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Subtitles

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When you've listened to John Wayne, Bruce Willis, Marilyn Munroe or Ava Gardener speaking Mandarin I'm sure you'll be just as quick as I am to join the yes' vote. There is something about the language of a movie and the characters and culture portrayed that is such an integral part of every movie whether it's a Hollywood blockbuster or a min-budget backstreet creation.

Just as voiceovers for cartoons are important, capturing the personality and attitudes of these sometimes larger-than-life characters, how much more important that real life characters be dubbed with the same care and attention to speech, style, personality and attitude.

Unfortunately the downside of cross-cultural viewing, especially dubbing is often to the detriment of humour and other subtleties of the original language. If you're living and working in another culture this may be a lost opportunity to listen to English language movies that for cinema showing are generally dubbed for the benefit of the broader target market.

For anyone interested in learning a new language or improving existing second and third languages, listening to the original while reading subtitles in your native tongue is a great learning tool.

While it's sometimes hard to follow the speed of subtitles, here one second and gone the next, I would much prefer to read English subtitles while listening to the original language also useful when listening to some English language movies.

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