The debate between subtitles versus dubbing made constant headlines even before the internationally acclaimed blockbuster ‘Parasite’ hit theaters worldwide. With Hollywood losing its title as a dominant force in the international film market, the global theater market has found an exponential growth, in becoming widely accessible through streaming of foreign language films and TV series.
The domain of localization has shifted from arthouse theaters to streaming platforms like Netflix in the United States which has provided its audiences the convenience to watch dubbed versions of currently hyped international productions from the comfort of their homes. Experts in the field weigh in how the localization market is on the “upswing, in terms of attention, dialogue, business potential, and growth”. And as the localization market expands with streaming, so does the demand for dubbing, experts point out.
Arthouses linguistically adapt scripts from movies and TV series in opting for dubbing to take into account the lip flap and visible sync of the voices of performers. This means that a script is adapted less literally in case of dubbing in order to allow the foreign words to sync more closely with the syllable count and lip movement of the actors. Whereas it is impossible to achieve this without being 100% noticeable, specialists try to achieve the best word to mouth match over a consistent stretch of time to give a near-perfect experience to the viewing audience.
Subtitles naturally allow for a more literal script adaption, unencumbered by lip flap sync concerns. The battle then becomes about how many words can fit on a screen, how long do the words need to stay on the screen so an average person can read it before the next one comes up. Timing again hence becomes an underlying concern for this adaptation but in a very different way.
Dubbing also requires a significant amount of time, money and effort. The industry standard conveys dubbing to cost as much as 10 times (and often more) greater than subtitling. Since it is a creative and simultaneously a technical process to produce a good dub, it is naturally much more time consuming-the usual turn around being around six to 12 weeks for a dub of a feature-length movie. 10-12 voice actors need to be brought into the studio to have them recorded and directed along with having a linguist nearby to do the translation on the spot.
This is followed by the massive struggle to edit and mix the recordings. Experienced performers and directors battle to make the dubbed voices sound like they were naturally recorded on location, trying to blend them into the soundtrack through their sound engineering antics to make the dubbed voices the least noticeable as they can be.
The decision to opt for dubbing as a default ultimately comes down to the respective country’s film culture. The decision to dub is undisputed in countries in Europe, where Hollywood cinema films have enjoyed a booming market for decades. In contrast, in Northern European economies, specifically Scandinavian countries where English is a second language, the choice to not dub is equally feasible as it can cut on the cost of by opting for a less expensive alternative.
The movie-going culture in the lesser established markets outside of Europe dictates whether dubbing is opted or not, a decision that also involves looking at financial implications in such economies as the global market changes and expands.
With every market now serving every market, localizing non-English language content for non-English speaking countries has become the most in-demand part of the business for many arthouses. We increasingly see non-English language movies slowly leading the international box office top 20, combined with the aggressive international growth of streaming services that are expanding their foreign language offering to all countries. For subscription streaming models, audiences are also trying different shows and movies.
We however find ‘purist’ people who still prefer subtitles scattered amongst the wide Asian audience, who just like their US counterpart want to fully immerse themselves in the on-screen experience, but generally speaking, the majority of the Asian market opts for dubbing.
The choice to offer a dub in a specific language depends on the distributor or platform’s reach and the size of their customer base in that language. The question then becomes that of getting a dub at a price that makes economic sense based on the number of subscribers, or ad revenue. The future of localization seems to bring in some level of automation and lowering costs through artificial intelligence (AI). As soon as theaters can afford to do a high-quality dub at a feasible price, the demand for dubbed versions is surely to rise.
Research points to data that a good dub has a higher consumer retention, so high engagement whereas a bad dub lowers audience engagement. The more aware the audience is of the (bad) dub, which can be the result of a bad performance, a lack of sync, or poor mix, the harder it is for viewers to get over their disbelief and fully understand the story.
Viewers streaming a foreign language episodic series are more likely to finish the series if they choose dubbing over subtitling which justifies the treatment of dubbed versions by major streaming platforms as the standard deliverable in many markets, including English speaking ones.
Here Netflix once again proves that it knows viewers better than they know themselves as it reveals some of the secrets of its operations, including the fact that defaulting to dubbed dialogue is a deliberate strategy the streaming service uses to increase viewership.
“Netflix conducted its own experiments to test viewer habits. When streaming a dubbed version of the French show “Marseille” to a small group of viewers by default, the results showed that they were far more likely to finish the series than those who watched it with subtitles. Shocker. This preference also bore out with the U.S. viewership of “Dark” and “3%.” The majority of American viewers watched them with dubbed audio.” Viewer retention is inevitably crucial in this binge-reliant service, which ultimately makes dubbing to become a standard, while subtitles are offered as an option.
The case for dubbing is hugely facilitated by the multitude of opportunities for multitasking it provides. Viewers who do not have to worry about reading off their screens are guided by the sounds of the actors as they busy themselves in other activities. This works especially well when audiences are in a need of a distraction from other mundane tasks such as washing the dishes or mopping their floors.
The fact that they do not have to give their undivided and complete attention to their screens means that they are saved from the trouble of experiencing long expository/filler stretches that often pop up here and there in between dialogues. ‘Reading’ a tv show or a movie can prove rather wearisome, and these viewers guided by their desire to escape this exact weary turn to the dubbed version to just relax and skip the reading bit for another day.
Subtitles on the other hand are supported by many for an optimum and unspoiled aural enjoyment experience. These audiences opt to listen to the original language audio with subtitles (in a native language) in order to experience the foreign content as authentically as possible. They argue that the emotion and intonation in the original content cannot be perfectly emulated in a dubbed version. Often these audiences have suffered gravely by watching out of sync dubbed dialogue in the past.
Dubbing, even when expertly done, pulls a person out of scenes when the words don’t match the movement of the actors’ mouths. This results in the audio lacking a sense of context, where the dubbing seems divorced from the scene on the screen. Hence to enjoy the original performance in in entirety, these viewers opt to read the subtitles instead.
For these users, movies and shows are meant to command 100% attention and hence they don’t shy away from reading from their screens. They opt for hearing and taking in of foreign languages and cadences, even if they are in the background, to preserve the original rhythms of the scene. To them, this gives them a true feeling of foreign culture without compromising on communication and understanding. The simple act of replacing dialogue with English erases a part of the original series, and they don’t want to silence the voices as to them it means something vital but unspoken being lost in translation.
Subtitles for some also serve as a reference point, in cases where dialects and accents of the original performers can be tricky even for native speakers. Subtitles offer to, “read a line that might not have been enunciated well or had bad ADR (Automated Dialog Replacement)…to judge all the words and names the closed captioners may have misspelled.” Written words can hence serve as an important backup, which can be especially useful in the modern day-and-age of too much TV and shortened attention spans. Subtitles can hence provide a necessary means to trick oneself into being as engaged as possible with tv shows or movies that deserve it.
The backlash to the Mother Jones article” It Should Come As No Surprise That Most Film Audiences Prefer Dubbing to Subtitles” by political blogger Kevin Drum epitomizes American arthouses’ aversion to dubbed movies. These purists, cinephiles, IndieWire audience constitute mainly of film buffs and enthusiasts that make for a vocal minority. Veterans of the industry, however, like to point out that “the community we live in a lot of our time is not actually the consumer reaction at the broad America level.”
The opposition of the general American moviegoing and streaming audience comes from bad experiences of dubbed telly in the past and the lack of exposure to foreign language content like most of the rest of the world. Because of the wide variety of English options available, the American market has remained closed off to dubbing with foreign language content not enjoying much exposure. This is because the commercial gatekeepers, the people who run the platforms and the pay TV services, have had so much U.S. entertainment on their hands that dubbing never really became a question to consider.
But as already mentioned, streaming is rapidly changing the U.S. Foreign Language film industry and as a consequence the dubbing market. The world of on-demand streaming has opened up so many offerings for viewers on the plethora of streaming websites. We need to be cognizant of how the dubbing versus subtitles debate is becoming more about which option is financially feasible in this age of globalization than about which option movie buffs stand behind. Choice to do both a sub and dub is evidently increasing, and it seems that it will continue that way as automation and demand for dubs drives the cost of a dub down.
We also need to be mindful of how big streaming platforms tie their localization calculations of how much to spend on original series with the global reach of the series or movie. The greenlighting process for original content gauges the cost of localization- a factor that also creeps its way in cost of acquisition discussions. Platforms are now more interested in the following questions:
“What’s it going to cost to produce that show? How much is it going to cost us to make? How much is it going to cost us to localize? And how much subscription value are we going to be able to get out of it?”
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