Well, dubbings are one of my pet peeves, so to speak! That and subtitles with bad translations!

In Portugal dubbing is largely restricted to children based TV programs and movies. I remember when I was a kid that there was a far less amount of dubbing. So, if you were a kid and wanted to know what was happening on screen, well, you had to read. That was a great incentive to advance your reading skills. And, most important, you were listening to the native words, and that helped to gain some rudimentary understanding of the language.

Take English, for instance. Most of the TV series and movies were (and are) English-based. Nowadays with cable kid channels displaying dubbed series a whole new generation of kids isn't used to hear English, and that will translate in less knowledge of the language.

And don't get me started on the quality of the dubbings! Shrek was ruined for me... not only because of lacking the craziness of Myers, Murphy and Lithgow but specially because of what they did to Shrek, someone thought it would be a good idea to make him talk with a phonemic disorder.... :S

Dubbing distorts the original meaning of the movie/series. That is clearly visible when you are faced with situations where the original text has language barriers (like playing with words) that can't have a direct translation. If you know the language, you can still understand the original meaning, with subtitles (even when the translator can't, or won't, find an exact translation).

Now, gaming with subtitles besides English, now, this I agree and approve. I only wish games would start using Portuguese subtitles, I don't need them, I resort to using the English subtitles as a way of helping when I can't quite get the intonation of what is being said, but I think the market would benefit from this.

I understand the OP's point. I hate when i can't play a game because of language barriers. And this happens often for me. There are many japanese games that i would love to play but i can't because i don't know a single damn word in japanese. And this is annoying, especially considering that most of this stuff never gets a western release. The only solution for me would be to learn japanese, but i really don't have time to do it properly right now.

Games in english without any sort of translation (be it dubbing or subtitles) used to be a problem for me when i was a kid. There were many games that i couldn't play properly because of this. The good thing is that my passion for games was the most important factor to make me really learn english. It's much easier to learn a language when you're always using it, especially to gain vocabulary. There were many words that i knew the meaning just from my gaming experience. You kind of learn the language just by the process of deduction/induction when you're listening/reading it. It helps a lot.

And honestly everyone should learn a second language, especially english. If my gaming experience depended on translations i would be fucked, because most games don't ever get translated to portuguese. This is only starting to change now, with most AAA games getting either subtitles or dubbing in brazilian-portuguese (like Halo, COD Black Ops 2, Farcry 3, Assassin's Creed, D3, Starcraft 2, Uncharted 3, Killzone 3 and a few others).

I do like it when games get translated to portuguese (be it subtitles or dubbed versions). It shows that companies care about us, and it makes their audience wider since not everyone knows english. I hate dubbed movies (expect for animation movies, which are ok when dubbed). In fact, everyone here hates dubbed movies. All the movies in cinema here have subtitles and original audio. Only the movies aimed at kids get dubbed releases. On TV everything is dubbed, but with a sattelite or cable TV you can choose the original audio with portuguese subtitles.

Now for games i actually enjoy the dubbed versions. There are some very good voice actors here and dubbed games are usually well done. Starcraft 2 and D3 are really great examples of that. I also played Halo 3 ODST dubbed and it was decent, but it could have been better. I think that the reason i enjoy dubbed animation films and games is because these are naturally dubbed. The characters don't talk, there are no original voices, so i really don't think i'm losing too much with the dubbed version.

Here's an example of the dubbing in Starcraft 2: (SPOILERS INSIDE)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=os-nryauXBY&feature=related

Well, to be fair, Germany (and France, and Italy, and Spain) has such an established dubbing "community" that dubbing into German has become an art form in its own right. If you listen to the digitally created dubs from today you'll notice that they're a heck of a lot better than the cut-and-paste ones of the 80s. Aside from the lip-synch, the sound editing is always very impressive. Dub scriptwriters also go to great lengths to ensure that the lip-synch is as good as it can be, which will often work quite well when dubbing an English-language film, less so when dubbing something like French or Japanese (Battle Royale in German just sounds horrible)

And while I do prefer the original soundtracks on a DVD or Bluray, there's something childishly nostalgic about listening to voice actors like Manfred Lehmann (basically the "bad-ass" voice of German dubbing, usually does Bruce Willis roles, I think he's done a few of Dolph Lundgren and Kurt Russell as well, and he did the German voice of Duke Nukem in DNF)

Actually one could even dub english movies in english again. Why relying on the original actors voice? Sometimes it might be nice, sometimes not. In these cases and because voice anyway is usually recorded again, one could think about maximizing the experience and combine beautiful voice and beautiful acting together.

Just happened to me today: I wanted to convince a friend of GOG and lost him to Steam. He prefers to have Whispered World or Book of Unwritten Tales in German (the original language) and it seems he can have it on Steam...

A sad day.