Dungeon Master Forum

*** EPISODE III SPOILERS AHEAD ***
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I've seen both the dubbed German version last Wednesday and the original English one yesterday. And it's correct, the dub isn't very well made. The voice change of the Emperor (when he names Anakin Darth Vader) for instance is laughable bad. In the original, Ian McDiarmid, the actor, just used a different pitch in his voice (like the voice he has in Episode VI) with only slight post production adjustments.

Same problem happened with the voice of Darth Vader at the end of the movie. The original version sounded familiar cause they got his voice of the original trilogy back (James Earl Jones). In the German dub it just sounds cheesy, especially the "Noooooooo!".

And yes, George cannot direct actors and cannot write dialog. The very first scene between Anakin and Padme on the balcony is so badly acted and poorly written it was embarrassing.

Lol, the original Noooooooooooooooooo soudns cheesy too, JEJ or no JEJ

beowuuf wrote:Lol, the original Noooooooooooooooooo soudns cheesy too, JEJ or no JEJ

The German one is even worse, trust me

ManFromAnotherPlace : I was commenting on the French dubbing of Episode IV, which was aired yesterday night on French TV (they're playing them all in a row, every monday). Don't know about the dubbing of EP III as I haven't seen it (and if I ever see it it will be in English).

Trantor : Wow, it's even mentionned on Imdb ? I guess I wasn't the only one shocked !

Yes, but not all of the horrible translations you mentioned are also on imdb. Is it true that Darth Vader isn't even called Darth Vader in French, but something like Dark Vador? The Italian version seems to have similar problems, by the way.

dark vador, dark sidius, dark maul... everything is dark, not darth..
and vader maybe sounded weird for the bad guy, so they called him vadOr, like terminatOr

True, it is Dark Vador... But this one doesn't shock me as much, don't ask me why... Linflas is right, French pronounciation of Darth Vader would sound like "Dart Vahd'air", not so cool...
I just don't get the droid names being changed, unless of course they decode into something meaningful which was translated before being "re-encoded" using the same "code"... Hope I am making myself clear enough...

This is not meant to be offensive to the French here in the forum, but I sometimes think that the French in general are a little too proud of their language. Why do they have to pronounce the names as if they were French, why not leave it at English? I even heard that French radio stations have to dedicate at least 40% of their program to French chansons! And is it true that the word "ordinateur" was made up to prevent the usage of the English word "computer"? I wonder how the French on this board feel about this. Don't you think this all goes a bit too far?

I agree with you Trantor, many words are "french-ified" (I don't know how to say that in english ) and I think this is stupid!

For example, we should not say CD-ROM but cédérom (which is the same pronunciation but with a 'french' spelling.

The last one I heard was about Wi-Fi, now we should use ASFI instead. It means "Accès sans fil à internet" (litteraly "wireless internet access"). I think this one is completely dumb as it changes the meaning. Wi-Fi is a network technology unrelated to the Internet itself. Even if it can be a way to access the internet, you can also use it between computers and not to connect to the Internet...

i agree too, it went too far but i only see those french-ified words in dictionnaries, docs for newbies and some pedant computer-related magazines.
btw, i never say "ordinateur" : i prefer "machine" or "bécane"
hmmm... and all countries have translated "mouse" to their own language, "n'est-ce pas" ?

Computer is from a latin word, did you know ?

And this isn't proudness at all. The quotas of french music on french radios is to try to protect the french music market. I don't know if it works, and don't listen to a lot of french music (more into post-rock and 70s stuff), but I can understand the logic.

I agree about the computer stuff: for me, the computer science is in english, that's historic and it's dumb to go against that. Computer languages are in english, big players (MS, Sun, etc) too. But you have to understand that some computer words must be translated for the regular people that know nothing about computers.

BUT, we are waaaay behind Quebec on that weirdness: they translate everything in french, and they're touchy about it.

I don't know... I'm really not offended by what you said Trantor, but I'm not too sure.

I can absolutely not explain those weird Star Wars character name changes (furthermore, it seems that the real names were restored in Episodes 1, 2 & 3 : back to C3PO, R2D2, not sure about Chewy cuz I haven't seen 3... anyway....)

The problem with dubbing is that, since all the dialog is in French, the "dubbers" can't just pronounce the character names with an English accent. First, I'm sure most of them have terrible accents (:)), and second, it would sound strange, wouldn't it ?

The main problem is : why dubbing in the first place ? Why not just rely on subtitles ? It brings up lots of other incoherences as well : currency unit (in a Friends or Seinfeld episode, I heard a character talk about how much French Francs something cost him ! Francs ? Buddy, you're living in New York City !!!), foreign accents (when dubbing an American sitcom, what happens when the French actor has to dub a character with a British accent ? Or better, a French accent ? It's usually pretty ridiculous... British accents are turned into posh accents, French accents have to be turned completely around and made into a British or Italian accent... Tsss...)

Rant rant rant... Sorry about that...

Now I agree with Linflas and Christophe about all the stupid "francized" technical terms. This is pathetic. But you know what ? I think Canadians are even crazier, well not crazy but extreme : they translate everything, and make up entirely new words so they don't have to use an English word. They usually come up with extremely witty and funny words, such as "courriel" for e-mail, a contraction of "courrier électronique" (electronic mail). All the French could think of was "émèl" or "mèl"... Yuck !
Another example with film titles : in France, they are not systematically translated, don't ask me why, I guess it's just that sometimes the English title sounds way cooler (luckily, "Blade Runner" wasn't translated... Can't imagine what it could have become....). In Québec, every film has a French title. I remember a particular one that struck me : Trainspotting (untranslated in France) had become "Les ferrovipathes". Which, when you think about it, it quite an excellent translation !!!

Finally regarding the music, it's true, radios have to play at least 40% of songs with French lyrics, not just by French bands.. They have to sing in French ! This makes it very difficult for a good English-speaking French band to break through... A shame really...

Wow, I started typig this before Wismerhill answered... Did I really type that much ???

You did Florent.

Very interesting feedback from all of you, it really seems that the Fanco-Canadians (hope this is the correct term) are much worse than the French.

Concerning movie titles and dubbing, the Germans also don't seem to have a system when they translate a movie title and when not. "Blade Runner" and "Trainspotting" were not translated, but "In the line of Fire" was changed to "Die zweite Chance" - "The second Chance" in English, and I have no idea why this was done. Recently, less and less movie titles seem to be translated, like "Ice Age" or "The Day after Tomorrow".

In Germany, English character names are always pronounced English. Of course, most dubbers have a strong German accent, but usually, nobody notices since all Germans have that accent. I prefer it this way, since it keeps at least some of the feeling of the original. Translating currencies (from Dollar to German Marks or Euros) is usually only done in movies for little children (and that is bad enough). Of course, accents are all lost here. French, Italian or Spanish accents can be done easily, but British or Scottish accents are usually all lost. And of course it gets strange when Americans meet Germans (like in Savin Private Ryan, where you can only guess that the German soldier is using the five English words he knows).

Computer terms are generally not translated here (apart from "mouse" Linflas, but "Maus" is close enough that most Germans won't notice the difference anyway ). The Germans in general have a different problem: They use so many English words that they can't speak proper German anymore! Especially teenagers seem to think that it is "cool" or "trendy" to use as many English words as they can, they only talk about "games" (insted of "Spiele") and "kids" (instead of "Kinder") or "checken was aus" ("check something out"). I usually don't mind using some English words, but sometimes, it is just too extreme. The craziest example came from an advertising on MTV: "Votet für die stylishste Crowd" - "vote for the most stylish crowd". Neither "vote" nor "stylish" nor "crowd" exists in German! It even goes so far that Germans use English words that don't actually exist in English, like "Handy" (mobile phone) or "Oldtimer" (vintage car). What a crazy world!

@florent : Chewbacca is (enfin!) correctly named in Ep.3

Florent wrote: The main problem is : why dubbing in the first place ? Why not just rely on subtitles ?

Ask U.S. people why. They are really against subtitles whereas in Paris, my favorite multiplex theater has 90% of movies subtitled... and I'm glad it does.

Trantor wrote:This is not meant to be offensive to the French here in the forum, but I sometimes think that the French in general are a little too proud of their language.

We can't be too proud, we are the best.
* run into shadows *

Unlike French, English is a dirty mongrel tongue with words derived from lots of other languages. This is why the spellings are so inconsistent. To me it seems only fair that English words are now being sent back the countries that contributed

Of course British English has been taking a bit of a pounding from American English in recent years, thanks mainly to invasive US pop culture. And British English suffers too in the computing world - if I put "colour=red" in an HTML page it doesn't work! Bolleaux!

Yes, as a web developer, when I return to writing non-computer related stuff I forget to use "centre".

Although, much as I love the English language, I never understood why centre is spelled that way. The American spelling seems more sensible. I hate the dropping of "u" though out of a ton of words -- what's the matter, is it just too much effort to write an extra letter?

I never unserstood the dislike of subtitles on film -- once you get in to the habit of them, it doesn't detract from the film and can actually enhance it. I watch a lot of French films, but I don't understand French -- so subtitles are essential, but I would prefer to hear the original dialogue too. I hate dubbed films.

Gambit37 wrote: I never unserstood the dislike of subtitles on film -- once you get in to the habit of them, it doesn't detract from the film and can actually enhance it. I watch a lot of French films, but I don't understand French -- so subtitles are essential, but I would prefer to hear the original dialogue too. I hate dubbed films.

I love you.

depends for me... if i want to really appreciate images instead of reading a text, i watch subbed version : pixar, miyasaki or every great animation prod. I admit I could have seen Ep3 subtitled but well, my friends and i voted... but i don't regret it, it was really good anyway.

Wismerhill wrote:I love you.

Are you a) Female b) Single c) Reasonably attractive d) Rich. If at least three of these apply, I'm sure we can work something out...

Gambit37 wrote:

Wismerhill wrote:I love you.

Are you a) Female b) Single c) Reasonably attractive d) Rich. If at least three of these apply, I'm sure we can work something out...

a) No. But when I had long hair, some people mistaken me for a girl.
b) I'm not married.
c) I think so.
d) It depends on the day of the month.

Three out of four!

I prefer subtitles too...I'm sure I gave someone the example of crouching tiger recently...the dubbed version is by many of the original actors I believe, so voice and tonally it will be perfect, but there is just soemthing about hearing the way the natural rythmn and tone of the natural language and the nuances synced with the performance

Unless you have it on in the background while messing about on computer : )

Haha.. yup the similarities are definitely there with the Vexirks..

I take back what I said about Hayden and Natalie's acting, I hadn't seen anything else they were in, so I didn't have anything else to compare it to. However, in the last week I've seen Episodes I, II, and III, and its safe to say they would have done way better if it weren't for the horrible dialogue written for their characters. Episode III rocked.

And that was very racist of Palpatine to make a green comment to Yoda. Hissssa would be offended to watch this movie.

Sorry I just went way off subject with my last post, I didn't realize there were 2 more pages of postings.. I agree with the comments on subtitles, I prefer them over dubbed movies, mostly because of poor voice-acting.

You will learn that if everyone apologised for going OT on a post there would be far more OT than there currently is

I rewatched Ep 3, and I like it a bit more and spotted some more subtler bits I didn't really spot the first time - I like it much better second watch through : )

Wismerhill : I was just referring to dubbing in France. Obviously subs are not so popular in the US...

Gambit : I l... agree with you

I like dubs for cartoons and video games, where it's relatively easy to throw out the old track and synch the new track. But live action just looks idiotic. When you're watching something and you just KNOW the person is not supposed to be speaking English (and interesting note here - you can tell, roughly, what a person's primary language is based on the facial feature and wrinkles, position of the mouth, etc ... I'm not very good at this but if I studied it more I'm sure it would be nice and easy), it's just distracting. Plus I like to hear other languages. I love songs in other languages. There's something extra-special about it. Aside from the beautiful sound (since I'm not bogged down by the meaning, I can appreciate the sound of the language for its own sake), there's the reminder that humanity is so amazing that every pocket of people created a fully functioning language that has survived to this day. If that makes any sense.

On the subject of American vs British spellings, I think many of our spellings make more sense, but that's probably because I grew up with them (kind of - mom's Canadian so she spells the British way). It started out as an act of rebellion, like all those kids you see who insist on changing spellings to be cool or edgy or revolutionary, only it wound up becoming a national thing because Americans are stubborn and ridiculous.

Wow, I use WAY too many parenthetic expressions when I write. Oh well. Hopefully my writing isn't too hard to follow. I LOVE the diversity in language and culture on this board. It's cool to get so many different perspectives.

LOL, don't get me started on dubbing in video games ! I prefer waiting for the next time I go on vacation in the UK or US, or asking a friend to bring it back, rather than purchase a game with French voices !!! They just sound so uncool and/or are so poorly translated...