The duality of dub - languages and film

Sub vs dub, the age old debate - but is there more to it than meets the eye? Personally, I have always been an avid dub hater. The lips moving, the sound coming out disjointed and unconnected - very few things irritate me more. And as a language student, I want to listen to as […]

Amelie Baker
17th April 2024
Image Source: IMDb
Sub vs dub, the age old debate - but is there more to it than meets the eye?

Personally, I have always been an avid dub hater. The lips moving, the sound coming out disjointed and unconnected - very few things irritate me more. And as a language student, I want to listen to as many languages as possible, so it is fair to say that sub has always been my personal choice. 

However, as a native English speaker, it is rare that I ever need either. We are lucky enough that the majority of cinema is in the English language. Although every year, more and more foreign language films are breaking into our British world, like this year's BAFTA winners, Anatomy of a Fall, The Zone of Interest and, of course, The Boy and the Heron, we have mostly grown up surrounded by English-language cinema.

However, where I am currently living in Spain, this is not the case. In Spain, the general opinion is that dub is actually preferable. ‘Why would you pay to go see a film in a language you don’t understand with words on the screen when you could see it in Spanish?’ is the ideology. And when you think about it, it makes sense. This is the tradition they’ve grown up with: children’s movies, animations, Disney - the majority of it is in English. But they have always watched it in Spanish. For them, these childhood actors, as well as actors on the big screen now, have two voices: their English one, and their Spanish dub one. 

I teach English to four year-olds here in Spain, and one of them has recently become obsessed with Star Wars, as all children must. He brings his little Luke Skywalker figurine to class, ‘to watch’. I told him, you know he speaks English? He was flabbergasted - no, he speaks Spanish! Even the famous Darth Vader line he only knows as “Soy tu padre”, not “I am your father” - and with a different voice (although the classic Darth Vader breathing has not been lost in translation). He has been raised in dub, so of course, why would subtitles ever seem a better option?

It would appear then that the preference of dub/sub is not only a personal choice, but one linked to our own culture as well, and, by extension, the language we speak. And so perhaps the preference for sub, and my hate of dub, is only due to the privilege of being an English speaker.

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