Wasn't "lektor" some kind of tradition in Poland where there wouldn't strictly be a dub in the professional sense, but rather a voiceover by a single speaker laid over the original soundtrack?

I have a few DVDs with it and it sounded horrible.

You may call it that way. "Lektor" was introduced first mostly because it was way cheaper than dubbing and it didn't require reading.

Thankfully, you may choose between original audio + subs and lektor in most DVDs except for the cheapest ones.

People got used to it, but I can't really. It's still better than dub, because you may hear original actors voice, but everything that voiceover dude says sounds indifferent. Destroys the movie experience just as much as foreign dubbing.

The only reason why voiceover/lektor is still used is that people are freaking lazy. Even on warez they like to download movies/tv series with voiceover (even amateur voiceover made by pirates themselves...) over reading subtitles. It's a shame.

Pfff... I've got BBC Radio 3 dramatization of Macbeth in my player. Released in 2000, "Ken Stott stars as Macbeth and Phyllis Logan as Lady Macbeth". Find either the entire thing, or some extracts (other than the first 2 minutes of introduction). The accent is so Scottish I had an irresistible urge to get some albums of bagpipe music.

Dubbed live action movies don't even exist in my reality. They are always bad. The lip synch issues are just too distracting.

As for animated movies, yea, that usually works better, though I still almost always prefer the original. There are a handful of exceptions, all of them being Disney movies (they always picked the good voice actors for those). They even managed to improve upon one of them, namely the Jungle Book, by giving the vultures different accents. Apparently that movie is less popular in those regions that the vulture accents are from, but it really gave them a lot of character. Hercules was also better in Swedish, but The Little Mermaid, Beauty & the Beast, The Sword in the Stone and most others were better in English. And the dubbed Donald Duck cartoons, unwatchable.
The Lion King was one of those that were roughly as good in both Swedish & English. They picked almost all the good Swedish voice actors for that one.

Hehe, I completely agree with your post. They really nailed it with the Jungle Book in particular.

Oh wow yeah, I've across a few clips like that on youtube and other such places. Is that a really common practise? They leave the original audio under it, but quiet right?
Our news programmes and documentaries use that technique to translate interviews, but I've never come across it in anything fictional (apart from the aforementioned things on youtube).

Pretty much all movies and tv shows are done this way in Polish tv. Except, as I've said, in satellite TV you may usually choose between that dude reading or just subtitles.

I can see where you're going. Japanese acting, at least for anime does seem to have a very distinctive style. The worst thing is when dub actors try and pull off the same 'over the top-ness' though. The English dub of Princess Mononoke was pretty well done although the same can't be said of most Jap->Eng things.

I think the English speaking world in general have exceptionally poor dubbing industries because they mostly just consume media originally produced in English. This means we seem to have a pretty bad situation in general for non-English things.

They rarely just release things with subtitles because everyone's too lazy to read, but unlike Germany (for example) we also have a really awful dub industry.


It's bizarre... like a cross between subtitles and a dub.

Tons of stuff was released like that by pirates in Russia in the 90s, on VHS: the original Star Wars, Die Hard 1 and 2. Some Polish movies were officially dubbed like that in Soviet times. You get used to it :)

Some movies actually become relatively better perceived because of that: we always hear bad dubbing, and never know how horrid the accents of certain actors are.

Only that it's ten times worse than any of those options, yes, even worse than dubbing. Over here I've only seen it done with the foreign-language kid's movies shown at the Berlinale, and I thought it was terrible. I guess if I'd live in Poland I wouldn't watch any TV at all ... Then again, I don't watch German TV either, because it sucks anyway. ;)

But to the ones criticizing the OP: C'mon, guys, he's is asking for a niche feature in your eyes, okay, and he's probably out of luck, but there's nothing wrong with what he wishes for, just because you don't think it's relevant. I find it pretty condescending and patronizing to tell him to learn English instead and to assume that everyone can easily learn another language just because you did. How do you know the OP doesn't know English, just because he prefers the Italian version? You don't even know if he's asking for the Italian version, he only mentions the multilanguage version - so what if he knows French and Spanish? I myself know several languages and I like to play games in the original language and I still sympathize with the plea for multilanguage support whenever possible, so that everyone can enjoy the game the way they like to - and that includes comparing the different voiceovers done for that game out of fun.

I'd like to see those with the elitist attitude play Gothic in German, Inquisitor in Czech etc.

Moscow. Federal agency, IT dept. The boss reads English well enough to understand jokes but doesn't enjoy media in English and doesn't speak the language. Everyone else can't read an untranslated support page and resorts to looking for familiar words.

This. I'll take Clothespin Guy over a boy-and-girl dub any day of the week.

Yeah, it's pretty absurd, because I think for most people the two are merged. They'd say "My favorite actor is Robert DeNiro", but they're half referring to a fictional Robert DeNiro, who speaks German in a very characteristic and charismatic voice. Most don't even know or care to know the voice-actor's name. If he dubs someone else they'll say: "That's Robert DeNiro('s voice)". And the weird thing is, they know perfectly well that it's a fiction and that the one speaking is not Robert DeNiro, but it's easier to play along and act as if he is. If they'd hear his original voice, most would probably be disappointed and say: "I like his German voice better."

It's both sad and cause for criticism of the dubbing system but also freaking hilarious and great fun, if you don't take it too seriously. I don't expect anyone outside the dubbing countries to understand it, I can see how horrible that must sound, but those who grew up with that culture will know what I mean. :D

And it doesn't exclude you from appreciating the originals, too, if you're interested in cinema. But if you think about it, it's not that weird. If a non-native speaker would praise the works of e.g. Goethe, I could also question if they mean Goethe or the dude who translated him to the speaker's native language.

I couldn't care less about live-action movie actors. Yes, theoretically, I know that Christopher Lloyd played Doc Brown, but I won't recognize him in any other role or IRL. I can't even tell if an actor is playing well or poorly; for me, shitty acting and shitty movie correlate 100%.

Alexey Mikhalyov (here, have a listen) on the other hand was a genius, and I'd recognize his voice anywhere, even though I knew him only as "that awesome guy who voiced Back to the Future, Aladdin and Ferris Bueller" until I got internet access and looked up the name.

Funny, I know him primarily as the main character in Toonstruck :)

Ah sweet memories... Playing Ultima IV while having an English dictionary on my lap. What a pita to understand those old English words that weren't in my dictionary.

That was awesome experience.

But I took German at school, heh.