| Dubbing |
May 24, 2018
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| One day, he was watching a movie, it was a Korean movie. The female protagonist's occupation was a voice actor. In one scene, she was in the studio with other actors. Each spoke into a microphone which matched along with each one's role on the screen. It was a puppet play. It reminded him when he was a child, there was a puppet play called 'Go-round Gourd Island' and it was very popular among children. Even now he could remember the roles, like 'Teacher Sandy', 'Professor (a smart child)', 'Dandy' (a cool guy), 'Beard' (a pirate), etc. When he watched the scenes of the Korean actress, he felt some unnaturalness because he had a vague thought that voice actors were not common in other countries. In his country, there were so many animations made for TV programs. There were many voice actors and actresses for that. But to come to think of it, their field isn't limited to only this market. They also work in foreign movies and dramas. When we watch foreign movies and dramas, we have two choices ~ subtitles or dubbing. Usually in the theater they provide subtitles. When you watch TV, on the other  hand, dubbing is major because TVs are small and reading subtitles is sometimes troublesome. But at present, TVs are becoming bigger and they sometimes provide both subtitles and dubbing, and the viewer can choose either of these. For children's movies and dramas, small kids can't read subtitles so they always prepare dubbing. He sometimes rented DVDs and watched the movies with subtitles. He was a 'subtitle person'. He believed that dubbing was an evil option. As actors performed including voices, viewers should watch without changing it. But there were many 'dubbing persons', like his friend who said that it was easier and he could do other things while watching TV. Maybe senior people might prefer dubbing because their eyes are weaker. Wikipedia stated that in some countries, like America, Germany, India, France, Spain, Portugal, Greece, South Korea, Thailand, dubbing is used more. In this case, maybe there are more voice actors in those countries. Even with his insistent habit, sometimes strange things happen. He liked Korean dramas. Before, he was watching a serialized drama, 20 episodes or so. He was watching them in dubbing mode. Maybe at that time, they might have been broadcasted only in dubbing. The drama was so good that he later bought the DVD set of those. The DVDs had both dubbing and subtitles. He decided to watch it with subtitles this time, which was his policy. But a strange thing happened: The Korean actors' and actresses' voices sounded strange and unnatural for him. As he got accustomed to the dubbing voices, the dubbing voices became more natural than the genuine ones. It reminded him of Disney's musical animation 'Frozen'. It was released all over the world, and took the world by storm. The theme song, 'Let It Go', which was sung by the protagonist Elsa, a queen, also became a big hit. Not only dialogues were dubbed, but also the songs were dubbed into other languages because their main target were kids. Each country's voice actors and actresses had to train for songs and to perform them well. In his country, a famous actress sung 'Let It Go', and it became a big hit. Soon Disney released something they usually don't do, on YouTube. They made a 'Let It Go' promotion video consisting of the songs in 25 different languages and edited it into one song. And people were able to hear, for the first time, a medley song in 25 different languages ~ Chinese, Hindi, Spanish, French, Germany, Japanese, Korean, Finish, Serbian, Latvian, Indonesian .... It was so smooth and was like only one woman singing it. It was said that many people thought that it was a super woman who was multilingual and sung the song in the 25 different languages. He checked on the internet. Now there was a 40 different languages version, a 50 different languages version, and even a 70 different languages version. They were not made by Disney, so maybe people whose language weren't included in the original 25 languages felt disappointed and added their own languages. He got an idea. Soon he found several YouTube videos that had the different languages of 'Let It Go'. He started to listen to them thinking which was good for him. He only knew his language and English, so the others were the new sounds and tones, which was beautiful to him? The result was this: he likes French, Arabic, Latvian, Turkish, Vietnamese, Indonesian. But, he was amazed that they were all good, and each country had such beautiful voices and skillful singers. He also came to know that each country loved their own language, and the dubbing world is kept alive by the efforts of each country's voice actors and actresses. |
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*dub :吹き替えする
*puppet :操り人形
*gourd :ひょうたん
*subtitle :字幕