BBC Sherlock Fan Forum - Serving Sherlockians since February 2012 » Sherlock dubbed versions

spanisherlock · May 4, 2014 2:43 am

In my country, Spain, most of audiovisual materials are dubbed too. The first time I watched Sherlock was by seeing an original version of the show but with English subtitles. To be honest, it find the show a bit difficult to understand without the help of subtitles and specially when Benedicts makes his long speeches. Later, I watched the Spanish-dubbed and Catalan-dubbed version. To me, both are good, however, I prefer the Catalan version to the Spanish one because Sherlock's voice tone is more accurate here.
By the way, do you know this website? You can watch Sherlock and other tv series in its original language: http://ororo.tv/en

Thanks

Last edited by spanisherlock (May 4, 2014 2:46 am)

MartaSt · May 4, 2014 8:16 am

What a wonderful website, thank you very much for sharing spanisherlock, it will be very useful

Pav · May 4, 2014 8:57 am

I watched Sherlock on Czech TV yesterday (The Sign of Three). They talked about Harry in the masculine gender.

Last edited by Pav (May 4, 2014 8:59 am)

belis · May 4, 2014 9:19 am

MartaSt wrote:
Yes, exactly. One person is translating all characters, usually with the same bored and slow tone even if the character is for example shouting (really). In Poland that is the most common way of translating films and series on public televsion. And if dubbing exist it's usually even worse than the lector. Of course there some exceptions but not many. That's why I don't watch films and series on TV.

Every time I go back home it takes me a while to get used to this again. It makes my head spin how they translate some of that lines- no resambles to the original. Overall it is quite annoying. I try to block of the lector and listen to the original.

I think subtitles are much better but the downside is that some people (with visual impariments or dyslexia for example) can really struggle to read those.

Marta · May 4, 2014 11:40 am

Ladies from Poland, you can often watch films on TV with subtitles now! Since the last year's revolution it works well. You just have to check the menu and change the audio for "original" and the subtitles for "on". It's possible for almost all films on public channels like TVP and film channels like Filmbox. I don't know why they don't talk about it on TV and inform people!

I just can't stand the lector, it's not only beceause I can't hear actors' voices and the music is quieter, I just don't know who says what (the lector often says a line before an actor says his, or after that). I hope those ridiculous lectors will vanish from the television and the subtitles will be available for all films.

But I have to defend Polish dubbing. We dub animations and films children and families watch (like Harry Potter). And Polish dubbing in animations is almost always very good, if not brilliant. I prefer Polish version of Shrek to the original one anytime. When it comes to films that aren't animated, it depends on the film. The dubbing for Harry Potter is good and I like Polish voices of some characters more than the original ones. Not Snape, though. Some bad films get bad dubbing. Sometimes the idea of dubbing is just wrong - I don't know why there dubbed Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland, I just watched the original version with subtitles, so I do everytime when the film isn't animated. If it is, I watch and enjoy the dubbing.

I watched some dubbed versions of Sherlock. I coulnd't watch the series that way but I have to admit I loved Moriarty's Czech voice

MartaSt · May 4, 2014 3:57 pm

Marta wrote:
But I have to defend Polish dubbing. We dub animations and films children and families watch (like Harry Potter). And Polish dubbing in animations is almost always very good, if not brilliant. I prefer Polish version of Shrek to the original one anytime. When it comes to films that aren't animated, it depends on the film. The dubbing for Harry Potter is good and I like Polish voices of some characters more than the original ones. Not Snape, though. Some bad films get bad dubbing. Sometimes the idea of dubbing is just wrong - I don't know why there dubbed Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland, I just watched the original version with subtitles, so I do everytime when the film isn't animated. If it is, I watch and enjoy the dubbing.

That's why I wrote that dubbing is usually (and not always) worse . I agree, Polish dubbing in animations is great, I can't imagine watching for example Lion King or Shrek with original dubbing (nothing will ever beat song "Hakuna Matata" in Polish ). But in most films with actors dubbing is awful and almost unbearable ( I"ve watched few minutes of "Hobbit" with dubbing - it was so bad that if I have to watch all film with it I would probably kill myself xD )

Marta wrote:
I don't know why they don't talk about it on TV and inform people!

I think it's because films on tv are watched by rather older people ( younger people are usually watching films on the Internet) and they don't care if film is with subs or with lector.

And about lector - I have a lot of fun when I see that actor on screen is shouting with emotions for example "I kill you!" and lector read this qoute with his most bored and slowly voice like reading in Animal Planet

Last edited by MartaSt (May 4, 2014 5:28 pm)

Harriet · May 4, 2014 6:23 pm

Pav wrote:
I watched Sherlock on Czech TV yesterday (The Sign of Three). They talked about Harry in the masculine gender.

Oh no! Where is the eye-roll-smiley when you need one?

polomare · May 4, 2014 7:53 pm

Hi All,
Think I'll jump in here.
I just wanted to make the comment that I have discovered that the German subtitles on my Sherlock DVD's are much more accurate to the original English dialogue than the actual spoken dubbing. Being a student learner of German, and not a native, this causes me all kinds of grief as I can read German much better than I can understand it and I really wish the subtitles matched the dubbed German rather than the spoken English. (I wonder what a hearing-impaired German speaker watching an episode with a hearing friend must think! If they were to compare notes, it would be like they watched two different scenes sometimes. LOL.)

But anyway, I mention it here because I would like to recommend to native German speakers to try the German subtitles if your English is not so good and you want to be closer to the original meaning. I know most people with perfectly good hearing, watching a dubbed program, would probably never think to turn on the subtitles in the dubbed language. So, if it's something you've never thought to try, give it a whirl! There is almost always an extra layer of meaning imparted there somewhere. And as I said, is almost always much, much closer to the original English.

SusiGo · May 4, 2014 8:04 pm

Thank you for the information. A reason may be that in the subtitles they do not have to consider the lip movements of the character and the length of their speech. Good advice.

zeratul · May 4, 2014 8:17 pm

Yeah I think the German subs always differ from the spoken word. I also discovered this with M*A*S*H for example...

polomare · May 4, 2014 8:28 pm

YW, SusiGo, and yes I finally figured that out. No need to sync the text to the characters lips!

I have found this subtitling thing in other shows too, not just Sherlock. And found it to be true in both Spanish & German. So, it is probably true for most other languages as well!

I do wonder about hearing impaired viewers though... it still seems to me that the producers would want to favor subtitling the dubbing, not the original. I mean, text is text, right? Why not match it to the language of whatever audio you are subtitling? There's another show that I watch in dubbed German, an old 1980's classic spy drama, and man, talk about discrepancies! Some of the dialogue is so crazy far off from the original, it's comical. I remember in one scene a character asks another "A penny for your thoughts?" And in the German it says "Do you want some popcorn?" And I'm like "What???" Luckily I haven't found anything that far off in Sherlock yet, but as my comprehension increases, I may discover some gems!

Hey, that's an idea: maybe we should start a thread of discrepancies in different versions (if there isn't one on this board already!)

Marta · May 4, 2014 9:16 pm

MartaSt wrote:
I agree, Polish dubbing in animations is great, I can't imagine watching for example Lion King or Shrek with original dubbing (nothing will ever beat song "Hakuna Matata" in Polish ). But in most films with actors dubbing is awful and almost unbearable ( I"ve watched few minutes of "Hobbit" with dubbing - it was so bad that if I have to watch all film with it I would probably kill myself xD )

And Tangled! And I just watched many versions of "Let it go" from Frozen and I liked Polish one very much. French one was really good, too. And the original one, of course. I have to watch the film

I watched Hobbit with subtitles and I was glad the cinema gave me a choice between subtitles and dubbing. I can't imagine watching Martin Freeman and hearing someone else, and I would naver miss Benedict's performance. I was curious and I watched part of the scene on youtube and hey, he's not Benedict but he wasn't bad. But other characters' dubbed voices were horrible.

It's interesting that German dialogues differ in dubbing and subtitles; part of the reason might be a simple fact that they probably aren't made by the same person.

MartaSt · May 4, 2014 9:55 pm

Marta wrote:
I watched Hobbit with subtitles and I was glad the cinema gave me a choice between subtitles and dubbing. I can't imagine watching Martin Freeman and hearing someone else, and I would naver miss Benedict's performance. I was curious and I watched part of the scene on youtube and hey, he's not Benedict but he wasn't bad. But other characters' dubbed voices were horrible.

Dragon's dubbing was fine but when I heard Gollum I wanted to throw my computer out of the window

zeratul · May 4, 2014 10:11 pm

Btw: The subs of Doctor Who (english / english) also differ slightly from the spoken word.

polomare · May 4, 2014 10:45 pm

Oh, and another word about the dubbing: those of you who were complaining earlier in the thread about the persistence of formal "Sie" throughout Sherlock & John's dialogue, I can tell you that the subtitles always say "du". I'm not sure when it started, I'd have to go back and check the first episode. (Probably after the front door handshake, if I had to guess.) But it was the very first thing I noticed as being a constant source of discrepancy between the spoken dubbing and the subtitles, hence a stumbling block for me, so that's why I noticed it right away.

It is a puzzle, as you'd think dubbing "du" for you would work just as well, if not better, than "Sie" for you. Maybe it's a word order thing...

As a not-native speaker, I for one can't wait until "du" cancels out "Sie" completely for all but the most formal of circumstances! It would make German so much more comprehensible to English speakers like me.

zeratul · May 4, 2014 11:09 pm

Oh I need to go back to the recorded versions of ARD on my Entertain Box, it also has subtitles in the Menu... (I only own the english Blurays because I didn't want German onscreen stuff).

The finnish "Sie" works exactly like the German one in grammar. It is the same grammatical person and also same word just with a capital letter... But they do not use it anymore...
Germans have a stick in their back, I think it will take ages until Sie is cancelled...

Last edited by zeratul (May 4, 2014 11:11 pm)

polomare · May 4, 2014 11:51 pm

"stick in their back"
*snickering*

SusiGo · May 5, 2014 6:25 am

The thing about "du" in the subtitles is really amazing. Seems they are done by other people than the script for the dubbing.

SolarSystem · May 5, 2014 7:29 am

SusiGo wrote:
The thing about "du" in the subtitles is really amazing. Seems they are done by other people than the script for the dubbing.

Do you know if those subtitles are especially done for the DVD? Or are those the subtitles for the hearing impaired and already there when the episodes air on television? Because if it's only done for the DVD, then it probably has nothing to do with the ARD... and apart from that it's most certainly done by other people.
But there has to be some sort of general agreement about important things like this, this sounds so absurd...

SusiGo · May 5, 2014 8:09 am

I have no idea. Some colleagues of mine work for a company specialising in subtitles. As far as I know they are done separately from the dubbing. Maybe I can ask them how this is done.