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Why are English films so difficult to understand?
Thread poster: Marina Steinbach
XXXphxxx (X)
XXXphxxx (X)  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 22:03
Portuguese to English
+ ...
Shame May 24, 2012

Marina Steinbach wrote:

Lisa Simpson, MCIL wrote:

Here's a clip from Brokeback Mountain, obviously I can understand most of it but some bits just disappeared into a haze of mumble for me: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edxufoYrY6Y&feature=related


Unfortunately, I couldn’t watch the film. The video box says: "This video contains content from NBC Universal, who has blocked it on copyright grounds."


Gosh, they must be able to control content being viewed in the U.S. because the clip works fine here.
 
kmtext
kmtext
United Kingdom
Local time: 22:03
English
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That happens quite often. May 24, 2012

Helena Chavarria wrote:

Lingua 5B wrote:

Marina Steinbach wrote:

Living in Germany, I never noticed so many F-words in a film. Of course, the films had always been synchronized for a German public.



Are you saying they are altering the movie script? Are they authorized to do so? What about copyright issues?


A number of years ago, after watching and enjoying "Full Monty" several times in Spanish, I thought I would treat myself to watching the film in English.

There is great difference between the Spanish and English version.

[Edited at 2012-05-22 09:36 GMT]


That happens a lot both in international distribution and broadcast. Where the films have been translated and dubbed, you will have "culturally sensitive" changes made, and some things, especially humour just don't translate well, so they'll often substitute a similar gag in the local language.

Back in my early days at ITV, we had different regional versions of films with varying degrees of editing for language/violence/drug use. That could mean as many as six different versions of a film being broadcast at the same time, so for example Yorkshire would have a fully-sanitised version with no swearing and minimal violence, Granada would have some mild swearing and some violence and Carlton would have an unedited version. The subtitles would have to reflect this, so we had to rejig the master file to each regional version. There are films I can recite almost the entire script to because I've had to watch them so many times.
 
Gianni Pastore
Gianni Pastore  Identity Verified
Italy
Local time: 23:03
Member (2007)
English to Italian
True, but... May 24, 2012

Stefano Papaleo wrote:

Gianni Pastore wrote:

...is often appalling. Apart from the f-word issue (which doesn't bother me one bit) sometimes the speech is just unintelligible so I am forced to rollercoast the volume in order to hear what's going on.

[Edited at 2012-05-23 09:37 GMT]


I have to agree with you. I guess this may be due to the fact that in the past few years more and more films are distributed with 5.1 audio, surround etc. and - unless the TV set or home theater system supports it well, it often happens that the sound score and effects are louder than the characters' voices which... makes you go nuts with the remote every 2 seconds!;) Sometimes good headphones may help or setting the audio track to something compatible with the display device.

Or the audio track just plain sucks:)))))


...as an obsessed movie-freak, I own a fairly good HT system with 5 speakers of good quality and I can assure you that lots of movies are audio-neglected! They worry too much about loud special effects and (apparently) very little about the speech tracks. Shame on them

Edit: gotta give the h/phones a chance, though!

[Edited at 2012-05-24 14:38 GMT]
 
Stefano Papaleo
Stefano Papaleo  Identity Verified
Italy
Local time: 23:03
Member (2005)
English to Italian
+ ...
Old school May 24, 2012

Being a kinda old-school guy I'm not so much into the new sound systems and good old stereo does it all for me. Dialogs matter in a movie so why giving them poor quality in favor of all the other sound effects beats me...

A good pair of headphones with a long cable make my day... and my neighbors' too;) Crisp clear.. of course not always feasible but still... at least you don't feel like eavesdropping or have to turn volume to the max just to hear what they say;)
 
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Why are English films so difficult to understand?







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