I bring up this topic once again because during my trip to Mexico I realized something very interesting. First thing we did in Mexico was go to the movies; we went to see Revolutionary Road. Now my first concern when my aunt told me we were going to the movies was the fact that is it was going to be in English or not. My Spanish is good but I’m so used to hearing my family speak it that if they say something I don’t understand I can ask them to explain things to me. I can’t ask a movie to stop and explain to me a certain phrase, so I was honestly worried. But my aunt told me “don’t worry the movie is in English, it’ll just have the subtitles in Spanish on the bottom.”

I thought ok that’s fine and we went and enjoyed the movie. The next few days at night we would sit around and watch TV. Now it really didn’t occur to me that everything we watched was in English, I thought maybe they are putting on channels that play them in English for me, since my Spanish is still not perfect. It wasn’t until my aunt gave me the controls and let me choose what to watch when everyone went to bed. I noticed almost all the channels playing American shows or movies were in English with Spanish Subtitles. I asked my aunt why this was, I know they dub over stuff as well so why not show it dubbed? She explained that they prefer it in English, that when a channel broadcasts a show Dubbed in Spanish the quality of the Dub tends to be very bad and the emotions don’t transfer over as well. She also explained when it comes to background music and background noises such as explosions and such. It doesn’t get transferred over. So if there is an action movie and they dub it over they remove all the sound and just replace it with their own so it sounds very bad.

I thought that maybe it was just the certain shows that did this so it was just easier for them to subtitle them and that was it. But then I switched over the HBO since they were airing an episode of True Blood. I noticed the episode was in English with Subtitles. Not what I noticed was weird is that all of HBO’s shows and movies were in English w/subs. What caught my attention about that is that here we have HBO as well in my home. It comes with HBO HD, HBO WEST, HBO Comedy, and HBO Latino, where everything is dubbed, from movies to the HBO original programs.

Now why would they have a dubbed over HBO Latino in the Us but not in Mexico? I asked my aunt about that. They don’t like dubs, same reason I don’t. You lose the Emotion and you lose the quality. They prefer to watch it in its original form. When you go to the movies the only movies shown dubbed are kid movies since some kids might be too young to read. But any other movie is shown with subtitles.

I found this very interesting because even my aunt said it just how I always say it here. You don’t read the subtitles, you skim over them. Our brains are designed that you don’t have to read everything, like when driving down the road you can see a sign and don’t have to sit there and “read it” you skim over it and you can see it obviously says” 15 Freeway on ramp 15 miles.” If you honestly sit there and read Subtitles you’ll never be able to enjoy the anime or movie or TV show fully. You have to skim over them and then enjoy your series. Now I have to say I’ve been conditioned to watch TV and such with Subtitles since I was a little girl. My father happens to be 60% deaf and we have always had closed captioned TV and movies with subtitles so he can enjoy the movie with us as well.

When you live your entire life with subtitles it comes as a second nature to not read them and skim over them. Knowing the language has nothing to do with watching a show in its original language. I don’t speak French, Italian or Japanese. Yet I do enjoy watching TV, Movies and Anime in these languages, as long as it’s the original language it was made in. yes I understand Subs aren’t for everyone. But really if you give it a try and get used to not reading but skimming over the subs you’ll find anime much more enjoyable and find yourself remembering certain words enough in other languages that when you hear them without subs you’ll find you recognize them. Watching Movies in Spanish and French really has helped me improve in both and I know if I focused on studying French, Italian or Japanese it would be much easier since my ears are much more accustomed to hearing it much more often.

Now here is my question for all of you outside of the US when a movie is released do they dub it or sub it? Is this as I think maybe an American thing? I notice that when a foreign film is released here it might be released in very few theaters subbed, and then if it gets popular they do a wide release but of it dubbed. Because there are too many people who won’t watch it if they have to “read,” far too many people feel they have to read the movie and don’t understand the idea of skimming over the subs. How do you feel on this topic? Last time I talked about my feelings on Dubbed Anime I got plenty of responses and I loved the amount of people who thought up really interesting arguments for both sides. Let’s get more of this kind of conversation.

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