Disney's Tower of Babel
February 18, 2022 12:15 PM Subscribe
Unlike many cinematic exports, the Disney canon of films distinguishes itself with an impressive dedication to dubbing.
Through an in-house service called Disney Character Voices International, not just dialogue but songs, too, are skillfully re-recorded, echoing the voice acting, rhythm, and rhyme scheme of the original work to an uncanny degree (while still leaving plenty of room for lyrical reinvention).
The breadth of the effort is surprising, as well -- everything from Arabic to Icelandic to Zulu gets its own dub, and their latest project, Encanto, debuted in more than forty tongues (can you even name that many?).
Luckily for polyglots everywhere, the exhaustiveness of Disney's translations is thoroughly documented online in multilanguage mixes and one-line comparisons, linguistic kaleidoscopes that cast new light on old standards. Highlights:
"One Jump Ahead," "Prince Ali," and "A Whole New World" (Aladdin) -
"Circle of Life," "Hakuna Matata," and "Luau!" (The Lion King) -
"Part of Your World", "Under the Sea", and "Poor Unfortunate Souls" (The Little Mermaid) -
"Belle" and "Tale as Old as Time" (Beauty and the Beast) -
"Just Around the Riverbend" and "Colors of the Wind" (Pocahontas) -
"One Song" and "Heigh-Ho" (Snow White) -
"When You Wish Upon a Star" (Pinocchio) -
"When She Loved Me" (Toy Story 2) -
"Let It Go" (Frozen) -
"How Far I'll Go" and "You're Welcome" (Moana) -
"Remember Me" (Coco) -
"We Don't Talk About Bruno" (Encanto) -
Disney Classics, Princesses, Heroes, and Villains in their native languages
One thing I've wondered about dub acting is whether they affect an accent for the dub version. Like do they dub Encanto in Icelandic/Arabic/Zulu with a South American accent?
posted by ishmael at 12:29 PM on February 18, 2022
posted by ishmael at 12:29 PM on February 18, 2022
Tangentially related, How Does Spanish Buzz Lightyear Sound In Spanish?
posted by mustardayonnaise at 12:34 PM on February 18, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by mustardayonnaise at 12:34 PM on February 18, 2022 [4 favorites]
TBH, when it comes to "Disney songs, but in the original language of their characters" I have my favorite (and he also did a Cantonese version)
posted by sukeban at 12:55 PM on February 18, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by sukeban at 12:55 PM on February 18, 2022 [2 favorites]
I have fond memories of riding down a Chinese highway, holding on my lap a toddler I'd just met two days before, belting out "Suí tā ba" in duet with our translator.
She said that in general the Mandarin dubs of Disney movies were pretty good, but that for Frozen they had in particular gotten excellent talent and good translators -- that parts of the movie didn't sound like it was in translation at all.
posted by Quasirandom at 1:27 PM on February 18, 2022 [3 favorites]
She said that in general the Mandarin dubs of Disney movies were pretty good, but that for Frozen they had in particular gotten excellent talent and good translators -- that parts of the movie didn't sound like it was in translation at all.
posted by Quasirandom at 1:27 PM on February 18, 2022 [3 favorites]
A short playlist of Disney cartoons from the 40's to the 70's are so integral to the Swedish celebration of Christmas that it's not fair to say that you haven't seen Ferdinand the Bull until you've seen it in the original Swedish.
posted by groda at 1:29 PM on February 18, 2022 [11 favorites]
posted by groda at 1:29 PM on February 18, 2022 [11 favorites]
One of my good friends is a fluent German speaker and watches The Simpsons dubbed in German on Disney+ just to keep up on his skills. He says he's not sure if it's Disney that's doing it or if it's old Fox material, but the dubbing is so good that he's learning new slang with every episode.
posted by JoeZydeco at 2:31 PM on February 18, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by JoeZydeco at 2:31 PM on February 18, 2022 [3 favorites]
We always get a laugh from the line in that Frozen song when she sings, "the cold never bothered me anyway" when listening to the multilingual version because in French it's translated as "the cold is the price I pay for my freedom" (takes drag from cigarette).
I feel like this is maybe a good place to mention that Apple TV has released a reboot of Fraggle Rock (FRAGGLE ROCK!!) which was an intentionally international show when it came out. And it looks like they've dubbed it and all its songs into a bazillion languages. We've been watching it in Dutch since we now live in the Netherlands and we're trying to learn the language. Not only did they also have Flemish, but we counted around 6 different versions of Chinese that were available in the menu, to give you an idea. Here's a trailer.
Anyway, looks like I should also go through Disney+'s catalog.
posted by antinomia at 2:38 PM on February 18, 2022 [4 favorites]
I feel like this is maybe a good place to mention that Apple TV has released a reboot of Fraggle Rock (FRAGGLE ROCK!!) which was an intentionally international show when it came out. And it looks like they've dubbed it and all its songs into a bazillion languages. We've been watching it in Dutch since we now live in the Netherlands and we're trying to learn the language. Not only did they also have Flemish, but we counted around 6 different versions of Chinese that were available in the menu, to give you an idea. Here's a trailer.
Anyway, looks like I should also go through Disney+'s catalog.
posted by antinomia at 2:38 PM on February 18, 2022 [4 favorites]
I love this topic. Back in 2011, I did an FPP on versions of Nightmare Before Christmas songs, although there is a lot of link rot there. I continue to wonder why Disney has never made a stage musical out of it. The Goth/theater kid nexus is so powerful.
... it's not fair to say that you haven't seen Ferdinand the Bull until you've seen it in the original Swedish.
Personally, I feel like "Friends on the Other Side" belongs in French -- Creole, to be honest, but you take what you can get. Watching Encanto songs with Spanish subtitles helps me with my learning Spanish.
posted by Countess Elena at 3:23 PM on February 18, 2022 [1 favorite]
... it's not fair to say that you haven't seen Ferdinand the Bull until you've seen it in the original Swedish.
Personally, I feel like "Friends on the Other Side" belongs in French -- Creole, to be honest, but you take what you can get. Watching Encanto songs with Spanish subtitles helps me with my learning Spanish.
posted by Countess Elena at 3:23 PM on February 18, 2022 [1 favorite]
With new releases and digital projection, do they now do any minor re-animation to make the dub better match mouth movements and such? Or would that still be way too expensive and/or overly complicated?
posted by snuffleupagus at 3:37 PM on February 18, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by snuffleupagus at 3:37 PM on February 18, 2022 [1 favorite]
My daughter was really into Frozen when it came out so we listened to the English and Japanese versions of Let it Go a lot (not complaining), and it was evident just how much better the translation/dubbing was compared to any other movie or show. And yeah that multi-language video of Let it Go was pretty cool.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 3:53 PM on February 18, 2022
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 3:53 PM on February 18, 2022
Also, I wonder if Disney's translations have been imported into any translation engines. I remember sitting in on a class when a friend was doing a campus tour and the instructor had mentioned that for English-French they used Hansard, the record of Canadian Parliament, because there was a lot of it and it had to be of high quality, and also likely because it would be freely available.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 3:56 PM on February 18, 2022
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 3:56 PM on February 18, 2022
The Hansard, and various UN publications were what I remember from back in the day. Literary language tends not to be as useful for machine translation as bureaucratic language, and if you are planning to translate into multiple languages, you may well start with a deliberately simplified source text. Dull, dull, reliable, but dull.
I would pay good money, that said, to see machine translation trained entirely on a corpus of Disney translations. Unreliable, but fascinating.
posted by ivan ivanych samovar at 4:32 PM on February 18, 2022 [1 favorite]
I would pay good money, that said, to see machine translation trained entirely on a corpus of Disney translations. Unreliable, but fascinating.
posted by ivan ivanych samovar at 4:32 PM on February 18, 2022 [1 favorite]
So This Is Love is so much better in French.
posted by lock robster at 4:35 PM on February 18, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by lock robster at 4:35 PM on February 18, 2022 [2 favorites]
I prefer subs. Always.
posted by metametamind at 5:19 PM on February 18, 2022
posted by metametamind at 5:19 PM on February 18, 2022
lock robster: So This is Love is so much better in French.
WOW. You just made my day.
posted by tzikeh at 6:42 PM on February 18, 2022
WOW. You just made my day.
posted by tzikeh at 6:42 PM on February 18, 2022
Ishmael: Like do they dub Encanto in Icelandic/Arabic/Zulu with a South American accent?
I don’t know other languages, but they certainly don’t with Icelandic. There just isn’t a large enough Colombian community for their to be a recognizable accent. The same goes for most languages, with a few exceptions.
Though a Colombian immigrant to Iceland, Juan Camillo Roman Estrada, is a fairly well known actor in Iceland (he features in very memorable section in the film Of Horses and Men, which I’d recommend) but he didn’t dub any of the voices.
posted by Kattullus at 10:51 PM on February 18, 2022 [2 favorites]
I don’t know other languages, but they certainly don’t with Icelandic. There just isn’t a large enough Colombian community for their to be a recognizable accent. The same goes for most languages, with a few exceptions.
Though a Colombian immigrant to Iceland, Juan Camillo Roman Estrada, is a fairly well known actor in Iceland (he features in very memorable section in the film Of Horses and Men, which I’d recommend) but he didn’t dub any of the voices.
posted by Kattullus at 10:51 PM on February 18, 2022 [2 favorites]
ivan ivanych samovar: The Hansard, and various UN publications were what I remember from back in the day.
One really important source was translations by the EU, which included Icelandic because of the EEA agreement, which meant that Icelandic was included during the beta phase of Google Translate, appearing in 2009. Having this service turned out to be really valuable for Iceland. Tourists make use of it every day in Iceland.
Now, unlike the languages of a lot of other long-time colonies, Icelandic isn’t really endangered, for a mix of historical and geographic reasons. But the same doesn’t go for a lot of other languages whose eradication was an imperial project, for example Welsh, Irish, Galician and Basque. That those languages, thanks to the EU, were included in the Google Translate database, was really crucial, as a powerful tool for people learning the language, and as a way to more easily integrate those languages into normal life.
I don’t know the situation as well outside Europe, but I hope Google has kept adding languages that are under pressure by imperialist states.
posted by Kattullus at 11:08 PM on February 18, 2022 [1 favorite]
One really important source was translations by the EU, which included Icelandic because of the EEA agreement, which meant that Icelandic was included during the beta phase of Google Translate, appearing in 2009. Having this service turned out to be really valuable for Iceland. Tourists make use of it every day in Iceland.
Now, unlike the languages of a lot of other long-time colonies, Icelandic isn’t really endangered, for a mix of historical and geographic reasons. But the same doesn’t go for a lot of other languages whose eradication was an imperial project, for example Welsh, Irish, Galician and Basque. That those languages, thanks to the EU, were included in the Google Translate database, was really crucial, as a powerful tool for people learning the language, and as a way to more easily integrate those languages into normal life.
I don’t know the situation as well outside Europe, but I hope Google has kept adding languages that are under pressure by imperialist states.
posted by Kattullus at 11:08 PM on February 18, 2022 [1 favorite]
The Oogie Boogie in German is amazing.
This is Halloween in Russian has a different tone.
posted by boilermonster at 12:34 AM on February 19, 2022
This is Halloween in Russian has a different tone.
posted by boilermonster at 12:34 AM on February 19, 2022
For anyone looking for an idea for a quiz round, I had a lot of fun with the following: grab Disney songs dubbed into different languages, play a 20 second snippet, and have people attempt to guess the language. Multi-choice of course, give them 3 or 4 options, we're not evil. Bonus point for correctly identifying all 10 (or whatever) movies they are from. If you're playing with language nerds - I work in language teaching and assessment - tune the difficulty by going for lesser-known languages or making the possible answers closer together. Make sure to drop Estonian in there!
I ran this for a couple of different online work socials during the pandemic and it went down a treat. It works well because you don't have to know the language, you just have to have a vague sense of what languages might sound like - was that more likely to be Icelandic or Farsi? And it's just difficult enough that people feel good when they get it right, but multi-choice makes a high score very achievable. And you don't have to know or love Disney to participate, but the Disney-heads really enjoy it. Highly recommended!
posted by dashdotdot dash at 3:31 AM on February 19, 2022 [4 favorites]
I ran this for a couple of different online work socials during the pandemic and it went down a treat. It works well because you don't have to know the language, you just have to have a vague sense of what languages might sound like - was that more likely to be Icelandic or Farsi? And it's just difficult enough that people feel good when they get it right, but multi-choice makes a high score very achievable. And you don't have to know or love Disney to participate, but the Disney-heads really enjoy it. Highly recommended!
posted by dashdotdot dash at 3:31 AM on February 19, 2022 [4 favorites]
The Māori language version of Moana has been huge for speakers and learners here in Aotearoa New Zealand.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 1:38 PM on February 19, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 1:38 PM on February 19, 2022 [4 favorites]
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