Struck up a conversation with a German language professor this weekend who mentioned that in some instances, American TV series or movies in Germany will use a “Turkish” accent when dubbing an ethnic minority character.
My shitty hochdeutsch isn’t good enough to help me confirm by watching a show dubbed into German. Is this the case? How is this handled in your country?
19 comments
AFAIK no specific accent. Like Eddie Murphy or Kevin Hart will just speak in a loud, somewhat shrill voice.
They don’t speak in a specific accent because there simply isn’t a corresponding ‘Black-German’ accent and giving them a regional accent would be even weirder.
One exception: In the movie ‘Airplane’ the two Black men speaking Jive speak in a Bavarian dialect in the German dub because it’s supposed to be incomprehensible to the flight attendant.
Pretty much only children’s movies are dubbed in Sweden. I assume if they were to dub a voice of an ethnic minority they would use either a normal Swedish accent or an accent of that ethnicity, because it would be both lazy and racist to do otherwise.
Perhaps they would use a generic [“shobre” Swedish](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rinkeby_Swedish) when the ethnicity is unknown or unspecified.
> will use a “Turkish” accent when dubbing an ethnic minority character.
I have never noticed that. I’m not saying, it never happens, but it is definitely not common at all. Normally every dubbed character speaks the same theatrical standard German. Rarely, very rarely, your over the top farcical British character in an American movie might get a 19th century Viennese accent, but that’s also not common. If the minority character’s accent is important for the story, they would get the accent that the language of origin has in German, not a random different one.
Much like Sweden we don’t really dub anything except cartoons/movies for kids… And in that case I can’t really point out a specific dialect or accent that would be used, could be anything really.
I don’t think dubbing is very popular here. I mean i noticed a few Netflix movies had a Romanian option, so maybe some people prefer it, although the desync between characters’ lips moving and the sound is super weird.
Children’s cartoons are dubbed, but they don’t seem to use any accents.
But i know that, before ’89, during communism, there was one lady dubbing everything on TV (not only women chars, everything). And, well, she did it to the best of her understanding of each movie. She was famous, like jokingly known as the voice of communist era movies.
> Struck up a conversation with a German language professor this weekend who mentioned that in some instances, American TV series or movies in Germany will use a “Turkish” accent when dubbing an ethnic minority character.
Ask them about an example, I cannot think of a single one.
Also read this: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskEurope/comments/12x52oj/in_media_produced_in_your_native_language_are/jhi7ale/?context=3
Most of the time the accent thing get’s lost. Most recent and hilarious example was in Star Trek: Picard. Spoiler Alert if you haven’t seen it yet.
>!In one scene Picard asks Crusher where their son got is english accent from and she answers that he went to a school in London and never lost the accent. In the german dub he asks where he got his ‘theatrics’ from and is told that Crusher sent him to a drama school for some time.!<
The scene didn’t make any sense until I saw it in english.
Only cartoons and movies for children are dubbed. But I think even they don’t usually give a character an accent, even if the original have one. Maybe to French chefs, if there are characters like that
I think there is no such thing in Finnish.
Mainly because barely anything with the exception of children’s media and nature shows are dubbed. Most of the time foreign media for adults is just subtitled.
You might find something like it in children’s shows, where rednecks talk a little funny, and in older dubs, Asians, africans and latin Americans have really offensive accents. But there’s no standardization and it’s rarely done. Since it’s for kids and they are not going to understand it anyway.
Usually not, they always speak in standard Italian without any particular accents, although African Americans are often dubbed with a particular cadence, which tries to imitate their speech.
Anyone here from Poland to share a perspective? Whenever I’m there and watch TV (foreign productions), it is like a monotonous male voice, devoid of almost all emotion, voiceovers all the characters. A bit like u/DarthTomatoo says, it would seem, but still that way today.
We don’t really dub in Dutch, only for children shows…and I don’t know if there is a pattern there.
No accent is used, although in parodies it’s different. For example Indians have Romani accent.
Sometimes a not very specific accent, sometimes none.
Something that I find a bit odd is that the grammar is still correct in almost every case; it’s regular german but with a funny voice.
Standard. Dubs/voiceovers are usually with extremely low quality voice acting, so no one bothers to fake an accent.
We dont really dub stuff outside of childrens content and the quality of those dubs is so fucking horrible that i really doubt they put in the effort. Of the dubbed content i have watched and that do put in some effort, they dont really do ethnic accents but more sociolect, based on the actual person. Crabbe and Goyle in the dubbed versions of Harry Potter do sound fat and dumb, but an immigrant character dont speak with an immigrant accent.
Do you mean https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African-American_Vernacular_English dialects or first gen immigrant accents?
They don’t use any different accent, it’s always a very standard (from Madrid) Spanish.
It sucks perhaps, but sometimes I am not sure how they could make it work with a different accent from Spain
> My shitty hochdeutsch isn’t good enough to help me confirm by watching a show dubbed into German. Is this the case?
No.
When it’s a foreign language (non-German) accent in English, we usually go for the equivalent in German. Italian, Spanish, Yiddish, Chinese, etc. It’s an issue when somebody has a German accent in English. Either it’s just rendered as standard German (just like the native English speakers), or it’s a German dialect, or it’s a different language/nationality.