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Subtitles

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My first experience of a dubbed film stands out very clearly in my memory. I was in Germany on an exchange programme at high school and was homesick. Thankfully, German television was showing Dallas, a programme that I often watched with my family back home. The only problem was that the show was dubbed into German and all the actors had different voices. I was so stunned at the change to Larry Hagman's voice that I almost forgot I was struggling to understand what was going on. I have never forgotten that, and have since always preferred subtitles to dubbing.

I studied languages at school and university. Unfortunately, British television at the time rarely showed foreign language films, but when it did, I would always take the opportunity to watch. Thankfully, the films were nearly always in their native language, and I took great pleasure in listening to the tones and nuances of the original language. I always tried not to pay too much attention to the subtitles, but sometimes, actors' accents not always being standard, it was necessary to read them.

In time, I was to move abroad, to China, where I lived for most of the nineties and the first part of the noughties. Earlier on in my stay there, foreign films were very few and far between. Only a limited number of films were allowed in the country in any one year; the main reason being that the Chinese authorities did not want the public to be exposed to Western influences. Perhaps also for this reason, voices were dubbed. That way, the Chinese authorities had control over what the Chinese people heard. From a language point of view, I did not mind too much - at the time, I was trying to listen to as much Chinese as I could. However, I found that films that I thought I was familiar with seemed different. Sometimes it was the tone of voice, sometimes, the emphasis had changed, sometimes what was said didn't fit it with what I remembered. Whatever, dubbing changed my impressions of the film and sometimes made it much less enjoyable. That was without taking into consideration the fascination that I felt for lips that moved out of sychronisation with the words. And the range of accents that can make a film so aurally pleasing were missing, because the Chinese film industry used the same group of actors and actresses to dub films, all of whom spoke standard Mandarin.

I am now living back in England and, perhaps because of my exposure to a foreign country, I take every opportunity to watch foreign language

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