American here. Forgive me if this is against the rules, but I’m not sure where else to ask this. I think there’s a good spread of non Americans in this sub that could answer.

14 comments

  1. I think there might be within some niche cinephile circles (Kurosawa enthusiasts, as a made-up example), but generally speaking, I don’t think so. Personally I generally prefer dubbed so I can watch the actual movie, but bad dubs are very distracting. I found Squid Game unwatchable when I had it on dub – the voice acting was horrid, so I switched to subtitles and liked it a lot more.

  2. Not heated, but definitely a debate, and not much of it because almost everyone agrees that if it’s animated it’s dubbed, if it’s with real people it’s subbed. But it definitely depends on English fluency, if you know some you don’t have to read every single thing. People that speak English well tend to watch things with English subs.

  3. Not a heated debate but people have preferences.

    The vast majority of media people watch is in English and the vast majority of Americans speak English. So it tends to be a pretty niche debate. Personally I usually prefer subs but some dubs are pretty darn good, like dubs for studio Ghibli stuff.

  6. I do subs and dubs to try and figure out the closest meaning to the script because these will be different translations usually.

    There is a debate in Japan I have heard of. I have never heard of one from Europe.

  7. It looks like some people might be misunderstanding OP’s question (Unless I’m the one who’s not understanding).

    What the OP is asking is, In Non-English speaking countries outside of the U.S., is there a large division in their populations about whether American movies filmed in English (Like the Avengers movies for example) should be watched with the original English voice acting and subtitled in their native language, or if the movies voice lines should be re-recorded with the native language of that country despite potential issues with quality.

    Unless that was clear to everyone, in which case, please move along and ignore this idiot.

  8. not really, but it varies by country. For example, people from the Netherlands usually speak really good English with a fairly faint accent, partly because they generally watch American and British media in the original language with subs.

    In Germany, there’s a dubbing industry and almost everything is released as a German dub. So Germans don’t always grow up watching English media like the Dutch do, and as a result many Germans have stronger accents than Dutch people do.

    (Obviously these are generalizations)

  9. Subs > Dubs if its a show or movie.

    If its a show car. Then you need both subs and dubs.

  10. Dubs are better for people who can’t read quickly. I vastly prefer subs tho. Dubs take away from the performance. It’s like if you’ve ever watched an episode of The Simpsons in Spanish, I’m sure the voice actors are great, but it sounds so so wrong to me.

  11. Dubbing live action movies/TV shows is cultural barbarism. “So and so is the German voice of Tom Cruise” my brothers in christ what the fuck are you doing.

  12. I’m American, but watch plenty of foreign movies & shows.

    I always prefer subtitles over dubbed audio.

  13. In germany, there is a debate among young people who prefer subs, but in general everything is dubbed in germany and people are used to it and the majority prefers it.

    In cinemas, there are usually a few screenings in the original language and a lot with the dubbed version. Subtitled version for english language movies are pretty uncommon, but a lot of people use them for example when watching Netflix.

  14. Not so much. In the Anime bubble, maybe, but on the rare occasion that a foreign film crosses over into the American market, it’s usually subtitled.

    On the other hand, Stephen Chow is nice enough to 1) include both versions on the DVD and 2) have a joke unique to both versions.

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