Rub a dub dub...

The French Film industry has recently been branded as 'racist' for not allowing black actors to dub white stars' voices, although white voices are quite often used to dub black stars' voices, such as Denzel Washington, Morgan Freeman and Danny Glover. The reason apparently is that white voices are more 'universal', whereas black voices are too distinctive. Hmmm, that's an interesting one.

Dubbing is a huge industry in France and one of the more bizarre things about living in France as a native English speaker (the list is long, let me assure you). Familiar tv characters, who have very distinctive voices back home, are transformed into French speakers with completely different voices.

This isn't really a problem when you are seeing a film for the first time; you just accept that that is how their voice should sound. But when it's a tv series you've seen hundreds of times in English, it can be slightly disturbing.

One of my local cafes always has 'Les Feux de l'Amour', or 'The Young and the Restless' to you and me, playing on the tv in the afternoons. Who knew that Victor Newman spoke such beautiful French? Or imagine watching Joey in 'Friends' and saying 'how you doin?' in French. It's just bizarre...

Many of the French 'voices' who dub the big names stars have become household names because of it. And once they find the voice of a certain actor, that voice tends to do that actor in several movies. Here's an article about Maik Darah in the Paris Voice magazine some years ago. Mme Darah has been the French voice several times for Whoopi Goldberg, Monica on Friends, and Madonna. I guess she's been one of the lucky French black voices allowed to do a white star's voice.

Problems can arise though when instead of doing a straight translation of the script, the dubbers are forced to water down the original. French audiences just have to hope that what they are hearing is as close to the original as possible.

But imagine not ever hearing George Clooney's real voice....