With the massive success of Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite, the conversation of whether to watch in sub or in dub has risen again.
For those who don’t know the terminology, “sub” means that you watch the movie in its original language and you would read the subtitles. On the other hand, “dub” means that the audio was re-recorded in your native language, whatever that may be.
There are tons of people who have not seen the movie due to it being in sub. Reasons vary from not wanting to “read a movie” or just simply not being able to understand the language.
This conversation is commonly seen in anime with lots of arguments on both sides.
There is the argument that things are lost in translation such as jokes or phrases when it comes to remaking the show or movie in dub but the same thing could be said about the translation for the sub.
“When it comes to live-action, dubbing is the worst. You just can’t do a voice over in a different language than the one that it was originally shot in,” says Chabot student and avid Anime watcher, Danny Loredo. “It’s just way too corny and distracts you from the film.”
There is also the fact that whoever is “dubbing” or writing the subs for whatever you are watching or playing could be censoring. There have been cases that prove that some lines are intentionally changed to issue in a form of censoring because whoever is doing the sub or the dub doesn’t agree with or approve of whatever is being said.
“Dub is just cringe for live action, translations would often result with a line being changed completely from what was originally intended,” says Chabot student frequent Anime watcher, Jacob Jenkins. “Live action dubs are awful because of how difficult it is to actually dub each line word for word due to how your lips move when speaking.”
An example of this would be Bruce Lee’s films he made while in Hong Kong the action was great but watching the movie in dub people would complain how his lips don’t match up with the words.
Will you be watching Parasite anytime soon or will you simply pass?