Poland Public TV to introduce subtitles instead of dubbing

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?

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.

Polish Dubbing: No emotions attached

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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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