Subtitles or Dubbed English?

Subtitles, definitely. They still preserve the quality of the movie and besides it's hard to watch when you know what they are saying doesn't match up with their mouths.

The DVD release of Hero had amazingly good dubbing (as far as lip-synch, suitable timbre/emotion and clarity/subtlety went). I've no idea how accurate the translation was, but given the amount of effort they'd obviously put into it, I reckon it might have been as good as normal subtitle standards.

You can see why they went to the trouble with Hero though - leaving you free to enjoy the visuals. As a rule though, yeah, for decent translation, subtitles are the way (except when they're cackly done as well )

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Virtual Reality chatter on a movie site? Got endless amounts of it here. Reviews over here

Aye, the dubbing in Hero is the best I've heard. Still didn't listen to more than 10 minutes though....

As to the translation - I had the English subs on at the same time and it was way out in places, though that doesn't say much. The subtitles might have been wrong.

And as for cack subtitles, the Zatoichi R2's are completely different than the version I saw in the cinema. Blind becomes 'sight impared' and bonesetter is changed to the ever-so-slightly less romantic sounding 'masseur'.

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"Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how the Tatty 100 is done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves." - Brendan Behan

Dubbing is so tied to lip-synching that it's almost always a bastardised version of the original. I've done some translating, and that's hard enough - and i've made a few silly shorts by re-editing and re-dubbing archive footage, and that's freaking difficult too (even tho i could chose my words freely, and be 'comically' sloppy with the synching). Dubbing in another language, with no lee-way, must be a nightmare.

Weird, the version i saw in the cinema had him down as a 'masseur', i think. I'm sure i remember them saying that near the beginning.

I love some of the really dodgy Hong Kong subtitles tho - ones that just make absolutely no sense for sentences at a time. I've been in tears of laughter thanks to some of those .

hmmmm, you saw it in the UK? I caught Zatoichi in Dublin, maybe it was a different print.

Definately noticed the differences when I bought the DVD - I wonder if the R3 or R1 subs differ?

Yup, saw it in UK. I could be wrong, coz the bone-setter thing rings a bell too. Grr, damn memory

Tarantino says he's doing a martial arts flick entirely in Mandarin. Apparently he wants to do two versions, one with subtitles and one with intentionally out of sync dubbed voices.

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TOP 100 | "Don't let the bastards grind you down!"

QT's even got his own stamp over here -

Ahhh, he may like shiny things, but he often lines them up in a way that increases their lustre. That's worth summink (well, more than 30p anyway )

completely agree, this may sound judgmental, but i'm really pissed off by the fact that americans and other westerners don't like to watch movies with subtitles ( and often in movies or tv series the characters mention something like "there's only a swedish movie with subtitles in the theatre " as a synonym for something that inevitably sucks ass and is boring..!!)
before you start attacking me, i know that real movie fans ANYWHERE don't have a problem with subtitles...i myself am from Croatia, and everything is subtitled here ( thank God, that's how i learned to speak English so well , not only English, but i've learned quite a bit of spanish like that)...germans on the other hand have everything dubbed, which is horrifying...imagine, not knowing how julia roberts or samuel l. jackson sound like...the horror!!

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It all depends on the dub. If the dub voice is no way close to matching the person it's just stupid. I love subtitles though. It was hard to get my dad to go to Hero, but I finally got him to go. Then he found out it was subtitled and was pissed off. However, after the movie he told me he really enjoyed the film. If my dad can watch a foreign film with subs, I don't see how others couldn't enjoy because my dad is anal when it comes to anything foreign or against the flow of Hollywood. *Shakes Head* That's my dad.

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"This is that human freedom, which all boast that they possess, and which consists solely in the fact, that men are conscious of their own desire, but are ignorant of the causes whereby that desire has been determined." -Baruch Spinoza

That's exactly how I feel. The only substitute though is Kung Pow: Enter the Fist. That cracks me up !!!

yes, subtitles rock...



no matter how good dubbing is, i will always be reminded of godzilla....

I think subtitles are good however some dubbing makes a film what it is.
Alot of spaghetti westerns has terrible dubbing but they all rock