How are TV series dubbed in other languages while keeping the sound effects and ambient noises?

Question

I’m talking about actual fully fledged dubs where the original voices are completely gone and replaced with matching voice actors, NOT voice-over dubs where they lower the volume of the original audio and have someone speak over the video in a different language.

I’ve always wondered how the original voices were removed and separated from the rest of the ambient sounds. I know for animated shows, everything is recorded on separate tracks, for example for a scene where two characters are having lunch in a busy restaurant,
the conversation would be recorded on its own track,
the sound effects the characters make ( picking up forks and knives, glasses, drinks being poured, footsteps etc…) would be on a separate track
and the ambient noises (other customers talking, distant traffic sounds from the road etc…) would be on a separate track.

Now for the same scene being filmed instead of animated, wouldn’t all of these end up on the same track? The actors would be talking while creating their own sound effects by moving plates, pouring drinks and all that, the background actors would be talking in real time around them and everything so wouldn’t the microphones pick all the sounds up at the same time?

I’m rambling but I guess my question is, how are they able to isolate and remove ONLY the voices of the actors talking and leave the sounds of everything else around them intact?

Again sorry for rambling but I’m terrible at explaining

In: Technology

Answer 1

Czech school of dubbing school used to be most famous in the world. In Czechoslovakia foreign movies were dubbed into Czech and Slovak “from the scratch” for like 90 years. The complete soundtrack used to be re-created and actors tried to synchronize words with the movie. All the sounds were created in studio or recorded in nature, on the road, … There are many documentaries from the “Inverted pyramid” building in Bratislava (capital of Slovakia) that was specifically built for dubbing and the creation of audio programs. You have rooms there with many kinds of windows, stairs, creaky floors and other features. Running horses, for example were dubbed using coconut shells.

I think nowadays you can record speech separately from other sound making it easier for dubbing the movie into other languages, but it used to be done from scratch for decades.