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The singer, Katja Ebstein, also represented West Germany in the ESC (or rather Grand Prix d'Eurovision) 1970 and 1971. The German lyrics divert quite a bit from Hal David's and translate into the following:
What does a Christmas tree dream of in May, can you guess?
Why does a day go by so fast, can you guess?
Why does the distant moon bring ebb or flow?
Why is this morning's suffering all right?
What does a Christmas tree dream of in May?
Ask the sun in the sky, ask the rain,
And then ask yourself alone.
Why do clouds rise from the sea, can you guess?
What makes raindrops heavy, can you guess?
Why is winter cold and summer hot?
Why does our world always go round in circles?
What does a Christmas tree dream of in May?
Ask the sun in the sky, ask the rain,
These are questions of life, questions of love,
And you know it all by yourself.
(Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator)
@Gerard, looking for this I found that the song seems to have been supplied with French lyrics as well (Savez vous ce qu'il faut au sapin de Noël?) and sung by Isabelle Aubret. Can you confirm?
And Isabelle Aubret not only took part in the Eurovision Song Contest (twice, in 1962 and 1968) but won once (in 1962).
And here's the french version of "From Russia With Love" :
And no, I won't subject your ears to Mireille Matthieu.
Does this mean Klaus played Connery in every film he made? And once he started was he never allowed to dub anyone else so that the audience wouldn't get confused if, say, Robin Askwith (I presume the Confessions films were big in Germany?) suddenly started talking with Sean Connery's voice?
Bit of a bummer if you are the guy who drew Laz out of the hat at the dubbing agency I guess!
These guys all do multiple voices. And though fans of German dubs may disagree, this is part of the reason every dubbed movie sounds like the same ten people talking.
The reason is of course as you stated: The actors who voiced the characters originally are no longer around, and simply employing others will be just as bad for the righteous ones as not using any at all.
When THE PERSUADERS (German: Die Zwei) came out on DVD, and later on Blu-ray, almost forty years after its original run, there were two episodes that hadn' t been shown on TV at the time. Both Rainer Brandt (who both wrote and directed the German version and provided the voice for Tony Curtis) and Lothar Blumhagen (who did Roger Moore there as well as in the Bond films) were still around (in fact both still are, but 82 and 90 years old, and I don't know how active), and those two episodes were dubbed for the first time.
Now THE PERSUADERS is one of the rare examples known to be far funnier in the dubbed version as compared to the original. It was a case of cult following in the early 70s to watch it and repeat the one-liners endlessly. So this was also a rare case for me to rather watch the dubbed (instead of original) version on DVD, for old times' sake.
And those two extra episodes just weren't the same. Nice try, and due respect to both, but those two just sounded like what they were, i.e. old men and not smart men-of-the-world in their late 40s.
So I'm sort of glad I keep watching the original voice track on basically all other occasions.
The safecracking scene was not cut in the Italian version, however the Blu Ray and the Ultimate DVD featured a few scenes which were missing in previous versions, such as Campbell arguing with Blofeld's men as well as Tracy and Draco discussing her love affair in the car during the safecracking scene. These scenes were dubbed by new people since most of the actors had died by then or were too old.
I think these scenes were removed from the original theatrical release as well. As far as I know, OHMSS is the only Bond movie which got an "extended edition".
https://forums.digitalspy.com/discussion/1485292/have-the-james-bond-movies-had-previously-cut-bits-re-inserted
True that. Same thing happened with the Star Wars original trilogy, though the Italian DVDs and Blu Rays had the new scenes being dubbed by other people who sounded close enough to the originals.
Remember that, too. In German Bond says "Der hat vielleicht Nerven" ( (which actually is one meaning of "He had some gutts", but the intended other meaning got lost.)
DAF: Plenty O'Toole's name was changed to Penny O'Toole. And instead of "Named after your father perhaps?" became "Oh, Du irisches Milchgeschäft" ("Oh, you Irish dairy shop" as a -hohohohowfunnylmao- pun on Plenty's breasts).
A sign of evolution would be if people stopped dubbing things and took the time to learn new languages or, FFS, read the freakin subtitles!!
Rant over. I'll go away from this thread now, because some time ago, several years ago, actually, I had to go away from the forums because I got into a huggggge argument about this with a german fella who defended dubbing. And frankly, I don't have the energy anymore for this. Sign of the ages, well, my age anyway.
So, for the dubbing defenders out there, here's a subtitle for ya!
That's exactly how I feel about your post :))
You Do know they have English cinemas in those places? ;)
Actually those are some of the best cinemas that i have ever been to, clean, slightly more comfortable and luxurious than regular cinemas, and because in places like Hamburg (The Savoy) or Vienna (Haydn Cinema) only adults go there (with above average english skills), you usually end up with an educated, well behaved crowd and no annoying teenagers or idiots who sit on their phones or talk during the movies.
You'll never ever see me in a regular cinema in non english speaking county ever again.
As for dubbing, personally i would rather shove a screwdriver in my ear than ever listen to a dubbed movie again. And if it's a language i don't speak i prefer subtitles.
We agree on every point.
About the English cinemas in those place, I do know about them. Thank heavens for them. But have you see television in those countries. It's embarrassing. Heck, don't you think I'd rather live in Paris or in Rome? Well, maybe not in Hamburg. In Wien,...maybe. Yeah, I do love Austria. The point is, dubbing is for dumb people who want to remain dumb. And I wholeheartedly agree with your screwdriver comment ;)
FYI, I don't live in an English speaking country. But here in Portugal, we don't do dubbing unless it's cartoons. And I don't give a damn about cartoons.
Now I wouldn't be caught living in Brasil, they dub everything, and when they don't, they have the worst subtitles/translations.
This has become a "where would I live discussion" on my fault. Sorry :)
(London, for me...except...damn Brexit).
That would be horrible, true.
@Walecs , my italian friend, the only place I'd live and I wouldn't mind the dubbing would be in Italy. Why? Because its freakin ITALY. And I love it there. Cheers
Every country has different methods, for example in Poland, where i originate from, they use one guy to basically talk over the whole damn film as a narrator simply translating the spoken words, in a monotone voice without reenacting the emotions. For that you can still hear the original actors in the background. It sounds weird (and kinda is) but you get used to it.
A weird advantage of that is that polish people have adapted very well to english. They've been hearing it in the background for decades lol.
We only use subtitles. Mostly very well done. We're a country of writers, after all.
That method used in Poland is used here mostly for documentaries.
Most Portuguese people speak english, french, and some german. I've come to appreciate this country more from my world travels. I'm a Europeist at heart, and I love many other countries from this old continent. But at least in Portugal we have kept our identity and at the same time our interest and respect for other cultures and languages. Same can be said for the way we conducted our world explorations back in the day, in comparison with other empirialistic or pious countries. But that is a huge discussion for some other time and place.
So, yeah, subtitles all the way ;)
No need to walk away; you are the voice of reason here.
Subtitles here in Flanders too, and the result is... I don't need them anymore! Spending countless hours listening to spoken English while reading Dutch translations worked miracles for me. In fact, thanks to the Bonds, films I watched and re-watched again and again, I began to memorize lines and reproduce them with the proper accents. By the time the DVD's were released, I didn't even have to select the subtitles anymore.
Nowadays, unless the audio is fuzzy or the English somewhat challenging (e.g. 2015's The Witch), I always consume my films without subtitles. And even if they are needed for the reasons already stated, I prefer English subs over Dutch subs. I mean, why bother? I read my books in English, I watch my movies in English, ... and all of that because I never resorted to aggravating dubs. You can't learn a language without hearing it, preferably hours and hours every day. With my voracious appetite for movies: check!
So how about other languages then? Well, I watch a lot of Japanese movies, anime and live-action, and in both cases, I will always seek out the original version with subs; never some dubbed piece of rubbish.
People don't have to give me that bollocks about "you can barely tell the difference". Yes, you can! Watch any Bond film with a French, German, Italian, ... dub. It's obnoxious--nay, hideous and horrendous. The argument that "reading subs is distracting" fails to convince me. It really isn't. The human mind is capable of doing both. ;-)
I just don't get it. As for dubbing vs subs, the truth is that I've seen many shows which had an awful acting (e.g. Once Upon a Time and The Walking Dead) and I had to watch them dubbed because they were unbearable otherwise, while the dubbing elevated them. I don't care if it's insulting to the actors (they don't even care in the slightest bit about the product since they only do it for they paycheck), I watch shows because I want to be entertained, not because I want to be thrown away from the story by the terrible acting.
I must say I'm all with the dubbing haters...so much that for instance I have some Italian movies in their original version with only Italian subtitles (Tornatore's Malénacomes to mind)...and I never learned Italian but can identify so much from Latin and French at school, and Spanish for some off-school courses. Still, I prefer the original version so much over the dubbed version that I don't mind not grasping 100 per cent.
Yet this is not the only truth. There are the rare movies or shows where I prefer the German version. Say international movies that have a German location and German characters that are meant to speak German (Valkyrie, which goes to some lengths explaining to their English-language viewers that those people are actually speaking German...as if that weren't obvious anyway) and which seem unintentionally funny by having actors speaking English with a supposedly German accent. That's just ridiculous. Either those characters are meant to be speaking German, then let them speak regular English and let the viewers get the connection themselves, or pretend that for some reason they actually try to speak English...in which case I'd accept a German accent though in fact not everyone has one.
One thing that universal dubbing has taught Germans is that if John Wayne speaks German in a movie means that he is really speaking English - and there is no need to dub him in German with an American accent. In the original High Society, Crosby, Kelly etc. speak normal German. Only Louis Armstrong was dubbed with an American accent in the German words he says. I found that racist long before it became popular to criticize something as racist.
Yet another example: The Persuaders. In the early 70s it became popular to dub some shows not true-to-source, but with a tongue-in-cheek approach. And The Persuaders is indeed an example that is infinitely funnier in German than the original version. Still, I'd like to have a choice. And since most German cinemas and definitely German TV don't offer that, I'll be stuck with discs for years to come.
That makes absolutely no sense. Really. None.
But, ok, I'll leave the thread. Only, not before thanking @DarthDimi for his lucid post. Thank you.
As for what you said, @Walecs,..., no sense. Total nonsense.
Cheerio.
I'm terribly sorry, @Walecs, but that makes zero sense. How can a dub improve the quality of a show? Either the show is deliriously bad no matter what, or you've got a bit of a chauvinistic tendency going on there if a dub, which I assume is in your native tongue, does it for ya. ;-)
Terrible acting is terrible acting. Some phoney voice dub, totally out of sync with the actors' lip movements and often in a distractingly different sound quality than the rest of the show, isn't going to improve things. Quite the opposite, in fact.
Also, yes, this thread is about dubbed Bond films. I believe it's perfectly fine for Bond fans to criticise the massacre of all those memorable, unique and beloved voices that are dubs. For the life of me, I cannot imagine sitting through FRWL or GF without Connery's fantastic voice. That's like looking at a Monet with sunglasses or listening to Debussy while the wee ones are playing video games with all the sound effects blazing through the living room. It's a deliberate slashing of a harmonious unity we all, as Bond fans, love. And what for? I mean, seriously, what the hell for? Either you understand English or you don't. In the latter case, read the subs, instead of pretending that the film was made by other people.
What's next? Changing the title of the film? Oh wait, that happens too in those Anglophobe countries, doesn't it? Like "Moonraker" somehow has to be "Moonraker-Streng Geheim". What the bloody hell is that all about?
Anyway, I don't appreciate the fact that @Univex or I must feel unwelcome in this thread. When our beloved Bond films are touched and maimed, we grab the pitchforks. ;-)
+1(000)
What a lucid, brilliant post, @DarthDimi. I can't add a thing to that; you've said it all. Nicely done, my friend. Oh, and the Monet/Debussy metaphor made me laugh out loud. Nicely done. To a tee.
I've got a thing for voices. That's actually a very important part on whether I like a Bond actor or not. I love hearing Dylan Thomas in the voice of Burton. Or stepping into Westminster and hearing Irons talk about the place. How could you dub Rickman, Hopkins, McKellen, Lee, Welles, Connery,...? That, IMO, is a true crime. Being stolen of their voice performances, what a theft, what a crime.
And yes, you are very right, for years our beloved Bond films have been butchered. Why shouldn't we complain?
Nice post, @j_w_pepper! I know a member from "the other place" who had to travel miles and miles in Germany so he could see an original version of SP when it came out in theatres. And he meant miles and miles and miles. I'd be in Spain or in the Pyrenees if I traveled that much to see a film.
And your experience with Italian cinema is similar to mine. I don't care if I loose some of it. I still prefer to listen to Mastroianni with his own voice. I would like to ask @Walecs how he feels when he hears Marcello Mastroianni speaking in perfect english - something he never did in real life, btw. What about a Fellini movie all dubbed by American "voice actors" with east coast accents. Maybe a Boston accent for Sophia Loren. I guess her accent inflexion that tells us immediately that she's from Rome, or when she changes it to make it sound like she's from Naples, don't matter a thing, right? Just make her American, with a southern accent, why don't ya?
Well, that was rant, wasn't it? Anyways, nice post, my friend.