#185 What is dubbing in movies, music and video games?

Speak English Now through mini-stories with teacher Georgiana

Hi, everybody! I am Georgiana, your English teacher and founder of SpeakEnglishPodcast.com. My mission is to help you speak English fluently.

Today I'll talk about dubbing. And we will practice grammar in context with a point of view story. Don’t worry. You won’t have to memorise any boring rules.

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Have you ever wondered why movies are dubbed in some countries and not in others? Dubbing a movie means to substitute the original voice for another one in the language of the country.

This way you don't need to know the original language of the movie. You can simply watch the entire movie in your language without any problems.

An alternative is to simply add translated subtitles. This is done in most countries.

This way you can listen to the original sound and at the same time read in your native language to understand the meaning. It is a cheap alternative and much easier than dubbing the movies.

Interestingly, performers are called voice actors. The truth is that I find this job very difficult. You have to record exactly at the moment when the character is speaking. Also, you need to use the right intonation. If the character is angry, or happy, or says something with irony, ... All this has to be taken into account.

There are some people who criticize dubbing. They give two reasons.

The first is that it doesn't help people learn foreign languages, such as English.

The second is that, in a way, it can distort the interpretation of the actors, since, if a dubbing actor is not good, he can totally change the character.

But dubbing is not limited to movies or series. Music and video games are also dubbed.

Dubbing music

Similar to movies, dubbing has a totally different meaning in music. Here, this process occurs when you transfer or duplicate a song.

Dubbing video games

Many games now require dubbing - when dubbing, the original audio is replaced with new recordings of the translated script. This allows players to listen while playing in their own language.

In my opinion, dubbing does not help people learn new languages. Regarding whether or not the interpretation of the actors is changed, I think it can happen, but I have to say that there are very good dubbing actors who do it very well.

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Read the transcript here: SpeakEnglishPodcast.com/podcast