Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Exhibition in Foreign Countries

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Posted by Dick Twentyman (Member # 2746) on 06-26-2005, 02:45 AM:

A general question - when a film is made in the USA, and is to be marketed in European countries, presumably it is sold in the language of the country. Are these films screened with subtitles, or with dubbed translated sountrack? In either case, where is the dubbing/sub-titling done?

Posted by Dieter Depypere (Member # 3184) on 06-26-2005, 02:57 AM:

This is different from country to country. In France, Austria and Germany for example, those films are dubbed (I think also in Italy). In Belgium, the films are shown with subtitles.
Don't know where the dubbing/subtitling is done either.

Posted by Christos Mitsakis (Member # 143) on 06-26-2005, 03:15 AM:

All foreign films are being presented with subtitles here, except those destined for younger audience (disney, dreamworks animated etc) which are dubbed in Greek. Both subtitling and dubbing is done here. There is always a Disney supervisor for their films during voice casting and dubbing process. Printing of the dubbed films although it can be done in Greece, I think Disney still prefers English Labs.

Christos.

Posted by Paer Hoegberg (Member # 3133) on 06-26-2005, 04:16 AM:

Also here in Sweden all foreign films are subtitled, except those for children (under 8-10 years old). Some of those films are released in a few subtitled prints, running in the major cities for the audience to select dubbed or subtitled version.

All dubbing is done here (but some, ex Disney, have to approve the actors). The subtitled are done here in Sweden, but sometime in other Countries, mostly UK.

Even Swedish films are sometime released in a few subtitled prints, for hearing-impaired....

Today(and next week) we are 8 films.
* Steget efter (Swedish)
* Star Wars EPIII, Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Kingdom of Heaven, The Pacifier, Million dollar baby, War of the Worlds (subtitled)
* SpongeBob squarepants (Dubbed)

The last time we had a dubbed film was Heffalump (half a year ago)

Pär

Posted by Per Hauberg (Member # 529) on 06-26-2005, 04:30 AM:

Just as sweden, Denmark has kids stuff dubbed, all other foreign films subtitled. Two local labs do the subtitling.
Guess, it's a question of getting used to one or another. Subtitles are not pretty, and sometimes not in focus with the picture, but - as just now on a german tv-channel, listening to Clark Gable and Burt Lancaster, argueing in german in "Run Silent, Run Deep" is just plain awful.

per

Posted by John Hawkinson (Member # 1135) on 06-26-2005, 12:47 PM:

"Even Swedish films are sometime released in a few subtitled prints, for hearing-impaired...."

We have this in the US as well, it's called "open captioning" (because everyone can see it, unlike "closed captioning," where only the people who want it can see it).

Note that captioning is distinct from subtitling -- subtitles translate the words, but captions tell you about other sounds, like "*door slams*," etc., which do not show up in subtitles.
(This is a big deal for the hearing impaired.)

--jhawk

Posted by Michael Schaffer (Member # 1204) on 06-26-2005, 12:54 PM:

Generally, films are dubbed in German, Italian, Spanish, and French. All other markets in Europe are too small to merit/justify dubbing - thank goodness. I personally hate dubbed versions. The other general rule is that kids' movies are dubbed basically everywhere, understandably. Kids can't be expected to cope with subtitles. The dubbings are done in the respective countries, most German dubbings are done in Berlin, some in Munich. A peculiar situation exists in France: even though our French friends like to demonstrate at every possibly opportunity that they despise foreign languages, and most of them categorically refuse to speak foreign languages - a lot of French people do understand some basic English, but they like to pretend they don't -, they still show foreign releases on many screens in the original version. I think this is because they do have a feeling for cinema as an art form. For the same reason, they do make really cool films once in a while. Because they like to switch between French an original versions, DTS is really big in France. They even had their own sound-on-disc system once (I think it was made by Thomsen) which DTS had to buy out for patent stuff reasons.
Even though I hate dubbing, I have to admit that it is done on a very high level in Germany, with really good voice talents (usually theater actors), and experienced dialog directors. In France, it is done on a reasonably OK TV standard level. In Italy, the dubbings are quite bad and usually out of sync, in Spain they are absolutely beyond good and evil. Every 14-year old with a tape recorder can do better dubbings than they do in Spain.
In most European metropoles, or other cities which like to pretend they are somehow international and multicultural, you will find a reasonable number of cinemas playing movies in the OV. Berlin actually has a whole modern multiplex - the Sony Center, which I made happen, but that is an entirely different story - which plays only OVs, and a fairly large number of "arthouses" which also play OVs. Vienna also has a good number of OV theatres. Vienna is a really cool city anyway, even though I believe it still has the highest number of suicides in Europe.

Posted by Mike Heenan (Member # 392) on 06-26-2005, 02:25 PM:

A friend in Amsterdam said they usually dub the big releases and subtitle the smaller ones.

Posted by Dominic Case (Member # 1830) on 06-26-2005, 07:28 PM:

US films are released in many Asian countries too. Almost always they are subtitled, as the business in each country isn't big enough to justify the costs of dubbing (and it's that much harder with totally different languages such as Mandarin or Thai).

Depending on the distributor, and the size of the print run, the subtitling is either done at the lab during the printing as an overlay negative or printed into the picture negative (we do a lot of those here) or it is done in the destination country by chemical etching (or occasionally laser etching).

In most cases, the translation of the dialogue is done in the destination country, by a native speaker of the subtitle language. It's a particular skill - fitting what people say in to a single line is easier in some languages than others, US slang is sometimes meaningless (or wrong-meaning) to non US-English speakers, etc.

Posted by Jeremy Jorgenson (Member # 2989) on 06-26-2005, 10:44 PM:

How about Russia? Are English language films generally subtitled or dubbed for exhibition there?

High Tension (Haute tension) was about ½ & ½ subtitled/dubbed here... sometimes it switched from one to the other in the middle of a line of dialogue.

Posted by Marin Zorica (Member # 1716) on 06-27-2005, 02:18 AM:

In Croatia films are with subtitles, but only film's for younger audience are dubbed.

For cartoons i think dubbing is ok, but i prefer films with subtitles.

Posted by Gilbert Travin (Member # 2138) on 06-27-2005, 07:51 AM:

Hi all !

Popular films are dubbed in France for "large audience" and especialy those for young public. (It is the same thing at principal channels tv.)
Notice that all are also presented in original versions with subtitles in selected theaters [Big Grin]

We have a lot of actors specialized in dubbing.

Posted by Stephen Furley (Member # 1277) on 06-27-2005, 07:51 AM:

In England foreign language films are normally subtitled.

Posted by Christian Appelt (Member # 1067) on 06-27-2005, 12:43 PM:

Stephen Furley wrote

quote: Stephen Furley
In England foreign language films are normally subtitled.

Hm, I have heard that the only thing separating Britain and the United States is the English language, but it must be quite expensive to subtitle all releases "from the colonies"... [Wink]

**********************************************

Oh, why can't the English learn to set
A good example to people whose English is painful to your ears?
The Scotch and the Irish leave you close to tears.
There even are places where English completely
disappears. In America, they haven't used it for years!
(MY FAIR LADY)

Posted by Mark Hajducki (Member # 1732) on 06-27-2005, 12:56 PM:

When Sweet Sixteen was shown on TV it was subtitled (Despite being in a UK based regional dialect of English). I don't know about the Theatrical release.

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 06-27-2005, 02:58 PM:

quote: Christian Appelt
Hm, I have heard that the only thing separating Britain and the United States is the English language...

...which promoted Samuel Goldwyn to remark in 1930 that 'if the Brits all spoke Spanish, then the UK might still have a film industry.' He was pointing out that after the conversion to sound, the UK had become the only European country to which Hollywood films could be exported without the significant extra costs of dubbing or subtitling (before that point, the cost of substituting local version intertitles in silent releases was negligible compared to the overall production costs of a feature). His implicit prediction - that British cinema would continue to be dominated by Hollywood but that film production in non-English speaking European countries would revive - turned out to be right, though more for political than technological reasons.

Posted by Michael Schaffer (Member # 1204) on 06-27-2005, 06:42 PM:

I think back in those days of early sound films they couldn't even dub movies. I know that in Babelsberg (a big studio complex outside of Berlin), they shot some movies with several casts in parallel in German, English, French, probably Spanish too. The famous actress Zarah Leander actually did all three versions, but normally, they would rotate the whole cast through the sets and shoot each scene several times in a different language with a different cast.

I wonder if they did the same thing in other countries too. Did Hollywood produce Spanish versions?

Posted by William Hooper (Member # 71) on 06-27-2005, 11:55 PM:

quote: Leo Enticknap
His implicit prediction - that British cinema would continue to be dominated by Hollywood but that film production in non-English speaking European countries would revive - turned out to be right, though more for political than technological reasons.

And probably much more from economic/monopolistic reasons than technological reasons: the Hollywood studios demanded block booking contracts from English theaters just like US theaters, with the result that local product was mostly shut out. Without consistently being able to market their own films, UK studios weren't able to improve the prodct. When they tried to balance things out with quotas, the opposite effect of indifference to the quality crept in.

The situation with getting Hollywood pictures in your town was pretty much like in the US when Wal-Mart comes to town.

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 06-28-2005, 02:11 AM:

quote: Michael Schaffer
The famous actress Zarah Leander actually did all three versions, but normally, they would rotate the whole cast through the sets and shoot each scene several times in a different language with a different cast.

This happened at Elstree studios near London, too. The British producer Michael Balcon signed an agreement with Erich Pommer in 1929 to produce a series of multiple language version (MLV) productions, both at Elstree and Neubabelsberg: E.A. Dupont and Geza von Bolvary directed most of them. If I remember correctly, there were around 15 of these films made between 1929 and 1932, and probably the best known is Atlantic. Sadly, none survive in all three versions (English, French & German), though Atlantic and G.W. Pabst's Dreigroschen Oper survive in both German and French.

quote: William Hooper
Without consistently being able to market their own films, UK studios weren't able to improve the prodct.

Even when they were, it didn't help. Alexander Korda in the '30s and Rank in the '40s both believed that if they threw Hollywood-scale production budgets at British films, that these films would make money both at home and abroad. But because the UK domestic market was so small compared to that in the US, they never came close to breaking even at home, even those like The Private Life of Henry VIII, which was very popular, and a number of factors prevented exports to the US on any significant scale. Korda went bust in 1937 and Rank stayed afloat by cross subsidising production activity from the 500 or so theatres he owned after buying out the Odeon circuit when its owner, Oscar Deutsch (the name is said to be an acronym for 'Oscar Deutsch Entertains Our Nation'), died in 1942. Throughout the Rank Organisation's lifetime, film production was a loss-leader which was paid for out of the group's other business interests.

Posted by Christian Appelt (Member # 1067) on 06-28-2005, 06:26 PM:

quote: Michael Schaffer
The famous actress Zarah Leander actually did all three versions, but normally, they would rotate the whole cast through the sets and shoot each scene several times in a different language with a different cast.

Michael, I think it was Lillian Harvey who did three versions, not Zarah Leander. DIE DREI VON DER TANKSTELLE (1930, US title: THREE GOOD FRIENDS) was shot with a French, British and German cast, only Harvey played the same character in all versions.

Posted by Michael Schaffer (Member # 1204) on 06-29-2005, 12:51 AM:

You must be right. I think Leander worked mostly on Sweden during the early thirties.

Posted by Dominic Case (Member # 1830) on 06-29-2005, 01:39 AM:

quote: Mark Hajducki
When Sweet Sixteen was shown on TV it was subtitled (Despite being in a UK based regional dialect of English). I don't know about the Theatrical release.

The first Mad Max film was dubbed for release in the US (under the title The Road Warrior). (And that was with Mel Gibson!).

American films are NOT routinely dubbed for release in Australia, nor are they subtitled. Sometimes it would help if they were.

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 06-29-2005, 01:44 AM:

quote: Michael Schaffer
I think Leander worked mostly on Sweden during the early thirties.

...and worked mostly on Goebbels during the late '30s (until he dumped her for Lida Baarova)!

Posted by Carl Martin (Member # 1146) on 06-29-2005, 03:16 AM:

quote: Mark Hajducki
When Sweet Sixteen was shown on TV it was subtitled (Despite being in a UK based regional dialect of English). I don't know about the Theatrical release.

yes, it was too. at least in the u.s.

carl

Posted by Mitchell Dvoskin (Member # 751) on 06-29-2005, 08:30 AM:

quote: Dominic Case
The first Mad Max film was dubbed for release in the US (under the title The Road Warrior). (And that was with Mel Gibson!).

The dubbed version of Mad Max was released in the USA with the title Mad Max. The second "Mad Max" film was released in the USA with the title Road Warrior. I don't know if Road Warrior was dubbed or not.

Could one of the moderators retitle this thread to "Dubbing vs Subtitling Around The World" or something else meaningful. Exhibition in Foreign Countries is so generic as to be not meaningful when someone does a search.

Posted by Dominic Case (Member # 1830) on 06-30-2005, 06:46 PM:

quote: Mitchell Dvoskin
The dubbed version of Mad Max was released in the USA with the title Mad Max. The second "Mad Max" film was released in the USA with the title Road Warrior.

Oops! Memory fade. Of course you are quite correct. Mad Max was Mad Max everywhere. Mad Max 2 was Mad Max 2 everywhere except the US. But my point stands with or without the US title.