Entry 4 : Subtitles and Dubs In Multilingual Film

The concept of dubbing in films are to localize it for the specific country that are not familiar with the language it is used. Many voice actor around the world will record a new voice track to replace the foreign language of the movie. As Herbst said, "It may well be considered a truism that one cannot translate one dialect into another, because if this is attempted cultural anchoring will suffer and the image will be belied."(Heiss, 2004). But there is exception to genre like comedies, which is known to have a more unusual solutions in film translation.

There are also multilingual film that pursue authenticity (Inglourious Basterds). Having different characters purposely speaking in their native tongue, the dubbing required will be quite challenging as some of the language. To make a scene in the movie even more realistic, like for example, those dialogue that does not serve the narrative purposes and only part of the multilingual environment, it is not necessary to translate it.

The subtitler needs to be aware of this in order to decide what can and must be subtitled, and what need not or must not – unless the decision has been made by the client and is contained in the translation brief (Díaz Cintas and Remael, 2007: 58).

Language plays an important role in movie experience. Having subtitles in one language for a multilingual film will produce translation mistake. Due to cultural differences, the audience will easily overlooked when they are watching it in a single language subtitles. By using both subtitles and dubbing, it will simply present the film with the diversity of its culture.

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References & Resources:

Heiss, C. (2004). Dubbing Multilingual Films: A New Challenge?. Meta, 49(1), p.208. 

Available at: https://www.erudit.org/revue/meta/2004/v49/n1/009035ar.html [Accessed 13 Jun. 2016].

Knowledge about how different countries have provide different rules of dubbing a film.


Cabrera, J. (2013). Subtitling multilingual films: the case of Inglourious Basterds. [online] ResearchGate. Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/257947990_Subtitling_multilingual_films_the_case_of_Inglourious_Basterds?enrichId=rgreq-0a9d626d23597c65dea27d14e2907ce5&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzI1Nzk0Nzk5MDtBUzoxMDQ3NzQ2OTk1ODU1NDhAMTQwMTk5MTY0MzYxOQ%3D%3D&el=1_x_3 [Accessed 13 Jun. 2016].

Gave me an insight of how the subtitles are being applied to the film.

BBC News. (2016). Hollywood dubbing: The German Bruce Willis and other invisible stars - BBC News. [online] Available at: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21523643 [Accessed 13 Jun. 2016].

Helped me to understand how voice actor are used for dubbing and how they try to mimic the original actor.