The potential of integrating dubbing activities in the translation classroom

Heike Elisabeth Jüngst

University of Applied Sciences, Würzburg

Germany is a dubbing country, but translators do not play an important role in the dubbing process. Still, it makes sense to teach dubbing in the translation classroom, for a variety of reasons. Firstly, the constraints of translation and dialogue writing for dubbing pose a challenge to the students which they normally enjoy. Secondly, classes in dubbing can focus on the distribution of tasks typical of the process and on the role translators play and might play in the dubbing process. In addition to teaching competences needed for the translation process itself, a dubbing class can provide a platform for reflecting on the role of the profession in the audiovisual sector.

Key words: translator training, dubbing didactics, dubbing industry, role of the translator, rough translation

Las ventajas de integrar actividades de doblaje en el aula de traducción

A pesar de que el doblaje es la modalidad de traducción audiovisual predominante en Alemania, los traductores no desempeñan un papel fundamental en el proceso de doblaje. No obstante, por varios motivos, tiene sentido enseñar doblaje en el aula de traducción. En primer lugar, las restricciones propias de la traducción y el ajuste necesario en doblaje suponen un reto que los estudiantes afrontan de buen grado. Asimismo, las clases de doblaje se pueden orientar hacia la distribución de tareas propia del proceso de doblaje y hacia el papel que el traductor desempeña (así como el que podría llegar a desempeñar) en dicho proceso. La enseñanza del doblaje puede contribuir a la adquisición de las competencias traductoras necesarias y, además, proporcionar una plataforma para reflexionar sobre el papel del traductor en el sector audiovisual.

Palabras clave: formación de traductores, didáctica del doblaje, industria del doblaje, papel del traductor, traducción sin ajustar

Introduction

Germany is a dubbing country. Films on television and in cinemas are dubbed, except for the few art house cinemas which cater for an audience interested in original versions with subtitles. Although most Germans will probably say that they would prefer subtitling to dubbing (for a variety of reasons, including language competence acquisition and faithfulness to the original film), it is not clear whether they are really convinced about this or whether this is simply the most respected opinion today. In addition, although many kinds of audio and subtitle combinations are possible with DVDs, it is not at all clear how DVDs are really used in the average household.

Professionals working in the sector will have a different view on dubbing. The view of many dubbing actors or voice talents, particularly of older generations, is that dubbing is the perfect solution for film translation whereas subtitles are at best makeshift.1 At the same time, we find the opinion that dubbing developed as job market for actors and directors who could not find a job otherwise — an opinion also held by some professionals in the field (Bräutigam, 2009: 14).

As dubbing is also an important economic factor in German film and TV industry, it makes sense to assume that translators play an important role in a dubbing production, and that translator training in Germany caters for a career as a dubbing translator. However, this is not the case, mainly since translators only play a minor role in the actual dubbing process, a situation which is not likely to change soon. This article will argue that training in dubbing is nevertheless worth the effort and it will illustrate how it might be implemented in the translation classroom.

Literature Review

Research in dubbing has increased over the past years with the boom experienced by Audiovisual Translation (AVT) at the close of the 20th century (Díaz Cintas, 2009: 1). Teaching dubbing has commanded little interest so far, especially if compared to other audiovisual translation modalities such as subtitling.2 However, a tradition of teaching dubbing as a combination of text and film analysis and practical workshops seems to have developed in the late 1990s. Publications on the topic increase slightly after 2000, a vast majority being written either in Spanish or in Catalan (see, for instance, Agost and Chaume, 1996; or Agost, Chaume and Hurtado, 1999). In print, Díaz Cintas (2008) provides the most comprehensive overview on teaching AVT to date, with chapters on teaching voice-over (Matamala, 2008) and on teaching dubbing (Chaume, 2008), the latter being one of the most important contributions to the didactics of lip-synch dubbing. The Media for All conferences held since 2005 and organised by the Transmedia research group also reflect the development in research on AVT. Apart from the fact that the number of delegates has increased almost exponentially, the topics of the papers have broadened considerably and an increase in papers related to dubbing training can be identified. Especially relevant is the paper presented by Martínez Sierra (2009) on the use of dubbing software in the translation classroom, as well as the paper by Adams and Cruz García (2009) on the use of simultaneous interpreting for the development of audiovisual translators’ skills. In the 2011 edition, it is worth highlighting the paper «How not to dub: dealing with dubbese in AVT translator training» by Koloszar-Koo and Fink (2011).

Some authors such as Danan (2010) have also explored the potential of dubbing in foreign language teaching. An interesting contribution to the use of dubbing in the foreign language classroom is provided by Burston (2005). This author does not deal with dubbing as a form of translation, but works with muted films in order to have the students produce a natural text in a foreign language, based on the images of the film.

The fact that the didactics of dubbing seem to play an increasingly important role in AVT courses may have to do with the universities’ need for diversification and for presenting attractive curricula. Spain seems to be an exception, as some Spanish universities included dubbing in their syllabuses in the 1990s (see Cerezo Merchán 2012, who provides a detailed overview of AVT training in Spain).

Dubbing in Germany

Germany became a dubbing country for a variety of reasons3, some of them of a political nature, but some related to other factors such as the size of the country (as argued by Hinderer (2009: 271), dubbing only makes sense if you can distribute more than 40 copies of a film at once). It has remained a dubbing country and this is not likely to change. Even though the view that films in their original version would improve the foreign language competence4 of the Germans is generally held among the population (and, in fact, it is by far more socially acceptable than any pro-dubbing argument could be), there are no conscious efforts to change anything about the status quo.

The process of dubbing is characterised by the high number of people involved. In contrast to subtitling, where the team usually consists of a translator, a technician and a proof-reader, dubbing is split into an even higher number of sub-activities, which means there are more professionals involved in the process. It is quite common that the members of a dubbing team never meet face to face or have direct contact with each other. Many companies in Germany follow a similar dubbing workflow which normally starts with a rough translation of the original script with footnotes. This task is done by translators, who are not expected to produce a translation which can directly (or with minor changes) be used for dubbing. In most cases, this is the only stage of the process where professional translators (or graduates who have received training in translation) are involved, as they are not responsible for dialogue writing, that is, for adapting the translation to fit characters’ movements and utterances. Obviously, this situation differs depending on the country. For example, in Spain it is «the translator who, progressively these days, is assuming the task of dialogue writing» (Chaume, 2008: 129). As shown by this author, this leads to a completely different workflow with fewer steps: «[e]xperienced translators and dialogue writers translate and synchronise at the same time, i.e. the first translation option usually fits into the screen characters’ mouths» (ib.: 130).

Regarding the translation of the original text, another possible scenario is the relay translation of the dialogue list. Results are often less than convincing, but this practice occurs frequently with Asian B-movies where an English rough translation is used as the source text for a translation into German. In this case we have to bear in mind that the verbal text is hardly ever the reason why the audience is interested in these films.

The rough translation is then put into the hands of the dialogue writer or of the dubbing director himself. Their task is to adapt the rough translation and transform it into a real dialogue which, at least in theory, should be as lip-synched (or phonetically synchronised) as possible, and it should also respect other types of synchrony such as isochrony or kinesic synchrony. Isochrony refers to «equal duration of utterances» so that characters do not speak with their mouths shut, whereas kinesic synchrony refers to the agreement between body language and dialogue (Chaume, 2008: 132-134). It has to be added, however, that the question of lip-synch is overrated; research into dubbing testifies to that (Herbst, 1994). Many sounds cannot be readily read from an actor’s lips, and many actors, particularly American actors, do not move their lips much. Even though perfect lip-synch is frequently quoted as an ideal, at least in Germany, dubbing practice looks different, and quite rightly so (see Herbst, 1994: 30ff). Once the dialogue has been adapted, it is interpreted by dubbing actors or voice talents and the recording of their utterances takes place. Technicians take care of additional sound effects for the voices, and the IT tape5 and the new dialogue tape are mixed.

Bearing in mind the limited role of the translator in the dubbing process, it makes sense to wonder how dubbing exercises can be used in the classroom and whether they are relevant. Firstly, dubbing practice may serve to increase students’ awareness of the translator’s role in dubbing scenarios. This may lead to reactions of acceptance, frustration or outrage among students. Secondly, dubbing lessons may serve to experiment with an extended role of the translator in dubbing scenarios, where the translator has full responsibility for the finished product and is also involved in other activities such as translation management (e.g. for TV series). Thirdly, dubbing practice is an excellent way to implement project management exercises with the typical division of tasks, either in a realistic or in an improved setting. In this case, other departments of the institution could be asked to contribute, e.g. film departments, media studies or art departments.

Most students will probably never work in the dubbing sector, and fortunately most students are aware of this and do not harbour unrealistic hopes. However, the exercises proposed below combine competences which can be put to good use in a broader field. It may well be argued that all these competences can also be taught in different scenarios and that dubbing, with its specific sub-tasks, detracts from translation problems rather than helping students to solve them. However, most students simply enjoy working with audiovisual material: the texts are well-formed, and non-verbal codes add essential information, which is not necessarily the case with more conventional texts.

Finding Material for Dubbing Activities

Material offering teaching ideas to be implemented in the AVT classroom to teach dubbing is still scarce. Chaume (2008) provides several well-designed activities, most of which will probably work best in the second half of a dubbing class. This author focuses on strategies and techniques to be implemented to comply with dubbing synchronies and gives advice on what software to use in the classroom (in addition to Windows Movie Maker, he lists Virtual Dub, Goldwave and Adobe Audition) (ib.: 138). Martínez Sierra (2009) also advocates the use of Windows Movie Maker 2.1. for dubbing training.

As with most AVT modalities, the best practice is to work with a script and the audiovisual text. However, it is not always possible to source the script. Since online sources offer mostly pre-production scripts, in contrast to what Bartrina and Espasa (2005) suggest, in many classrooms it will be necessary to work directly from the audiovisual text. In the case of the analysis of the dubbed version, this does not make a huge difference from working from a script. However, where practical work (i.e. the actual translation for dubbing) is concerned, a script is of great help. Transcribing dialogues from the audiovisual text is a tedious and time-consuming task which turns translation training classes into listening comprehension classes and thus cannot be recommended. However, there are short films with simple and clear texts where transcription is not necessary and where it is possible to provide a translation directly from the original text. In our course, the texts for this task are normally taken from archive.org.6

In real life, working without the video is not too uncommon. Sometimes, videos reach the translator later than the script and, in some cases, companies feel that giving away the script should be enough (as translators translate words, obviously).

Activities involving the analysis of dubbed products

Analysing dubbed texts is normally recommended as a first step into dubbing (see Bartrina and Espasa, 2005). As will be shown below, the analysis can be conducted with a variety of exercises. Experience has shown that students tend to be over-critical at this stage, and that practical work later in the course will change their attitude towards dubbed texts. There are also arguments against analysing dubbed films: students in Germany have been exposed to dubbed films all their lives and have already formed their opinions on dubbed products. They will be keen on doing some practical work and try their own hands at dubbing. Bearing this in mind, if time constraints are pressing, the course could start with practical exercises straight away. Criteria for distinguishing between appropriate and unsuitable translation strategies in dubbing can also be developed while the students are working on a dubbing task.

As a possible exercise involving the analysis of an existing dubbed product, students could be shown the original and the dubbed versions and be asked to take notes. This activity could be implemented at an early stage, without much theoretical background needed: shot sizes and camera movements could be introduced briefly before the analysis, in order to provide a common terminology. The notes taken by students will therefore be rather unreflected and unprofessional in most cases. They will demonstrate the students’ level of knowledge at that stage and it is good practice to ask them to check them again at the end of the course. However, these notes will contain general observations which are worth sharing with the class. On the basis of the notes, pinned onto a pinboard, students could start developing a possible classification of dubbing problems. The pinboard with the classification will remain in the classroom throughout the course. Changes and additions can be made by the students whenever they feel it necessary.

Students tend to concentrate on finding translation errors and on problems related to phonetic synchrony. Experience has shown that both kinetic synchrony and isochrony should be explained in detail since, once students are familiar with these concepts, they start to watch and criticise dubbed films in a different, more differentiated way. Certain prejudices about dubbing will come up in first reactions to films but will then be reflected upon and finally discarded.

The audiovisual texts to be used for this kind of exercise could include both examples of good and bad dubbing. As many students assume that all the films they are supposed to criticise must in some respect be deficient, even good dubbing solutions can be subjected to heavy criticism. Specific texts presenting special dubbing problems, such as song lyrics or multilingual scenes, could be chosen. Although these examples do not abound, they find researchers’ interest more easily than «standard» dubbing problems, and students are generally fascinated by them as well.

Another kind of exercise which fits into this category and requires more creativity on the part of students could consist in asking them to guess the original text of an audiovisual text played in the dubbed version only. Although this activity can be extremely difficult, the level of difficulty will depend on the information provided on screen. It will be easier for students to guess the original text if it fits typical situations (e.g. «Waiter!», «Bon appetit!») or well-known scenes.

Activities related to the role of translators in the dubbing process

The division of work in the German dubbing industry has been well-established for many decades now and is taken for granted by most professionals in the field. The audience, however, is not aware of this situation. Audience criticism centering on «bad translations» should very often rather be labelled «bad post-production» criticism. The practises mentioned above — relay translations or translations from a dialogue list only — must be considered when criticism is voiced.7

Two factors which also play an important role in the creation of a dubbed film are time constraints and non-sequentiality. The issue of time constraints is well-known to everyone working in translation, but schedules in AVT tend to be particularly tight. Non-sequentiality is a key problem in the translation for dubbing, and it is also typical of other forms of AVT, including video games localisation. Some film production companies fear that those involved in the dubbing process may give away important twists in the film plot before the film is released. Therefore, films and/or scripts arrive on the translator’s desk in jumbled order. This practice is mainly related to blockbusters, but for the translators involved it is highly problematic. The lack of trust reflected in this practice is also painful.

Having said that, it must be taken into account that the influence of the translator on the finished product can vary and depends partly on the source language of the audiovisual text, and partly on the size of the dubbing company.8 Regarding the first aspect, most Germans are convinced that they speak perfect English; consequently, dubbing directors will feel no qualms about heavy editing translations from English. With more exotic languages, they may be more reluctant to make changes and will instead rely more heavily on the rough translation provided by the translator. The other point mentioned above, the size of the dubbing company, is more important than might seem at first sight. In a small company, the rough translation will generally pass through less post-production steps than would be the case in a bigger company. In very small companies, the technician may double as dialogue director and even as proofreader and dialogue writer and the translator may well be responsible for the finished script.9 In large enterprises, there is often a one person per step ratio. Both systems can work well and both can fail.

Students tend to be fascinated by non-sequentiality and the use of dialogue lists only, as it contradicts many of the translation strategies and procedures they are familiar with which, among others, suggest reading the whole text before starting the actual translation, and using visuals to clarify ambiguities. Problematic though non-sequentiality is in real life, it makes a good classroom exercise. In order to mirror professional situations, tutors could divide the dialogue list of a film students will probably have not seen into different parts. The snippets could be distributed to the project team members, which would be asked to sort out the scenes. In this kind of activity, normal project organisation which would involve the provision of glossaries for everyone involved in advance should not be allowed.

What is a rough translation?

The key term on which the task of the translator in a dubbing scenario seems to center is «rough translation». When trying to define this term, a non-representative survey among colleagues not involved in the field of AVT brought the following answers: «If my boss asks for a rough translation, he wants a target language summary of a text». «It means I run a text through my Translation Memory system and hand it on for post-editing». «It is a translation by a non-professional which I have to post-edit». What these answers have in common is that they refer to types of translation which are not as time-consuming as a complete, edited translation and that these types of translation are meant for either post-editing or for in-company purposes. Clearly, neither of these are what a dubbing studio means by «rough translation». They want a «normal» translation which is then subjected to some media-specific editing and adaptation. A polemical definition of rough translation as seen in the dubbing sector might be: «It is called a rough translation because it is not the final text used, which means we have to pay less».

In fact, Bräutigam (2009: 35) defines the rough translation as «zuverlässige, professionelle Übersetzung […] adäquate Wiedergabe von Slang und Fachausdrücken […] Fehler in der Rohübersetzung fließen meist in den endgültigen Dialog mit ein» (a reliable, professional translation […] an adequate rendering of slang and LSP […] mistakes in the rough translation normally make it right into the final script). This clearly resembles the definition of a «normal» translation. When providing a definition of this term, Pahlke (2009: 40) quotes dialogue writer Erik Paulsen who states that a rough translation is «eine, so weit es geht, wörtliche und dem Sinn entsprechende Übersetzung des Originals ohne Rücksicht auf stilistische Feinheiten und Lippensynchronität» (it should be, as far as possible, a word for word translation which renders the meaning of the original text but does not take heed of stylistics and lip synchrony). He continues with the remark that

[e]ine gute Rohübersetzung weist bereits auf Wortspiele, Anspielungen oder Redewendungen hin, die z.B. einen speziellen kulturellen oder historischen Hintergrund haben, und zeigt Möglichkeiten auf, wie damit im Deutschen verfahren werden könnte. Das bedeutet für den Rohübersetzer, dass für diese möglichste exakte Eins-zu-eins-Übertragung des Originals durchaus auch Recherchen nötig sein können» (a good rough translation points out wordplay, allusions and idioms which have a specific cultural or historical background and gives hints on how to transfer them into German. For the rough translator [sic] this means that this one-to-one transfer should be as exact as possible and might demand research) (ib.: 40-41).

This means, above all, that a rough translation may involve more work than a «normal» translation.

A good way to introduce the issues related to the rough translation in the classroom is to ask the students to write down a definition of «rough translation». Although many of them will use the term «rough translation» in a variety of contexts, few of them will ever have reflected upon what it really means.10 It is therefore also interesting to see what kind of translation students produce if they are asked to do a rough translation of a text. The translations will differ considerably in respect of completeness, style and formatting.

Extending the translator’s role

Translation trainers normally try to reflect and imitate the actual situation and tasks at the workplace in the tasks they set their students. Despite being an important part of translator training, the classroom can and should also be used for specific training exercises which improve competences needed in translation even if these exercises do not correspond to any actual task «in the real world». Tasks which belong to this area are, for instance, word field or ontology collection exercises or translations of text types which are not regularly translated. In the case of dubbing, the translation and dialogue writing of a dialogue list would belong to this group of tasks. Writing and reading out dialogues is part of what all the dubbing translators who are not only involved in rough translations do. Matters such as the achievement of isochrony, kinesic and phonetic synchrony (especially with regards to how much of it is needed and when) build the focus of this exercise. However, concentration on dubbing-specific problems must not mean that other aspects of translating can be neglected. On the contrary: intercultural problems, wordplay, character-specific elements of speech or historical dialogue may all be important aspects for the translation.

Bartrina and Espasa (2005) suggest that it may be a good strategy to start with training in voice-over translation before proceeding to dubbing. This progression has proved to be a good introduction into the subject matter. Voice-over has fewer constraints than dubbing. However, isochrony or «voice over isochrony» (Orero, 2006: 259) is also required in voice over and working with this AVT modality will help students to familiarise themselves with this concept and practice text reduction strategies. It is interesting to note, though, that many students feel that the tasks of translation for voice-over and translation for dubbing differ widely from each other. This probably has to do with the fact that voice-over is typical of non-fiction genres with their specific translation problems. Terminology mining, for example, plays an important role in most genres where voice-over is used in Germany.

Another technique which could be used to prepare students for dubbing translation is simultaneous film interpreting (SFI) (see also Adams and Cruz García, 2009). One of the issues preventing the implementation of this approach is that in many translation programmes, the majority of the students do not attend interpreting classes. Consequently, doing SFI only makes sense if the students have some experience in simultaneous interpreting. In this case, SFI is an excellent way to prepare students for dubbing specific problems and to reflect on issues such as voice quality in dubbing. For SFI in translator training, original scripts are a must since, without a script, it is impossible to aim for a style that corresponds to the film or to identify and prepare problematic elements such as wordplay or quotations. In this kind of activity, students will be asked to prepare the scripts in the way they would for other types of interpreting. After this initial preparation, they will partly read out / partly interpret the film while it is shown. This exercise works well for comparing different versions done by different students, for discussing voice quality or for a combined effort where every student takes over fifteen minutes of film.

Recording and voice casting

In the paper given at the 2009 Media For All conference in Antwerp, Martínez Sierra demonstrated how actual dubbing could be imitated in the classroom without too much technical overhead. This author reported using the audio commentary function of Windows Movie Maker 2.1. The programme is easy to handle, and the results presented at the conference were encouraging. One could clearly see that students found this activity enjoyable and that they were encouraged to produce creative solutions to a variety of problems.

One of the aspects students realise in the process is that they have a voice. In fact, even students who want to work as interpreters are often not aware of their vocal qualities. Voices are a very important factor in dubbing. Some people are fans of voice stars, although the situation in Germany is not as pronounced as in Japan. If an actor who was popular in dubbing dies, fans and producers alike are faced with a dilemma. The fans will be very critical of a new voice for a popular character in a series. In Germany, the two best-known cases are Columbo and Marge Simpson. With Columbo, the search for a new standard voice (the original dubbing actor had died) failed. With Marge Simpson, the new voice was quite different from the old voice, but it was generally accepted by the fans. Websites like stimmgerecht.de give an idea of the high number of professional dubbing voices in Germany.11

As finding a voice which corresponds to the character in question is an important feature in this task, students could even be asked to conduct a voice casting. Voice castings are an integral part of the dubbing process (Pahlke, 2009: 13) and a good chance to improve the students’ awareness of how voices contribute to the general perception of a character. For this activity, students could be asked to select a text to interpret during the voice casting and justify why they have chosen the text in question. Texts will differ depending on the kind of audiovisual texts students want to dub and on the character the candidate will have to dub later. In order to make the most of the voices available in the classroom, students should be encouraged to produce a translation which sounds oral, and which can be read out without losing quality. This is not as far-fetched as it may sound, as a certain oral rhetoric quality can in fact be important in everyday translations as well. For instance, companies may want to broadcast speeches of their CEOs via Internet, including a voice-over translation and recording, which could well be done by the translator. The same could be applied to films showing production procedures, which have become popular with companies and might also need an audio commentary.

Amateur criticism of dubbed productions

With the advent of the DVD, original versions (OVs) of films were suddenly available to a broad audience. Before that, buying OVs used to be difficult and could only be accomplished with the help of personal contacts in the respective country of origin. Certain dubbed versions contained translation errors which could be noticed without previous knowledge of the original, and these cases were well-known among film buffs. The advent of DVDs with OVs and the possibility of publishing film reviews quickly on the Internet has led to a situation where amateur criticism of dubbed versions has become a popular pastime. In fact, nowadays we hardly ever find an amateur film review which does not devote the last two lines — at least — to the quality of the dubbing. The search words «Synchronisation schlecht» (bad dubbing) offer nearly one million hits on one of the most popular search engines. Lobbying for high-quality dubbing translations is a part of the general lobbying translators have to do. Therefore, amateur criticism should be taken seriously and we should gain a better understanding of the criteria used by the audience to assess the quality of dubbing. Amateurs might become our allies in an effort to improve the status of translators in the dubbing process. Students could be encouraged to read and discuss reviews both by amateurs and professionals — and they should not hesitate to publish their own amateur reviews online. After all, they might find good or even excellent examples of dubbing and write a review in support of professional translations.

Traditions: fundubbing in Germany

Interestingly, Germany has been a stronghold of fundubs12 (or at least the predecessors of today’s Internet fundubs) for more than 40 years. This may sound strange, as fundubs are normally associated with the Internet, but in fact (fairly mild) fundubs used to play an important role on German public broadcasting channels.13 The English TV series The Persuaders (broadcast as Die 2 in Germany) was highly successful in Germany, due to the fact that the dubbing included more jokes than the original version, often had more text and its register was far more informal. This dubbed version is also an impressive example of the fact that audiences did not seem to mind at all if a character spoke with his mouth firmly shut.

Another kind of fun dub was popular on children’s TV in the early 1970s. It consisted of short silent movies mostly of American origin with a combination of voice-over and dubbing. One actor, Hanns-Dieter Hüsch, did all the voices and added some comical effects to the films (see Jüngst, 2010: 81-83). These examples show that dubbing can also have a creative side, which could be exploited in the translation classroom. Both types of dubbing / voice-over can easily be turned into classroom exercises.

Conclusion

Throughout the paper it has been shown that, if time permits, dubbing activities in the AVT classroom can work as eye-openers for a variety of aspects related to the dubbing industry: social, artistic, technical, etc. To this end, the paper has offered an overview of the dubbing industry in Germany with its specific workflow and reflected on the role played by the translator. This information will be useful for students, who should be familiar with the situation in the industry in order to decide whether they want to work for it. The paper also offers trainers some suggestions for classroom activities. Even though the students involved will probably not work in the dubbing sector as it stands today, they may contribute to necessary changes and to a different perception of our profession.

RECIBIDO EN NOVIEMBRE DE 2012
ACEPTADO EN ENERO DE 2013

VERSIÓN DEFINITIVA DE NOVIEMBRE DE 2012

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1 Schoenfelder (1916, in Bräutigam, 2009: 7) refers to dubbing as «zwangsläufig» (unavoidable) and to subtitling as «unbefriedigende Notlösung» (makeshift solution). Although this opinion is not typical of younger generations, Bräutigam (ibid: 8) maintains that dubbing is a «Publikumswunsch» (demanded by the audience) and that therefore we have a kind of «Synchronzwang» (dubbing is a must; there is a dubbing urge).

2 Díaz Cintas and Anderman (2009), a high-profile collection of articles, has a section on education and training in audiovisual contexts, but all four contributions deal with subtitling.

3 For information about the dubbing-subtitling choice in various countries see Danan (1991).

4 It must be stated that «foreign languages» here refers almost exclusively to English. In Germany, there is little interest in improving competence in other foreign languages (Jüngst, 2011).

5 The IT tape is the international tape where all sounds that are not verbal are recorded. In dubbing, the IT tape is mixed with the utterances of the voice artists.

6 Archive.org is an archive of Internet sites, films, audio documents and the like. The films collected at archive.org tend to be old and free of copyright (the latter is not necessarily true in every country, though).

7 Bartrina and Espasa (2005: 88-89) write about the same problem in a Spanish context.

8 A list of the best-known dubbing companies in Germany can be found in Pahlke (2009: 139).

9 My personal experience as a voice-over and dubbing translator is with a small company where my translations were proofread by a translator and then sometimes slightly adapted by the technician. Personal contact was excellent and I could share the responsibility for the finished product.

10 The author of the present article is currently doing research on the matter and welcomes definitions.

11 A list of websites can be found in Pahlke (2009: 143).

12 Whereas fandubs are dubbed versions by fans and can be serious or funny, fundubs normally send up the original. They can either be parodies or change the content of the text completely.

13 The term coined to describe this way of dubbing, as performed by the dialogue writer and voice actor Rainer Brandt, is «Schnodder-Synchro». «Schnodderig» is a Berlin term which means «cheeky».