-especially when they yell! Vietnamese on the other hand is a really ugly sounding language(IMHO)