American movies in Japan

Michael Raine michael.raine at yale.edu
Tue Jun 4 13:00:39 EDT 2002


Hello Eija,

I'm not sure that this is "of course" true. Wouldn't you say that Hollywood
films are dubbed in most non-English speaking markets? Germany, France,
Italy, for example. In Eastern Europe dialogue is apparently sometimes
narrated by a single voice, in West Africa often not translated at all.

There were, of course, attempts at dubbing: reports from the late 1950s
indicate that dubbed sports films and westerns met with success in Asakusa
(the class connotations are obvious). The reasons for the continuations of
subtitling, and the use of dubbing on TV, are both technological and social.
I remember there was some debate over both aspects in late-50s film
journals, which often incorporated a section or hosted special issues on TV.
In one of the first Anniversary volumes for the TV studios (I think it's
Fuji TV) there's a story about trying to show a film with subtitles. They
were unreadable on the "braun-kan" (cameras and receivers in those days had
far less resolution than contemporary TVs, though the signal was the same).
But it also strikes me that the TV audience, at least by the early 1960s,
was broad enough that the dual distribution strategy of Japanese film
studios wouldn't work on TV.

Michael

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu
[mailto:owner-KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu]On Behalf Of Eija
Margit Niskanen
Sent: Sunday, June 02, 2002 4:03 PM
To: KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu
Subject: Re: American movies in Japan


Of course they are subtitled, as in most non-English-speaking countries.
Why: because the majority of the audience cannot understand fast spoken
American English.
Movies for children, for ex. Disney films, tend to be dubbed. The local
singers doing the Disney dubs (not only in Japanese but in any foreign
language) have to approved by Disney, this happens through taped
voice/singing samples.
Eija

At 03:52 PM 6/2/02 -0400, you wrote:
>Is it a lot more common for American movies to be subbed or dubbed when
they
>are shown in Japanese theaters? why and why not?



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