Friday, January 25, 2008

Dub?! Sub?!

My order from Amazon has arrived today, yay! Well, half of them anyway. I’m still waiting for the box set of His Dark Materials trilogy, but the rest are here, safe and sound. I probably won’t be reading them for a while, though, since I started Winter’s Heart yesterday.

Day Watch and Twilight Watch is the second and third book from a tetralogy, the first and fourth book being Night Watch and Last Watch respectively. I recently watched Night Watch (a film adaptation) and enjoyed it, even though there are some significant deviations from the book. Wanted to watch Day Watch but restrained myself, since I haven’t read the book yet. I think that since the plot can be quite complex, reading the books are actually useful in order to better understand what’s going on.

Now, I’m a firm believer of watching something in its original language. Dubbed version just pisses me off. In the case of films, you get to hear the actor’s real voice. If it is some voiceover instead, the whole film will feel fake to me. The character's voice will not match the lip movement and in some cases, the way they say things are completely different. In the case of anime, the argument gets quite complicated since the characters are, well... animated so the lip movements will not be exact anyway. But, I suppose most anime production companies in Japan will collaborate to a certain extent with the manga authors, so the Japanese character voices will be closest to what the original manga author intended them to be. Anyway, it’s certainly not that hard to use a few spare brain cells and read subtitles.

So, I was extremely aggravated when I found a few comments on the web about Night Watch:

“Hopefully the second one will get dubbed someday so I can watch it also.”

“Now I will be able to understand this.” – referring to the dubbed version.

“I went and saw this at the movies, and walked out cause I couldnt be f*cked reading the subtitles.”

Okay, is it so hard to read subtitles? Do you actually go to the extent of not watching it if the dubbed version is not available? Are you kidding me? Lots of foreign films are not (nor would I hope that they will be) dubbed, so if you can’t be bothered to read subs you’re actually missing out. Which is a shame really, since there are many good ones that deserve people’s attention.

Anyway, sorry for the rant. I just get annoyed sometimes, because not making an effort to read subs just seems like being lazy to me.

Yaz.

4 comments:

fadzlirazali said...

in germany it is lots worse! everything is dubbed. from cinema to television programs. Everyone can "talk" deutsch here. hahaha...

yazid jay said...

Really?! It must feel very strange watching tv if everything's like that.

And I remember back in Malaysia I was annoyed coz all the anime characters from the different shows have the same voice. I was like, "Get somebody else!"

Anonymous said...

a few brain cells?

believe me, it is more than that! you just underestimated the power of YOUR brain...

1.you have to coordinate the muscles of the eyes
2.synchronize it with the speed of the sub
3.transpose the image (left to right and vice versa) so that the brain will see it correctly
4.interpret it as a language
5.arrange the next action (look for the next subtitle or look at the actor/actress) <-- again, you have to coordinate the muscles of the eyes
6.try to make it sense..(basically to understand the sub)
(7.perhaps you need to repeat the steps above if you don't understand at some parts of the film!)
(8. i might forget some other things too!)

and you do all these UNCONSCIOUSLY! and it involves most,if not all, of the main parts of the brain..
imagine if any of these sequence is truncated due to disease or trauma damage?

you will appreciate your brain more than you are if you saw a patient with brain problems even if it affects just a tiny part of your brain...

just my 2 cents,
a med student in bute medical school..

yazid jay said...

Ahahahaha! Sorry, sorry, I stand corrected =)

Of course, it's just a figure of speech. I don't think it has the same effect if you say: "It's not that hard to do. You just need a few billion brain cells."