I've grown up a fan of cartoons. Now, instead of Saturday Morning cartoons, I await Fridays and new versions of the anime Naruto. I've graduated to the next level of animation: anime. But I'm still a fan of the classic Warner Brother cartoons, enjoying Bugs Bunny, Yosemite Sam, and the Road Runner in all their various exploits.
We recently got Cartoon Network as part of our cable package at our flat in Oslo. I was looking forward to some Toonami and/or Adult Swim. I turned on the TV in the morning to some Tom and Jerry. In Norwegian. This is wrong on so many levels.
Cartoon characters have very distinctive voices. They're specifically chosen to fit the character. But when there's a voice-over, it's rarely as good as the original. For the same reason, I always try to get animes with Japanese audio and English subtitles. Try to imagine Bugs Bunny, chewing on a carrot, confident yet not arrogant. Marvin the Martian walks up to him, Bugs opens his mouth and someone else says something in a language you don't understand. It ruins the whole experience.
Thankfully, I'm only about two weeks from going home. Bugs Bunny, here I come!
Note: Comments with a light blue background were made by the site owner.
I wholeheartedly agree. I grew up with subtitled cartoons on Swedish tv (only the cartoons for the youngest children, the pre-reading ones, were dubbed, since dubbing was expensive), and non-subtitled ones on The Children's Channel on satellite. One of my favourites on Swedish TV was The Flintstones, subtitled.
Nowadays Cartoon Network shows The Flintstones, dubbed into Swedish. TV3 also shows The Flintstones, also dubbed. The only problem here is that these are two different dubs, so depending on what channel you watch, the voices (and translations) are different. I hate that.
It's the same with movies, fortunately only very few movies are dubbed up here, usually only childrens' movies. And the only childrens' movies worth watching (Disney) are usually also shown subtitled for those of us who don't want the dubbing.
I have also experienced the beauty of art in its orginally intended language, both at the opera, and in the movie, "Run, Lola, Run," which is best experienced in the original German language with yellow English subtitles. This movie features the same actress as later appeared in some Matt Damon movie which came out a few years ago, and whose title is currently eluding me.
And in galling cartoon news, the WB has apparently removed the X-Men from its line-up. Does this spell the end for the X-Men, or have they simply moved to another network? I don't have cable, so I can't even catch the old-school reruns. Poo.
bourne identity, soon to have a sequel out, btw. if you ever run into one of those elusive titles again, you should go to imdb.com. you can look up "run, lola, run" and click on the actress to see a list of movies she's been in. i swear i'm more than a walking advertisement. i also type.
on another note, watching the american revolution in german is fundamentally odd to me, though at the time, my mother pointed out that i have no qualms with the english "sound of music" (which takes place in austria).
p.s. rock on adult swim. i'm home now, but whew, i've missed it!
X-men and X-men Evolution are two shows that I still enjoy watching today. I'm very sad to hear they've been taken off the air, but hope that it is merely a step for another network to pick them up or another show to come along.
I hear you Tim. I too like the english versions of disney cartoons. I hate listening to familiar norwegian vioces which bring my thoughts somewhere completely else than to the world of fun cartoons.
When we had analog satellite-tv, it was possible to select which audio-channel you listened to, and I always chose the original english, not the Danish, Swedish, Finnish or Norwegian. I want that option back, but I guess I'll need a better digital receiver for that, not the free Viasat one. Too bad you have cable ;-)
Being norwegian, I've gotten used to the dubbed cartoons, but I still prefer seeing them in their original language. I think this is the case for all TV-shows/movies; when translating and dubbing, you lose one of the most important characteristics of an actor/character - the voice.
I have the DVD version of Ice Age, where I can choose between norwegian and english audio. Just for fun, I once started the norwegian version.. wasn't fun... not even a little bit.. well, Scrat was still funny, but he never says anything..
Hm, to conlude my incoherent rambling: I agree with you, and I would love to have a digital receiver so I could follow Toman's advice.
I have the Ice Age dvd, too. I haven't tried the Norwegian audio track, but the Swedish one dubbing is actually very well done, with very good actors. I do prefer the English version, but the it's not that bad.
There is one movie where I can't stand the original version, and where the Swedish dub is the only good one, and that is Disney's The Jungle Book. The Swedish dub is just hilarious, with Beppe Wolgers as Baloo. Compared to that, the English version is downright boring to listen to.
But I think that's the only movie I can think of that is better dubbed.
I think the difference between new high budget cartoons (e.g. Disney) and mass-produced or older cartoons is that the former can afford to put a
lot of effort in both translating and finding as good voices as possible. Sometimes the voices even may have to be confirmed by the main producers to go on.
As another example of a successful dubbing, I believe Walt Disney himself once thought the Swedish female lead in Snow White was the best one he had heard, despite not understanding the language (but only the tone and singing voice).
That would be another approach, to get some actors who speak many languages to do several voice-over versions of the same movie.
One thing that striked me when recently watching the DVD version of Finding Nemo, is that nowhere on the box nor on the DVD was any credits about the dubbing, despite four or five non-English audio tracks were included. This was despite being the premium two disc set with a lot of translated and dubbed "behind the production" stuff.
Watch Cartoon Network at night
During the day Cartoon Network broadcast in norwegian for kids, but in the night all the shows are broadcasted in english