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Which is better for foreign language films, dubbing or subtitles?

Results so far:

Subtitles
81% 218 votes Total: 269 votes
Dubbing
19% 51 votes

I would choose subtitles over dubbing any day. Although I can understand where those who don't read quite fast enough to keep up with the movie as well as read it there are a few elements that I think make subtitled movies better then dubbed movies. Among those elements are emotion from the actor, less distraction, and sounds issues.

I personally would rather not be able to understand what the actor or actress in a movie is saying and still be able to her the emotion they portray being their character then a voice actor would portray. Often when a movie is dubbed you still get emotion through the voice actor, but the emotion in the voice and the emotion on the face of the character don't always match. This makes it hard to get into the movie as the consistency is very off.

I believe that reading the subtitles is far less distracting then trying to focus on a movie where the words don't even come close to matching the movement of the lips. Some movie I'll admit are dubbed better then others but there will always be mismatched lips and words in a dubbed movie as substituting one language for another requires completely different facial and mouth movements.

Another major problem with dubbed movies is sound issues. Often in older dubbed movies the sound completely cuts out so that the dubbing can be put in. This ruins some of the effect of the movie because back round sounds cannot be heard.

All in all I prefer subtitled movies to dubbed ones because I believe they have a higher quality and are more fun to watch because of this.

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Which is better for foreign language films, dubbing or subtitles?

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