Dubbing

Germany dubbing actor sues Disney ! (Fluch der Karibik“: Warum Captain Jack seine Stimme verlor)

2011-08-09T10:53:00.000-07:00

http://www.thelocal.de/society/20110809-36851.html

Johnny Depps Synchronsprecher Marcus Off liegt im Streit mit Disney.

The voiceover artist who dubbed US star Johnny Depp for the Jack Sparrow character in the German release of "Pirates of the Caribbean" is suing film studio Disney, claiming his contribution to the role is underappreciated.

In what could be a watershed for Germany’s legion of dubbing artists, Marcus Off, 53, is demanding €180,000 for his voiceover performance – about 10 times what he was actually paid, the daily Süddeutsche Zeitung reported Tuesday.

Off has been in a dispute over the issue with the German arm of Disney since 2008. His case is now about to reach the Federal Court where he will argue in effect that he is the part creator of the hugely successful films and therefore is entitled to a share of the massive profits.

“Doing voiceover is acting, plain and simple, even if you only hear the voice,” Off told the paper.

Off’s voice has featured in hundreds of foreign films dubbed into German for cinema and television. He is the German voice of such stars as Ralph Fiennes, Sean Penn and British actor Michael Sheen.

The actor did the German voice for Johnny Depp’s memorable character Captain Jack Sparrow in the first three instalments of the "Pirates" franchise, which have been seen by an estimated 19.5 million people in German cinemas.

Indeed the films have been a phenomenal success worldwide, grossing more than €2.1 billion. The second installment, "Dead Man’s Chest," is the fifth highest-grossing film ever, according to the website Box Office Mojo.

Off claims that his contribution has been important to the films' success in Germany.

He was paid a total of €9,306.14 for his performances in all three, plus a further €8,650 for dubbing the DVD bonus material and TV ads. These sums are well above the standard rate for voiceovers.

Disney has refused his demands and has used another voiceover artist for the fourth film, "On Stranger Tides," prompting an internet petition by Off’s fans in Germany.

The case will soon go to the Federal Court, though Off has already lost a case before a Berlin court in June, for which he had to pay legal costs.

The outcome could be a precedent for the sizeable dubbing industry. Unlike many European countries, Germany foreign films and television are dubbed into German rather than running in their original language.

The IVS dubbing artists association, which has nearly 300 members, is supporting Off in his claim and is paying his legal costs, up to €20,000, according to Off.

Off is basing his complaint on a paragraph of the 2002 copyright law, called the “fairness paragraph,” which deals with adequate compensation. The paragraph enables an author to press for an additional claim from the publisher of a work if there is a “demonstrable discrepancy” between the agreed payment to the author and the eventual earnings from the work.

The federal court ruled in January that a publisher needed to ensure the translator of a non-fiction book was adequately compensated based on the sales of the work.

Off argues that he has not been adequately compensated given the massive success of the "Pirates" films. The question, then, is whether a voiceover artist can be considered on par with an author.

Disney does not believe so. In its original response to Off’s complaint, it argued that voiceover actors should be considered no differently than news or radio announcers, according to the Süddeutsche Zeitung.

“In some ways, voiceover speakers make even less of a creative contribution, because they simply imitate the voice and speech of an actor who has already given the text a dramaturgical value,” Disney argued.

However, Off was brought in for the first installment only after Disney had rejected the interpretation by another German Depp-dubber, David Nathan, suggesting the issue is not entirely straightforward.

http://www.merkur-online.de/nachrichten/kultur/fluch-karibik-captain-jack-synchronsprecher-ausgetauscht-mm-1245750.html

Films no longer have to be dubbed or subtitled into Ukrainian

2010-11-04T10:17:00.000-07:00

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/ukraine-ditches-controversial-dubbing-regulations-35092

MOSCOW -- The lifting of controversial dubbing regulations in Ukraine is likely to benefit Russian distributors.

Earlier this week, Ukraine's culture and tourism minister, Mikhail Kulinyaka, told reporters in Kiev that a regulation requiring that all movies slated for a theatrical release in the country, should be either dubbed or subtitled into Ukrainian, is no longer in force.

The regulation, which came into effect in early 2008, created a lot of controversy, especially in Ukraine's predominantly Russian-speaking eastern part, hitting those distributors which until then used Russian-language film copies. A few theaters even went on strike, protesting against the regulation, and there were reports about some theaters going out of business.

Now, Russian distributors operating in Ukraine will be able to save costs by again using Russian-language film copies. "There is a lot of Russian interest in the country, and what this is all about is re-distribution of revenues," Ukrainian television producer Igor Kondratyuk told Kommersant-Ukraine.

Iran dubbing actor passes away at Resalat Hospital

2009-06-15T08:06:00.000-07:00

Iran dubbing actor passes away

Veteran Iranian dubbing actress Mahin Bozorgi has died at the age of 74 after a long-drawn battle with Diabetes in Tehran's Resalat Hospital. According to Fars News Agency, Bozorgi went into a diabetic ketoacidosis coma and passed away after waking up from the coma.

Mahin Bozorgi started her dubbing activities in 1956 and worked for the Iranian television and radio for over 50 years.
Bozorgi also performed in Iranian filmmaker Fereydoun Jeyrani's 2007 To Be a Star.

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2009-06-13T17:30:00.000-07:00

dubbing | film dubbing

2009-04-08T12:26:00.000-07:00

To dub? Or to sub-title?
http://www.pi-consulting.com/2008/09/01/%e2%80%9cdub-titling%e2%80%9d-for-spanish-speakers/
Movies on TV are supposed to be entertaining, and Spanish-speaking viewers don’t feel they should have to work too hard at having a good time. For mainstream American audiences, of course, the question scarcely arises, since foreign-language movies from beyond the US domestic market only hit the national consciousness with extreme rarity, if at all.
Views can vary in the dubbing vs. titles debate. In Latin America, for instance, large numbers of the films and TV shows aired are American in origin, but preferences for translation formats are far from uniform. Overall, dubbing seems to win by a comfortable margin. However, a surprising number of TV viewers and moviegoers in Argentina and Mexico say they prefer the original English soundtrack, and reading the sub-titles. This seems to correlate with (a) a higher proportion of the population professing to speak English, and (b) a sense of pride in taking Anglo-Saxon cultures on board undiluted. Upscale Mexicans, for instance, will be at pains to seem comfortable with Hollywood Americanisms in the original English. For their part, Argentineans notoriously regard themselves as more European than the Europeans. In Buenos Aires, the overwhelming practice in movie theatres is to show foreign films in their original version, with Spanish subtitles only provided for those ‘ignorant’ enough need them.
Curiously, in Brazil they tend to ‘dub-title’ movies, i.e. viewers get much English-language material dubbed into Spanish, with Portuguese subtitles added as well. This can get ferociously confusing. Your Pi blogmeister has sat on planes to Rio or São Paulo, and realized that the two simultaneous translations of the in-flight movie not only mis-represent the English original, but are also totally different from each other.
With dubbing, something always seems to get lost in the translation, and the quality of the movie-watching experience can suffer. Puerto Rican viewers, many of whom are bi-lingual in Spanish and English, complain that Hollywood fare dubbed into Spanish is often so badly done that the movies and series seem more like parodies of themselves. The same voice-over artists’ voices come back, thinly disguised, again and again. “It’s awful”, says one viewer in San Juan. “Serious programs come across as screamingly funny, while supposedly funny ones simply aren’t”. Sounds like “The Unwatchables”.

Oreste Lionello- Movie dubber dies

2009-02-19T06:32:00.000-08:00

Oreste Lionello a cabaret entertainer and film dubber who was Italy's "voice" of Woody Allen, Peter Sellers and other comic stars, died in a Rome hospital Thursday. He was 81

Oreste Lionello- Movie dubber dies

http://www.thestate.com/movies/story/689589.html?RSS=life_and_style

ROME -- Oreste Lionello, an entertainer and film dubber who was Italy's "voice" of Woody Allen, Jerry Lewis and other comic stars, died in a Rome hospital Thursday.Lionello, 81, was a star in Italy's important entertainment industry of movie dubbing .Relatively few Italian cinemas show films in the original language, so moviegoers often only know the voices of Hollywood stars through dubbers like Lionello.
Italian actor and director Pier Francesco Pingitore, who did cabaret acts with Lionello, said the dubber died Thursday morning after a long illness. No details were released about the illness.
Besides Allen and Lewis, other actors who were dubbed by Lionello included Peter Sellers, Marty Feldman and Charlie Chaplin in "The Great Dictator."
Lionello on occasion answered his phone by saying, "I am the voice of Woody Allen." For those who had seen Allen's films only in Italian, hearing the real voice of Woody Allen could be jarring. Lionello's dubbing captured all of the neuroses and sarcastic tones in Allen's speech.
Early in his career in entertainment, Lionello worked in theater as a comic actor and in cabaret, where he was noted for his imitations of veteran Italian politician Giulio Andreotti. Lionello also worked successfully as an entertainer on Italian TV in the 1970s and 1980s.
But it was in dubbing that he earned his greatest fame.
While in other European countries, subtitled versions of foreign films in original language are usually available, most of the hundreds of movies imported into Italy each year are dubbed.
Some distributors hold that dubbing prevails because many people will not go to subtitled films.
The city of Rome planned to hold a wake for Lionello in City Hall, starting Thursday night, with a funeral in the Basilica of Santa Maria d'Ara Coeli next to city hall on Saturday.

2008-10-22T08:43:00.000-07:00

A dub step too far

2008-10-15T13:45:00.000-07:00

A dub step too far

Dubbed films are two a penny on the continent, bringing foreign language films to mainstream audiences. Why hasn't it taken off in Britain?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2008/sep/24/2

In my head Arnold Schwarzenegger speaks with a French accent. So do Sly Stallone and Harrison Ford, and often they sound the same.

In France, most film fans never get to hear the speaking voices of Hollywood stars as dubbing is the preferred method of rendering non-French language movies releasable in the republic. Subtitled fare is only seen in some cinemas - usually in the bigger cities - and is hardly ever shown on television, unless it's on a speciality film cable channel.
In fact, one gets so used to Hollywood actors speaking in one's own language that listening to the real deal can be unsettling. The first time I watched Arnie in the original I thought I was watching a comedy piss-take. Was the Terminator supposed to come from a futuristic Austria? He sounded better in French.

The same tends to apply across the continent, certainly in Spain, Italy and Germany. I found this out the hard way in Berlin, at the European premiere of Peter Jackson's King Kong. As the lights dimmed, my excitement turned to frustration as I realised the movie was dubbed in German - alas, a tongue I haven't gotten my head around. I had assumed a concession would have been made for a European premiere. The next three hours were spent ruing my mistake.
Of course, there are some exceptions to the rule. In the Nordic countries, subtitled films are the norm in cinema and on TV as most locals speak perfect English. After all, subtitling is cheaper; dubbing is only used for children's movies. But in general, European film fans who want to see Al Pacino lose his rag in English rather than in German or Turkish have to resort to an illegal download, wait for the DVD (more subtitles options than you could ever possibly need) or (for the truly desperate) move to the UK.
I used to hate dubbing. It was a crime against art, an outrage against all the actors who slaved away on set to get their performance just right. It was particularly bad for comedies: all that rhythmic timing went down the drain the moment voices were translated. But some translations can be great fun (like this French clip of Four Weddings and a Funeral); others are predictably awful.

Yet some of the best classic films were dubbed. Visconti's Il Gattopardo starred Burt Lancaster, Alain Delon and Claudia Cardinale in a mishmash of original and translated voices. Visconti initially refused to have a "cowboy" play a Sicilian aristocrat, but it is now hard to see how anyone but Lancaster could have played the part – even if it meant the movie had to be dubbed.
Another great thing about dubbing is that it makes foreign-language films more accessible. Many British cinemagoers balk at the idea of watching a film with subtitles as they associate it with difficult arthouse fare that will bore them witless - that would be adding insult to injury after coughing up an extortionate amount just for admission. Maybe dubbing it in English would sweeten the pill.

The problem is that British audiences are not used to dubbing: terrestrial TV stations only show English-language films and the occasional subtitled movie. A dose of dubbed Jean-Paul Belmondo might be just thing the doctor ordered.

2008-10-07T15:09:00.001-07:00

Iranian dubber Kameli dies at 79

2008-09-13T23:53:00.000-07:00

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http://www.tehrantimes.com/index_View.asp?code=177886

Born in 1929, Ata’ollah (Taqi) Kameli began his career in 1955. He featured many popular characters in world renowned films including the lead actor Kirk Douglas in “Spartacus” (1960). He was the dubbing manager of many popular series such as the British television drama “Agatha Christie’s Poirot”, the Australian children TV series “Skippy, the Bush Kangaroo” (1966-68) directed by Eric Fullilove and Max Varnel and also the James Bond film series. The funeral procession will begin from the House of Cinema and the date of the ceremony will be announced in near future, the director of Iran Dubbing Association Nasser Mamduh told ISNA.

Poland Public TV to introduce subtitles instead of dubbing

2008-08-27T03:57:00.000-07:00

Poland Public TV to introduce subtitles instead of dubbing
http://www.polskieradio.pl/zagranica/news/artykul89969_Public_TV_to_introduce_subtitles_instead_of_dubbing.html

Polish television should introduce subtitles to English movies instead of the traditional dubbing and voiceovers as soon as possible - this is the opinion of Education, Culture and Higher Education Ministries, who have joined the "English First" campaign.
Sławek Szefs reports.
"English First" was initiated by one Polish daily to popularize English language. Only one in three Poles declares to speak English. This is one of the worst statistics among EU countries. For comparison: in Sweden, 89% of people speak English. In Germany, it is 59% and in Estonia, 46%. Poland needs to catch up, says MEP Konrad Szymanski who supports the project: 'English language is at the moment the lingua franca of politics, business and also science. If Poland wants to be involved in the mainstream, common knowledge of English is a basic factor.'
Original soundtrack movies with Polish subtitles would improve foreign language skills among Poles, say proponents of the idea. The experience of other countries where movies are shown in the original language proves that point, says Minister of Science and Higher Education Barbara Kudrycka: 'Many research methods have concluded that not only children, but also people with weak foreign language skills, are able to improve just by watching subtitled movies with the original soundtrack. They quickly learn to speak the language fluently.'
Kasia teaches English as a foreign language to students of all ages. She often uses movies in class and agrees that they are a valuable help in language teaching. 'It's one of the best ways to teach pronunciation and real, often used vocabulary. Often times textbooks use very sophisticated language and when they watch movies, they can grasp real language,' she says.
Poland neglected the teaching of English to its citizens for decades, because it was isolated from the outside world by the communist rule, says famous Polish film director Krzysztof Zanussi: 'We are in the process of ending some kind of cultural isolation. We had been an extremely neglected country, because of the Iron Curtain and traveling difficulties. So, for us, the contact with the world that speaks other languages is a problem to be overcome. This is not a problem for many other nations.'
Krzysztof Zanussi supports the idea of subtitles on television. He says voiceovers and dubbing are leftovers from communist times, when the propaganda sometimes used them as tools to change those dialogues in western movies, which were not in accordance with the communist ideology. 'There used to be a commonly accepted rule that movies should be ideologically refined, by means of changing dialogues to more proper ones than the original. There was a famous movie, "The Walls of Malapaga", where the whole plot was changed by censorship. A criminal on the run was turned into a communist on the run, who was persecuted. So dubbing and voiceovers were useful technologies for the communist propaganda,' said Zanussi.
Polish public television Channel Two is introducing the first regular timeslot of programs in English in September. Movies for kids and youth, documentaries about nature and cartoons without voiceovers will be broadcast Saturday afternoon.
Commercial stations are not planning to introduce the idea, they say the Polish audience prefers dubbing and voiceovers. According to TNS OBOP polling center, 19% of Poles would welcome subtitled movies.
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End of voice-over on foreign films in Poland?

2008-07-31T13:15:00.000-07:00

Polish TV to say goodbye to the famed lektor?
http://www.polskieradio.pl/zagranica/news/artykul89661_Polish_TV_to_say_goodbye_to_the_famed_lektor.html
The Ministries of National Education, Culture, and Science and Higher Education want to introduce subtitling on Polish television instead of the famed lektor: an actor who voices scripts over the top of an original soundtrack.
During a debate at the “Dziennik” daily headquarters, Ministers Barbara Kudrycka and Katarzyna Hall said that subtitling, especially of English programming aired in Poland, would increase English proficiency in the country.
Merely one third of Poles have a knowledge of English, making Poland linguistically inferior in comparison to other countries in the European Union. Minister Kudrycka hastened to add that knowledge of English is highest in countries which employ subtitling of English-language films in their respective television broadcasts.
Kudrycka and Hall both agree that subtitling should be introduced to public television, which should play a greater role in youth education. Fall 2008 will see the first ever series of English shows being broadcast with Polish subtitles on TVP 2. Childrens’ and youth programming, including cartoons, as well as nature shows will also begin to be aired without the ominous lektor’s voice on Saturday afternoons.
Film directors are also pleased with the move. Renowned Polish cinematographer Krzysztof Zanussi has said that watching films in their original language versions are a chance for Poles to become more civilised. He is not alone: many Poles in the branch are for the introduction of subtitles. Yet many stations, most of them commercial, are going to be sticking with the lektor for some time to come, stating that most Poles prefer films with a voice over .
According to a poll by TNS OBOP almost one third of Poles under the age of 29 would prefer subtitles, with only 19% of all Poles preferring subtitles over the lektor.
Poland is one of the only countries in the world to employ a lektor in television programming: the somewhat emotionless and monotonous drone may also be heard in Russia.

End of voice-over on foreign films in Poland?
http://www.polskieradio.pl/thenews/human-interest/?id=87948
The English language, Ministers of Education and Science want voice-overs on foreign films shown by Polish TV channels replaced by subtitles.

The Education Minister Katarzyna Hall and Minister of Science, Professor Barbara Kudrycka are in favour of subtitling foreign films shown to Polish TV viewers, because such practice would “quickly and naturally lead into an improvement in the knowledge of foreign languages, particularly English,” among the Polish audience, writes Dziennik daily.

The experience of many European states clearly shows that the level of knowledge of English is the highest in those where films are shown with the original soundtrack and subtitled.

Dziennik quotes an American methodologist Renae Swain Curtis, who claims that subtitling films and television programmes - so-called total immersion - has the effect similar to that of living abroad and is one of the best methods to learn languages. For that very reason, in Curtis’ opinion, the number of people who can speak English in Slovenia and Croatia is much higher than in the Czech Republic or Slovakia.

Representatives of Polish TV channels are much less enthusiastic about a possible switch from the current practice of using voice-over to subtitling foreign broadcasts offered to the Polish TV audience due to the viewers preferences.

Polish TV viewers simply cannot be bothered to read the small print at the bottom of the screen and instead, they prefer to follow the action and listen to a speaker in the background.

“The Jan Suzin [the most popular voice-over speaker in Poland] syndrome is too strong and the Polish television market too unforgiving for us to begin experimenting”, Edward Miszczak from the private TVN channel has said as reported by Dziennik.

Last week the government was criticised for its plans to make English language classes uncompusory for seven year olds in the new syllabus starting in September.

Lost in Bad Translation

2008-04-22T13:06:00.000-07:00

Lost इन Bad ट्रांसलेशन
Russian dubbing sometimes ruins films. But that doesn't have to be the case. Marina Kamenev reports.

http://context.themoscowtimes.com/print.php?aid=184346
By Marina KamenevPublished: April 11, 2008
There are some voices that are suited to their foreign roles. "National Lampoon's Pledge This!" a movie starring Paris Hilton, is dubbed by Russia's own socialite bimbo, Ksenia Sobchak. And Pamela Anderson and Denise Richards in "Blonde and Blonder" are dubbed, most appropriately, by blonde Ukrainian pop star Olya Polyakova and by the blonder and more surgically enhanced television presenter Masha Malinovskaya.Those, however, look like rare examples of when dubbing gets it right in a country where dubbing on illegal DVDs ranges from the incomprehensible to the inaudible. Often, all the characters --male and female, young and old -- speak in the same monotonous voice of a middle-aged man.The combination of amateur translating and dubbing can lead to perplexing moments on screen.

One expat recalled how, in the cult U.S. series "Lost," the heroine, Kate, was telling another character that she was wanted. "Ya khochu [I want]," said the person reading over the film.But some studios and actors insist that dubbing can be done properly. Sergei Kazakov and Stanislav Strelkov both trained as actors and have been dubbing films for over 15 years.Kazakov, who has played everyone from Sylvester Stallone in "Rocky" to Robert De Niro in "The Godfather Part II," said that films are mostly dubbed because Russia does not have a culture of subtitles. "It's a well-read nation. People read so many books that when they come to the cinema, they want to switch off." Kazakov and Strelkov work with official studios and agree that the industry has changed over the last two decades. "Then [in 1991], dubbing had more significance. Before you even had a microphone in front of you, you would be assigned your role and watch the film. They would say, 'You are Stanley, you are Harold, you are Stella,' and then we would watch the film knowing who we were playing, go home, practice our lines and then perform them later."

Goblin (Dmitry Puchkov) is well known in Russia for his uncensored translations of leading English-language films and TV programs.

In the early '90s, new releases hardly made their way into Russia, and most of the films they dubbed were already well known. Today, for many actors, the first time they see the film is when their voice is already being recorded, which makes it more difficult. "You have to judge the personality and adjust your voice from a piece of paper," said Kazakov. Which means that even if movies are professionally dubbed, there is a lot of room for error.There are two ways of translating films from their original: voiceover , where the actors talk over the script, and the original language is still audible; and dubbing, where -- if it's done right -- the actors appear to be speaking in Russian."Dubbing is much harder," said Kazakov. "You have to read the script and determine the character's personality, their intonation, try and imagine the way they speak, their every cough. Everything has to be perfect," he said. Voiceovers are done slightly differently. "There are usually three people that do the voiceover for one film, two males and a female," said Strelkov, because there are more male roles in most films. "To be good at voiceovers, you have to be able to read quickly, have a good, clear voice, with a lot of range and have very good timing," Strelkov said.

Scope
Sergei Kazakov dubbed Robert De Niro in "The Godfather Part II."
Actors have to differentiate their voice when they are responsible for the sound of more than one character. "Sometimes it sounds like there are twenty people in the studio, and not three," said Kazakov. When dubbing, the film can be paused to fit the sentence in with the actors' words, but there is no such possibility with voiceovers, where the film has to play at its original speed while the voices are recorded."You don't need to act as much in voiceovers, because you already have a sense of the original actor -- the way they act, the way they sound," said Strelkov.

Translating voiceovers, however, is much more difficult, and it's a process that involves editing. "You have to translate the words not only so they make sense but so that they fit in and take up the exact amount of space as the original text," said Gennady Maksimov, an expert in the field of film translations. "With dubbing you can be creative, but the rules and parameters for voiceovers are much stricter."Maksimov usually works with French translations, but has also translated "The Godfather" into Russian."It's very difficult because its not just translating words: You have to make sure that things make sense culturally. Taking something that is American and making sure that every aspect of it will translate to a Russian audience is the real challenge."Russia's most famous film translator is Dmitry Puchkov, known as Goblin. He is notorious for not toning down the bad language from the original films, ranging from Guy Ritchie's "Snatch" to "The Big Lebowski." His aim, he said in an email interview, is to make the translation as authentic as possible.Puchkov said that a good translation requires expertise in a variety of fields, from medicine, to law, to astronomy. "The issue is not so much knowing English, as knowing everything that allows you to understand the original adequately enough to translate it into Russian."

Top Film Distribution

"Blonde and Blonder" is dubbed by Russia's own stars.
Puchkov said one of the reasons that dubbing is so awful is that the people doing it often don't care enough about the finished product. "It's obvious to everyone that American films are stupid. Any idiot can translate them, and in fact idiots are hired to do so. To this you can add the work of the actors who do the dubbing and don't care about the films, and the sound director, who decides how it should sound. As a result you end up with a totally different film, with different dialogues, different intonations, and different accents."Puchkov has a set method of translating. First he watches the film for understanding, then he consults a dictionary. "Where before you had a shelf of books, now you have the web." He then looks at specific clauses that may not be understood in Russia. "How to quickly explain what a famous company does ... what's funny about the last name of a comic character, what kind of details you need for translating jokes."

If there are things that Puchkov does not understand, he asks the author of the text. "I have never encountered a refusal for help."If a direct translation does not work, than Puchkov will work something different into the film. "Most jokes are a play on words, so translating them word for word is impossible. You have to make your own joke up, or insert an analogy," he said.While there are a lot of fans of Puchkov on Internet forums, not everyone is a Goblin follower. "I think only young people can possibly like his translations, because they are fascinated by the swearing, but it caters to the lowest possible audience," said Maksimov. "It's butchery. It's like taking Pushkin and interpreting it with some kind of modern, vulgar voice."Maksimov recalled trying to watch the Sopranos on NTV3. "The series said that it was a professional translation by Goblin, which I thought was the height of rudeness," he said. "It was insulting to the actors and to the profession of translating."

The fact that there is no professional training in the field of dubbing is, perhaps, the source of these conflicting ideas. This is a problem that Kazakov and Strelkov hope to solve next year -- by opening Russia's first school to teach trained actors how to do dub.

To Dub or Not to Dub?

2007-12-07T11:10:00.000-08:00

To Dub or Not to Dub?

http://www.film.com/movies/story/todubornottodub/11597472/17540523

To dub or not to dub, that is the question. And while it might seem like a no-brainer, depending on which side of the coin you reside on, it is actually a fairly complicated issue. I mean, I'm sure you're sitting there right now saying to yourself, "This guy's an idiot of course they should always…"
But always what? That's the real question. Both translate into box office; both have their fans and detractors; and both can radically affect your feelings on a film. Some people don't like to read a movie. Others don't think the mouth movements are more important than the content. So let's take a look at the pros and cons of the sacred arts of dubbing and subtitling.

Subtitling: The art of translating the words spoken as literally as possible and scrolling them along the bottom of the screen to convey them to an audience who speaks another language.Pros: This method gets the most literal translation (as there are no corresponding mouth movements to match the words with) and can easily explain complex concepts or ideas that often literally get "lost in translation" in dubbed films. Subtitling also can cover for bad or even downright lousy acting, as the audience can't understand the delivery of the line – only the context. This is the preferred method of viewing for cinephiles.Cons: Slow readers can miss entire patches of dialogue, or translations of fast-talking languages can get left behind entirely during long speeches and monologues. Comedy also doesn't translate very well, as the bonus of disguising a bad performance also manages to destroy a good or even funny one. Jokes are often funnier spoken than they are written. Oh, and subtitling a film means a very limited time at the box office unless the film is about one of two things - Kung or Fu.

Dubbing: The art of having new voices record the dialogue in a brand new language, often by rewriting the script to make the dialogue seem to match the mouth movements.

Pros: The method allows people to watch a foreign film just as they would watch one in their own native language. You can both take in the dialogue/story while watching the beautiful camerawork/cinematography. And comedies more readily translates across the language barrier. This is the preferred method of the mainstream, Middle American film watchers.

Cons: People chuckle when the mouth movement doesn't correspond properly to what's being spoken, so the dialogue is often truncated and occasionally completely changed. I've seen dubs in which the entire plot of the film is radically different than the original as a result of the ideas being too complicated to explain in the short time the dialogue allows. And wow, if you get bad or uninterested voice talentfor the dub, the movie can sound like a couple of high school students reading Shakespeare aloud in homeroom.

Me? I fall dead between both camps. While my favorite first viewing method is always subtitling, I admit I'll skip subtitled films once it hits around midnight – especially if I want to stay awake. But often times, once I've seen a film, I'll check out the dub just to admire the cinematography… and to see if I can watch the dub as the preferred method for that film.

Polish Dubbing: No emotions attached

2007-10-16T00:52:00.000-07:00

(the video will show "buffering" for some time.......depending on your internet speed it will load in 1-8mins....Click the "Play" icon on the above video player after sometime to preview the video.)

On Polish TV, Desperate Wives Sound Like Guys

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119215016517556740.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

By AARON O. PATRICK

When Walt Disney Co. brought the hit ABC TV series "Desperate Housewives" to Poland, producers found just the right local actor to do the voices of the show's sexy, tempestuous female stars: Andrzej Matul, a 59-year-old guy with a deep voice and a flat delivery.
Mr. Matul is a lektor. In Poland, American shows aren't dubbed by actors mimicking the original, English-speaking actors. A lektor, the Polish term for voice-over artist, simply reads all the dialogue in Polish. While the lektor drones on, viewers hear the original English soundtrack faintly in the background.

The approach is popular in Poland, where viewers still feel comfortable with a style deeply rooted in the country's communist past. Lektors, traditionally men with husky voices, pride themselves on their utterly emotionless delivery, a craft honed through thousands of hours in recording studios. Fans appreciate the timbre of their voices, often tempered by years of cigarette smoking.
Jan Wilkans, 49, who got his first lektoring job narrating a pirated version of the movie "Dead Poets Society," says he has his own rule: "Interpretation, yes; expression, no."
Lektoring is also popular among American TV distributors. It offers them a low-budget way to get their programming into a market with a young population and strong economy.
As a result, lektoring is booming, just when it should be dying out as viewers all over the world are coming to expect higher production values.

About 45 foreign channels started up in Poland in the past five years, including the Discovery Channel, ESPN and HBO Polska. Last week, the British Broadcasting Corp. said it is starting three channels with lektored programming in Poland. The Disney Channel began broadcasting in December. On the main networks there are often more than eight hours a day of lektors reading in Polish what is being said in English and other languages.
"It doesn't seem right to Westerners," says Costa Kotsianis, managing director of Hippeis Media Ltd., which translates shows throughout Europe from its headquarters in London. "But the very good lektors can record a whole show in one take. It saves a lot of money."
One little problem is that Polish words are generally longer than English words, and they're rich in consonants. A lektor can't fall behind the action and he needs to read in a steady, slow, low voice. So, the dialogue is simplified.

In "Desperate Housewives," for example, a seven-word apology from prim Bree Van De Kamp to her husband at his hospital bedside becomes three, with Mr. Matul saying, "Mam wyrzuty sumienia." ("I have pangs of remorse.")
When Mr. Wilkans did his bit for the popular Australian police drama, "Blue Heelers," at HBO's studios in central Warsaw one afternoon recently, translator Olga Latek cut out some of the back and forth because Mr. Wilkans speaks so slowly. "Lektors don't like too much text," Ms. Latek said. Lektoring began during the Cold War, when few Western shows were on Polish TV. When the Berlin Wall fell and TV imports became more common, conventional dubbing became popular in other former communist countries but never caught on in Poland. In 2001, French network Canal Plus used six different voices for the main characters on the hit TV sitcom "Friends" to see whether high-quality dubbing would attract more viewers in Poland. The experiment bombed, and the network quickly reverted to lektors.
"We had a lot of phone calls" from unhappy viewers, says a Canal Plus spokeswoman, Marta Jozwiak. "It just didn't work."

Disney's research found even Polish children like lektoring. But the broadcaster plans to gradually start dubbing shows on the Polish Disney channel, believing children will prefer a variety of voices once they get used to them. "We are confident we can introduce a greater level of dubbing over time, but we can't just rush in," says Robert Gilby, managing director of the Disney Channel in the United Kingdom, Scandinavia and Emerging Markets, which includes Poland. When Disney's hit teenage movie, "High School Musical," appeared on Poland's main network in December, all parts were read by a man in deadpan.
Some younger lektors such as Daniel Zaluski, 31, want to make lektoring more entertaining. "When Arnold Schwarzenegger is killing people, I like to modulate the tone," he says.
But lektors must be sparing with the dramatics. One of Warsaw's main voice-over studios, Start International Polska Sp. Z.o.o., has hired six new lektors in recent months, but lektors who sound like they're acting aren't invited back, says studio chief Malgorzata Kazmierska. "It's the most horrible thing when a lektor starts to play the emotion," she says.

About 100 lektors are working today in Poland, up from just a handful a decade ago. They also do announcing and read commercials. The work doesn't require special training, though most lektors have radio or TV experience. Few speak English fluently, and the studios rely on freelance translators to churn out scripts. The voice-over people rarely have time to read the scripts before they record them, though.
When Warsaw limousine driver Pavel Szulc watches TV, he says he recognizes his two favorite lektors, Tomasz Knapik and Maciej Gudowski. "My wife and I just like the quality of their voices," he says.

As the boom in imported TV is creating more work, Discovery's History Channel uses a sound studio in a two-room apartment opposite Warsaw's main cemetery for some of its lektoring. The studio is run by 27-year-old Konrad Ganzke, who sleeps in a bed next to the padded sound booth.
An influx of young lektors has upset veterans, who feel the newcomers don't really understand the secret of lektoring: speaking so smoothly that viewers forget that Paris Hilton sounds like a Polish Johnny Cash.
"A good lektor is better than an actor -- a lektor can read anything," says Krystyna Czubowna, 53, who has been a lektor for 22 years and is one of the best-known women in Poland. "The new people come from the street and just start reading. They are very limited in what they can do."
Sun Poland Studios in Warsaw operates 10 or 12 hours a day. Lektors sit around a small kitchen drinking coffee while they wait for their recording sessions to start.

Mr. Zaluski, the Warsaw lektor, says he often doesn't remember the shows' names or plots because he reads so many scripts. One afternoon at Sun Poland, Mr. Zaluski sat in a soundproof room, wearing large headphones so he could hear the original English soundtrack, and recorded a documentary on the fashion designer Christian Dior. Sound engineer Kuba Szumowski, 25 years old, worked a bank of computer screens and a pair of speakers, mixing Mr. Zaluski's session. In 34 minutes of taping, Mr. Zaluski made just nine mistakes, mainly stumbling over words. The engineer marked the mistakes on the computer for correction later.
His 10-hour days are exhausting, Mr. Zaluski says, but generally not as tough as the time he taped nine episodes of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" in one day.

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Simpsons' Spanish Voices Angry With Film

2007-03-12T01:51:00.000-07:00

http://www.freerepublic.com/^http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/fn/4619934.html

Simpsons' Spanish Voices Angry With Film
March 11, 2007, 5:43AM
MEXICO CITY — Mexican voice-over actors who have dubbed "The Simpsons" TV series into Spanish for 15 years are threatening to boycott the cartoon's upcoming movie if they are not hired to dub it.
Gabriel Chavez, the voice of Homer Simpson's boss Mr. Burns, told the Mexican newspaper El Universal that his union's voice-over actors were told they could work on "The Simpsons Movie" _ to be released worldwide this summer _ as a condition to the end of their strike in 2005.

"Gentlemen keep their word," Chavez told the newspaper.

He said that if Mexico's National Actors Association is not allowed to dub the film into Spanish, "there will be a boycott across Latin America of the film."

Chavez did not immediately return phone calls to The Associated Press seeking comment.
In 2005, the union went on strike to demand the series only hire its voice-over actors.
Officials at Gracie Films, which produces the series, and 20th Century Fox in Mexico, which distributes the program, could not immediately be reached for comment.

The prime-time animated series created by Matt Groening is now in its 18th season.

French film-industry dubbers complain of pressure to water down scripts

2007-01-22T01:38:00.000-08:00

Jean-Louis Sarthou
president of the audiovisual commission for Sacem

French film-industry dubbers complain of pressure to water down scripts
By Doreen Carvajal
Published: January 21, 2007
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/01/21/business/dubbing.php?page=1
PARIS: France may be the historic home of edgy auteur cinema, but its vibrant industry of dubbers and translators is in an uproar about pressure to scrub gritty American films and foreign television series by eliminating vulgar words, terms for alcohol or drugs and familiar brands like Coca-Cola.
With deft attention to proper lip-syncing — voilà! — a blunt-four-letter English expletive common in films like "Scarface" transforms into "ce n'est pas vrai," — or "that's not true."
Even the national bubbly synonymous with France gets transformed in a French version of a German series, "Verliebt in Berlin."
A character's ardent declaration, "I adore Champagne!" becomes the tepid "I would drink this again." Also lost in translation are drugs like cocaine, which is altered to "poudre," or "powder." Similar liberties are taken with the American show "Grey's Anatomy" when a doctor advises a patient to reduce stress with a daily cigarette. French translators transform the prescription for puffing into a daily bowl of rice.
"This is not just a French problem, but a problem of communication that is really serious," said Jean-Louis Sarthou, president of the audiovisual commission for Sacem, which represents the rights of writers. "This is a consequence of globalization. It's excellent that movies circulate around the world and give more work to translators. But unfortunately if a film works well, some people in the industry feel obligated to turn art into a product without problems."

This month, more than 200 translators and dubbers in the French film and television industry gathered for a discussion of the issue at an event organized by Sacem. Dubbing is an art regarded seriously in France, with some people collecting the signed photos of the French actors whose voices dub such celebrities as Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt.
Dating to the 1930s, France has remained one of several West European countries, including Italy, Germany and Spain that dub the majority of American films with the voices of local actors. Less-expensive, subtitled productions are more popular in smaller countries.
In Italy, the practice started under conservative governments that sought to minimize outside cultural influences, including the transformation of non-Italian place names. The same tradition grew up in Spain under the dictatorship of General Francisco Franco, with foreign movies dubbed to reduce international influence, historians say.
With the rapid globalization of the film industry and the rising volume of movie production, veterans in the eclectic field of French cinema translation say that in the past five years they have faced increasing pressure to speed up their work and to follow an unwritten code to shun certain expressions and trademarks.
"Nothing is written in black and white because it would leave traces," said Vanessa Bertran, a translator for almost a decade for programs like "Sesame Street" and the American series "Vanished," noting that no one has issued a list of taboo words. "The problem is that we don't know who gives the orders because every time the blame is passed to somebody else. The companies who order the French version say they were asked by the television channels to do it and it's not us. Who is to blame in this story?"
In her own experience, Bertran said that the standards change constantly and that she has also been asked to make television programs more French, for example, by changing the name of the character Francesca in the Italian police series "RIS" to Françoise. Alcohol and drugs, she added, are particularly delicate subjects, with translators trading tales of particularly creative transformations. A word like "syringe," she said, was permissible if it was tied to a doctor, but forbidden if it was a drug user making the reference.
Then there are changes rooted more clearly in politics. When a character on the American show "CSI" warns darkly that "you'll end up roasting in the electric chair," the French translation is much more polite, "if you go to prison, you'll deserve it."
TF1, France's flagship television station that dominates the advertising market, broadcasts that series. It is most often criticized by translators and dubbers for being the most aggressive about changing dialogue to avoid offending a mass audience. TF1 did not attend the event organized by translators to discuss the issue.
But Boualem Lamhene, a Disney executive who manages the dubbing and translation side of the Buena Vista film unit in France, was at the debate. He said that what the industry needed was more openness and communication.
"We respect the original versions to the maximum," he said, noting that Buena Vista recently insisted on restoring some salty language for one of the "Pirates of the Caribbean" movies, even though Disney's consumer-products unit favored softer language. "We don't have a problem with slang or bad words. We try to employ the same terms and to respect the real voice in America."

Translators said they worked through intermediary companies carrying out the translation work for Disney. In the past few years, they said, these companies ended up trying to anticipate what the media giant wanted by eliminating references to religion, such as "My God!," or, in children's programming, softening wording related to death — "dead bird" becomes "oiseau malade" or "sick bird."
A spokeswoman for TF1 confirmed that the station has sought to eliminate the mention of some trademark names from some programs to conform with rules set forth by the broadcast regulator, CSA, to prohibit clandestine advertising. But a spokeswoman for CSA said the agency played no role in setting standards for the dubbing of foreign films and programming.
American script writers also note how U.S. and European standards differ on product placement.
"This is the problem inherent in the proliferation of product integration in American television and film," said Jody Frisch, a spokeswoman for the Writers Guild of America in California. "Writers and actors are often forced to endorse products with little or no control. Now translators are put in a difficult position because European law protects against the commercialization of content."
If there was a form of passive censorship, Lamhene, of Disney, pointed out that the writers were much more organized in France than in any other countries to raise their complaints.
Some of the words that they say are being censored still manage to surface in other ways. When the national daily, Le Monde, published a story about dubbing, a blunt-four letter English expletive still made it into the headline.

Dubbing, Doubling, and Duplicity

2007-01-15T13:50:00.000-08:00

Dubbing the Deer, a film by Masoud Kimiai, 1976

Dubbing, Doubling, and Duplicity

2007-01-15T13:44:00.000-08:00

Bahador, Esmaili and Kameli, three of Iran's famous dubbers

Dubbing, Doubling, and Duplicity

http://www.pagesmagazine.net/2006/article.php?ma_id=7830018
By: Hamid Nafisi

“Don’t be alarmed,” said a voice, “None of your ventriloquising me,” said the tramp.
H. G. Wells, The Invisible Man

Dubbing is the unsung hero of the history of world cinema. By making the movies intelligible to world populations, a majority of which was illiterate, it contributed immeasurably to the spread of cinema as the most popular entertainment form. It also contributed to the rise of the national cinemas and film industries. And it introduced its own poetics and politics, which impacted how cinematic stories were told and were transformed.

In Iran, dubbing was lynchpin of the hybrid production mode, and it took two chief forms. Dubbing involved an operation on foreign language movies by which Persian language dialogue replaced foreign language dialogue. Doubling involved an operation on locally made movies by which diegetic actors or voice doubles recorded the films’ dialogue in post-production sessions. The separation of the characters’ voices from their bodies broke the tyranny of sync-sound, which was the sound equivalent of invisible editing, the armature of classical realist cinema style. And it provided ample opportunities for a range of not only dubbing and doubling but also of duplicating and duplicitous practices, involving translations, mistranslations, substitutions, elisions, apparent losses, surprising gains, opportunistic accommodations, and censorship, contestation, and haggling of all sorts. As such, dubbing—the general term applied to both dubbing and doubling operations—is one of the most significant and signifying aspects of the pre-revolution Iranian cinema, during which it flourished.

Dubbing Foreign Movies

Ismail Kushan dubbed the first foreign language movie into Persian, but not in Iran. During World War II, he had joined the Nazi Ministry of Propaganda in Berlin as producer and announcer of Radio Free Iran’s Persian Service and as voice-over narrator of Persian language German newsreels, and he had played bit parts in German movies at UFA, the giant Nazi movie factory. His pro-German and anti-British broadcasts prevented him from returning home, forcing him to relocate from Germany to Turkey, where using Iranian students there he dubbed into Persian Henri Decoin’s French comedy Premier rendez-vous (1941) under the title Runaway Girl (Dokhtar-e Farari). Kushan had troubles finding women willing to act as voice-over artists, but finally he engaged Nurieh Qavanlu to dub the voice of the lead actress, Danielle Darrieux. In Turkey, he also dubbed a second movie, a Spanish song and dance item, La Gitanella, which he titled Gypsy Girl (Dokhtar-e Kowli). He carried both movies with him home at the war’s end, when he was allowed to return. He screened Runaway Girl for dignitaries and the general public in Tehran’s Crystal Cinema starting on April 25, 1946. The film’s 200,000 tumans box office and positive media publicity about Qavanlu’s dubbing of the French actress’s voice was very encouraging.

Kushan’s Mitra Films released in 1948 the first Persian language talkie made inside Iran. Called Tempest of Life (Tufan-e Zendegi), it was produced, photographed, and edited by Kushan and directed by the German-trained theater director, Mohammad Ali Dariabaigi. Kushan surmounted many production, technical, and personnel problems, as in an artisanal fashion he performed not only these but also many other un-credited tasks for the movie. The result was a melodramatic, musical tearjerker in which true love won over arranged marriage, and hard work and perseverance transcended class inequality. The film was first shown in Rex Cinema to dignitaries such as Ashraf and Abdolreza Pahlavi (Shah’s sister and brother), preceded by a newsreel about the opening ceremonies of the Royal Social Service Clinic, headed by Ashraf, which Kushan had filmed. The novelty of the first Persian-language sound movie made inside the country brought many enthusiastic spectators to the theater.

The overall success of the initial dubbed movies resulted in a flurry of activities to establish new dubbing studios to take advantage of the public’s fascination with Persian language foreign sound films. Between 1949 and 1954 at least 8 dubbing studios opened in Tehran and other studios were opened in Italy, which had an advanced dubbing industry. Together, these studios helped bolster the Iranian film industry and cinema. Dariush Film Studio in Italy, headed by the Armenian-Iranian Alex Aqababian, made a specialty of dubbing Italian movies into Persian for the Iranian market. For his first effort, The Story of Miserable Feraidun (Sargozasht-e Feraidun-e Binava, Le Meravigliose Avventure di Guerri Meschino), Aqababian not only translated the Italian dialogues into Persian but also Persianized the proper names of the characters, including that of the protagonist in the title. Its screening in October 1952 in Tehran’s Diana Cinema was so successful than within a week Park Cinema also began showing it.

The bulk of the dubbing took place inside Iran which, as Jamal Omid reports, by 1968 boasted some twenty-five dubbing studios, 240 dubbers (170 males and 70 females), and a professional Film Dubbers Union, which had began operation in 1965. Technical quality of the dubbed prints continued to be a problem as were some of the liberties the film importers, distributors, exhibitors, government censors, and dubbers took with the originals. Many of the technical problems were gradually overcome, but some of the aesthetic and ideological problems were exacerbated, leading to the emergence of certain poetics and politics. By the 1960s, foreign movie distributors and importers were providing dubbing studios with music and sound effects tracks that were separate from the dialogue track, allowing the voice-over artists to concentrate solely on their dialogue dubbing and the dubbed films to retain their original music and sound effects. Indeed, these voice artists became very proficient and prolific, the best of them specializing in dubbing the voices of several foreign movie stars. As a result of their success, the number of dubbed foreign movies shown in Iran continued to rise rapidly--56 films were dubbed in 1957, 119 in 1958, and 183 in 1959. By the end of the 1950s it was rare to encounter a foreign movie that was not dubbed.

Doubling Domestic Movies
Because of various production difficulties, almost all commercial features made in Iran were also doubled, that is, they were filmed MOS (without sound), with dialogues and sound effects both recorded and added in post-production. As a result, dubbing and doubling became lynchpins of the entire commercial film industry, impacting production, censorship, importation, distribution, exhibition, and advertising of the movies. The institutionalization of dubbing and doubling and their kin, lip-synching of actors to pre-recorded songs—as in Siamak Yasami’s Qarun’s Treasure (Ganj-e Qarun, 1965)—popularized commercial cinema movies and filmgoing and helped to improve both the technical capacity of the film industry and the construction of new moviehouses. However, it also had a profoundly negative impact on film production practices. One such consequence was that actors did not have to memorize their lines. This situation reinforced laziness, intuitive acting, spontaneous filmmaking, and the insidious idea that filmmaking was basically improvisational, requiring little preparation.

Until the end of the 1950s, Iranian actors had doubled their own voices in post-production , but from the 1960s onward—the emergence of the hybrid production mode—most of them abandoned this practice in favor of professional dubbers (called dublor from the French doubleur) doing their voices. These Professional voice-over artists were both specialists and generalists and they were also prolific. Some of them specialized in dubbing the voices of only certain foreign and domestic actors, while others dubbed and doubled many different voices. They often indigenized (Iranianized) the foreign actors and stars by putting Persian language expressions in their mouths—continuing the function of live screen interpreters (dilmaj). This was particularly true of the comics and of the strong character types, such as cowboys, tough guys, outlaws, and romantic heroes and heroines. Sometimes, these efforts at indigenization were inappropriate, as when dubbers spoke Burt Lancaster’s lines in a Persian Turkish accent or that of Tony Curtis’ in a Persian Rashti accent—both of which carried very specific cultural baggage not in the original. Also, because each voice-over artist usually dubbed and doubled the voices of several characters, foreign and domestic, strange transnational crossover resonances and dissonances would be set up between dubbed voices and screen characters and between original and dubbed films, which served to undermine the spectators’ mirror-phase identification with the foreign characters.

Thus, dubbing became, as Natasa Durovicova notes, the great equalizer, a “machine for processing differences.” Nonetheless, some critics, such as Amirhushang Kavusi, rightly condemned these efforts as fraudulent and unethical because they violated the “authenticity and integrity” of the original films. However, audiences, particularly those from the lower classes seemed to like such transformations and equalizations, as they would draw special pleasure from hearing John Wayne and Jerry Lewis use expressions that Iranian tough guys or comedians used. This sort of cultural hybridity, brought on by dubbing, on the one hand, subverted the original films and, on the other hand, endeared them to audiences whose film watching experience was thereby enriched. As a result, contrary to the pessimist culture industry critics, the “work” of these slippery and manipulative dubbing and doubling practices was highly ambivalent, ambiguous, and sometimes even counterhegemonic for instead of providing wholesale interpellation and identification with Western movies and cultures, they created new movies and an alienating sort of identification. In addition, however questionable some of the specific practices of the voice-over artists were, it is clear that by giving voice and personality to the actors and stars they brought them to life and provided incalculable service in popularizing cinema in Iran and in bringing enjoyment to audiences. Unfortunately, their individual services oftenwent unrecognized by both critics and audiences.

Dubbing is an unrecognized dimension of the orality of the Iranian cinema—and of the hybrid mode—for the oral tradition was strong enough among some of the voice-over artists to drive their practices. Many came from radio, the most oral of the mass media, and some from the theater. The comic radio actors, such as Hamid Qanbari, transferred their various radio personalities into their film dubbing, imbuing foreign actors, such as Jerry Lewis, with a new Iranianized personality beloved to audiences, who spewed specifically Persian expressions, or even jokes that were then current in Iran and on the radio. Thus, Jerry Lewis was always haunted by his indigenized double. As in Persian art music and oral storytelling, sometimes, the composition and performance of dubbing occurred at the same time. Dialogue translators and voice-over artists, forced to work within the confines of a time-based art such as cinema, resorted to improvisation and to the efficiency of inserting tried and true expressions in the mouths of the actors, much like oral poets who stringed together blocks of known formula phrases. Such reliance on improvisation and formula phrases probably aided the development, and the longevity, of typage in Iranian cinema. Once a type had emerged, such as country bumpkin, foreign bride, tough guy, or dandy, the voice artists ran with it. They did so by turning a foreign character into a local one, or by imbuing a local actor with more character than he visually displayed on the screen, or by typecasting him into a familiar, endearing, or tiresome character. The development of all the key characters of Qarun’s Treasure—Qarun himself, Happy Ali, Hasan the Rattler, Ali’s mother Zinat, Shirin, and Qarun’s purported Indian son, played by Ali—all owe something to these dynamics of orality, dubbing, doubling, and typage.

Finally, any dubbing is a form of translation and mistranslation, not just in linguistic terms but also in cinematic, sociocultural, and political registers. Like song and dance sequences, dubbing served narratively and politically important functions in the commercial cinema, which was bridled by heavy censorship. It offered the directors a second chance to smooth over their films’ narrative flaws and rough spots or to tie up loose ends. By adding a few words of dialogue or expository speech, they explained away or covered up ellipses, missing scenes, missing persons, or extraneous elements left in the movie because of improvisational filming. It also allowed them to censor their movies, papering over immoral relationships or politically sticky points. In this process, names of characters, lines of dialog, story lines, locations, and character relationships were manipulated and changed to make the films both palatable to public tastes and to government and religious censors. Through drastic manipulations of this sort during dubbing, sometimes, a tragedy would be turned into a comedy. Dubbing also served the causes of Iranian nationalism by encouraging linguistic homogeneity and reducing heteroglossia and the “Babel effect,” so feared by religionists and ultranationalists. This is how Persian became the dominant language not only of national cinema but also of television, all of whose programming—a large portion of them imported—were dubbed.

After the Islamic Republic, dubbing of foreign movies became more of a politico-religious instrument for censoring films, consciously employed to cover up scenes that due to their perceived immoral Western content or incorrect politics were altered or removed, creating new story lines, character relationships, and politics. For example, through dubbing and cutting, the sexual relationship of unrelated men and women in foreign movies—illegal in Islamic Iran—would be changed to sibling or friendly relations. Verbally, the lovers would be called brothers and sisters or friends, and to avoid incest taboos, images that suggested sexual relations would be removed by cutting. Such changes would have major repercussions for the entire movie, requiring many other changes to make the story seamless and coherent. Without those fine-tuning changes throughout, the movies’ intelligibility would be compromised, which was the case in many instances in the early days of the Islamic Republic. Similar strategies were applied to change and to manipulate the films politically. Because of its vast possibilities, dubbing provides a rich arena for deciphering the tensions of hailing and haggling, and of selfing and othering.

Doubling of the Iranian movies decreased enormously within a decade after the Revolution, as the government began to encourage sync sound filming by providing more funds, or more raw stock at lower prices, to the filmmakers who took that option. As a result, most of the art cinema films were shot with sync sound on location, a practice that enhanced the realism of the postrevolutionary movies.

Hamid Nafisi is Professor of Film and Media Studies, Department of Art History, Rice University, Houston, Texas. He has Published extensively about theories of exile and diasporic cultures, films and media; and Iranian, Middle Eastern, and Third World cinema.
(The copy right of the article 'Dubbing, Doubling, ' is held by its author.)

'To dub you have to be as good an actor. Or better'

2006-11-21T00:55:00.000-08:00

'To dub you have to be as good an actor. Or better'

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/filmandmusic/story/0,,1937345,00.html

Kirsten Dunst earns millions for a film. But what about the actor who dubs her into Spanish? The world's top voice artists tell all - in their own words

Mexico's Kirsten Dunst: Claudia Motta
I began dreaming of acting as a little girl, watching Japanese cartoons. I fell in love with the voices. Later I got into radio and then into dubbing - and I love it. After I spoke Kirsten Dunst's lines in Spider-Man, they asked me to do Mona Lisa Smile, Wimbledon, and others. She's a favourite in my stable of characters now, and I'm so pleased things are going well for her in Hollywood. I don't imitate the actor, I get into the personality of the role. I focus on the gestures and reflect that in my voice, even if there was no sound in the original. I add to the drama because to dub well you have to be as good an actor, or better. They paid me 10,000 pesos (£500) for Mary Jane in Spider-Man. The problem is that distributors don't put us in the credits. Suppose Kirsten Dunst thought, "Gosh, how nice I sound in Spanish." She wouldn't have known who the voice belonged to.
Much of my work is for television. I'm best known for playing Bart Simpson for 10 years. When different actors were brought in because of a contract dispute, the public demanded we be brought back. Mexican dubbers mostly use a kind of neutral Spanish without accents or regional expressions so all Latin America can understand. We have the best dubbing industry, and the competition in Argentina and Venezuela just doesn't have our finesse or tradition. Top Cat in Spanish has a personality and feeling that is missing in English - and I take my hat off to the woman who voiced the witch in Snow White.

India's Arnold : Schwarzenegger: Pawan Kalra
I've done most of the big names: I was Arnold in The Terminator and True Lies; I voiced Owen Wilson in Shanghai Noon and Shanghai Knights; and Hugh Jackman in Van Helsing. A number of people say I look like Bruce Willis and I did Bruce as the cop in Sin City. I think Brad Pitt is one of the finest. I have just done him in Spy Games - a great film. Pitt is a very fine actor who can both overplay and underplay a role. You really have to watch how he speaks, it is fantastic.
Dubbing is an art requiring a voice of many textures and tones. Not everybody can do it just because they have a good voice. Voiceover artists are cast and we have writers who make the scripts fit the lip movements of the actors on screen so that it runs as smoothly as possible. There are sometimes arguments over how to translate a single phrase.
It is hardest with black actors like Eddie Murphy and Will Smith. They are not only very funny but they speak very, very fast. Trying to street talk quickly in Hindi is extremely tough. After two days your mouth gets really tired.
My brother was in the film business. I was running my father's transport company in Bihar, out there in the sticks. But I had done some performances, so my brother said: come out and try. So I did. And here I am, eight years later.
A film for TV takes two days. I will make 20,000 rupees (£250). For theatre release it is more like 50,000 rupees (£625). It's really exploding. I do films, commercials and TV shows now. There are a lot more people saying "I heard you on television" these days. But it's a really competitive industry. When I started there were just a few people - now everybody thinks they can voice movies.

· Interviews by Jo Tuckman, Angelique Chrisafis, John Hooper, Jonathan Watts, Jess Smee and Randeep Ramesh

Germany's Julia Roberts: Daniella Hoffmann

2006-11-21T00:53:00.000-08:00

Germany's Julia Roberts: Daniella Hoffmann

It all started out with the casting for Pretty Woman back in 1990. Back then I didn't expect it to be a big deal - more like a B-movie. I was among the finalists and I think it was my laugh that clinched it. I can do a good, really filthy laugh just like Julia Roberts -I love it when she laughs. Since Pretty Woman I've played her in every film. My vocal range is very like hers, so it all comes pretty naturally. With Ally McBeal, whom I also dub, I put on a very different voice, much higher.
I don't often get recognised as being the voice of Julia Roberts. I think women's voices are much harder to identify than men's. But being Julia has definitely brought work my way. Some adverts want the sound of "Julia Roberts" and I have also done Charlotte's Web because it was originally Julia who did the voiceover.
When I come in to record I generally haven't seen the film I'm going to dub. It used to be different: we used to get the videos to take home beforehand. But these days they are amazingly strict about new releases. When I did a voice for Star Wars, I wasn't even told in advance what film we were doing - just to turn up.
But when I play Julia Roberts I don't need to prepare or anything. I follow her lead. I mean, the woman is a great actress, an Oscar-winning actress - why should I change anything about her work?

China's Tom Cruise: Ren Wei

2006-11-21T00:51:00.000-08:00

China's Tom Cruise: Ren Wei

Tom Cruise was my latest voice acting role, but I have played hundreds of parts since I joined the Shanghai Film Dubbing Studio in 1986. I was Ewan McGregor in Moulin Rouge, John Travolta in Broken Arrow, Joseph Fiennes in Enemy at the Gates, Hugh Jackman in Kate and Leopold and Vincent Perez in Fanfan la Tulipe.
But my real dream is to become a tenor. Luciano Pavarotti is my idol and I haven't given up trying to get a role in a musical. I have a good voice, dancing skills, and acting experience. I just need a chance.
I guess I was chosen to voice the Tom Cruise role in Mission: Impossible III because my age and physique are similar to his. Some people say I even look like him from a certain angle. It was a tough job. While Atang [the Cantonese nickname for Tom Cruise] had months to make the film, I had to do the whole thing - from learning the script to dubbing all the lines - in four days. We always have to rush because of the piracy problem in China. If we don't get the translation and dubbing done quickly, an unauthorised version will be out on the streets before ours.
Every day I worked for at least 12 hours. I studied Atang's voice and tried to imitate his style of talking. It was an action movie, so there was lots of running about and shouting, which was hard to emulate in a studio. It was very intense and I had to cover a big range of emotions. In the fighting scenes, it was all "Get down, get down! Go, go!" Then there were romantic moments when his voice breaks up as he tells his wife how much he loves her. I had to watch the original English version time and time again to get the feeling right.
When it was all over I was so hoarse that the director told me to go home and take a rest. The crew cracked jokes: "Tom Cruise runs so fast he breaks his legs, Ren Wei shouts so loud he breaks his voice."
I have never used the fact that I am Atang's voice actor to chat up women, but I have received letters from fans who say they really like my delivery. But that is not what is most important. My main aim is to satisfy the original actor as much as the audience.

Italy's Renée Zellweger: Giuppy Izzo

2006-11-21T00:50:00.000-08:00

Italy's Ren�e Zellweger: Giuppy Izzo

Italy's Renée Zellweger: Giuppy Izzo

I was born into the business. My teacher was my father. He had four daughters and most evenings at dinner he would try to teach us something about intonation. He had a saying: "Your voice is the soundtrack of your life." One of my sisters also entered the business and is now a dubbing director as well as a dubbing artist. It was a bit like growing up as a circus child, really.
My first job was as the 10-year-old daughter in The Goodbye Girl. I've no idea how many other films I've dubbed since then. I've voiced Renée Zellweger in both her Bridget Jones movies and several others. I've studied her diction, her movements and her breathing so much that I feel I know her. We've not met, though - the only actor I've both dubbed and met is Ellen Pompeo, the star of Grey's Anatomy. She came up and hugged me at a conference in Milan in the summer.
The key to this profession is obsession with detail. To get the same effects as in the original, I try, as far as I can, to imitate the actor's movements as I say her lines. Anyone who saw me working would think I was nuts. I lay down on the floor for the bedroom scenes in the Bridget Jones films. At the end of one of them, there's a scene in which Bridget is badly out of breath.
I ran twice around the block before we recorded it.

France's Angelina Jolie: Françoise Cadol

2006-11-21T00:49:00.000-08:00

France's Angelina Jolie: Françoise Cadol

Sometimes my home phone will ring and when I say "hello" there will be a sharp intake of breath at the other end. I know immediately it's a dubbing fan who has got hold of my number. Once a woman rang me and started gasping. Then after a silence, she said: "Sorry, I'm just so emotional at hearing you, I can't speak, I'll have to call back."
There are people in Paris who keep scrapbooks on dubbing, who collect signed photos, who know what you've dubbed despite your name rarely appearing on the credits. I respect people's reasons for wanting to contact me, but I don't send out photos. People feel they know the voice and they want to know you. A voice is a very moving thing. Dubbing is taken seriously in France, and people get very upset if an actor who has dubbed a star for a long time suddenly changes. Audiences want continuity.
I get invited on to TV shows to discuss dubbing - people are interested in the process. I have been Angelina Jolie since Tomb Raider because I was the voice of Lara Croft in the video games. I thought Jolie was very good in Mr and Mrs Smith - you could tell she and Brad Pitt were having a good time making that film. I don't seek out information on her in the celebrity mags, or follow her life at all, but I get on very well with the French actor who dubs Brad Pitt - a well-known actor in his own right. I'm also Gong Li, Sandra Bullock, Patricia Arquette and the voice of Mary Alice in Desperate Housewives.
I dub films because I enjoy it, it's artistic - and it is a skill that teaches you a lot about acting. I'm currently writing my fourth play for my theatre company and dubbing allows me to keep on doing the work for theatre. I've acted in theatres all over Paris, I've been on the TV, but the greatest irony is that I've never actually appeared on the cinema screen.

Doubling As 'Dubbers'

2006-09-30T04:47:00.000-07:00

Stefan Fredrich & Manfred Lehmann

Doubling As 'Dubbers'

2006-09-30T04:46:00.000-07:00

Regina Lemnitz

Doubling As 'Dubbers'
Brian Montopoli: Actors Find Extra Work As German Voices For Foreign Stars

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/09/28/world/main2050048.shtml

(CBS) Irina von Bentheim may have been a child movie star in Germany 35 years ago, but her face doesn't even appear in the role that has made her most famous. In 2001, von Bentheim was chosen to provide the voice for Sarah Jessica Parker in the German-language version of the television series "Sex and the City." The show was a hit here, and von Bentheim’s voice, dubbed over Parker’s, was soon echoing through living rooms in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

Many German actors double as dubbers. Even if the money isn’t good — "It’s peanuts, what we get for dubbing work," von Bentheim complained — there can be ancillary benefits. Von Bentheim has turned the role into a second career. She recorded an audio book of Candice Bushnell’s columns, on which the show was based, and put together a tour during which she read the columns onstage, demonstrated the dubbing process, and invited people to try it themselves. She also began hosting a weekly radio show in which she gave advice on sex and relationships.

Manfred Lehmann, the German voice of Bruce Willis, is also heard in commercials for Praktiker, a chain of home improvement stores. “I think the producer at Praktiker knows people are hearing the voice of Bruce Willis when they hear me. It’s been very successful for them,” said Lehmann, who is regularly approached at bars and cafes and asked to spout catchphrases from the “Die Hard” films. While Lehmann looks a bit like Mr. Willis, more often than not the dubber and actor share little resemblance.

Regina Lemnitz, who provides the voice for Whoopi Goldberg, was standing in front of a cabaret in Munich when she called out to a friend. Suddenly, a woman in the crowd screamed: "Whoopi Goldberg is here!" "I guess she didn’t realize Whoopi speaks English — and is not a white woman," Lemnitz said. Stefan Fredrich, who provides the German voice of Jim Carrey, John Turturro and the computer-generated Jar Jar Binks of recent "Star Wars" installments, said there are benefits to a job in which everyone knows your voice but no one knows your face. "Nobody recognizes me on the street. I can be drunk and it’s not on the front page the next day," said Fredrich, who doesn’t actually drink.

Daniela Hoffmann has provided the voice of Julia Roberts ever since she dubbed Roberts' role in 1990’s "Pretty Woman." She also voices Calista Flockhart. "Julia Roberts is a little bit deeper, sexier," explained Hoffmann. "Calista Flockhart is a half-octave higher. It’s excited and all over the place." Hoffmann, a successful actress, said dubbing is actually the greater challenge. "When I’m acting, I can cry when I want to cry. I can act with my body," she explained. "I can do what I want – not what Julia Roberts wants."

Torsten Michaelis, who provides the German voices of Wesley Snipes, Martin Lawrence and Benicio del Toro, echoes that sentiment. "Acting is about finding your own rhythm; dubbing is about finding someone else's," he said. "But that can be the joy of it. I can play roles I couldn’t play in the real world because of my body. I’m a small guy. Characters like Snipes in '‘Demolition Man' – I could never do that in Germany."

When a film is dubbed into German, it goes through two translations. In the first, the intention is to keep the German text as close to the original as possible. In the second, however, some jokes and lines are altered, and sentences are rewritten to fit the mouth movements of the actors onscreen. "It’s the same as when you translate literature," said Klaus Bauschulte, production manager at dubbing studio Berliner Synchron. "Staying exactly true to the original is not always the highest aim." Indeed, sometimes staying true to the original can be a hindrance. "The Persuaders!," a short-lived ABC television series from the early 1970s starring Tony Curtis and Roger Moore, was a flop in its original version. When Rainer Brandt adapted it for Germany, he wrote new jokes and asides into the script, and it became a hit. Brandt, a former actor who once voiced Curtis, Elvis Presley and Marlon Brando, now runs his own company, where he oversees the adaptation into German of television shows like "Everybody Hates Chris." "When a company says they want something to be commercially successful, to make the people laugh, I give it woof,” said Brandt in a low, guttural voice, pushing his fist away from his body and down towards the ground. "I make them laugh like they would in a Bavarian beer garden." Brandt also adapted "Hogan’s Heroes," the late ‘60s CBS sitcom about Allied prisoners in a German POW camp. The show, in which dim-witted Germans bore the brunt of the jokes, had been unsurprisingly unpopular when first shown in Germany. But Brandt rewrote the dialogue to make the characters into even more ridiculous caricatures and it became a hit. Accents, however, remain a problem. How can a German actor convey Tony Soprano's New Jersey intonations? The few clumsy efforts by dubbing studios to pull such a thing off — to turn a character from the American South into, say, a Bavarian — have mostly left viewers confused. Instead, studios usually rely on language. To convey James Bond’s distinctive Englishness, for example, dubbers use old-fashioned German words and deliberate, upper-class speech.

Dubbing, rather than subtitles, has been dominant in Germany since the end of the Second World War, when German audiences gained access to foreign films that had been banned under the Third Reich. While they were hungry for fare like "Gone with the Wind," moviegoers found subtitles distracting and avoided films that were not dubbed. Today, it is rare to come across any foreign entertainment on German television or in theaters— from the lowliest infomercial to the loftiest blockbuster — that isn't dubbed. But many in the industry feel they get little respect for what they do. "There is no question about the quality of the artists, about how well you do it," said Brandt. "It’s only a question of price. Low, low, low. Keep it cheap." Lehmann, one of the best-respected dubbers in the industry, said he is typically paid roughly 2,000 Euros to dub a Bruce Willis film — less than he makes for a Praktiker commercial. He was on location in Thailand for an acting role when the time came to dub "Die Hard: With a Vengeance." Instead of adjusting the dubbing schedule to accommodate Lehmann, the studio simply used someone else. "They did not find ways of making it work for that film," said Patricia Fitzgerald of Agentur Drews, who represents Lehmann. "And they could have made it work." It is not uncommon for studios to use different dubbers for the same foreign actor, for reasons ranging from cost to availability to the preferences of a studio.

Efforts have been made to raise the industry’s profile. There is an awards ceremony each year similar to the Oscars in which prizes are given to the best dubbers in a variety of categories, but it hasn't meant greater recognition from Hollywood. "Sometimes, it’s very depressing,” said Dirk Hartung, who lives with Hoffmann and writes German scripts for "CSI: Miami" and "Numbers." He points out that the couple almost never gets invited to the premieres of the movies that Ms. Hoffmann dubs. "You just have to think, you are not the German voice of Julia Roberts," said Hartung. "Julia Roberts is your American body."

By Brian Montopoli
©MMVI, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Iran dubbing King Kong

2006-07-24T01:55:00.000-07:00

KingKong

http://www.mehrnews.ir/en/NewsDetail.aspx?NewsID=356997
Iran dubbing King Kong

TEHRAN, July 23 (MNA) – Veteran dubber Jalal Maqami and co. are making the acclaimed director Peter Jackson’s “King Kong” ready for the summertime airing of the blockbuster in Iran.
King Kong is the 2005 Academy Award-winning remake of the original 1933 King Kong.
The remake is about an overly ambitious movie producer who coerces his cast and hired ship crew to travel to mysterious Skull Island, where they encounter Kong, a giant ape.
Produced by Jackson and Fran Walsh, written by Jackson, Walsh and Philippa Boyens, the film stars Naomi Watts in the role of Ann Darrow, Jack Black as Carl Denham, Adrien Brody as Jack Driscoll, and through performance capture, Andy Serkis as Kong.
The film was released on December 14, 2005, and received very positive reviews, though not as positive as the reviews given to the Lord of the Rings trilogy that the director Peter Jackson had previously worked on.

The film made a modest opening of $50.1 million, and significantly underperformed expectations at the box office.
With a huge marketing campaign and many commercial tie-ins, the release was all-encompassing for the movie market, and was seriously challenged only by its other major competitor “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe”.
However, the DVD set record sales, and the film appears to have strong enough sales to allow Jackson to make his extended edition of the movies.

NM/KK
END
MNA

ITALIAN FILMS SOON TO BE DUBBED IN HINDI AND POLISH

2006-03-28T15:39:00.000-08:00

Claudio Sorrentino, president of the 'Masters of the Cinema 'Foundation and Culture Minister, Rocco Buttiglione

ITALIAN FILMS SOON TO BE DUBBED IN HINDI AND POLISH(AGI) -
Rome, 28 Mar 2006
http://www.agi.it/english/news.pl?doc=200603281748-1188-RT1-CRO-0-NF30&page=0&id=agionline-eng.bnessitaly
Italy is to 'export' its experience in dubbing and is to focus on promoting its cinema worldwide.
An agreement signed with India and Poland will in fact mean that some of the most successful Italian films will be dubbed in Hindi and Polish in order that they be better understood and therefore 'appreciated' by foreign audiences.

The project was explained today by the Culture Minister Rocco Buttiglione and Claudio Sorrentino, president of the 'Masters of the Cinema 'Foundation, dedicated to the training of professionals in the sector. Some of the best Indian and Polish actors will shortly be arriving in our country where, with the assistance of Italian tutors, they will learn, in a month, our dubbing techniques. "

Italians are seen as the best in this field - Sorrentino explained during a press conference to mark the event - we don't simply do dubbing, but proper Italian versions of foreign films, and we'd like the same thing to be done for our films abroad". Included in the films to be 'exported' could be next season's titles including, Medusa's managing director confirmed, "La Sconosciuta" by Giuseppe Tornatore, "Viaggio Segreto" by Roberto Ando' and Carlo Vanzina's film out at Christmas as well as "Manuale d'amore" a comedy that met with success in 2005 that, Sorrentino announced, had already been proposed by De Laurentis. The cost of versions made for audiences abroad (around 50 thousand euro per film) will be out up by the individual production houses while the tutors will be provided by the aforementioned Foundation.

"This project - said Minister Buttiglione - is part of a wider strategy for our cinema. In the future we must focus on building a European market for this sector: we Italians have great potential in the cinema profession and we must make the most of it, so much so that we attract the foreign market.

Dubbing requires passion and meaning: it is a means of taking our films abroad, as it has done for the American cinema in coming to Italy". The foundation of cinema professionals, that featured at the most recent Venice Festival, is to start work in September: "we'll be dealing with all professionals in the cinema world - Sorrentino explained - from the director, the sound engineer. The producer right up to the electricians and the camera operators - special skills or expectations on the part of young people wanting to take part will not be necessary".
(AGI) . 281748 MAR 06
COPYRIGHTS 2002-2006 AGI S.p.A.

Study shows strong demand for Maltese-dubbed films

2006-03-16T15:32:00.000-08:00

Tourism and Culture Minister Francis Zammit Dimech

Study shows strong demand for Maltese-dubbed films
http://www.timesofmalta.com/core/article.php?id=217919

The quality of children's and sports programmes on TV stations needs to be improved, according to an audience survey, which also found that 66 per cent of respondents would rather watch foreign programmes dubbed in Maltese and 67 per cent would like more foreign programmes.

No local TV stations was considered to be the best for the genres of children's programmes and sports. In the case of children's programmes, an overwhelming 855 respondents out of the sample of 1,050 said no local TV stations could be considered the best while 752 said none of them could be considered the best for sports.With regard to good quality, children's programmes in Maltese and reality shows ranked lowest in the list of preferences, registering 19 per cent and 28 per cent respectively of the whole sample.

The independent survey, commissioned by the Tourism and Culture Ministry, under whose umbrella the audio-visual sector falls, was carried out by Ernst & Young.
It was aimed at finding out audience perceptions of local TV productions and the best stations for different local productions, among other things.The findings showed that TVM was the station most watched every day of the week, except for Monday, when Net TV took over, probably due to the Maltese series Santa Monika. TVM peaked strongly on Friday because of the programme Xarabank.

Indeed, the most watched TV programme was Xarabank, with an estimated viewership of 119,000. It was followed by Bondì+ and Tista' Tkun Int, with an estimated 106,000 viewers, and Showtime with 104,000. In the case of news bulletins, TVM also came first with an estimated 92,000 viewers, followed by Net News (65,000) and One News (50,000).
Xarabank also topped the list of high quality programmes (31 per cent of respondents), followed by Tista' Tkun Int (20 per cent) and Santa Monika (15 per cent).But as many as 17 per cent of respondents were unable to name a single programme of quality and 10 per cent were unable to mention two.

As for the dubbing of films into Maltese, the category of the semi-skilled and unskilled worker, or those dependent on social benefits, had the largest percentage (81 per cent) of those making this request.

Tourism and Culture Minister Francis Zammit Dimech said that, where this was technically possible, dubbing could be done, for example in the case of documentaries. But the technology to dub a movie, synchronising the words with the lip movement, was not available.

The audience survey also delved into radio listeners per day, with results showing that over half the respondents, did not listen to any station. Of those who did, Super One had the most listeners (91 out of the 1,050 sample), followed by Calypso/101.8 and Radju Malta. With regard to cinema, the survey showed that the majority of respondents (64 per cent) last frequented the cinema over two years ago, and that more women than men watched movies at cinemas.

It was on the basis of this study that the directives for PBS Ltd on how the funds of the extended public service obligation (EPSO) should be spent on different programme genres during the October 2006 to June 2007 schedule were drafted, Dr Zammit Dimech said.
The EPSO covers those genres that are not commercially viable and include children, current affairs, drama and culture programmes, to name a few. They are eligible to an allocation of Lm500,000. The directives would be forwarded to PBS Ltd in the coming days, he continued, adding that the dialogue with independent producers would continue, while focus groups were analysing the findings.

Dr Zammit Dimech said the independent producers played an important role in the building of Malta's audio-visual industry.

SARFT responds to public criticism of "Geisha movie"

2006-03-09T05:56:00.000-08:00

Memoirs of Geisha

SARFT responds to public criticism of "Geisha movie"
By Zhang Kun
http://app1.chinadaily.com.cn/star/2006/0117/ci4-3.htm

The Hollywood movie "Memoirs of a Geisha" will not be premiered in China on February 19, as originally planned, the China Film Company has said.

The dubbing of the movie has been stopped at the Shanghai Film Dubbing Studio. The China Film Company confirmed that the movie will not be shown in Chinese mainland cinemas in the near future.The movie, from director Rob Marshall ("Chicago"), stars three top Chinese actresses (Michelle Yeoh is Malaysian, but her movie career has mainly been in Chinese Hong Kong).

Strong criticism from the Chinese public accompanied the making of the movie, ever since Steven Spielberg first became interested in making it, with Maggie Cheung playing the heroine.
People have criticized Zhang Ziyi for taking the role of a Japanese prostitute. A comment on Eastday.com reads: "I was injured in the 'War of Resistance against Japan' and I won't go to see a movie like that."

Columbia Pictures, the distributor of the movie, was aware of the sensitivity of the subject. A formal copy was sent to China in advance to be played to officials from the SARFT (State Administration of Radio, Film and Television). According to the Shanghai Youth Daily, the movie passed the SARFT inspection, and Shanghai Film Dubbing Studio started to work on the translation. Gong Li and Zhang Ziyi both agreed to dub their own roles in the Chinese version. But then the translated script was sent to SARFT for further inspection, and this time failed to receive a notice of approval.

"You say it passed the inspection, where is the proof?" said Gu Min, a staff member of the Shanghai United Circuit, the largest film distributor in town. "A movie receives a licence if it passes the inspection, but so far, we haven't seen the licence for this movie," he explained.According to the Shanghai Youth Daily, the largest obstacle to the movie's release in China is that the government is afraid that the film content may outrage the audience. SARFT has been receiving letters from the public almost every day protesting against the movie's release in the Chinese mainland.

Ironically, pirate copies of the movie have been available in the local market since early January. Viewers left a variety of messages on the Internet: "The rhythm is too slow. Several women had a lengthy conversation at the beginning, made me sleepy." "Bad plot and characters, didn't carry out the cultural connotation of the 'Geisha'."Gong, a star in the movie, won higher applause from local audiences for her performance than the heroine, Zhang."The movie has received lots of public attention. It would be a shame if it can't be shown," said a staff member from the United Circuit.

Spanish dubbers are desperately seeking stardom of their own

2006-02-22T03:54:00.000-08:00

Desperate Housewives in Spanish

Spanish dubbers are desperately seeking stardom of their own

01:00 AM EST on Wednesday, February 22, 2006
BY MIREYA NAVARRO
New York Times News Service
http://www.projo.com/tv/content/projo_20060222_dubbers.1270592e.html

LOS ANGELES -- In a small sound studio late on a Wednesday night, Larisa Asuaje is channeling Teri Hatcher. She sighs, giggles and gesticulates wildly with her hands, speaking in the halting, nervous ways of Hatcher's character, Susan, in Desperate Housewives, only in Spanish.
She looks up at Hatcher's lips on a screen, which are saying, "I need an operation on my spleen, and I just found out I don't have medical insurance."
"Is there anyone I can sue?" Susan asks. "Hay alguien a quien pueda demandar?" Asuaje repeats simultaneously.

Asuaje describes dubbing as "translating the essence of the person into another language." It is what she does for other actors while she herself -- an actress who has theater, film, soap operas and television commercials to her credit -- waits for her own big break.
"I'm honored to do that voice," she said of Hatcher's vulnerable Susan. "But to be honest, there's a part of me that says, 'I wish I could be there.' "
In Los Angeles there are those who wait tables, those who park cars and those who find other ways to pay the rent while pursuing their Hollywood dreams. Bilingual actors like Asuaje, 36, have another option: following others' speech tics, mimicking their emotions and matching their m's and p's, so voices do not come out of closed mouths.
Performing in anonymity -- no credits, always heard but never seen -- the actors who dub movies and television shows into Spanish here are a fringe group even among the people who do the voiceovers for television commercials and, more prestigiously, animated feature films and television series such as The Simpsons.

To dub in Spanish, say those who do it, usually means earning a modest $12 to $20 an hour, being heard mostly in other countries and scrambling for work. Most dubbing jobs have migrated to places such as Venezuela and Mexico.
But things are looking up for Asuaje and her fellow dubbers. Last fall ABC announced that it would dub such top-rated shows as Desperate Housewives and Lost to attract the growing audience in the United States of Spanish-language networks such as Univision. The Spanish translation of these network hits is heard through the Secondary Audio Program option on television sets, which is available to more than 85 percent of American households.
The secrecy surrounding the story lines of the ABC shows, and the tight deadlines for broadcasting each episode in both languages, has meant the dubbing must stay home, specifically Burbank. But more important to dubbers such as the Spanish-speaking Desperate Housewives, whose pay has been bumped up to $25 an hour, being connected with a hit brings the hope that some of the success will rub off.
They are thinking about exposure, meeting the right producers and ultimately winning a role that would pluck them out of the shadows.

"There's that saying, 'You may not be a thoroughbred, but if you're a fly on the tail of a thoroughbred, you're a thoroughbred fly,' " said Marabina Jaimes, the voice of Brenda Strong's character, Mary Alice, the dead narrator of Desperate Housewives.
"We'd like producers to realize we're actors and can do these roles in front of the camera," she added.
What Spanish dubbers -- who are also playwrights, translators and stunt doubles, and give their voices even to car navigation systems -- may have over the rest is a tight-knit fellowship in which everybody knows one another and learns about dubbing work strictly through word of mouth.

Dubbers like Jaimes and Asuaje dub only a few hours a week and draw most of their income doing ads for companies such as Bally Total Fitness, AOL and Home Depot, in both English and Spanish. It's not a bad living, but they couldn't be farther from the glamour of such red carpet awards shows as the Golden Globes.
There was not a stylist in sight last weekend when the Spanish-speaking Desperate Housewives gathered in Griffith Park for a photo shoot. Gabriela del Carmen, 43, who dubs Felicity Huffman's Lynette, walked around carrying her own plastic bag of makeup. Purses and other belongings went not into a trailer but the Honda SUV of Jaimes, also in her 40s, who said jokingly, "I don't have champagne, but I have water."

Among the seven women, some had known one another from years of freelance dubbing work, even roomed together, and all easily fell into laughter and gossip about ex-husbands (only two remain married). So small is their Hollywood subculture -- the working ranks of Spanish dubbers number in the dozens, by most estimates -- that the Spanish-speaking Edie, Bree and Gabrielle of Desperate Housewives can also claim to have been Huey, Dewey and Louie on dubbed Disney cartoons.
Rocio Gallegos, 51, a career dubber from Mexico who directs some of the dubbing sessions of Desperate Housewives and herself dubs Betty Applewhite, the mysterious housewife played by Alfre Woodard, says that for the actors, dubbing is a form of performing-arts school where they can learn technique from the best.
"I love Alfre Woodard," said Gallegos, who has also dubbed Kathy Bates in movies and whose own son, Humberto Amor, 31, dubs Betty's son, Matthew. "That seriousness. She's dramatic without raising an eyebrow."Gallegos does not physically resemble Woodard.

As it turns out, blue-eyed del Carmen is vivacious like Huffman, and Asuaje is thin and brunette like Hatcher. Marcela Bordes, who dubs Edie on the show, is a blonde (who won't reveal her age) much like Nicollette Sheridan, the actress who plays Edie; Ana Grinta, also ageless, has the cool sexiness of Marcia Cross; and Ivette Gonzalez, 42, has the smile and perkiness of Eva Longoria, although she herself notes that after two children "I'm twice the size of Eva."
Their love life may not be as convoluted as the going-ons on Wisteria Lane, but these desperadas come with their own eccentricities.

"You meet someone, and you're, like, 'My God, what a horrible voice,' " said del Carmen, who is divorced and, unlike the others, has no children. "I'm thinking, 'Why doesn't he breathe with his diaphragm?' "

Thai film adaptation gives breath to innocent love

2006-02-19T01:02:00.000-08:00

Cinta Pertama (First love), the Indonesian title for the 2003 Thai movie called "My Girl"

Thai film adaptation gives breath to innocent love
Kenny Santana, Contributor, Jakarta
http://www.thejakartapost.com/detailfeatures.asp?fileid=20060219.P02&irec=35

The film opens, the faces looks familiar, they speak like any Indonesian and one might think this is a typical local movie. But it is not -- it just looks like one. The film is Cinta Pertama (First love), the Indonesian title for the 2003 Thai movie called "My Girl".

For the first time ever, a foreign film has been adapted into a Bahasa Indonesia-dubbed version with local songs.

Dubbing a foreign film maybe off-putting for a lot of moviegoers. Here, audiences are used to watching foreign fare in their original version or at least, in English. Many moviegoers assume that dubbed films are either telenovela or Bollywood fare for TV consumption. However, this didn't deter Fiesta Films -- which has distributed some of the more popular Thai films like Shutter, The Eye and Iron Ladies -- from making the first Indonesian-language film adaptation with My Girl.

"The film's background has a lot of similarities with Indonesian culture, and we believe the film's moral message can touch all audiences. This is why we dared to take this project onboard," said Devi Luciana, PR representative of Fiesta Films. "Not all films can be adapted to fit Indonesian audiences."

The journey began in 2003 when the six-director My Girl emerged a huge hit in Thailand. As Fiesta Films bought rights to the film, Fiesta's sister company Musica Group, with its extensive library of Indonesian music, made an offer to collaborate on making an adaptation with an Indonesian soundtrack. The next step was to find the right adaptation director -- and this was when Rizal Mantovani entered.
"We've known Rizal for a while because of his work on music videos with Musica Group. When the project was offered to Rizal, he watched the original (film) first and took it because he was inspired by the movie," Devi told The Jakarta Post.
"He's passionate about films, very frank and keen to give suggestions to make the adaptation better and better," she said.
The choice was a bull's eye. Rizal, whose repertoire includes the acclaimed Kuldesak -- which he co-directed with three peers -- and horror blockbuster Jelangkung had made for highly enjoyable entertainment.
Rizal's Indonesian script uses colloquial language that it feels real to viewers. Just listen when the children talk, play and mock each other. The dialog reminds us of the lovely, and sometimes sad, childhood we all experienced.
The film opens to Jeamy as he receives a wedding invitation from his childhood friend, Nina. Then the plot flashes back to the good times they shared during those early years. The boys versus the girls, the bullies, their blossoming love -- such key childhood moments are featured in the movie.
Rizal himself confessed to having fallen in love with the story: "I am so amazed how the structure of the film could be so simple, the characters so natural and how the directors managed to capture every detail to enhance that simplicity into this wonderful piece. Brilliant."
However, the process to bring it closer to Indonesian audiences was not easy. "The translation could get tricky in some parts," he said. "I think the trick here is to have the audience immerse themselves in the world of these grade-schoolers. Indonesian grade schoolers have an their own 'lingo'. I tend to not have these kids talk like grown-ups. They should speak their language and act their age."

The film's dubbing was handed to Ferry Fadli, who is considered the master in the Indonesian dubbing industry. And he did whatever necessary to make the film as true to the original -- even to the point of using a woman vocal actor for the role of Jack.
"I had a hard time finding the voice of Jack, a pivotal character that had to be handled delicately. Eventually, a woman actor was chosen as the perfect voice for Jack. As long as the audience finds nothing wrong with the voices, then I think we did our job right," Rizal said.
It took about 10 months to produce the adaptation, starting with the translation, casting the right vocal actors for each character, dubbing, mixing and finally to finding the right nostalgic songs to substitute the original Thai soundtrack.
The use of local songs from the opening scene to the credits is one of the highlights of the adaptation. From 1975's Jatuh Cinta by Emilia Contesa to Chrisye's Hip Hip Hura Hura and to Ku Menanti by Iwan Fals, the songs are undoubtedly an homage to Indonesian pop songs of the 1980s and 1990s.
The selection team, which included Rizal and several Musica people, chose the songs based on the mood of the scene instead of on the lyrics. Rizal then matched the songs to the scene, timing it exactly -- sometimes the songs had to be altered to fit the scene, creating a longer intro or even a new song to achieve the right mood.
In the end, whether you tap your feet to Hetty Koes Endang's Demi Cinta Niye or cry your heart out to Chrisye's Pergilah Kasih, the movie's soundtrack is a real treat, bringing back the good old days.
But can a good thing come around twice? Devi of Fiesta said: "This is the first time for us and we want to see the market's reaction, if such a film can be accepted. So far, we haven't found any new script that's 'perfect' enough for an adaptation like this."
When asked if he'll make another adaptation, Rizal hinted that there might not be a second time around: "It's a once in a lifetime project. I really love the movie and want to share that experience with everybody."
The colloquial dialog and nostalgic songs complete the simple, heartbreaking story and wonderful performances in the original, making the movie's charm accessible for audiences of all age groups.
Children will love to see themselves mirrored on screen, seniors will chuckle at memories that still linger in the past, and young couples will remember "their song". All in all, it is a tribute to that childhood love we all remember and cherish for a lifetime.

Chinese develop a foreign ear

2006-01-29T22:32:00.000-08:00

Chinese develop a foreign ear

By Xu Jitao
Shanghai Star. 2004-08-05
http://www.shanghai-star.com.cn/2004/0805/cu18-1.html

MOST Chinese born before the 1980s have deep impressions of dubbed movie classics such as "Jane Eyre", "Waterloo Bridge" and others. They remember it as natural that the exotic heroes or heroines in the movie would speak Chinese: they are very accustomed to the voices that belong to dubbing artists. As far as those audiences were concerned, the heroes and heroines in the movies were foreigners who happened to speak Chinese.

Glory history

The Shanghai Film Dubbing Studio has been the most important place for the emergence of an industry based on translating and dubbing films into Chinese. Before 1949, there were no dubbed films in China: the audiences had to read pamphlets telling about the content of the films, or subtitles presented by slideshow, if they wanted to understand foreign films. Otherwise audiences had to listen to commentators explaining what the films were trying to say. Only a few cinemas were equipped with earphones through which to hear interpreters translating the dialogues in the films for the audiences. This was obviously inconvenient for Chinese audiences who were trying to familiarize themselves with brand-new foreign movies.
In November 1949, after the Shanghai Films Studio had been founded, a department for film dubbing was added. On April 1, 1957, the translating and dubbing films department of the Shanghai Films Studio became an independent organization and its name was accordingly changed to the "Shanghai Film Dubbing Studio". From then on, it became the only professional translating and dubbing studio for foreign films in China.

During the past 47 years, the studio has introduced more than 1,000
foreign movies into China from roughly 50 countries.
Among these films, there are many classics that have influenced generations of Chinese, such as "Death on the Nile", "Zorro" and "La Tulipe Noire". In the memories of most Chinese audiences, Peter Ustinov, Alan Delon, Vivien Leigh or Robert Taylor are always associated with the attractive voices of Bi Ke, Tong Zirong, Liu Guangning or Qiao Zhen.
It would have been awkward for these audiences to accept such heroes or heroines speaking in foreign language on the screen. Dubbed voices have replaced the original voices of the actors or actresses and become an inseparable parts of these movie classics.

Lost flavour

But the trend has changed, especially in cities such as Shanghai. More and more young men have begun to take the original foreign films with subtitles as their first choice when they decide to go to cinema. For them, dubbed films lost their attractions long ago.
In 2001, when "Pearl Harbour" was imported into China, Shanghai took five original copies of the movie out of 10 and became the city to import the most original copies in China. Most people chose the undubbed one when they decided to watch the movie.
According to the Shanghai Youth Daily's interview with a young actress, Yan Xiaopin, after she had watched the original copy of Pearl Harbor, she felt that dubbing would have harmed the original dialogue and the subtle performance of the actors and actresses.
Zhou Liming, a film reviewer who lives in America, had commented that dubbing jeopardized the original films: dubbing makes the dialogue in the films become awkward; the original soundtrack gets lost in the dubbed version of the films; and the audiences lose their chance to learn and understand foreign language and culture in a direct way.
So the comments cited above by the young actress and the film reviewer can be taken as representative of people's attitudes in Shanghai towards the dubbing of films. What concerns them most is that the films' original soundtracks and actors' performances may be jeopardized by the dubbing. It seems reasonable, but in fact, it involves great prejudices and misunderstandings about the dubbing of films.
As the leading and only independent film-dubbing studio in China, the
Shanghai Film Dubbing Studio has a first-class sound effects studio that is the equal of the great studios in Hollywood. According to the chief of the Shanghai Film Dubbing Studio, in recent years, they have imported the most advanced sound effects equipment to keep up with the development of sound technologies elsewhere in the world. What they have done in their studio while dubbing films is just the same as the sound engineers did for the original films.

Post-colonial voices

On the other hand, the dubbing work doesn't alter the characters in the original films. Quite the opposite, it helps audiences to understand the characters in the films better. "I don't believe that everyone who goes to the cinema knows foreign languages and also I don't believe that they can catch every word that the characters say in the original films, because it's even a tough task even for the professionals in our studio to catch all the words that the characters say in these films," said the chief of the Shanghai Film Dubbing Studio.
So why do people choose to watch the original films? This is a complicated question and what lies behind this tide may be the global wave of post-colonialism: with the languages and cultures of the developed countries dominating the daily lives of people in developing countries.
In his review article, Zhou Liming said that watching dubbed films shows audiences have no taste and are "illiterate". This kind of opinions may indicate what many Chinese think in the context of post-colonialism.
"It's natural for people to follow the cultures of developed countries today. But we cannot ignore the side-effects that this wave brings. For people who do not know foreign languages in most rural areas, the decline of the dubbing of films is not fair," said Liu Yong, an independent film reviewer.
Another concern is the connection between piracy and the high cost of movie tickets. The accessibility of the latest pirated movies and their low price are in sharp contrast with the relative rarity and high expense of foreign movies put on in the cinemas. "I think maybe a relatively lower price would bring more audiences back to the cinemas," said the chief of the Shanghai Film Dubbing Studio. "Maybe our dubbed films would benefit from this."

Film distributors weary of Ukrainian language requirement

2006-01-27T01:24:00.000-08:00

Ukrainian currency

Film distributors weary of Ukrainian language requirement
http://5tv.com.ua/eng/newsline/182/0/20199/

Some film distributors are worried that the government’s plan to phase-in Ukrainian language dubbing and subtitles will hurt the industry. Representatives of government and film distribution gathered for a roundtable discussion in Kyiv on Thursday. According to the governmental plan announced earlier this month, by September of this year, 20% of foreign movies projected in theaters across the country should be dubbed or subtitled using the Ukrainian language.

The plan eventually calls for 70% of all movies to be in Ukrainian. Representatives from the “Association for Developing Cinema” spoke on behalf of the distributors and said the government plan will cost too much and complained that there are not enough facilities in the country for dubbing and subtitling. They claim that dubbing one film into Ukrainian will cost up to 300,000 hryvnia, the equivalent of 60 thousand dollars. Association president Mykhailo Sokolov said that film distributors only gross 150 million hryvnia annually and the new language requirement will end up costing 50 million hryvnia every year. He also said that the dubbing will introduce a month long delay to the premiers of movies in Ukraine.

Vice premier Vyacheslav Kyrylenko, who introduced the measure, said that he does not understand why distributors are willing to pay for the dubbing movies into Russian, but refuse to pay for Ukrainian language translation.

High school students call for reintroduction of non- dubbed cartoons

2006-01-19T23:38:00.000-08:00

Tweety

High school students call for reintroduction of non- dubbed cartoons
http://www.daily-news.ro/article_detail.php?idarticle=21640
Otilia Haraga

"Save Tweety!" is a petition urging the reintroduction of cartoons in the English language on the specialized animation channels. The petition has been posted on the internet by a group of high school students from Bacau, and about 3,000 people had signed it by Thursday at noon, according to the daily Ziarul Clujeanului.

Tweety, the little chicken from cartoons, was chosen as a symbol for a protest initiated by a group of high school students discontented with the dubbing into Romanian of several "classic" cartoon series such as Tweety, Tom and Jerry or The Flintstones. Initiated by pupils and teachers of the Ferdinand I National College in Bacau, the petition was sent to the Ministry of Education and also the Ministry of Culture.

The pupils are demanding a return to the model in which the original voices are in English with subtitles in Romanian. The document was posted on the internet at the address http://www.savetweety.lx.ro/ and lovers of cartoons in the "original" form are invited to support it. Over 400 supporters had registered on Wednesday over the course of several hours, most of them emphasizing the benefits of cartoons in English in helping small children to learn the language.

"I grew up with cartoons in English and honestly they were a big help. I learnt English more from television then I have and will learn from school," said one of the signatories, Gabriel Samfira. Adopting the Western model, the Cartoon Network channel has followed its standard policy of dubbing voices into the official language of the country in an effort to make the cartoons more accessible to children

2006-01-12T01:30:00.000-08:00

Czech/Slovak

Language split sees Czechs, Slovaks talk in tongues

2006-01-12T01:24:00.000-08:00

Czech/Slovak Presidents

Language split sees Czechs, Slovaks talk in tongues
http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=worldNews&storyID=2006-01-12T031340Z_01_KWA211557_RTRUKOC_0_UK-CZECH-LANGUAGE.xml&archived=False

By Matt Reynolds
PRAGUE (Reuters) -

Ivana Formanova loves watching old movies. But when a film from the former Czechoslovakia comes on in the Slovak language, she quickly switches channels."I don't really understand it. It's too hard to sit and watch and figure out what they are saying," the 15-year-old Czech, born in the former Czechoslovakia, says.
The Slovak and Czech languages have so much in common that Czechoslovak officials once considered them two versions of the same tongue.But 13 years after Czechoslovakia split into the independent Czech and Slovak republics, the ties that bind the two languages are fraying. Some experts believe the day will come when Czechs will barely comprehend their Slavic neighbours.
"I think Slovaks felt Czechs would always understand us," said Mira Nabelkova, a Slovak linguist at Charles University in the Czech capital Prague.
Mindful of young people like Formanova, Czech television executives decided last year to begin dubbing Slovak shows into Czech. Many middle-aged and older Czechs were outraged and articles criticising the move appeared in the national press.The executives justified their decision by citing studies that show 30 percent of Czech teenagers and young adults have trouble understanding Slovak entertainment."The more you meet people, especially children, who have difficulty understanding, the more you realise how different the languages are," Nabelkova said.

TWO TONGUES
Czech and Slovak are the closest of the Western Slavic languages, which include Polish and Sorbian, but 15 percent of their vocabularies and about half their noun endings differ.
From 1918 to 1993, Czechoslovakia's bilingual state media made overcoming these differences easy for anyone with a radio or television.
Slovaks still watch Czech television and read newspapers from their bigger neighbour, and many say they barely notice whether a book or film is in Czech or Slovak.
But in the Czech Republic, Slovak television has all but disappeared, Slovak press is sold at only a few fringe shops, and most of the 200,000 Slovak residents speak Czech.
"Young Czechs have few opportunities to hear Slovak," said Nada Vokusova, president of the Slovak-Czech Club, which prints journals and magazines in both languages.
"When they grow up, they may understand Slovaks like they understand Poles, about 70 percent when they concentrate."
Having grown up in Czechoslovakia, adult Czechs are surprised to find their children cannot understand Slovak."My generation understood it absolutely no problem," said Jan Prokop, a Czech journalist who served for two years at an army base in what is now Slovakia when he was younger.Prokop's 10-year-old daughter, Olivia, is a child prodigy of mini-golf -- three-time junior champion at the World Championship and four-time junior champion at the U.S. open.
Last year, Prokop sent her onstage to answer questions at a post-tournament banquet in Arizona with a Slovak-American translator."He translated one question. Olivia just stood there. He translated another," Prokop said. "No answer. I finally realised she wasn't scared, she just didn't get it."

DRIFTING APART
A Slovak asking for beer or cigarettes in one of Prague's famous pubs will have no problem. The words are the same.But young waiters are often baffled by requests for foods that sound totally different in Slovak, such as cabbage soup.Cabbage is 'zeli' in Czech and 'kapusta' in Slovak.
Despite such differences, broad language similarities helped unite Czechs and Slovaks after the Austro-Hungarian empire collapsed following World War One, when Czechoslovakia was formed.Linguists debated whether the languages should be considered separate at all. For a time, Czechoslovakia's official language was Czechoslovak, with two separate standards, Czech and Slovak.
State television and radio broadcast in both languages, and they grew even closer. Czech expressions entered Slovak usage, and the late Communist leader Gustav Husak, a Slovak who lived in Prague, spoke a goulash of the two tongues.
Czech linguist Marian Sloboda says the growing divide between the languages has eroded the solidarity that developed between Czechs and Slovaks over 70 years.
"A few years ago, some Czech students were unhappy that Slovak students were getting spots in Czech dorms," she said.
"It was clear they viewed Slovaks as 'them' rather than 'us' ... The Slovak language fading in the Czech Republic will increase that feeling, the feeling that 'they' Slovaks are different from 'us' Czechs."

(Additional reporting by Alan Crosby)

© Reuters 2006. All Rights Reserved.

Italian film looks to the future

2005-09-01T04:29:00.001-07:00

Roberto Benigni

Roberto Benigni won two Oscars in 1999 for his film Life is Beautiful

Italian film looks to the future

2005-09-01T04:29:00.000-07:00

Sophia Loren

Italian film looks to the future
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/film/4200042.stm
By David Willey
BBC Rome Correspondent

As the Venice Film Festival gets under way in Italy, can the country's film industry build on its glorious past and continue to compete with the Hollywood giants?
Italy began hosting one of the world's most prestigious film festivals as long ago as 1932 when Benito Mussolini was one of the first to understand the importance of international exploitation and marketing of films.
Both he and the Nazis in Germany were to use the new art form for regime propaganda.
He invited along to Venice for the first festival Louis Lumiere, the Frenchman who had invented the motion picture camera and projector and had given the world's first movie show in a Paris cafe in 1895.
Italy was also the country that gave birth to Roberto Rossellini, Sophia Loren, Vittorio De Sica, Marcello Mastroianni, Federico Fellini, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Bernardo Bertolucci - who achieved stardom as some of the most important film directors and actors in the subsequent history of world cinema.
Now in the 21st Century, the Italian film industry pales into insignificance beside that of Hollywood. About 3,500 people are employed full time in film and TV production.
Showcase
While the number of feature films made in Italy continues to decrease each year because of rising costs, Italian cinemagoers show a continuing preference for American made films dubbed expertly into Italian, rather than for their own home-produced films.
The figures tell the story. In 2004, over 150 first-run Hollywood films were shown in Italian cinemas, in comparison with only just over 100 home-produced films and co-productions.
Twenty-eight first-run features from France were shown along with 17 from Britain. Total box office receipts were up 10% from the previous year and the number of cinema tickets sold approached 100 million - but two-thirds of the profits went to America.

Only 26 Italian-made films took more than a million euros (£684,160) at the box office in 2004. Many Italian made films attracted heavy government subsidies.
This year's Venice Festival is still predominantly an international showcase.
Only three out of the 19 films in competition were made in Italy and none is a likely winner of the prestigious Golden Lion award.
But another three are Italian co-productions with France, Poland, Russia, and the USA.
Pooling film production resources with other countries is clearly the way for the future according to senior executives in the Italian film industry.
Earlier this year Culture Minister Rocco Buttiglione went to India to sign a new co-production agreement with Bollywood which the Italians hope will open up to them a huge new market.
The Indians are particularly interested in learning from the hugely successful Italian film dubbing industry. Italian film actors traditionally boost their income with dubbing work.

Cinecitta, the formerly state-owned Rome film studios - also founded by Mussolini - has been privatised and equipped with the latest digital technology to cash in on the vogue for historical blockbusters and the increasing number of feature films commissioned by TV.
Nowadays it is television as much as the film industry that keeps Cinecitta in business.
Italian talk shows and reality TV productions are broadcast live, advertising spots are filmed and fiction series are shot for distribution in Italy and abroad.
Of the latter, the latest enterprise is a $100m (£56m) series entitled Rome, co-produced by HBO and the BBC, for which the scenery experts have constructed life-size replicas of Roman monuments.
When shooting of the planned 65 episodes ends, the sets will be left in place, in the hope of enticing other producers to use the studios for more films set in ancient Rome

International markets have long been crucial to film biz

2005-07-29T12:43:00.000-07:00

Hollywood

International markets have long been crucial to film biz.
By Hy Hollinger and Cynthia Littleton

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr/film/feature_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000999360

"Without the foreign markets, Hollywood would be bankrupt."

It's a statement that is as true today as it was when it was penned 70-odd years ago by The Hollywood Reporter founder and publisher William R. "Billy" Wilkerson in his Page 1 Tradeviews column."The loss of (foreign) markets would necessitate at least a 50% cut in production costs," he wrote in his Feb. 18, 1937, column detailing the rising threat of government-imposed censorship, tariffs and other restrictions on Hollywood's exports."

For some of us to say 'To hell with Turkey! Forget about Roumania' ... would be talking out of the wrong side of our mouths," he wrote.As The Reporter boss could see back then from his Sunset Boulevard perch, Hollywood was destined to become an ever-more internationally driven business.In the 1930s, foreign boxoffice revenue accounted for about 40% of the major studios' annual revenue. From the 1950s to the '70s, the U.S. studios are reported to have brought back about 30% from the offshore market, a percentage that started to rise in the '80s to the current 50% level.Today, filmed entertainment represents the U.S.' second-largest export after aircraft.

Indeed, the industry paid attention when MPAA chief Dan Glickman reported in March at the annual ShoWest conference that the percentage of worldwide boxoffice revenue from international markets exceeded that of domestic for the major studios for the first time ever last year.Of the 24 films that topped $100 million at the overseas boxoffice in 2004, 20 exceeded their North American takes, with several more than doubling domestic returns and others helping to salvage domestic disappointments."International activities have grown in importance for the MPAA (and) for our member companies," Glickman said at ShoWest, though in the same breath he warned against the growing threat of worldwide piracy and trade barriers to content providers in developing markets like China.

But as much as the international aspects of the film business are becoming more prominent at home for Hollywood, the record during the past 75 years in The Reporter in many ways shows that things haven't changed all that much from the industry's formative years, when film exports were more commonly measured in feet rather than dollars.A few generations ago, Wilkerson was bullish enough on the promise of the European film business that he launched The London Reporter, a British-based daily trade paper covering the U.K. and continental market. It lasted five months, from March-August of 1936."We felt that there was enough production going on in London, enough being planned, enough throughout Europe to support a strictly production daily paper," Wilkerson explained in his Aug. 1, 1936, Tradeviews column in the hometown edition.

"We were wrong."But history has proven that Wilkerson hardly was wrong to have focused a good deal of The Reporter's newsgathering efforts from the start on letting the hometown industry know what was going on in foreign markets. (The nomenclature switched to the less ethnocentric "international" markets with the first rumblings of globalization in the 1980s.)When The Reporter debuted Sept. 3, 1930, the dubbing problem was the big international concern for Hollywood's largest studios at the time. That challenge came at a time when British, French and German filmmakers represented serious competition. Titles in any language easily could be inserted in silent-film prints.Talking pictures by then had taken root in the domestic market, but it was a different story overseas. MGM, Paramount, RKO, Warner Bros. and other majors were experimenting with dubbing for non-English-speaking markets and with the production of "version" pictures, in which actors of different ethnicities would shoot at night on sets populated by Hollywood stars by day.The Reporter had been publishing for less than two months when it asserted "No Profit In Foreigns" in the banner headline of its Oct. 23, 1930, edition. The story noted that "out of the 23,477 motion picture theaters throughout the world, excluding those in English-speaking nations, there are but 2,727 equipped to run talkies."

The grim picture painted in that story didn't stop the newspaper from proclaiming "Foreign Market Solved" less than a year later, in the banner story of its July 30, 1931, edition. The solution was that the majors had gotten "dubbing down to a fine art" and adjusted release plans in markets that preferred subtitling.But that was only the beginning. As the major studios established sales offices from Melbourne to Mexico City in the 1920s and '30s, Hollywood had more than a few battles looming on the horizon with foreign governments.Gaining access to the lucrative British market was a particularly fierce fight at times for the pioneering Hollywood moguls and MPAA ambassador Will Hays, of Hays Office legend, who fought hard in the 1930s and '40s against the British and their quota system mandating the studios produce a set percentage of films in Britain, which became known as "quota quickies" in the parlance of The Reporter.

Then as now, foreign presales were a key component of film financing for independent producers and studios alike. In its Dec. 19, 1930, edition, The Reporter trumpeted the "Big Deal For Chaplin" news that a British distributor had advanced auteur Charlie Chaplin the record-setting sum of $2 million against 75% of the British gross for the distribution rights to "City Lights."And Hollywood always has been quick to sound the alarm on film piracy."Indies Charge Piracy," read The Reporter's banner headline in its Jan. 30, 1936, edition. The story reported that Mexico was a principal "hotbed" for stolen prints and that I.E. Chadwick, head of the Independent Motion Picture Producers Assn., was planning to appeal to the State Department "for cooperation from foreign governments in stopping wholesale piracy."By the late 1930s, Hollywood was getting nervous about Adolf Hitler and his impact on foreign markets. "Hitler's Fist at H'wood," warned The Reporter's banner story of April 6, 1937, detailing the "suppression in Germany of American boxoffice hit pictures on unknown pretexts." (A few days later, The Reporter carried an item about the Nazi government explaining that "Charlie Chan at the Opera" had been banned in Germany because it contained "too many murders.")

The slowdown and eventual collapse of key European and Asian markets that came with the onset of World War II in the late 1930s was at first a major cause of panic for studio chiefs who only a few years earlier had grappled with the adverse effects of the Depression.Even the most prophetic readers of The Reporter couldn't have known that the loss of foreign revenue in the 1939-45 war years would be comfortably offset by the spike in domestic demand. Indeed, planning and strategizing among the majors for rebuilding European operations began as early as 1943, the record in The Reporter shows. Two months before the D-Day invasion, in the banner story of the April 4, 1944, edition, The Reporter predicted "a vicious cutthroat war for dominance in the world film market when the present global conflict is over is foreseen by the heads of the picture industry, who are even now making plans to come out on top."

The end of the war served as the catalyst that helped propel Hollywood films to worldwide pre-eminence. The buildup of global distribution networks and assistance from the U.S. government in pushing film exports played a major role in entrenching Hollywood's domination of the international film trade and advancing it during the march toward globalization.In 1944, the majors organized individual foreign holding companies -- Universal International Films Inc. and Columbia International Corp., for example -- that took over each of the company's foreign assets and controlled all of its foreign operations. There was some discussion at the time about forming a single export company to handle all the product of the majors so as to counteract monopolies that existed in Italy, Germany and Japan.That never came about, but some form of a joint venture emerged during the economic decline of the 1970s. Charles Bludhorn, chairman of international conglomerate Gulf + Western, which owned Paramount, and Universal's Lew Wasserman sparked the formation of United International Pictures, a London-based overseas distribution partnership of Paramount, Universal and MGM.Jack Valenti, who helped steer the industry's path overseas in his 38 years at the helm of the MPAA, famously preached that a viable local film industry created a desire to see movies from all countries.

Today, major companies, facing a decline at the domestic boxoffice, are teaming with offshore filmmakers for production, co-production or distribution of local-language films."It does make us a good citizen of the world to be able to bring our expertise and resources to aid a lot of great local filmmakers," Jim Gianopulos, co-chairman of Fox Filmed Entertainment, told The Reporter in May, shortly after the studio unveiled plans to invest in the production of Russian-language films through a three-picture deal with director Timur Bekmambetov. "It affords us an opportunity for growth beyond our own homegrown slate."

Film Dubbing Development in China

2005-07-18T06:10:00.000-07:00

Madagascar

Film Dubbing Development in China
http://www.china.org.cn/english/features/film/135120.htm

Madagascar, another animated special from the creators of Shrek and A Shark's Tale, debuts in cinemas across the country today.

Tailor-made for the summer holidays, the cartoon about friendship raked in over US$100 million in the United States, catapulting it to the top of box-office rankings in North America. Movie stars Ben Stiller, Chris Rock, Jada Pinkett-Smith, and David Schwimmer lent their vocal talents to the film, bringing to life a lion, a zebra, a hippo and a giraffe respectively, best friends and stars of the show set in New York's Central Park Zoo.

In the Chinese release of the cartoon, local celebrities Jin Haixin, Lin Yilun and He Jiong put their talent to good use, and their efforts were applauded by film buffs who attended the Beijing premiere. All three were newbies.

Singer Lin Yilun said that the success of the dubbing could be attributed to the close relationships the stars have with one another, and the fact that they each tried hard to keep in character.

But the success of the Chinese release of Madagascar is somewhat of an aberration. China is still in dire need of professional voice talents.

When Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith hit Chinese movie screens two months ago, a third of the 300 film copies distributed in China were in the English language. Although this could be taken as an indication that the standard of English is improving generally, critics believe that it had to do also with a loss of confidence that audiences have in dubbed version .

The Chinese version of Matrix Reloaded, for example, was severely criticized. Fans of the movie complained that TV star Li Yapeng’s dubbing was so bad that it killed the atmosphere of the film.

The state of the dubbing industry is very unlike its brilliant past.

China built two film dubbing studios in the 1950s, the first in Changchun, Jilin Province in 1955 and the second in Shanghai in 1959.

In the late 1970s and 80s, dubbing actors – like Qiu Yuefeng, Shang Hua, Bi Ke and Li Zi – were stars in their own right because they made foreign movies accessible to the ordinary Chinese person.

After the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), the dubbing industry went full steam ahead into its golden era, which lasted most of the 1980s and 90s. Over 600 movies from about 40 countries were dubbed at the Shanghai Film Dubbing Studio , with 700 from 30 countries at Changchun. Japanese and Mexican movies came first, followed by Hollywood.

But things have changed since then. The industry hasn't been able to fill positions emptied through retirement or death with young talent. Today, there are only about 10 dubbing actors still working at the Shanghai studio. Most of the actors from the Changchun studio have moved to Beijing hoping to earn more money.

"The actors have to make a living," said Du Huijun, manager of the Changchun studio.

Low salaries are hindering the development of the industry. Jin Feng, voice of Anakin Skywalker in Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, was paid only 1,200 yuan for his services. Oddly enough, this is about twice what the average dubbing actor would make.

In a bid to revive the flagging industry, the Beijing Film Academy started offering a performing and dubbing elective in 2002, the first of its kind in China. The first group of graduates has so far been able to find work dubbing for foreign movies such as Finding Nemo, Green Giant and Pirates of the Caribbean.

(China.org.cn by Li Xiao, July 15, 2005)

When Hollywood Goes Global

2005-06-30T05:04:00.000-07:00

Bloopers

http://www.riverdeep.net/current/2000/12/122800_subtitles.jhtml

The Art of Subtitles

Many people in other parts of the globe base their views of American life on what they see in the movies. The dialogue for American movies is translated into many other languages. What can go wrong in the translation? How can non-English speaking audiences around the world understand the latest adventures of the nutty professor or Erin Brockovich?

Before a movie is released in countries where English is not the official language, the dialogue must be translated. One frequently used method is subtitles. The original dialogue soundtrack is left in place and the translation is printed along the bottom of the film. The translator of subtitles faces a unique challenge that few other translators deal with: The original words are presented simultaneously with the translation. Anyone who understands both languages can immediately spot any translation mistakes.

Vivian Vitler is a veteran translator of English and Spanish movies and television shows for Israeli audiences. She says that the challenge of having the original dialogue alongside her translation forces her to check and recheck her work to ensure accuracy. She relies on an array of specialized dictionaries (including ones that cover slang, visual definitions, and technical terms), extensive research on the Web, and consultation with specialists in order to catch as many of the unfamiliar phrases and specific references as possible.

Vitler gives the example of a mistranslation by one of her colleagues: The dialogue said that someone was so crazy he wanted "to build a Greyhound depot on the highway." The translator relied on a dictionary instead of consulting with someone who could provide the fact that Greyhound is the name of an American bus company. So, of course, the subtitle changed the intent: "He is so crazy that he wants to build a dog-racing track on the highway." Subtitles give the translator the option of explaining puns and jokes, if this can be done in a word or two. For example, Vitler recently translated a movie in which a young boy claimed that he was a pacifist so he would "pass-on-fist."

Obviously no translation is going to express this play on the sound of words. But with subtitles, the translator can add a brief explanation in parentheses, to help the audience get the full intent of the original dialogue. The Bloopers When Americans watch a subtitled Hollywood comedy in a European cinema, they often laugh at points in the film where no one from the native audience laughs. Sometimes the European's lack of laughter is due to cultural differences in perception of what is funny. In other cases it is because the translator has failed to translate the joke. In a handful of cases, the Americans' laughter is caused by the translation itself. Consider a simple word like "call." Webster's dictionary gives 15 definitions for the noun alone.

Here are two actual mistranslations from movie and TV subtitles :
A priest explains, "That's when I got my call from God."
The subtitle reads: "That's when God telephoned me."

A general has to decide whether or not to bomb an urban target, and he says, "It's a tough call." The subtitle reads: "It's hard to make a phone call."

In both cases, the translator didn't consider the various meanings of the word call.

Subtitles vs. Dubbing

There are two possible methods for providing the translation of a movie's dialogue: subtitles, where the original dialogue soundtrack is left in place and the translation is printed along the bottom of the film dubbing , where the dialogue soundtrack is replaced with one recorded in the viewing country's language by local actors.Each method has advantages and disadvantages. Subtitles enable audiences to hear the original soundtrack the way the original actors and the director intended. Subtitles also let people with some English vocabulary listen to the original, while aiding them when they need help understanding a specific phrase.

Subtitles:

Subtitles are limited by space and time. There is only room for a limited number of characters across the bottom of the film. The translator must break the translation into logical lines that fit into this space constraint. Also, each subtitle needs to display for two to six seconds to enable the audience to read it. If the dialogue is flowing quickly, the audience members may feel that they are "missing out on something," because obviously more is being said than they are being given to read.

Dubbing :

The advantage of dubbing is that it frees the audience up from the need to read, enabling viewers to enjoy the visual side of the film more fully. Dubbing is free of space limitations, so the translator is able to include more of the dialogue. However, there are still time constraints: The dubbed dialogue must take the same amount of time to speak as the original dialogue. It is unsettling for the viewer to watch one person's lips moving while another person's voice is speaking. Dubbing is necessary for nonreading audiences, such as preschoolers, who are incapable of reading subtitles.

For this reason, Disney movies are usually dubbed, including the songs. Have you ever seen a movie with subtitles or a dubbed soundtrack?

Did you enjoy the experience?

What did you dislike about the experience?

If you are going to a foreign-language film and have the choice between subtitles and dubbing , which would you prefer?

Why?

Foreign Language Dubbing

2005-06-30T04:54:00.000-07:00

Shrek(2)

http://www.mcall.com/features/arts/all-filmdubbingjan23,0,3142564.story?coll=all-artsideas-hed

Film-dubbing a key for foreign movie sales

By Mary McNamara
Special to The Morning Call
HOLLYWOOD

At first Chuck Mitchell did not think it was such a great idea to insert a slaughterhouse joke in the middle of ''Shrek.''''I said, wait a minute, I don't think so. I mean it's one thing to have Shrek say he's going to kick Donkey's butt; it's another to have him dragging him off to the meat house.''But then Mitchell isn't Polish. Apparently, in Poland, there is a very funny folk tale involving a donkey and a slaughterhouse. And according to the translator working on the Polish version of the wildly successful DreamWorks film, they would be fools not to reference it. So Mitchell said go with the slaughterhouse.''We had a great translator,'' he says with a shrug. ''I trusted him. There were lots of things that had to be changed because a lot of the fairy tales they use in 'Shrek' are not known in Poland. So we used dialogue to add some Polish fairy tales.

''Mitchell is president of Voices in the Arts, an audio production company that does, among other things, foreign dubbing for theatrical and nontheatrical film projects. As foreign sales have become increasingly important to the entertainment industry — making up, in some cases, 50 percent of revenue — the ''foreign post-production,'' or dubbing, industry has grown in scope and expertise. Where once it consisted of literal voice-over translation, often not particularly well-synchronized, now entire casts and crews are assembled to re-create the dialogue in a way that captures not only the spirit of the original movie but also provides local nuance to make it play better in the various foreign territories.

Throughout Western Europe, English-speaking film and television has been regularly dubbed for years. In France, Italy, Germany and Spain (the FIGS, as they are called in the industry), there is a free-standing dubbing industry with studios and talent that can have lucrative careers in dubbing alone. But as Hollywood has ventured into Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa, dubbing is overseen by the American studios that will hire local actors and directors but, when the budget allows, also provide a production supervisor such as Mitchell to be on set.Mitchell signs off on everything — from the script to the performances, where cultural translation is as important as linguistics.

For ''Shrek,'' Mitchell oversaw the Polish, Catalan and Castilian versions; for ''Titan A.E.,'' he worked in Hong Kong, Korea, Spain, Iceland and Greece; and for ''Star Wars: The Phantom Menace,'' he supervised the dubbing in Hong Kong and Russia. ''Chuck is part of a very select group who not only understand the creative process but also know how to do all the audio post-production,'' says Debra Chinn, executive director of international theatrical dubbing for Fox Film Corp., who has worked with Mitchell many times over the years. ''Because it's not a question of understanding the language so much as it is understanding the original project.''

''In a way, I am a professional American,'' Mitchell says. ''A lot of the [foreign] directors may or may not have worked in the U.S., so they may or may not get some of the references or nuance. Sometimes I have to explain that this is supposed to be funny, or this isn't.''That cuts both ways. Mitchell remembers asking a Russian director why the actors voicing one film sounded so stern and angry. ''I said, 'You know, the characters aren't supposed to be angry here.' And he said, 'Oh they aren't angry. That's just the way we talk.' I hear it's even worse in Turkey; in Turkey they scream at each other.''

Mitchell, who got into theatrical dubbing by way of music production and interactive dubbing , is one of a handful of independent dubbing supervisors living in the United States. Occasionally, he works in the FIGS. (If there is a big enough budget for the translated version, local stars will be cast — in France, Vincent Cassel often dubs Hugh Grant, in Poland Jerzy Stuhr dubbed Eddie Murphy in both ''Shreks.'')But much of his work has been in the newer territories. Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa still tend toward subtitles, but that is changing, especially for those films aimed at a family audience. ''Kids can't read subtitles,'' Mitchell says. ''So they dub the animation features and some live action. 'Star Wars' is a natural example.''

''When I got into dubbing in 1989,'' says Chinn, who has a degree in linguistics, ''I went to Disney because the only studio that had its own dubbing department was Disney. Now most of the big studios have one.''And with the increase in foreign sales has come a greater concern about ''protecting the brand.'' Filmmakers want to make sure that what audiences are hearing in Iceland and Hong Kong and Moscow is essentially, if not specifically, the same dialogue heard in the United States. Which means the studios need more control and more resources.'' So in 'Star Wars,' you have to secure all the various voices of Darth Vader,'' Chinn says. ''Which can be difficult if, over the years, some of the actors have died or retired.''

Although it probably isn't the first thing on anyone's mind, every shift in the international community affects Mitchell and Chinn and those involved in foreign post-production. When the Soviet Union fell, when the United States invaded Afghanistan and then Iraq, new dubbing markets were born. When Chinn came to Fox in 1997, the studio dubbed for 28 territories; this year it will be 33.''Croatia may not provide a huge revenue,'' Chinn says, ''but it's revenue.''Although it is cheaper to deal directly with a director in a given territory, a dubbing supervisor gives the studio more control. There are countless ways a translation must be modified for each audience. ''I Huckabees,'' for example, opens with 45 seconds of swearing, which doesn't play well in France. So the tenor of the language had to be changed.

Directors such as David O. Russell and Baz Luhrmann are becoming increasingly involved; many will sit through each dubbed version with a translator and sometimes demand a new version if they aren't happy with an actor.''It isn't like the old days when films just got a voice-over translation,'' Mitchell says. ''Everything is much more nuanced.''

Yet cost-cutting at every level has recently decreased the number of jobs Mitchell has gotten abroad. It has been suggested to him by several studio executives that he move to Europe, which would make him competitive for projects without the budget to fly in and put up a U.S.-based supervisor. So far, he and his wife have resisted, and a nascent local dubbing market is filling in some of the gaps.

Mary McNamara is a writer for the Los Angeles Times, a Tribune Publishing newspaper.

Hollywood studios have mixed record in India

2005-06-30T04:48:00.000-07:00

Gladiator(Hindi)

http://www.glamsham.com/movies/scoops/05/jan/30hollywood.asp
By Priyanka Khanna, IANS

Mixed signals are emanating from Hollywood studios about their future plans in India. While 20th Century Fox has decided to wind up its operations in India, some other studios have declared the country a "priority market". Buoyant after ticket collections of Rs.2.5 billion ($57.3 million) in 2004, Columbia Tristar Films and Warner Bros are bullish about the Indian market and are rolling out expansion plans in the subcontinent. In dramatic contrast is the news about Fox's India office closing down because of a decline in the market for dubbed English films. Is Fox's decision to pack up its India operations a hasty decision or are Columbia and Warner Bros' plans for expansion based on unfounded optimism?

The answers seems somewhere in between. The box-office report for Hollywood films seems relatively better than that of Bollywood's ware. "Spiderman 2" grossed over Rs.350 million last year, the second highest English grosser in India after "Titanic", which made over Rs.500 million, reports indicate. In fact some Bollywood observers claim the English movie market is growing at 35 percent in India, which now ranks 15th in theatrical collections made by Hollywood studios. And studios like Columbia and Warner Bros have lined up a slew of big movies in 2005, like "Batman Begins", "Star Wars Episode III", "King Kong", "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire", "Hitch", "Miss Congeniality 2", "Mr and Mrs Smith", "The Chronicles of Narnia", "Memoirs of a Geisha", "War of the Worlds" (a Steven Spielberg film) and "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory".

Simultaneous global releases are becoming the norm. The total number of films made by Hollywood is peanuts compared to films made in India. The domestic movie industry makes around 900 films a year, compared to America's 100, making it the world's most prolific film-producing country. But given the low rate of box-office hits - less than one-fourth of them break even - the industry's market share in the $300 billion industry is a mere $3.5 billion. Though Fox's marketing manager Paresh Manjrekar was quoted as saying that poor box-office returns for Hollywood films had prompted the decision for a pullout, the facts tell a different story. Foreign studios have had a reasonably good run at the Indian box-office. Fox's "Garfield" netted a neat profit and Columbia Tristar made the highest profit in 2004 after setting up business in India.

Insiders said the reason behind Fox's decision to close its India operations could well be the way the country conducts business and no way a certificate of Bollywood's triumph over Hollywood.Former Fox India's managing director Aditya Shastri had at many forums brought up the need for urgent change in policies and laws but to no avail. He had gone on record as saying: "We have multiple problems in India, including unsettled tax issues for the last eight years. So we are not seriously looking at production here."The biggest adverse impact will be on Indian producers like Ram Gopal Varma who were counting on funds from Fox. Industry chambers like FICCI have been advocating the need for transparency in Bollywood for eons.

FICCI's S. Dasgupta said Bollywood needs a lot of catching up with regard to contracts, bonds and insurance procedures. Hopefully, his voice will be heard with Fox's withdrawal from Indian market. Restrictions imposed on foreign investors in the entertainment industry are probably more responsible for the low Hollywood stakes in the Indian film market. The world's biggest entertainment industry accounts for a mere five percent of the Indian market, whereas in most other markets its share is up to 60-90 percent.Domestically produced films capture up to 95 percent of the Indian market and there is no doubt that most Indians prefer Indian movies.

Nonetheless, there is no dearth of connoisseurs of Hollywood products. Evidence for the demand is the fact that the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) said Hollywood's leading studios lost more than $896 million in 2004 because of rampant movie piracy in the Asia-Pacific region. Fuelling the demand for Hollywood films in India is the increasing demand for them by Indian TV channels. Channels like STAR and SET Max have made the airing of Hollywood movies dubbed in Hindi a rule rather than the exception.

Hollywood films, particularly those big on action and special effects, are typically dubbed by voiceover professionals in Hindi to reach a wider section of the billion-plus population in a country crazy about movies. To further increase their reach, Hollywood films are now being dubbed in Tamil and Telugu. In fact, Sean Connery who uttered a few Hindi words in "The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen" will be seen speaking eloquent Hindi, Tamil and Telugu as the dubbed versions of his James Bond classics roll out across India. Ashok Amritraj has acquired the rights to dub the vintage Bond hits into the three Indian languages. He is also considering dubbing many action-packed films including the early Clint Eastwood movies for exhibition in India. The entry of major Hollywood studios into production has to a great extent quelled the resentment of domestic players.

Instead of fighting off the trend, the high and mighty of Bollywood have joined the gang and recently superstar Shah Rukh Khan lent his voice to the Hollywood movie "The Incredibles". Some studios are mulling the possibility of Hollywood directors and producers making out-and-out Bollywood potboilers starring our very own homespun stars.No longer content with Hollywood blockbusters -- both dubbed and non- dubbed-- cornering a fair share of Indian moviegoers, the Western movie powerhouses are joining the Bollywood bandwagon. At a conference, MPAA's Asia-Pacific senior vice-president admitted Hollywood was keen to join hands with Bollywood to "bring the mystical magic of film to people everywhere through the new digital technologies".

Hyperion Pictures India, a subsidiary of the independent Hyperion Studio Inc, is looking at three projects in India, including a musical directed by US director Willard Carroll, with an American heroine but an Indian hero, cast, crew and locations.Universal Music has announced its intention of producing three Hindi films. With this, Universal has stolen the march over Sony Pictures Entertainment, which was the first to get a Foreign Investment Promotion Board clearance to produce and distribute films in India way back in 1998.Though Sony is going slow on the production front, it has significantly opened up its distribution line-up through its Columbia Tristar Films arm. Some Indian production houses have tied up with their Western counterparts for financing and distribution. Clearly, the future of Hollywood films in India is not too bleak. Some Hollywood studios are cooking up right for the Indian palate but changes in Bollywood's way of doing business are the need of the hour.

German Dubbing:Losing its Glory ?

2005-06-23T11:46:00.000-07:00

People have become adept at lip reading to get around the dubbing

http://www.expatica.com/source/site_article.asp?subchannel_id=26&story_id=1716&name=Dubbing+down

Dubbing downNo matter how people might try to defend it, dubbing of German television seems to have developed into another crude form of cultural imperialism. And says Andrew McCathie it can drive you mad.

Strangely enough I have never heard people saying the same thing about learning German from German TV — even though, at least according to German television, the whole world speaks perfect Hochdeustch (High German) with almost every programme that takes to the air dubbed to within an inch of its life. Instead of picking up the German language, many people say they have become adept at lip reading as a way of getting around the heavy-handed voiceovers and 'synchronisierung' that has turned dubbing into a major industry in Germany. Frankly, it can drive you mad.

Those actually doing the dubbing might have become big stars in their own right in Germany, but the whole process of sychronisierung wipes out regional and national differences in language with the actors' 'voices' seeming to come down to just a handful of dubbers. For a country that prides itself on its acting profession and theatres, there appears to be a very rudimentary understanding of the importance of language in even the most minor character roles. The madness appeared to reach a particular low point on the night of the death of Marlene Dietrich more than a decade ago when in marking her career German TV showed one of her English-language movies with Dietrich's sultry voice dubbed out and replaced by the bland voices from the television dubbing machine.

The conclusion was all too depressing. Germany might have very quality TV programming, but if Germans don't get it about the importance of Dietrich's voice in her acting, how can they get it for someone like Woody Allen or a cop from Liverpool or Muriel in the Australian film 'Muriel's Wedding'? The Germans are a sophisticated and educated lot, so how do they really feel when the die Glotze or boob tube takes them to some remote part of the world only to find that everyone there (surprise, suprise) speaks perfect German? Or as was the recent case when a young German man met a beautiful young Portugese woman. “I don’t speak Portugese,” he told her. Don’t worry, she said, “I speak German”. I am afraid I flicked on so I didn't hear why she spoke German or if it had anything to do with the storyline. Even TV addicts say they have given up following their favourite shows in Germany But how can it be that Germans will tell you that it was only after a visit to Britain that they were for the first time able to hear the Queen's squeaky porcelain voice in its royal glory?

At least now with the arrival of international television via cable TV Germans can cringe with the rest of us when they hear George W Bush attempting to piece a sentence together or reducing the word 'terrorist' to one syllable. With the whole world speaking German, as German television would have it, flicking into a TV movie or programme after it has started can very problematic in Germany as it often takes a while to work out what country a programme comes from. Is there anything more irritiating than hearing those excruciating voices when some of our older dubbing friends do the voiceovers for children? And for that matter do the dubbing for some of those older people. Who on earth does those weird 'voices' for The Golden Girls?

New TV technology and programming has helped, with some televisions allowing viewers to watch programmes in their 'original sprache'. But even the most hardened television addicts will tell you that they have to an extent given up on trying to keep up with their favourite shows in Germany, partly because they seemed to have been transformed into quite different programmes by the, let’s face it, highly unwelcome dubbing process. There appears to be a very rudimentary understanding of the importance of language Germans insist that German-speakers are in the minority with their language, and without dubbing their language would be swamped by a world which is already dominated by English. But other even smaller nations make do and in fact almost celebrate showing programmes from other nations, often with subtitles. There is a sense of: that is their culture and this is our culture.

Interestingly enough, it is the old European fascist powers of Germany, Italy and Spain which during the dark pre-war days seemed to use dubbing as a form of censorship that now seem most concerned about maintaining their dubbing industry. Unfortunately, far from protecting their own language, the reality is that the dubbing game appears to have developed into nothing less than a rather a clumsy form of cultural imperialism.

February 2005
[Copyright Expatica 2005]
Subject: Life in Germany, TV, films dubbing

Mexican Simpsons stars on strike

2005-06-23T11:16:00.000-07:00

The same actors have been voicing the Mexican Simpsons for 15 years

Mexican Simpsons stars on strike

The same actors have been voicing the Mexican Simpsons for 15 long years in Latin America.Now these voices of cartoon family "The Simpsons" in Mexico went on strike on Wednesday. They say the dubbing company wants to cast cheaper actors from outside their union, the National Actors Association.

The actors picketed the offices of the company, Grabaciones y Doblajes Internationales, blocking entry to the non-union actors. "For now we have to keep up the strike there," said Patricia Acevedo, 45, the voice of Lisa Simpson.

The actors normally start recording their parts in January but negotiations between the union and the company have broken down. The company has said it is struggling to remain competitive because of the union's actions. "With attitudes like these, our country has lost ground for dubbing in Latin America," the company said. Humberto Velez, the voice of Homer Simpson, has said he earns about 600 pesos ($54, £28) per episode and felt obliged to stand up for his union.

Northern voices, foreign tongues

2005-06-23T11:05:00.000-07:00

APTN

Northern voices, foreign tongues

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20050329/ABORIGINAL29/TPEntertainment/FilmProducers

Producers are up in arms over a decision by the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network to replace subtitles with dubbing. Inuit film and television productions are going to end up sounding like badly dubbed kung-fu movies. That's the fear of Zacharias Kunuk, director of the 2001 film Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner), which was shot entirely in the Inuit language, Inuktitut, and was shown around the world with subtitles. Kunuk is joining other filmmakers and politicians in Nunavut to speak out against the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network's new policy of asking producers to dub their programming into other languages instead of subtitling them.

"We've been producing films for 15 years and we've never had any trouble producing in Inuktitut," Kunuk says. "Now it's the one TV network that belongs to us aboriginal people of Canada that's giving us a problem. It feels like we're moving backwards." Kunuk spoke at an emotionally charged public consultation last month in Iqaluit, Nunavut, that was organized by the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network (APTN). Inuit elders and film and video producers voiced concerns that the network's move to dub aboriginal-language programming into French and English could damage the territory's fledgling TV and film industry and roll back efforts to promote Inuktitut.

However, APTN's CEO Jean LaRose, a member of the Odanak First Nation in Quebec, says the new policy will have exactly the opposite effect: It will promote the use of aboriginal languages across Canada. The issue flared up after APTN sent out a request for proposals asking for new dramas, children's shows and series to be dubbed into more than one language: For example, an Inuktitut drama would be dubbed into English and French, while a French series would be dubbed into English and Inuktitut. LaRose says the move prepares them for the transition to HDTV, which can carry four tracks of Secondary Audio Programming, allowing the viewer to select which language they want to listen to. He says this will allow the network to reach more viewers and generate additional revenue.

But film and video producers who make programming in Inuktitut have reacted with anger, engaging in a public e-mail debate with LaRose. John Houston, president of Ajjiit, the Nunavut Media Association, an advocacy group for the territory's film and television industry, feels dubbing will reduce the quality of their productions. Houston is a non-aboriginal filmmaker who is fluent in Inuktitut, and his APTN-funded programs feature elders speaking their own language with English subtitles. "When you watch an elder speaking Inuktitut, you might not understand a word he's saying, but a lot more is transmitted than just straight content," Houston says. "You hear the elder pausing. You hear the earnestness in his voice. Taking away an elder's voice and replacing it with an English voice feels like an insult to me. It feels wrong." Feature films like Atanarjuat aren't currently eligible for funding from APTN, but Houston mentions it as an example of an Inuktitut film that reached a wide audience while using subtitles. Houston says if people had the option of listening to an English dub, many would never hear the beauty of the Inuktitut language. He's also concerned that if APTN programming is available in English at the press of a button, young Inuit might not listen in Inuktitut. Nunavut's minister of Culture, Language, Elders and Youth, Louis Tapardjuk, recently sent a letter to APTN expressing his concern. "

Speakers of aboriginal languages right across Canada are struggling for the very survival of their mother tongues and film and television are very powerful tools to reach out to young people and spark an interest in their language," Tapardjuk says. "When producers are encouraged to provide programming with dubbing in English or French, it undermines our efforts in Nunuvut to promote Inuktitut." Almost all of APTN's aboriginal-language programming is currently in Inuktitut, and LaRose says dubbing will help the network diversify its content. "I know that in the North right now, there is a great concern about the rapid loss of the Inuktitut language," LaRose says. "I can understand their concerns, but at the same time I have to look at the national mandate of the network, which is to program in as many aboriginal languages as we can and give every language an opportunity to be heard. There's been a strong reaction of fear, but we are not trying to take anything away from the Inuit, we're just trying to give other groups the same opportunity to hear their own stories."

LaRose says APTN's policies are flexible and he's not closing the door to subtitled programming. "It's not our preference because we'd rather have dubbed versions we can use with the Secondary Audio Programming. However, if a producer says they're doing a documentary with elders and they are adamant that they don't want other voices speaking for them, we'll still work with the producer and come to an agreement." However, LaRose says subtitled programming may be broadcast only on APTN's northern feed and producers will receive lower licence fees, as they won't have the additional cost of dubbing. His comments haven't been much of an assurance to Northern filmmakers, who fear losing their national exposure and wonder if they'll end up with smaller budgets.

Some worry that by insisting on using subtitles, their proposals simply won't be approved. And producers like John Houston feel they don't have any time to waste, as they're documenting the last living elders who grew up on the land. LaRose, who is still crossing the country doing public consultations, hopes the emotional debate will die down as people get more information. He says the expectations for the aboriginal broadcaster are extremely high, and everywhere he goes, native people all want the same thing: to see more of their own culture on the TV screen.

Palestinians have a chance to watch the movie Gandhi in Arabic

2005-06-23T10:41:00.000-07:00

Gandhi

Palestinians have a chance to watch the movie Gandhi in Arabic
By: Maher Abukhater*

http://www.amin.org/eng/maher_abu_khater/2005/apr6.html

Ramallah-

Dubbed in Arabic, the Oscar winning film Gandhi was premiered in Ramallah Wednesday April 6, launching plans to screen the film throughout the Palestinian areas and Arab world. Makers of the original film in English, including actor Sir Ben Kingsley, who won the Best Actor Oscar for his portrayal of Gandhi in the film, told a press conference, two hours before screening the film in Ramallah, that the Arabic version came in response to a Palestinian initiative.

“We saw a genuine need and we responded,” he said, joined in this by the film producer Jake Eberts.

Kingsley, Eberts and Palestinian director Hanna Elias, who worked on the Arabic dubbing since September, along with the funders Kamran Elahian, founder of Global Catalyst Foundation, and Jeff Skoll, founder of Skoll Foundation, met before the press conference with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and other members of the Palestinian civil society.

Kingsley said he saw strong support from Abbas to this work, which he hoped would carry a message to the Palestinian and Arab people that “the force of truth is irreducible.” He said the film was not about violence or non-violence, rather about one word he mentioned in Indian, satyagraha, which means “truth force.”

The Palestinian director Hanna Elias said: “A lot of effort was put into this project by all parties; Sony Pictures donated the rights to dub the film Gandhi. We were able to complete the work in less than a year with support from the Skoll Foundation and the Global Catalyst Foundation (GCF). Mr. Kamran Elahian, Founder of GCF and Mr. Jeff Skoll, Founder of Skoll Foundation believe that it is essential to support Palestinian Civil Society that practices Gandhi’s philosophy and call for economic self-reliance.” Elias said the idea for an Arabic version of the film Gandhi came few years ago when he and Elahian were traveling through the West Bank and Gaza. The Israeli military checkpoints and the situation on the ground showed him how important it was to present to the Palestinian people a film that can give them hope. He approached the producers of Gandhi and Skoll and was able to get them to commit 60,000 US dollars to make the Arabic version of the film. However, when the work was completed, the costs did not exceed 20,000 US dollars, said Elias, a Palestinian film director whose recent film The Olive Harvest won best picture in the Cairo Film Festival.

The date for launching the film, April 6, also came coincidental with the fact that April 6 was the date mentioned in the film for fast and prayer. When work on the film began in September, said Skoll, it was planned to be completed in April. However, certain problems a month before schedule made it appear as if the production would be delayed. However, explained Skoll, when it was realized that the launching date, April 6, was the day of prayer and fast, work was increased and the dubbing ended on time. Eberts said he was ready to make the film in other languages if necessary, praising what he said was the high quality of the work in Arabic.

The film, using 129 Palestinian actors for the dubbing, will be screened in the Palestinian cities, villages and refugee camps. It will be given to schools and non-governmental organizations to show it wherever possible. The Ramallah event will be followed by screenings in Jerusalem on April 7th, Bethlehem on April 9th and Gaza on April 14th. The April launch in Palestine will be followed in May by screenings in Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.

* Palestinian journalist based in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

"Stop Busting Homer Simpson's Union"!

2005-06-23T10:27:00.000-07:00

Simpsons

[Information for this alert comes from the Mexian National Association of Actors (ANDA) and U.S. Labor Education Project in the Americas (US/LEAP)]
http://www.nosweat.org.uk/article.php?sid=1262&mode=thread&order=0

Mexican actors who do the voice dubbing for Fox Entertainment Group Spanish-language programs in Latin America including The Simpsons and Malcolm in the Middle were forced to strike on February 23 when their employer refused to honor the workers' collective bargaining agreement requiring the use of union labor. For 40 years, the Mexican National Association of Actors (ANDA) has guaranteed union actors' right to work on productions by Grabaciones y Doblajes Internacional (GDI), which produces the programs for Fox. When GCI refused to respect the existing collective bargaining agreements, ANDA actors such as Humberto Vélez, the voice of Homer Simpson, stopped working to protect the union's rich tradition of providing top-notch performances for Latin American audiences. "We are not difficult people to work with; we work out of love of our craft," says Vélez. "Let's hope that before we have to turn this into an ugly affair that (our employers) solve the issue. It would break my heart to have to stop doing the voice of Homero, and to turn on the television and hear someone else doing my voice."[El Universal]

ANDA is striking to protect its collective bargaining agreement that guarantees union members the right to work. Although the dispute is not about money, it is worth noting that there is a stark contrast between the $60 per episode paid by DGI in Mexico and earnings of their English-speaking counterparts, who are paid as much as $250,000 USD per episode. Over 250 million viewers in 40 Spanish-speaking countries watch Los Simpson and other Fox programs. Striking ANDA actors ask that worker rights advocates immediately contact GDI's main client, Fox Entertainment Group, to insist that it do the right thing. Urge Fox to demand that GDI respect the basic rights of its workers and the collective bargaining agreement and to stop using non-union labor for voice dubbing of Fox programs.

Dubbing it out; one man’s battle against TV voice-overs

2005-06-23T07:41:00.000-07:00

Dubbing Studio

25.05.2005

Dubbing it out; one man’s battle against TV voice-overs

By Darius James Ross
http://www.baltictimes.com/art.php?art_id=12793
VILNIUS -

In a bid to increase second-language fluency among Lithuanians, a young parliamentarian is telling television networks that it’s time to start using subtitles instead of voice-overs in the programs they import from Europe and the United States. Algirdas Paleckis, a 34-year-old social democrat, says Lithuania’s longstanding voice-over tradition – a cheap form of TV dubbing that uses a single voice, usually male, for all roles regardless of gender, and that makes no effort to synchronize text with lip movement – is hurting the country’s integration into Europe.

“I’m trying to get Lithuania to be more European,” he says, adding that Lithuanians talk proudly about their 2004 accession to the 25-nation bloc, but must still strive to improve their foreign language skills. Studies released earlier this year show that only one in 10 Lithuanians demonstrate a high degree of fluency in English, French or German, which is far off the EU’s goal of two second languages for each European, and a figure that has many local government experts worried.

Paleckis said he’s frustrated because so many young people are emigrating, taking the second-language skills they learned at school with them when they leave. Meanwhile, those who choose to stay have few opportunities, such as watching foreign television shows in their original languages, to keep up what they’ve learned.“Fluency in English, in our day, is as important as being able to read and use a computer,” he says, adding that French and German were tied for a not-distant second place.Nearly all Lithuanians, especially adults, are still at ease in the language of the country’s former overlord – Russian.

Despite a healthy mix of locally produced state-run and commercial Lithuanian language broadcasts, programs beamed in from Russia – which, in a paradoxical twist, are often subtitled in Lithuanian – are still widely watched. “The vast majority of Lithuanians understand this language [Russian],” says Paulius Virbickas, a producer with LNK, Lithuania’s biggest private broadcaster. He adds that LNK uses subtitles for Russian-language shows, but reverts to voice-overs for those in any other foreign language. While Lithuanian commercial networks mostly show benign Russian-language entertainment programs, it’s the Russian news channels that cause unease for some.“We know who rules the flow of information in Russia,” says Paleckis, referring to Russian president Vladimir Putin’s claw-back of media freedoms in recent years, which, critics say, was a deliberate strategy by the Kremlin to remove a pesky burr in its saddle.

Months before acrimonious diplomatic rows between Moscow and the three Baltic capitals culminated earlier this month over the implications of the end of World War II, a Russian channel foreshadowed the Kremlin’s official view that Baltic states were “liberated” by Soviet troops, not occupied, in a documentary that drew outrage from Lithuania and scorn from its fellow Baltic states. But in Lithuania, even the “Discovery Channel” and “National Geographic TV” are shown in Russian.“It’s ironic that American television reaches us through Russia,” said Egidijus Aleksandravicius, a Kaunas-based history professor and social critic who is one of a growing number of educators joining Paleckis’ chorus.Government education experts who did not wish to be named said that they weren’t overly worried about the high dose of Russian television on Lithuanian airwaves, but they do say subtitled Western programs would go far in boosting second language proficiency.

TV execs disagree

Paleckis doesn’t intend to use the legislature to push through his hobby-horse, but he is applying pressure on the country’s government-owned broadcaster, Lithuanian Television, in the hope that it will lead the way in a gradual replacement of monotonous, staccato voice-overs with less intrusive subtitles.“I think our public broadcaster will break the ice,” he says, adding that private stations told him voice-overs were deeply ingrained in local television culture and they feared losing viewers. “The private broadcasters are looking to Lithuanian Television to pave the way.”But the head of Lithuanian TV, Kestutis Petrauskis, doesn’t see a bright future for subtitles.“It’s a habit that’s taken shape over several decades; people are used to the voice-overs. It’s something that’s easy for politicians to talk about, but much harder to put into practice.”

Petrauskis says studies have shown that linguistic subtleties cause translated subtitles to be too long, and that Lithuanians grow tired quickly when reading them. LNK’s Virbickas agrees: “We listen to television here as much as we watch it. Subtitles mean you can’t step away from the TV set, you always have to follow the small running lines of text.” Teresa Ziboliene, an independent film and television producer, says that eye strain is known as a drawback of subtitles, but also a proven and very effective way to acquire second-language skills, adding: “in the case of quality films, subtitles preserve the artistic integrity of the production.”According to Petrauskis, Lithuanian TV will test the waters by broadcasting some subtitled films on its second station, which is reserved for re-runs as well as high-brow cultural programming.When asked if using subtitles would lead to a drop in viewers, LNK’s Virbickas says yes. “It would be almost cruel to all the housewives here if we forced them to watch Mexican soap operas in their original language,” he explains.Yet Virbickas himself, who is fluent in English, admits he prefers watching English-language films in their original language.Virbickas says legal obstacles prevented LNK from dubbing Stanley Kubrick’s “Eyes Wide Shut” and Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of Christ,” which were both shown with subtitles, and that both films drew high ratings. However, he adds, the controversial nature of the films was the likely reason behind their popularity.

Looking around

Latvian Television experimented last year with subtitles by showing the same film on two channels simultaneously – one dubbed, the other subtitled. In the end, dubbing won and subtitles were ditched. But Latvia goes one step further than Lithuania by matching the sex of the reader to that of the actor, though it doesn’t synchronize text with lip movement.Estonia, on the other hand, emulates Finland and Scandinavia by using only subtitles for foreign shows, and is the example lawmaker Paleckis says Lithuania should follow: “People in these countries have developed very good second-language skills, with no erosion of fluency in their mother tongue.”

When asked about the practices of France, Germany and Italy, where television is usually dubbed, he said: “These are big countries that are comfortable in their major language space. It’s the small and medium sized countries such as the Netherlands and the Nordics that Lithuania needs to look to.”

Lost in translation on Japanese screens

2005-06-23T06:34:00.000-07:00

Japanese "Godzilla" movies were infamous for their dubbing, but it fell out of fashion

The Japan Times Printer Friendly Articles http://search.japantimes.co.jp/print/features/life2004/fl20040509x4.htm
SPEAKING IN TONGUES

Lost in translation on Japanese screens

By SETSUKO KAMIY: A Staff writer

Unlike the countries that tend to dub foreign movies, Japan has been mainly using subtitles for more than 70 years. No one knows exactly why, but some say the Japanese simply enjoy hearing the original voices of the actors and the sounds in the background. Most now take it for granted that going to the movies means reading subtitles. Good subtitling is thus indispensable for the audience. And that is why some people are upset when they spot poor subtitles. They believe that they warp directors' intentions, mystify audiences and ruin the cinematic experience that people pay for. There was a scandal just two years ago, for example, when angry "Lord of the Rings" fans lobbied the movie-trilogy's Japan distributor, Nippon Herald Films, demanding improvements to the subtitles written by popular subtitler Natsuko Toda.

Of course some problems are partly due to the technical demands of the craft. Compared with other fields of translation, subtitlers have greater freedom to paraphrase foreign dialogue -- but this is also a result of their constraints. The number of words that can appear on screen must be limited so the sentences can keep up with the flow of the story. And this is on top of getting the dialogue across while compensating for cultural differences. Given this, subtitling is undoubtedly hard work. But some in the industry think subtitlers have been taking too many liberties with scripts, a phenomenon they blame not only on the subtitlers, but on the mind-set of the industry itself. Film director Masato Harada, 54, says he has long been bothered by the philosophy of mainstream subtitlers, who he says believe the rapidly changing lines of text must be simple to make movies "easier to understand," a habit handed down by their pre-war seniors. "Because of their explanatory interpretations, Japanese are forced to watch movies without appreciating all that crisp dialogue."

Harada, who directed "Inugami" (2001) and other movies, worked on the subtitles for Stanley Kubrick's "Full Metal Jacket" (1987) after the American director, who retranslated the work of Toda's back into English, asked for replacements because he wanted the nuances of the dialogues rendered more faithfully. As a director who writes his own scripts and is also careful about the subtitles on his own works screened overseas, Harada said he sympathized with Kubrick. "Producers and scriptwriters each have their own personalities, and that must be respected," Harada said. Most movies are translated by a select group of popular subtitlers (whose names appear in the credits) at the request of local distributors. According to an employee of a major film production company in Tokyo, who asked to be referred to only as "S," distributors hesitate to take the risk of hiring inexperienced newcomers because an awkward translation might ruin its box-office potential.

But although experienced subtitlers are essential to a film's success, the conditions under which the subtitlers work may also be another cause of the problem. Subtitles are often completed within a short space of time -- often just a week or two -- to meet tight screening schedules. In the case of simultaneous releases in Japan and the United States, subtitlers may not even have the final cut to work from. Director Harada said distributors should take more care when working on subtitles, especially those for major movies that could be nominated for the Academy Awards. His opinion is echoed by movie critic Atsuko Osanai, who says distributors should take more responsibility for the final product. Although they are supposed to double-check the subtitles, Osanai says she has heard of cases where they only confirm that the subtitles are timed correctly with the scene. In other cases, "corrections" made in haste when errors were spotted before shipping often turn out to be erroneous themselves because no one bothered to run the change past the subtitler. Osanai has even witnessed cases where mistakes found at preview screenings were left in because the distributors said they didn't have time to fix them. As an effort to improve the situation, "the names of distributors should be listed in the credits alongside those of the subtitlers," she said.

Meanwhile, the industry is seeing an increase in dubbing especially for family-oriented movies, such as the "Harry Potter" series, which audiences find easier to watch because it allows them to focus on the stories. In addition, demand for dubbing has climbed with the growing popularity of DVDs, where dubbing is considered just one of many standard viewing options. Dubbers can convey three times more information than subtitlers can, and dubbing can handle several people speaking simultaneously. Subtitlers mainly concentrate on the main characters.

But dubbing has its downside, as well. For example, dubbers must translate freely in some cases, such as movies aired on TV, to tone down offensive language. Sometimes, according to S, they have to change product names in the movie to avoid upsetting the program's corporate sponsors. The cost of dubbing a movie is also much higher than subtitling because it requires more staff, including actors, S said. Nevertheless, an increasing number of movies recruit celebrity voice actors to attract more viewers. Subtitlers and dubbers are usually different people. Videos and DVDs often use the same subtitles made for the movie's original release. But dubbed lines, added later, usually differ. The DVD version of "The Last Samurai" includes both Toda's subtitled version (as released in the cinema) and a dubbed version, "directed" by Harada, who starred in the film as the sinister Omura. Viewers may find the dubbed dialogue is a far better match for the nuances of the original than the subtitles.

One possible scenario: If DVDs with dubbed dialogue catch on, and more Japanese become aware of the difference, maybe viewers will become more demanding and the movie industry will be nudged into improving the quality of subtitling. Then maybe, just maybe, fewer things will get lost in translation.

The Japan Times: May 9, 2004(C) All rights reserved

Dubbed Works Losing Popularity

2005-06-23T06:07:00.000-07:00

Harry Potter

http://www.china.org.cn/english/Life/132371.htm
Dubbed Works Losing Popularity
It is said there is a generation gap with anyone three years younger than you in China. The claim is true if you look at the choice of entertainment out there if you listen to hard rock instead of chilled-out tunes, watch dazzling Star Wars instead of Harry Potter, you are already old in the eyes of teenagers and hipsters in their early 20s.
And the latest fashion:
Watching Harry Potter movies in English. If a Chinese person chooses the Chinese-speaking dubbed version instead of the English-speaking original with Chinese subtitles, he or she is scoffed at by the younger generation. The ongoing Shanghai Film Festival certainly follows this mode of thinking none of its more than 100 foreign movies have been dubbed. Dubbing is expensive, arouses intellectual property issues and above all is unnecessary, as the festival is targeting the educated young, said sources with the organizers.

Here comes the generation gap:

For those Chinese above 30, movie dubbing is itself a great art and experts in the field are widely respected, probably more than the foreign actors and actresses actually in the movie. More than 30,000 Shanghai residents reportedly lined the route of Qiu Yuefeng's funeral procession in 1980. Who's he you ask? Only one of the most famous local dubbing actors ever to put his voice to foreign films. Qiu is remembered best for his interpretation of cinematic heroes like Mr Rochester in the British film Jane Eyre. Dubbing actors were immensely popular among Chinese in the late 1970s and 1980s, partly because dubbed films were among the only ways for ordinary Chinese to learn about the outside world at a time when a foreigner in the street was still a rare species, according to Peng Zhichao, vice president of the Shanghai Film Dubbing Studio. "Ask a Chinese of the time what a Western man was like, he or she would probably cite Zorro, or Alan Delon," he said. Dubbed films are an interesting hybrid of East and West: Of the two major components of a movie, namely video and audio, the audio part is "localized" in a dubbed film.

In the eyes of dubbed film fans, the Shanghai Film Dubbing Studio is a Mecca of the industry. China built two film dubbing studios in the 1950s the first in Changchun in Jilin Province in 1955 and the second in Shanghai in 1959 and both have remained State-owned, while the latter stands out for being more "international." The studios also "dubbed" China's international relations: The first film dubbed in Shanghai was a biography of Russian botanist Michurin imported from the former Soviet Union. China cut its film ties with the Soviet Union after the relations between the two countries soured over many issues. It began importing films from "countries of brotherhood," like Albania and Yugoslavia.

Japanese and Mexican movies were the first foreign films to make an impact in China after the "cultural revolution" (1966-76), and Hollywood blockbusters later arrived including Arnold Schwarzeneger's True Lies and Keanu Reeves' Speed. In the past five decades more than 1,000 movies from about 50 countries have been dubbed at the Shanghai Film Dubbing Studio. Meanwhile, Chinese who grew up watching the studio's dubbed films have reached their 30s, 40s or even 50s. Boys and girls of a dating age the major customers of theatres have become used to home videos with original soundtracks and Chinese subtitles. And they exhibited great enthusiasm for the first subtitled foreign film to be shown in China the Hollywood saga Pearl Harbour in 2001. Since then more and more theatres in Beijing and Shanghai have been showing subtitled movies in their major cinemas and dubbed movies in the smaller ones.

For those familiar with foreign languages, seeing the original movie is a handy way to brush up on language skills whilst having a good time. But for those who are not familiar with foreign languages, reading subtitles during a foreign movie can grow tiresome. "I know it can be tiring for my eyes to capture two parts of the screen at the same time, but it is so embarrassing to take a girl to a dubbed film," said 19-year-old Wang Chen, a freshman at Tongji University.

(China Daily June 17, 2005)

Dubbing & Subtitling

2004-12-13T01:03:00.000-08:00

hi!
This will be a blog for all those who have a special interest in Dubbing/Voice over & Subtitling.Here you can find old articles,details of conferences,reports & research materials.

If you want to share something pls feel free to do so.

thanks,
Sameer