I love anime and a lot of foreign films/shows that are on Netflix. I mostly watch in the original audio, but sometimes watch with dubbed audio because the subtitles are not great. I’ve always noticed though, that the subtitles are way off from the dubbed audio. I’m assuming that they’re done separately, but why wouldn’t the studio try to sync them up as best as possible? Looking for any linguists out there to shed some light.
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This bothers me too. I always find myself wishing that they’d do the subs based on the dubs, or if the subs are already done first, just read the subs as the dub “script.”
You’re correct that they’re done separately, and they’re also done with slightly different objectives:
The subs are trying to explain what the actors are trying to express. Suppose emphasis is given at the end of a sentence, but the foreign language follows subject-object-verb order (instead of subject-verb-object, like what English uses). This means the emphasis is actually on the *verb* and the translator has to move the sentence around in some way to get the verb to the end, or otherwise rephrase it to make it clear it’s the verb that’s being emphasized.
The dubs are replacing the voices altogether, trying both to match **both** the natural mannerisms of an English speaker and the lip movements and body language of the character as best as possible. This means the translation often has to move words within sentences (and even entire sentences) around to match that as best as they can.
In practice this difference doesn’t turn out too badly. Most audiences prefer either subs or dubs, but not both. I’m somewhat hard-of-hearing with spoken conversations so I have subs turned on, even when I’m watching a dub, and I really wish the subs would just be redone to the dub. But I also realize I’m in the minority. 🙂
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