The debate between subtitles and dubbing: Who wins?

Watching films at home or at the theaters is fun, relaxing, and chilling at the same time. It helps us take a break from our daily schedule. The last few years have brought a revolution in the film industry and among the public. The audience is always keen on watching Indian content with subtitles but they also want to watch foreign content. 

Netflix, Hotstar, and Amazon prime are some of the major platforms which offer foreign language films and web series. More popular among the audience is Japanese and Korean. As a result of the OTT giants providing foreign content with subscriptions, people are willfully ready to purchase the subscription and watch the foreign content with either subtitle or in a dubbed way. 

Narcos which was foreign content was much appreciated by the audience. Since then the audience is getting used to either subtitles or the dubbing part. This will be more encouraging to all the voice-over artists and the people who are professional in providing subtitles.

There were many people who were asked whether they like the subtitles or the dubbing. More than 90% of the people prefer the subtitles whereas the rest of the public prefers the dubbed part. At the end of the study conducted for the preference of the people, it was observed that the people preferred everything according to their choices. The majority of the people prefer the subtitles over the dubbing part because they want to hear the original voice of the actors and not some other artists’ voice-over or lip singing. 

With dubbing, there is an issue of the lip movement and the months creating a distraction, and sometimes the dubbed voice and the mouth of the actual actor do not align with each other. This can create a whole lot of confusion.

One plus point about subtitles is that they help the listener learner learn a new language. Dubbing does not give the listener a chance to learn a new language. This gives rise to the English citation and the other citation. When we watch a lot of foreign movies, there comes a time when we follow at least 1% of the words they are speaking, we know how they speak, and how they sound. 

There are times when regional language films are also dubbed due to a variety of languages in a country and also all over the world. The audience will enjoy the process of listening to many other languages. There are actors who do dubbing for their own voice. That actually gives a feel of watching a film or a web series,

There is a minus point about subtitles as well. Everything has a plus point and a minus point, and so do subtitles and dubbing. If dubbing does not give the feel of watching a movie or the real voice of an actor and actress is not heard, then subtitles could be equally the same for the rest of the audience. 

With subtitles, there are chances were some scenes or some onscreen time may get missed because one is reading the subtitles. It happens because the actors are talking at a speed and in a 2-hour film, some time goes in only reading the subtitles. For example, if a person wants to watch a horror movie at night. A horror movie is of a language that the person does not understand and he or she prefers subtitles. 

When the film is going on, some time will go in reading only the subtitles. If a person is scared, the person may just get scared a few minutes later instead of that very moment. By overlooking the subtitles and just hearing the sounds and by just watching what is happening irrespective of whatever is happening, the person may just watch it as it is.

Dubbing is more expensive in comparison to subtitles. Watching a film with subtitles will help you learn more vocabulary and learn a new language. For that matter, if Hindi or English is dubbed into a new language, it will devalue the artistic value of the film and also makes it less authentic. There are words and saying that suit only that specific language and cannot be disturbed

The debate between subtitles and dubbing is very subjective in nature. No one can forget that most films and TV series of foreign origin dominate the award show nominations and some even manage to take the awards back home. Subtitles or dubbing is just a matter of preference. Both help in making significant profits for the OTT giants and also for the actors out there.

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