Drama Thoughts: Subtitles vs. Dubs

One of the things about watching Korean and Chinese dramas is that you need translation. As someone, who has a long history of loving foreign cinema, subtitles have never been a problem for me. It is at the point that I can get immersed in the film while reading subtitles. Most of my experience until I got into Chinese and Korean dramas has been with established world cinema films at international film festivals. These films have high likelihood of good translation. 

So when I discovered Chinese Vertical Dramas, which are short form dramas made specifically for the Internet, I noticed a drop in quality when it came to translation. At first, it was jarring, but now I have seen enough Vertical Dramas, that I can look past them. I still notice when character names are literally translated into "White Demon" or "Real Stars" instead of the actual character names. I have learned to translate in my head what they mean. This is what happens when you do not have someone actually interpreting what the characters are actually saying and they are sticking to literal translations which often end up confusing to comical. 

HIGH QUALITY SUBTITLES> HIGH QUALITY DUBS> LOW QUALITY SUBTITLES> MEDIUM QUALITY DUBS> LOW QUALITY DUBS

Occasionally, I run into dubbed films and they are not my favorite. I grew up watching Japanese monster films like Godzilla with famously bad dubs.  I would rather have a low quality subtitle than a low or medium quality dubbed film. The dubbing would have to be extraordinary for me to give up subtitles as I am used to subtitles.

The worst dubbing is the ones are the ones that mix up gender of who is speaking. When it seems that they threw in just anyone and sometimes use different people for the same character, it is really jarring and it is hard to get through.

It is also bad when it is clear that the dubs are electronically done, where it is just text-to-speech. Everyone has emotionless computer voices and it really distracts from what the actors are trying to do. Medium quality dubs are when they at least have the emotional vocal acting, but do not specifically cast to the character. If you can deliver the emotional content and get the genders right, I count that as medium quality DUB. 

Dubbing is best when the production makes the effort to cast voice actors who fit each character and they seek to properly synchronize the English to Chinese or any language. If I can completely lose myself in the story with dubs, then I will take that over low quality subtitles. Many of the foreign series and movies on Netflix do a very good job, at least from the perspective of someone who doesn't know much Chinese, Korean, or Japanese. 

There is a part of me that wants to learn all of these languages so I can turn all of it off and experience the native language. Then you get to immerse yourself in the culture via the words and phrases they use. When I took linguistics at University, I learned that language can reveal so much about the culture , history, and the people who speak and write it. I feel the same way about foreign books and how important it is to have a great translator who can actually write in English all the nuances of meaning of the foreign text. That is really hard to do for books as it is for film or tv series. 

What do you like better? What are your stories of good or bad substitles or Dubs?