Translated from French by Alexandre Ellis, Emeline Vaussier, Lisa Boron, Lorelei Frétard-Dufils, Lucie Breau, Morgane Le Menn, Valentine Lorthios et Violette Frouin.
Hollywood movies in their original language are only released in a few countries. Except for English-speaking countries, films need to go through a translating process. Two techniques are available: dubbing and subtitling. To choose between the two, economic criteria are first taken into account, but the political context can’t be ignored either. Indeed, audio-visual translation is directly linked with the notion of identity. The current globalization process revives the debate on techniques that had been thought to be established since the 1930s, once talking pictures had become the norm. Because it is exported in almost every country in the world, Hollywood cinema is particularly sensitive to these issues.
The economic and political stakes of audio-visual translation
The economic and political stakes of audio-visual translation. Dubbing or subtitling?
Major Hollywood studios, such as Columbia or Warner Bros., have language strategies that fluctuate depending on the demand. Traditionally, Hollywood films are dubbed in four languages: French, Italian, German and Spanish. The major countries in which these languages are spoken are known as the FIGS (France, Italy, Germany, Spain)[1]. The main reasons for this choice are financial ones. Dubbing is indeed expensive and is therefore exclusively used in the most important markets. In smaller countries such as Greece or Portugal, the additional charge caused by dubbing would put a film’s profitability at risk.[2]
These language strategies are also based on cultural criteria. At the time when talkies were first produced, the German, Italian and French industries were flourishing. Hollywood majors feared that the spectators, who were used to watching movies in their own languages, would not be fond of foreign movies because of the subtitles.[3] Movies were thus dubbed for major markets, creating a strong national film industry. It should also be noted that prior to the 1979 Iranian Revolution Hollywood movies were dubbed for this market as well.[4] In smaller markets where the industry was not as significant, majors preferred subtitles. Finally, in semi-closed markets, the language strategy was, most of the time, imposed by the government.[5] During the Cold War, in Eastern Europe, the American soundtrack was simply covered by the voice of one or two actors reciting the script. In that case, the dubbing voice also censored the dialogue.
The major difference between dubbing and subtitling lies not so much in their cost as in the effect produced on the viewer. When a film is subtitled, the original dialogue does not disappear, as Martine Danan points out: “Viewers […] are constantly reminded of the foreignness of a film by the presence of the original soundtrack.”[6] On the contrary, dubbing plays a part in naturalizing the movie: “Dubbing is an attempt to hide the foreign nature of a film by creating the illusion that actors are speaking the viewer’s language. Dubbed movies become, in a way, local productions.”[7]
The fact that they [Hollywood films]’re shown dubbed in many non-English-speaking countries removes one layer of what we perceive as their Americanness.[8]
Dubbing a movie means making it sound more local. For example, when Duel (Steven Spielberg, 1971) came out in Japanese cinemas in the wake of the success of Jaws (Steven Spielberg, 1975), the distribution company tried to attract the audience through a twofold naturalization process. The movie was dubbed in Japanese and followed by a second one, a movie produced locally by the Shochiku company. Naturalizing the motion picture, or making it sound local, helps attracting spectators.[9] Similarly, Disney decided to dub The Lion King (Roger Allers, Rob Minkoff, 1994) in Zulu, as the company thought that the seven million potential Zulu viewers would more likely appreciate the movie, whose story takes place in Africa, if it were in their own language.[10] Refusing to dub a film means refusing this process of naturalization. In 1972, France opposed the distribution of a dubbed version of Paths of Glory (Stanley Kubrick, 1957). It was an avowed attempt at standing in the way of this movie, as it had not been submitted to the French censorship committee in 1957.[11]
Dubbing: naturalizing a movie
Subsequently, from a cultural point of view, dubbing has more serious consequences than subtitling. The point is to make the audience welcome a movie as if it were coming from their own country, in a way, rather than the United States. Several strategies are used in order to naturalize a Hollywood movie or make it sound more local. To make the audience feel closer to the film, the distribution company tends to pick voices that are well-known to the targeted viewers.[12] This method is particularly easy to apply to animated movies. For instance, Disney chose celebrities in each country to dub Hercules (John Musker, Ron Clements, 1997).[13]
Similarly, the comedians Patrick Timsit and Eric Métayer were cast in France. One of Pixar’s executives explains that he does not choose actors whose voice sounds like the original American one for the dubbing, but that he favors locally known actors.[14] The two following examples show that Dreamworks does likewise. In 2001 Alain Chabat’s was the voice of the protagonist in Shrek, while in 2004, Dany Boon and Patrick Timsit dubbed the characters of Shark Tale.
Translation choices also play a part in the naturalization of the dubbed films. To make sure that the dialogue is well understood by the audience, it may be necessary to adapt the American script. This process, known as script-doctoring,[15] is generally needed for a dialogue with a specific language register or for humorous ones. Wayne’s World was dubbed by Alain Chabat and Dominique Farrugia, two actors known for the TV show Les Nuls. The difficulty here is to find an equivalent to the very particular teenage slang of the protagonists, such as “Party on!”. In French, Wayne and Garth speak verlan, a way of speaking used by French teenagers, and “Party on!” becomes “Mégateuf !”. Likewise, the German actor dubbing Sid in Ice Age (Chris Wedge and Carlos Saldanha, 2002) decided to give him a German touch by making him yodel.[16] Translation adaptations are also essential when characters are swapping jokes. For instance, jokes about the Poles, only understood in the United States, target the Belgians in France.[17] It is this localisation of humour that can make a difficult film relatively successful. In Germany, Hudson Hawk (Michel Lehmann, 1991) benefited from the quality of its dubbing. Jürgen Shwau, CEO of Columbia TriStar for Germany, explains this localisation process: “No one would have understood some of the American jokes, so we used similar ideas and gave them a German mentality.”[18]
Dubbing makes it possible to add or delete references based on the movie’s acceptability in a particular market. That of The Power of One (John Avildsen, 1992) is strengthened by subduing the references to Nazism. The German version of For Your Eyes Only (John Glen, 1981) makes it clear that the movie is set in Germany by including the West German police in an international cooperation movement which mainly includes, in the original movie, the CIA, Interpol and the Mossad.[19] The choice of voices, as well as the deletions and additions in the dubbed version, make it easier for the moviegoers to “identify to” the characters in the film.
The target countries may also take care themselves of the translating process and modify it. In the late 1960s in Iran, a strict censorship banned any reference to sexuality, violence, or left-wing ideas but also any attack against religion or the Shah. The movies that did not follow the criteria of the committee were simply “tailored to fit” when dubbed. That is why, for the Iranian public, the hero of The Thomas Crown Affair (Norman Jewison, 1969) decides to give back what he stole and marry Vicky Anderson, which is a complete rewriting of the original end of the story.[20]
Therefore, to choose a linguistic strategy is a process which is economic, cultural and political. The purpose of the majors is to manipulate Hollywood movies so as to bring them closer to the local audience. They undergo a cultural adaptation to the market. Once the difficulties of the shift to talkies had been overcome, the majors kept to the same linguistic strategy: dubbing for only a few countries and subtitling for the others. However, in the 1990s, the globalization process put these practices back into question.
The new stakes of globalization. The paradox of globalization
Globalization was beneficial to the majors, which took full advantage of the new territories becoming accessible in the late 1980s: Eastern Europe, the USSR, but also South Korea. These opened up to free market economy, the media and Western products, especially Hollywood films. From the mid-1990s, the box office receipts of Hollywood films in foreign countries were higher than those coming from the domestic market. However, contrary to what was most often forecast in the 90s, no standardization of the world market occurred. The majors were looking forward to the building of a homogeneous market, a shared culture under the influence of CNN and MTV, but they were disappointed. Indeed, the universalizing dimension of globalization generated a surge in national and local values.[21] Globalization is highly paradoxical, as it goes along with new local cultural energy. This paradox directly impacted the majors. While the world market was widely expanding, it became more and more diversified. In his book on international marketing, Charles Croué underlines the subsequent dilemma: “The more a production company increases its global coverage, the more the countries in which it operates have different cultures. The more international a production company becomes, the more it has to take into account cultural differences.”[22]
One linguistic strategy illustrates this tension between the global and the local in the methods of the Hollywood majors in the 1990s. In order to make further inroads into the foreign market, the majors increasingly used a localisation strategy: dubbing.
As the audience favored dubbed versions, Hollywood films gained ground in many markets. Dubbed versions were distributed in more and more countries[23]. The dubbing of Jurassic Park (Steven Spielberg, 1993) into Hindi was a milestone in the sales of Hollywood films in the Indian market.[24] In general, the number of dubbed versions for family films went up from about twenty to forty. For other genres, the majors no longer limited dubbing to eight languages. X-men: The Last Stand (Brett Ratner, 2006) was dubbed in eighteen languages, Garfield 2 (Tim Hill, 2006) in thirty-two, including Mexican Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese and Hungarian.[25] The tension between the local and the global was also transforming Hollywood films, making the translation process even more complex.
The growing multilingualism of Hollywood films
As the foreign market became of utmost importance, the majors reacted by increasingly taking the foreign viewer into account in their production choices, hiring foreign artists (actors, directors), or favouring films set outside the United States. From the end of the 1990s and especially in the early 2000s, several languages could be heard in Hollywood films even in their original versions. It was an issue first for directors, then for translators.
The fact that there were several languages other than English in a film made the director’s task more complex. Foreign languages were more or less present. Cantonese and Mandarin Chinese were used at the very beginning of Rush Hour 2 (Brett Ratner 2001), just like Korean in the opening sequence of Die Another Day (Lee Tamahori, 2002). In Pearl Harbor (Michael Bay. 2001 1), Japanese was often used in scenes involving Japanese officers. In Anna and the King (Andy Tennant, 1999) and The Last Samurai (Edward Zwick, 2003), Thai and Japanese were frequently used and were two of the film’s languages.
Hollywood movies also bring to life languages which are rarely used or which were invented, such as Gaelic in King Arthur (Antoine Fuqua, 2004) or Elvish languages in Lord of the Rings (Peter Jackson, 2001, 2002, 2003). When the foreign language at stake is sparingly used, the director has the film subtitled. When it is heard more often, another specific strategy may be developed. Let us see three possible ways of introducing a foreign language into the story. The protagonists of The Last Samurai are American and Japanese. The soundtrack reinforces the American point of view, by having the heroes talk in English, but also shows the director’s desire for authenticity: the Japanese characters speak in their mother tongue and their dialogue is subtitled. Nathan Algren even tried to act as the go-between bridging these two cultures by learning Japanese. One of the leading roles in the film is that of the translator. Stalingrad (Jean-Jacques Annaud, 2001) solves the language issue in another way. The protagonists are Russian and German. Having one of these groups talk in English would automatically have established a point of view. To subtitle the entire movie would have made it less successful in the US. The director applied the following technique. In order to make the nationality of the Russian characters clear, the camera lingers several times on Cyrillic signs on newspapers and leaflets. In order to clearly identify the German characters, the soundtrack includes, at the very beginning, some German. Once the scene is set, all the characters speak in English. In The 13th Warrior (John McTiernan, 1999), the director came up with another possibility: he filmed the language learning process itself. As these examples show; this increasing multilingualism forces Hollywood directors to take linguistic questions into account.
Multilingualism and dubbing
When it is time to export these movies, the act of translating becomes more complex. It is no longer a matter of translating from a source language to a target language. From this point onward, there are several source languages. Let us take the point of view of a translator for the French market. The Last Samurai, Stalingrad and The 13th Warrior will not cause too many problems. English is simply replaced by French. The other foreign languages can be left as they appear in the original version. Yet what can be done about Hollywood movies that include characters who speak French?
The linguistic choices made for Godzilla in 1998 are telling of the issues arising in such situations. In this movie, Philippe Roaché (Jean Reno) leads a French counter-intelligence team in charge of getting rid of the mutant monster that originated from the French nuclear tests in the Pacific. The team settles undercover in Manhattan and conducts an operation at the same time as the one led by the US army. In the original version, language is clearly used to emphasize the team’s Frenchness. The characters speak either French or English with a strong French accent (on the “r” sound for instance). In order to target American viewers, the French dialogue is extremely simplified, focusing particularly on onomatopoeias, and includes entire bits of sentences in English.[26] Furthermore, the French have a very slow pace when speaking and stress simple words that American viewers may recognise, such as “café” or “croissant”. These linguistic choices, while acceptable for the American spectators, are very problematic in the version dubbed in French. The translators chose to keep the dialogue in French from the original version, while only translating the sentences in English. “No croissant? “becomes “Pas de croissant?” and “You said it was French Roast!” is turned into “Celui-là devait être torréfié en France!”. However, translation alone is not sufficient. These scenes should have been dubbed anew. Indeed, the pace of the dialogue in French in the original version is not natural. This sense of artificiality is even more obvious for French viewers as the rest of the movie is dubbed in standard French, at a relatively fast pace. Ironically, the dialogue dubbed in French seems more natural than the original French sentences.
Another extract from the movie clearly shows the translators’ dismay. Philippe Roaché and his team decide to enter the zone guarded by the American army. They are accompanied by young American scientist Nick Tatopoulos. Upon entering, they are stopped by a soldier. In order not to be betrayed by their accent, the French let Tatopoulos explain why they are entering, even though it is Roaché who is driving. Surprised by his silence, the soldier asks: “You got a problem talking?” The Frenchman answers with a perfect Southern accent: “Why? No sir, I’m fine.” When the soldier lets them pass, Roaché adds: “Thank you very much, sir!” Tatopoulos, astonished, glances at him. Roaché explains: “Elvis Presley movies.” The touch of humour in this excerpt relies on the linguistic situation. The Frenchman, in order not to be exposed, imitates Elvis Presley’s accent to perfection. Dubbing this extract in French therefore seems impossible, as can be seen in the dubbed version:
Soldier. — T’as un problème, toi ?
Roaché (mimicking Elvis Presley). — Why? No sir, I’m fine.
Soldier. — Allez-y!
Roaché (mimicking Elvis Presley). — Thank you very much, sir!
Tatopoulos (off-camera). — Où est-ce que tu as appris ça?!
Roaché. — Elvis, mon pote. C’était le King.
The reference to talking disappears from the soldier’s question, and a comment is added to the dialogue by Tatopoulos, while he is off-camera. Despite these efforts, one can’t help but notice the awkwardness of the extract in which out of the blue, with no apparent reason, the main character speaks English to a soldier who speaks French! Dubbing this scene in French has proved impossible. The obvious limits of Godzilla’s dubbed version definitely show the translators’ disarray when confronted to multilingualism in Hollywood movies, a fairly new thing at the time.
With the addition of foreign languages, translators have to redefine their approach. Translating the original version literally is no longer an option. An actual analysis of the role of the language in that version becomes necessary in order to translate accordingly. In 2004, the translation of the French character’s dialogue in Ocean’s Twelve shows interesting strategic choices. The movie intentionally plays with multilingualism, which really participates to the post-modern atmosphere of the movie.[27] Two scenes are particularly interesting: one stageing Toulour and Ocean, and the conversation between Toulour and Lahiri. These sequences have different aims and the translators chose to focus on two separate linguistic strategies. In the first dialogue, Frenchman Toulour welcomes the American Ocean in his castle. After a few brief sentences in French, the rest of the dialogue unfolds in English. In order to preserve the difference, the translators introduced the dialogue with a plurilingual sentence: “Quelle joie et quelle surprise de vous voir ici, Mister Ocean [What a joy and a surprise to see you here]”. Toulour himself emphasizes the name. The rest of the dialogue is entirely in English. In this movie, which is entirely based on clues, the translators managed to introduce a specific reference, betting on the fact that the French spectators would recognize George Clooney as an American star.
The interview with François Toulour and the Europol agent Isabel Lahiri (Catherine Zeta-Jones) was different. The French character introduces himself by giving a false identity, and asks Lahiri to investigate the robbery of his paintings. At first, they speak French, then Lahiri asks him if he speaks English, as he himself doesn’t speak French very well. He confirms. The rest of the conversation takes place in English. The challenge here is to render the exoticism of the sequence. The French character is distinguished, seductive, and speaks with a charming accent. The voice actors probably analysed the sequence as such, which is why they went for something similar. The point was to find something that, to a French speaker, would sound similarly exotic. In the context of the movie, there was an obvious solution, and French is replaced by Italian. This choice is even more striking as Toulour is identified as French in the rest of the movie. It is also very interesting, because it plays with the theme of dissimulation that is present in this scene. Toulour is in fact the thief nicknamed “le Renard de la nuit” [night fox] that Lahiri is tirelessly hunting down. In this specific sequence, Toulour, in the French version, is concealing not only his identity but also his real nationality.
Dubbing and subtitling a movie doesn’t just mean translating its script. These linguistic choices rely on economic, political and cultural aspects. Nowadays, the majors earn most of their money from foreign markets, but ironically this phenomenon leads to new linguistic difficulties. To seduce the international audience, Hollywood movies have to incorporate one or even two languages other than English. Moreover, the movies must be translated in more and more different languages. This development leads to more complex production and distribution processes for Hollywood movies. The current mission for translators is to set up dubbing strategies which respect the plurilingualism of the original version and its inner motivations. This is a real challenge, especially as Hollywood studios do not invest much in these questions, as they prefer spending huge amounts of money on advertising campaigns.
Interviews
C.E.O. of Pixar Animation Studios, via email, June 15, 2006.
C.E.O. of Kerner Entertainment, interview with the author, Los Angeles, July 18, 2006.
Voice actor, interview with the author, Los Angeles, July 26, 2006
Filmography
Paths of Glory (Stanley Kubrick, 1957)
The Thomas Crown Affair (Norman Jewison, 1969)
Duel (Steven Spielberg, 1971)
Jaws (Steven Spielberg, 1975)
For Your Eyes Only (John Glen, 1981)
Hudson Hawk (Michael Lehmann, 1991)
The Power of One (John Avildsen, 1992)
Wayne’s World (Penelope Spheeris, 1992)
Jurassic Park (Steven Spielberg, 1993)
The Lion King (Roger Allers, Rob Minkoff, 1994)
Hercules (John Musker, Ron Clements, 1997)
Godzilla (Roland Emmerich, 1998)
Anna and the King (Andy Tennant, 1999)
The 13th Warrior (John McTiernan, 1999)
Pearl Harbor (Michael Bay, 2001)
Shrek (Andrew Adamson, Vicky Jenson, 2001)
Rush Hour 2 (Brett Ratner, 2001)
Lord of the Rings (Peter Jackson, 2001, 2002, 2003)
Stalingrad (Jean-Jacques Annaud, 2001)
Ice Age (Chris Wedge, Carlos Saldanha, 2002)
Die Another Day (Lee Tamahori, 2002)
The Last Samurai (Edward Zwick, 2003)
[1] Voice actor, interview with the author, Los Angeles, July 26, 2006.
[2] John Durie, Annika Pham, Neil Watson, The Film Marketing Handbook, Over Wallop, Media Business School, 1993, p. 123-4.
[3] David PUTTNAM, The Undeclared War: The Struggle for Control of the World’s Film Industry, London, HarperCollins Publishers, 1997, p. 145.
[4] “Fox’s Man in London Unravels Mysteries of Continent”, in American Film, vol. 7, n. 2, November 1981.
[5] This is how Martine Danan explains the linguistic choices made in Europe from the 1920s to the 1940s. Martine DANAN, “Dubbing as an Expression of Nationalism”, in Meta, vol. 36, n. 4, 1991.
[6] Ibid., p. 613
[7] Ibid., p. 612. CMQS.
[8] Jonathan Rosenbaum, Movie War: How Hollywood and the Media Conspire to Limit What Films We Can See, Chicago, A Capella, 2000, p. 132.
[9] “Altered Playoff Pattern, TV Dates Mark Japan”, in Variety, January 7, 1976.
[10] “Have Pix, Will Travel”, in Variety, March 28, 1994.
[11] “Kubrick Holds up “Glory” in France for Better Time”, in Variety, August 2 1972. http://www.cndp.fr/Tice/Teledoc/dossiers/dossier_sentiers.htm (visited on August 26, 2008)
[12] When the distributor decides to choose the actor who usually dubbs the
celebrity in the country, their voice cannot be separated by the audience from the image of the Hollywood star. In this case, there is no need to make it sound local. CEO of Kerner Entertainment, interview with the author, Los Angeles, July 18, 2006.
[13] “Queues Control”, in Screen International, July 4, 1997.
[14] C.E.O. of Pixar Animation Studios, via email, 15th of June 2006
[15] “Yank Pix Mine B.O. Gold as Euro Dubbers Get in Synch”, in Variety, 10th of August 1992
[16] ”The Plots Thicken in Foreign Markets”, in Los Angeles Time, 6th of October 2002
[17] ”Yank Pix Mine B.O. Gold as Euro Dubbers Get in Synch”, in Variety, 10th of August 1992
[18] ”Yank Pix Mine B.O. Gold as Euro Dubbers Get in Synch”, in Variety, 10th of August 1992. CMQS.
[19] ”Yank Pix Mine B.O. Gold as Euro Dubbers Get in Synch”, in Variety, 10th of August 1992. “UA’s Eyes Only Using 160 prints for Germany: Press Peek Favors”, in Variety, August 5, 1981.
[20] “Print Piracy, Censorship Problems in Iran”, in Variety, November 12, 1969. “H’wood take Dips in Iran as Native Films Win Bigger Share of Market”, in Variety, December 9, 1970.
[21] Mel VAN ELTEREN, « Conceptualizing the Impact of US Popular Culture Globally », dans le Journal of Popular Culture, n° 30, 1996, p. 56.
[22] Charles CROUÉ, Marketing international, Bruxelles, De Boeck, Perspectives Marketing, 5° édition, 2006, p. 62.
[23] David PUTTNAM. The Undeclared War: The Struggle for Control of the World’s Film Industry, London, HarperCollins Publishers, 1997, p. 323.
[24] The film is also dubbed in Urdu for the Pakistani market. « Dino Dub Rubs Coin in India, Pakistan » in Variety, 25 April 1994. India’s Dino-Size Legacy, in Variety, 15 August 1994. Toby MILLER, Nitin Gown and John McMURRIA, Global Hollywood 2, London, British Film Institute, 2005, p. 317-9.
[25] Dubber, interview with the author, Los Angeles, July 26, 2006.
[26] Here are two examples of a dialogue between Roaché and his men:
1) Roaché (as he notices the breakfast about to be served): Aaaaah! (Disappointed): No croissant?
Agent: Non monsieur.
Roaché: You call this coffee?
Agent: I call this America.
2) Roaché (after sipping coffee from his cup): You said this was French roast!
Agent (pointing to the pot of coffee with the inscription “French Roast”: Ben oui. C’est marqué “French Roast!”. (Looking puzzled) Ben!
Roaché: More cream!
[27] For instance, Ryan and Ocean are both obsessed by one episode of Happy Days in Italian.