Not this.
I feel I'm only just beginning to get Miyazaki. Some context: Kiki – for this is a scene from Miyazaki's 1989 Kiki's Delivery Service – has left her family to start a life as all witches have to do when they turn twelve, found a job at a friendly baker's, and made a friend who's trying to invent an aeroplane. The two spend a lovely day together, dangerously testing a prototype, but when more friends of his turn up, Kiki recognises among them a particularly entitled prick of a kid from a delivery job, and races home for this confession to her cat. Actually I'm underselling the subtlety of the encounter. The kid isn't particularly entitled, or even a prick, she's just embarassed by her grandmother's cake – one of those tiny, almost meaningless interactions which can nevertheless make you abandon all hope in humanity. (One of the great strengths of this film is showing the difficulty Kiki has not just responding to an independent life, but having to respond to those responses.) I saw the film for the first time a couple of weeks ago, with subtitles, and the speech above stood out to me so much that when I got home, I immediately fastforwarded the Engish dub on Netflix to see it played in English.
Which is how I found out just how different a dub can be.
Because the words above are not what I saw in the cinema. Those are the captions to that English dub (as posted to instagram by the Prince Charles Cinema, which is what prompted me to this proselytism). What I saw Kiki say in the cinema was...
This.
I mean, I know one has to pick one's fights, but I don't understand how anyone could change a word of that.
No no, it is a good fight!
ReplyDeleteSubtitles often take liberties but dubs are crazy. The lack of respect is infuriating.
I always watch in original version with subtitles, even if it’s in a langage I don’t speak at all.
I would have thought especially if it's a language you don't speak, no?
DeleteI meant original + subs instead of dubbed.
DeleteLike, I speak a bit of spanish so obviously spanish version + subs because I can understand some of it. But also korean + subs rather than dubbed in French or English, even if I don't understand a single word.
Yeah, it makes more sense to say "even if it's in a language I don't speak at all." If you don't speak the language at all, then you're not really getting anything special out of watching it with subtitles, and there are compelling reasons to choose a dub instead in those cases (e.g. more localization in the dub could make the material more accessible when you're missing a lot of cultural context, or being able to appreciate the visuals more because you're not busy reading the subtitles), so it makes sense for a person to assert that they still prefer subs even under those circumstances. When one does speak a little of the original language, then they can pick up a lot of nuance that gets lost in translation, so of course such people would prefer subs, making that preference unremarkable.
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