I'm curious to see what people prefer when watching anime/movies/shows that were produced in another language. I'll be watching Avengers:Endgame in Brazil and the theatre here has seperate screening options for both dubbed and subtitles.

My friend and I prefer subtitles with the original soundtrack. My professora prefers dubbed.

What about yall?

 

Always the original language for me.

 

If we're talking about live-action, I prefer subtitled. I find dialog that doesn't match up with mouth movements distracting. I watched a bunch of Spanish movies with subtitles for a class, and I enjoyed them. I'm not sure what your native language is. If it's English, I'd prefer to hear the actors' voices, and just ignore the subtitles. If English isn't your native language, you might not get as much out of the original performances (I know I didn't when I watched the Spanish movies...I was too busy reading the subtitles to pay attention to voicework). It's really personal preference though.

For anime, I prefer dubbed. I don't find it distracting, because (2D) cartoons rarely animate mouth movement so precisely that it matters. It should be noted that I'm not a big fan of anime though. When my friends want to watch anime, I generally want to use as little brainpower as possible to comprehend what's going on. Or I just tell them watch whichever they prefer, and catch up on homework, lol. People that are into anime have told me subtitled is better, because it's more accurate to the original intent. I'm never invested enough to care, frankly.

 

Generally, I can do with either/or. It depends on the quality of the dub. Some are smooth enough, others are clearly "OH, NO! LOOK! IT IS GODZILLA!" and I'm not good with those. In those cases, subtitles are best.

Generally, native language with subtitles is the best option, but I will watch a dub. I think Anime, depending on the actors, fares better in terms of dubbing than live-action does.

 

Subbed never dubbed.

 

Interestingly enough, a lot of what you list here is why I don't like anime. The voices are annoying, the humor doesn't land, and the deliveries come across as awkward. Maybe I'd be able to get into it more if I watched more subtitled anime.

 

Dubbed. I dont like to read the movie. I rather watch it.

 

Some are painful to read too like Couching Tiger.

 

Yeah I prefer subbed due to the voice acting just being better in the original. And then people aren't constrained to trying to match the length of the sentence or lip movements. I'm convinced they do attempt this with some of the bigger budget dubs and it has to affect the lines that are being delivered.

 

Always dubbed. If i can't understand what they are saying, it does nothing for me.

I'll just not watch something if it is subbed.

 

I like subbed. I don't care about matching lip movements in dubbing (you're not fooling me, I know different languages don't have the same syntax), but I can't get a sense of who a character is if I can't hear the original actor, even if I can't understand him/her.

 

both, preferred sub, then dub. I think it's cool to see the differences in the dialogue. It's even better with both sometimes. My hero comes to mind with this.

 

Usually dubbed. But I watch a lot of TV shows in English, usually it's in English better than dubbed. Especially Deadpool. Sometimes the jokes don't translate to German and they replace them with lame ones. And sometimes they didn't get the joke and translated it directly and you automatically recognize what they were originally saying in English original and facepalm that they dubbed it word for word like that.

But usually German dubs are the best in the world. Still, original often is a lot better. But sometimes the German voice actors save a movie that had a bad actor in the original.

But I would never watch a Schwarzenegger movie in English, I hate his accent. He sounds much better dubbed by Thomas Dannenberg.

Original also always feels more realistic. Even though the dubs are mostly perfectly lip synced, it feels like entertainment. So sterile. Original sounds a little more raw and real.

There are only rare cases were they couldn't sync it to the lips and you think "that's not what he was saying", but when it's noticeable, it always takes me out.

Sometimes they have to change the dubbed text to something different that has the same meaning, but fits better to the lip movement.

But I definitely don't like subtitles. Because they distract from the movie and it annoys me when you read something different than what they were really saying.

Exception is Seven Deadly Sins. When I first watched it, it played Japanese audio and English subtitles. I thought it was meant to be like this. Only later found I out, that I could have just watched it with German audio  

But then I switched back to Japanese and English subtitles, because I liked the voices better. And as I don't speak Japanese, I don't notice when they say something else as was written in the subtitles  

 

It depends on my mood. Sometimes, I want the subs because the dubs are usually atrocious in translation, and other times, I don't want to end up reading the whole movie because I feel like I'm missing animation content.

 

Always subtitled for Japanese media. Especially anime movies and shows I like many Japanese voice actors so i would rather listen to them.