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

Because believe it or not those ambient sounds in most media are recorded separately from the dialog. There’s a whole entire art to sound design. Recording artists will get a “room tone” in the location of recording to base their background sounds on, to give them authenticity with the actor’s dialog that is being recorded in the location but then they either record them separately or mix them from stock sounds.

In some cases, this isn’t done but there are still artists who can fake it and create background sound profiles from scratch to match scenes – and in many cases the opposite is true and actors’ dialog is re-recorded later and just synced up with the film/video they shot on location.

Professional video production is complex.