Dubbing or killing a piece of art

Wikipedia: “Dubbing is the post-production process of recording and replacing voices on a motion picture or television soundtrack subsequent to the original shooting. The term most commonly refers to the substitution of the voices of the actors shown on the screen by those of different performers, who may be speaking a different language. The procedure was sometimes practiced in musicals when the actor had an unsatisfactory singing voice, and remains in use to enable the screening of audio-visual material to a mass audience in countries where viewers do not speak the same language as the original performers.”
For me Dubbing is killing the original film/series/animation. Each film has his own director, its actors and a whole crew that worked really hard for the result. Many countries, among which are Germany, France, Italy, Spain have adopt dubbing in the most of movies, (if not all) and so a foreign speaker or even a local that wants to a enjoy an original film cannot enjoy it. That is not happening only in cinemas but also in television series.

So imagine to watch your favorite show, not in its original language. Imagine How I met your mother for example in the video above. The essence of the show is lost, the actors authenticity as well, and the fun from the show is not remotely the same. Even when I watch my favorites shows in countries that are using instead subtitles like Netherlands or Greece, I am usually annoyed by the translations and the fact that there is no way for an expression or a catch phrase to be translated. Need more proof? Watch the German trailer for the Oscar winning film The King’s Speech.

The amazing performance by Colin Firth as King George cannot be transferred as it is in German or any other language. Thus, in such cases you are watching another movie with another actor in the main role. An actor that didn’t have the same director directing him, an actor that performed instead on set, behind the closed doors of a recording studio.

Fortunately in countries with small population, the movies are in their official release. No matter if the movie is in English or French or Turkish. The only cases of dubbing usage can be found in movies that are mainly for kids or in TV cartoons. Even in cartoons or animations there are some cases that I am annoyed of dubbing as well. Imagine, for example Shrek without the original performance of Eddie Murphy as the donkey…

Dubbing was only partly used in countries like Greece many years ago and Turkey for many years till recently. The main reason that dubbing was used was the large number of illiterate population. Since that is no more a problem, I really don’t understand why in civilized countries the distribution companies use dubbing against of subtitles, in that degree that you can rarely watch a movie in its original version. They are paying an important overhead of money resulting worse quality of art. And imagine that this is not only the case for big blockbusters (one can argue that he can watch the next Transformers movie in any other language, in a film that fighting robots are the stars), but also in many arthouse films.