> I strongly dislike dubbing and simply cannot enjoy a dubbed drama or film.
The problem is that often the original screenplay contains cultural references that are not known in the audience that the dubbing is made for. So you have to replace the cultural references by ones that are understood by them. The same holds for puns, word plays, songs etc. These have to be rewritten.
In this sense a dubbing (at least in Germany) is much more than a rough translation of the original spoken text, but often a reinterpretation. Thus I wrote that there are even people who say that the German dubbing of some American movies is yet better than the English original, since the translators are even more creative in the wordings than the original screenplay writers.
To give one example: In Finding Nemo, the German names of the two sharks (besides Bruce) are Hammer (hammer) and Hart (hard) (in the English original they are "Anchor" and "Chum"). Now you have to know that in German "Ich bin voll der Hammer" ("I am full the hammer") is a very plebby way of saying "I'm the greatest". If you now keep in mind that Hammer and Art were dubbed by some German comedians which have a very turkish-plebby image you will understand why the German dubbing of these scenes is much more funny in German than in the English original.
Also, the combination "hammerhart" is a colloquial word, maybe comparable to "smashing" (as in, great) in English. Those two names are just a great pun.
I have only ever seen animated films/series where things like that occurred (which isn't dubbing as someone else pointed out).
When it comes to live action movies, I stopped watching dubbed versions a long time ago, at least in situations where I'm not watching together with people who don't understand English that well.
I cannot enjoy dubbed films as much as originals for a number of reasons. First of all the voice actors rarely match the tone/behaviour of the original actor very well, which detracts from the experience.
Then there's the problem that there actually aren't all that many voice actors in major productions so I tend to instantly recognize the voice actors (or at least recognize that I have heard that voice many time before) within seconds. Finally I just don't think most dubs are very good - they feel forced, cold, detached, often times like the voice actor was bored; you just notice that they were recorded in a studio and not on the actual set.
It bothers me enough that if say, Amazon Prime Video only has the dubbed version and not the original of a movie I was going to watch, I'll just watch something else instead.
Edit: In case it wasn't obvious, German native speaker here
The problem is that often the original screenplay contains cultural references that are not known in the audience that the dubbing is made for. So you have to replace the cultural references by ones that are understood by them. The same holds for puns, word plays, songs etc. These have to be rewritten.
In this sense a dubbing (at least in Germany) is much more than a rough translation of the original spoken text, but often a reinterpretation. Thus I wrote that there are even people who say that the German dubbing of some American movies is yet better than the English original, since the translators are even more creative in the wordings than the original screenplay writers.
To give one example: In Finding Nemo, the German names of the two sharks (besides Bruce) are Hammer (hammer) and Hart (hard) (in the English original they are "Anchor" and "Chum"). Now you have to know that in German "Ich bin voll der Hammer" ("I am full the hammer") is a very plebby way of saying "I'm the greatest". If you now keep in mind that Hammer and Art were dubbed by some German comedians which have a very turkish-plebby image you will understand why the German dubbing of these scenes is much more funny in German than in the English original.