French/Canadian Versions HPPS

[GulPlum]

"Sheila Rider" wrote:

> I had previously watched the trailers on the harrypotter.fr site, 
> so I realize that there are both "French French" and "Québecois 
> French" dubbed versions.  Is there perhaps only one French subtitle 
> track?
> 
> If there is anyone on the list who might be knowlegeable of the
> dubbing/subtitle industry?  I wouldn't mind having a discussion 
> about this.

I have a little knowledge and experience of the subtitling/dubbing 
world, and what's more, in France. :-) 

I expect that you're probably right. As I understand it (never having 
been to Canada but having lived in France for a huge portion of my 
life), the main differences between Hexagonal and Québecois French 
are in the spoken rather than written language, and that vocabulary 
differences are largely one-way (ie Canadians understand more 
Hegaxonal French than vice-versa. Certainly having seen some French 
Canadian TV news broadcasts in the past, I was left scratching my 
head at some points). 

I would therefore assume that a single set of French-language 
subtitles was produced for both markets, but when it came to dubbing, 
each market prepared its own. I assume that the Canadian dubbing 
features Canadian accents?

In any case, dubbing and subtitling are very different skills and 
have different needs. Dubbing requires the dialogue to fit the 
intervals of speech as closely as possible (e.g. if a character 
speaks for exactly 10.3 seconds, the dubbed translation needs to last 
exactly 10.3 seconds), although attempting to match mouth movements 
has long ceased to be priority. Subtitles need to fit on the screen 
and avoid as much as possible the use of long words, especially in 
kids' films (I really must check out Mary Poppins sometime and see 
how they manage the subs for Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious). The 
dialogue also needs to be represented in short bursts. The cadence of 
speech makes it extremely difficult to keep up subtitles, whereas for 
dubbing, the cues are there on screen. 

As a result, the translations and scripts for subtitles and dubbed 
versions are normally produced entirely separately from each other, 
by different translators with different sets of skills. I also know 
of examples where the dubbed version has relied on the movie's script 
whereas the subtitles have been based on a transcipt of what's on 
screen (as we all probably know, minor variations from the script are 
always cropping into the finished product).  

Sometimes, both versions will work from the same translation, but the 
penultimate step in production, known as "spotting" is always done by 
a third party. This is required partially to check the translation, 
but its main purpose is to check for technical glitches (ie to ensure 
that the spoken text lasts as long as the dialogue on screen for 
dubbed versions, or to ensure that subtitles can realistically keep 
up with the action). The spotter indicates precise (to the 100th 
second) timings in the dubbed or subtitled script, so that the 
technicians know what goes where. 

The technician who adds the subtitles to the negative in all 
likelihood has no understanding at all of the film's original spoken 
language (though this unlikely in Canada between English and French 
in whatever direction) and thus has *only* the spotter's timings to 
go by. I've witnessed some funny moments where the spotter or the 
technician have got things wrong, subtitling whole conversations with 
the subtitles seemingly inverting who says what! 

With dubbing, the actors in the sound studio watch the film as they 
record their lines, so they have the chance (or indeed, the need!) to 
change things or bring in final corrections. As a result, major 
changes can possibly enter the recording even at that stage.

It's therefore extremely common for dubbed and subtitled versions of 
films to have dramatically different texts, and this should not be a 
surprise. 

I'm in the UK and the UK DVD has French subtitles but no French 
soundtrack (Warners have cottoned on to European sub-regions, and the 
UK version includes only an Arabic dubbed version!), so I can't 
witness the changes you mention for myself. However, I'm curious what 
differences you've found. If you want to point out some of the 
glaring subtitle differences, I'll see what my subtitles say, so we 
should be able to extablish whether the European and Canadian 
versions used the same ones...