A Disney movie is successful, not just because of the amount of hype dollars the marketing people manage to spend, but also because of the quality of the all-round package they create. Their people are the best at what they do. They are skilled people who really know how to put the perfect animation together – including the matching up characters to voices, and vice versa. This is the area where it all falls apart however when the movie is moved out of the English speaking world.
I now live in a country which is starting to speak more English, but most things – especially those related to children – are in Swedish. This means that every Disney movie that comes here is dubbed. In fact, not only are the voices changed, but occasionally even the names are changed, for example Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck became Musse Pigg (pronounced Moosy Pig) and Kalle Anka (pronounced Kallay Anka) and as yet no-one’s given me a good enough reason why they would have done that. Names aside however, it’s the voices where the main problem occurs for me.
It’s not that the voices speak in Swedish. I could live with that. It’s that the Swedish voice that is doing the dubbing is nothing like the English speaking voice it is copying. Many voices in a Disney movie are instantly recognizable to a character, but if you heard them in Swedish, they just sound like any other cartoon character. I’ve told my husband that I’m sure there are only about 6 people in the whole of Sweden who do the voice-overs for all of the animation seen on TV here – and rarely does the voice match the character they are supposed to be speaking for.
As someone familiar with so many Disney characters, I think it’s sad that some of the magic is taken away when this polished package leaves the Disney studios for it’s international debut, and is given a second-class voice performance in its new country. Whilst it is necessary to dub the movies in a language that is accessible to the children of whatever country the movie is being shown in, I feel that with a little more effort, they could find a voice more [alike] the one in the original movie. Disney seeks out voice talent to match the characters, why don’t the importing countries also take time to at least find a similar voice – or even tone! It’s often said that there is a lot of information that gets lost in translation, but with Disney, I think even more gets lost in the dubbing.
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