But why?

My first impression of Germany in general and Berlin specifically has been great. Except for one thing. It’s something that I knew of before I came here, it is however something that I will never understand. Dubbing! You turn on the TV and immediately recognise the programme as NCIS, a show you actually like, but you soon realise that something is wrong, very wrong! First of all, the voices are all wrong - Gibs doesn’t sound likes Gibs and Siva certainly doesn’t sound like her usual self! Then you realise that it’s because they all speak German.

My German is still very limited and unfortunately, I simply can’t understand what’s being said on German TV. It would have been nice to relax in front of the TV after a long day of doing whatever. But with only German speaking TV programmes I have to choose between concentrating really hard to follow the plot or give my brain some time off and not understand a thing.

I do realise that the tradition of dubbing goes very far back and that Germans shouldn’t change their ways to please non-German speaking people living in or visiting Germany. I just can’t see what’s wrong with subtitles. I grew up watching subtitled TV-show and I turned out great, in my own humble opinion ;) It must be cheaper too. Hiring all these people to do the dubbing must be way more expensive than just hiring a translator to do the job. Of course, being a translator myself, I might be slightly biased in favouring this solution.

The other day, two movies were on. I had a choice between the first Twilight movie and Star Wars Episode III. Both movies were of course dubbed. Knowing that watching a movie originally filmed in English but dubbed in German could ruin the movie for me forever I obviously chose Twilight. Nothing to ruin there. And Star Wars is after all a classic ;)