Silence on the Set! And Localizing!

The discussion of localization often focuses very narrowly on software and technical content, and technology. And while no one has yet suggested localizing literature—Harry Potter is translated into 31 languages, not localized—another art form is regularly localized: film. Depending on budget and expertise, a localized film may be boffo box office or mercilessly panned by the critics and shunned by the masses. And technology, although important, is only part of the story.

Subtitles

As a technology, subtitles have been around longer than the talkies. In silent movies, dialogue delivered by heroines with bee-stung lips, mustachio-ed villains and noble heroes was "translated" in writing and slipped between action shots. Lengthy lines were often scantily interpreted—"Here I come to save the daaaaay!" —but exaggerated gesture and expressive eyebrows helped the audience get the idea.

Subtitled translations have the same drawback. Lengthy dialogue is encapsulated so it fits at the bottom of the screen, the pacing of the film taking precedence over textual concerns. Anyone who has seen a subtitled film has experienced the frustration of a seemingly key monologue being reduced to a monosyllabic translation.

Dubbing or voice-over

Dubbing, re-recording sound and "doubling" it over the original soundtrack, in the context of this article, to localize film has gradually come to replace subtitles. Critics of dubbing resist the technology as energetically as D.W. Griffith resisted the addition of sound. Why?

Like colorizing a black and white classic, dubbing alters, subtly or profoundly, the quality of the acting. Dubbing separates an actor from an essential tool of the trade: his or her voice.

Let's take two pop examples. I, for one, cannot imagine Arnold Schwarzenegger stripped of his trademark Austrian-accented English and I haven't even paid to see the films. "Ah'll be back" loses all its punch (no pun intended) for my husband, a Quebecois with two sons, who has seen a lot of Ahnold... dubbed in French.

The Pink Panther provides a more complex example. In the original English-language versions, the bumbling inspector Clouseau speaks with a distinctive, decidedly bizarre French accent. How does the French-language version localize Peter Sellers' ersatz accent and still get laughs from a French audience? (This question is not rhetorical. If anyone knows, please share!)

Beyond these concerns, poor quality dubbing can make even a great film come off like the old Godzilla movies. Not only does the synching have to be impeccable to be believable but unless ambient sound elements are dubbed also (e.g., crowd noise and incidental chatter, on-screen radio and t.v. broadcasts, intercom announcements, police radio transmissions, music, etc.) the effect may be less than satisfactory.

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