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FILM

Explained: France’s passion for dubbing films

Historically France has been known for its enthusiastic dubbing of movies, but times are changing and streaming has led to more people watching subtitled original versions - although it might be too early to say adieu to French dubbing stars.

Explained: France's passion for dubbing films
France is historically known for dubbing movies. Photo: AFP

In amongst the tributes pouring in for the American actor Matthew Perry was one that might have surprised non-French people.

“It is an immense sadness” – the emotion of Emmanuel Curtil, French voice of Matthew Perry. 

While hardly a household name, Emmanuel Curtil has a voice familiar to any French fan of Friends – as he dubbed Mathhew Perry’s Chandler Bing into French. 

You can check out his work here.

In fact, as is common in the dubbing industry, Curtil voiced all of Perry’s roles in their French translation.

Likewise when voice actor Patrick Poivey died in 2020, social media overflowed with tributes. 

While those who aren’t French might think “Poivey who?”, to French audiences he was a superstar – dubbing iconic actors such as Bruce Willis, Mickey Rourke and Kevin Costner.

The reaction might seem peculiar to foreigners, but the dubbing tradition has long been firmly rooted in France’s cinema culture.

But as streaming platforms take over more and more of the screen time in France, some fear the curtain will fall over the French dubbing industry as more people get used to watching subtitled versions of films rather than the dubbed VF (version française).

Dubbing is the norm

France, along with Spain, Italy and Germany, is one of the EU countries that dubs the most of its foreign programmes. 

Reader Question: Can you avoid seeing a dubbed film in French cinemas?

With streaming making it easier to watch a show in its original language and sometimes allowing early access to new releases that haven’t been translated yet, will it mean the end of the dubbing industry? 

“I don’t think there is a debate,” Anthony Panetto, a dubbing artist and secretary of the ATAA (association of translators/adapters of the audio-visual), told The Local.

“In fact, multi-lingual versions on TV have been available for 15 years in France, and more recently on platforms, and the dubbing industry is still strong.”

During the pandemic, Netflix France considered it was important to explain to the French public why dubbed versions of several of its programmes were missing. 

In a tweet, the company explained that dubbing companies were closed due to the Covid-19 crisis, and that it chose to offer the possibility to watch the shows and films with subtitles rather “than nothing at all”. 

“We want you to know that as soon as we’ll be able to add the missing VF, we will do it,” tweeted the company. 

Dubbing does seem popular, yet as of today, there haven’t been any official surveys on the number of viewers who choose to watch the dubbed version over the original version.

“We are trying to organise with other bodies to ask for a study with numbers regarding the relation between the original version and the dubbed version,” said Panetto.

“Until recently, it was considered that 90 percent of the population watched a show in French, but that subtitled original versions were becoming more popular,” he said.

And while many actors remain in the shadows, some have been gaining more and more esteem with the ATAA’s Award Ceremony, which acknowledges the work of these behind the scenes translators and voice actors, with Manga or TV show fairs where voice actors can meet the public.

“With the internet and social media, voice actors are coming into the limelight because the ‘voxophile’ community (voice actor fans) can reach out to them more easily,” said Panetto.

History

If many people in France prefer watching movies in French rather than English today, it is also a product of a deliberate government policy that sought to challenge the United State’s post-war cultural hegemony.

“In 1949, to face Hollywood’s power and to boost its movie industry, France implemented a law which required a foreign movie to be dubbed in studios located in France in order to be released,” wrote filmmaker Thierry Le Nouvel in the book Le Doublage et ses métiers (Dubbing and its jobs) in 2007. 

For decades, watching a movie in its original language was impossible in France.

“Over the years, our country became an expert with a unique savoir-faire, with the use of the rhythm band, which can be considered as ‘the expression of a real cultural exception’,” Le Nouvel wrote. 

English skills at fault?

One reason the French still prefer dubbing today is linked to France’s relatively weak English skills. According to the EF English Proficiency Index, France ranked 23rd out of the 33 European countries included in 2019.

Charlotte, 31, who used to watch her movies in French, recently decided to switch to original versions. “I realised that I was missing the emotions and that I wasn’t getting as much into the movie with the French versions,” she told The Local.

“I always watch a foreign programme in French and when it hasn’t been dubbed I watch it with subtitles,” Melina, 25, told The Local.

“I am not fluent enough in English to watch shows exclusively in English and it may be lame, but we don’t all have the chance to speak fluent English,” she said.

A 2007 study showed that a programme aired with subtitles could result in a 30 percent decrease in audience numbers.

But even if someone’s English is good enough, many French people still prefer to watch programmes in their mother tongue rather than in the original language.

“Some watch a programme in the original language because they think it’s cooler, but honestly watching it in French allows me to really look at the images instead of watching the subtitles, and to better immerse myself in the movie’s atmosphere,” Raphaël, 35, told The Local.

Paris vs. Regions

For years now, there has been a strong divide in France between those promoting movies in their original language and others promoting films dubbed in French. 

In fact, people who watch a film dubbed in French are often considered as being lazy because they don’t want to read the subtitles or listen to a foreign language, while people who prefer movies in their original language consider subtitles or dubbing as being un-artistic.

“In the 1930s, it was really difficult to watch subtitled movies outside of Paris, because of an official regulation which drastically limited the number of movie theatres that could show subtitled versions,” according to French audiovisual translator Jean-François Cornu in La Revue des médias.

“This is why films dubbed in French have long been associated with the regional public, while films in their original language are supposedly meant for people living in Paris or in important French cities,” wrote Cornu.   

Today this situation still lives on with a clear predominance of films in their original language in Paris, while the split between those in favour and against the French language versions remains strong. 

“People who say watching a movie dubbed in French is cheesy are snobs,” said Panetto. “This amounts to trashing any foreign art that is translated.

“People think reading a text on a rhythm band is easy but in fact voice artists are real actors, who often play in theatres or do voice over,” he added.

“Some people are really attached to the voices, there is an intimate relationship with the voice,” Panetto told The Local. 

By Olivia Sorrel Dejerine  

French vocab

If you want to know whether the film at the cinema will be dubbed or subtitled, it’s all in the acronyms.

If you’re watching a foreign film, its listing will include either VF, VSOT or VO.

VFVersion française – this film will be dubbed into French

VSOTVersion Originale Sous-Titrée – the screening has the original soundtrack and (French) subtitles.

VOVersion Originale – in its original language with no French subtitles

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ELECTIONS

Will Macron resign in case of a French election disaster?

The polling is not looking good for president Emmanuel Macron's party in the snap elections that he called just two weeks ago. So will he resign if it all goes wrong?

Will Macron resign in case of a French election disaster?

On Sunday, June 9th, the French president stunned Europe when he called snap parliamentary elections in France, in the wake of humiliating results for his centrist group in the European elections.

The French president has the power to dissolve parliament and call fresh elections – but this power is rarely used and in recent decades French parliaments have run on fixed terms. Very few people predicted Macron’s move.

But polling for the fresh elections (held over two rounds on June 30th and July 7th) is looking very bad for the president’s centrist Renaissance party – currently trailing third behind Marine Le Pen’s far-right Rassemblement National and the combined leftist group Nouveau Front Populaire.

Listen to the team from The Local discussing all the election latest in the new episode of the Talking France podcast. Download here or listen on the link below

The election was a gamble for Macron – but if his gamble fails will he resign?

What does the law and the constitution say?

Legally, Macron does not need to resign. In France the presidential and the parliamentary elections are separate – Macron himself was re-elected in 2022 with a five-year mandate (until May 2027).

His party failing to gain a parliamentary majority does not change that – in fact the centrists failed to gain a overall majority in the 2022 parliamentary elections too (although they remained the largest party). Since then, the government has limped on, managing to pass some legislation by using constitutional powers.

The constitution also offers no compulsion or even a suggestion that the president should resign if he fails to form a government.

In fact the current constitution (France has had five) gives a significant amount of power to the president at the expense of parliament – the president has the power to dissolve parliament (as Macron has demonstrated), to set policy on areas including defence and diplomacy and to bypass parliament entirely and force through legislation (through the tool known as Article 49.3). 

In fact there are only three reasons in the constitution that a president would finish their term of office early; resigning, dying in office or being the subject of impeachment proceedings.

Since 1958, only one president has resigned – Charles de Gaulle quit in 1969 after the failure of a referendum that he had backed. He died 18 months later, at the age of 79.  

OK, but is he likely to resign?

He says not. In an open letter to the French people published over the weekend, Macron wrote: “You can trust me to act until May 2027 as your president, protector at every moment of our republic, our values, respectful of pluralism and your choices, at your service and that of the nation.”

He insisted that the coming vote was “neither a presidential election, nor a vote of confidence in the president of the republic” but a response to “a single question: who should govern France?”

So it looks likely that Macron will stay put.

And he wouldn’t be the first French president to continue in office despite his party having failed to win a parliamentary majority – presidents François Mitterand and Jacques Chirac both served part of their term in office in a ‘cohabitation‘ – the term for when the president is forced to appoint an opposition politician as prime minister.

But should he resign?

The choice to call the snap elections was Macron’s decision, it seems he took the decision after discussing it just a few close advisers and it surprised and/or infuriated even senior people in his own party.

If the poll leads to political chaos then, many will blame Macron personally and there will be many people calling for his resignation (although that’s hardly new – Macron démission has been a regular cry from political opponents over the last seven years as he enacted policies that they didn’t like).

Regardless of the morality of dealing with the fallout of your own errors, there is also the practicality – if current polling is to be believed, none of the parties are set to achieve an overall majority and the likely result with be an extremely protracted and messy stalemate with unstable governments, fragile coalitions and caretaker prime ministers. It might make sense to have some stability at the top, even if that figure is extremely personally unpopular.

He may leave the country immediately after the result of the second round, however. Washington is hosting a NATO summit on July 9th-11th and a French president would normally attend that as a representative of a key NATO member. 

You can follow all the latest election news HERE or sign up to receive by email our bi-weekly election breakdown

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