Subtitles vs. Dubbing: How the World Differs...

Red: Countries that prefer dubbing

Dark blue: Countries that prefer subtitles

Yellow: Countries that use voice-over translation

Green: Countries that import dubbing from other language regions (e.g., Slovakia uses Czech dubbing, Belarus uses Russian dubbing)

Light blue: Situations where it differs by region, like Belgium — Dutch-speaking north prefers subtitles, French-speaking south prefers dubbing.

In Europe, there's a lot of debate about whether movies should have subtitles or different audio tracks.

When watching foreign films and series, people's preferences are clearly divided between subtitles and dubbing. Subtitles can interfere with enjoying the screen, and dubbing can compromise the authenticity of the original language, so there's no right answer.

While 'arthouse' audiences tend to prefer original audio + subtitles, actual viewing data shows that the general public chooses dubbing more often. For example, a significant number of US Netflix users watched 'Money Heist' dubbed.

Good dubbing enhances immersion, and US viewers, in particular, are more likely to finish dubbed dramas than subtitled ones. Subtitles require concentration, but dubbing also has a major practical advantage: it's easy to watch 'while doing chores'.

Subtitles are about 10 times cheaper than dubbing, but with the explosive growth of global content, there's a huge demand for large-scale dubbing, and cost isn't as big a factor as it used to be.

In the early days of cinema, things were very international. Silent films could be distributed worldwide just by changing the intertitles. However, with the advent of sound films, the language barrier grew, and in an attempt to solve this, multi-language versions (MLV) were briefly popular at first.

MLV involved reshooting the same film in multiple languages, but due to cost and hassle, it quickly disappeared, and dubbing and subtitles became the mainstream. There were exceptions, like Murnau's 'Nosferatu'.

Later, large markets like France, Germany, Spain, and Italy started preferring dubbing, while smaller markets like Scandinavia, the Netherlands, and Portugal preferred subtitles, and regional cultural and political factors solidified these preferences. Italy even has a 'Dubbing Oscar'.

In large dubbing markets, voice actors can become huge stars. For example, Germany's Thomas Danneberg voiced countless actors like Schwarzenegger and became famous.

In Eastern Europe, when translating movies or dramas, they don't completely re-record the voices like we typically think of 'dubbing'. Instead, the original actors' voices are kept, and one voice actor reads all the characters' lines in their own voice over the top. This is called VOT (voice-over translation).

This method is so common in Poland and Russia that there were even famous voice actors called 'lektors' who specialized in specific genres. For instance, some would handle action movies, while others would do comedies or dramas.

However, with the advancement of deepfake and voice cloning technology, future dubbing quality could significantly improve and potentially replace the Eastern European VOT market. Still, in regions with deeply ingrained subtitle culture like Northern Europe, changes will be slow, and subtitles are unlikely to disappear easily because they also help improve language skills.