Globe Trekking

This week had an American theme with "The Omega Glory" and our 4th of July Tribute, but we cannot forget that Star Trek knows no borders. Almost a third of the readers of this site live outside the USA (about half of those are from non English speaking countries). In fact lately we have been getting more tips and help from friends in the UK, Iceland, Japan, Germany and elsewhere. I see links coming in and news sites from all over the world reporting on TrekMovie.com stories: from Croatia to Brazil to Isreal. So for our Friday Night at the movies I have put together some random Trek clips from around the world in a small way to say ‘Hola’ ‘Guten Tag’ ‘Bonjour’ ‘Konichiwa’ (etc) to all those non-American Trekkies out there.

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I wonder what it is like growing up with Star Trek and hearing voices other than the actors.

Does it make a difference in terms of the quality of the acting?

Like, Good Day, Eh? From Canada

What’s the deal with the Germans adding “Only You” when Uhura comes on screen?
Wild to see the differences, Anthony. Thanks.

English?? We don’t need no stinkin’ English!!!

This might be the only way I could ever learn a second language…

What, other than Klingon?

Hello from Slovenia!

(I posted this in the wrong place at first, so here it is again. Please feel free to delete it at the other instance:)

Hello from Germany,

we’re used to watch dubbed versions of foreign movies and tv shows here and that german tv trailer reminded me that the german actors who were dubbing Captian Kirk and Mr. Spock für nearly 20 years died 10 years ago, one of cancer and one at a car accident. I identified the charakters since childhood with these charakters and was very upset wehn they changed Shatner’s german voice in Star Trek II + III. It was changed back to his original voice in Star Trek IV by initiative by some fans woho contacted Mr. Nimoy and complained about the somtimes very poor quality of the translations.
So let’s remember Mr. G.G. Hoffmann (Kirk) and Herbert Weicker (Spock) and K.E. Ludwig (Scotty; who attended german conventions and even became close friends with James Doohan), Manfred Schott and Randolf Kronberg (McCoy), Rosemarie Kirschstein (Uhura) and Fred Klaus Sulu. For the reconstrcuted DVD soundtrackthey had to use partly other voives voices. Star Trek will vever sound the same in german.

Because Uhura got the M&M’s-Space-Award (yeah, that small candies). Sat.1 is a crappy network, but the spot is also really old.

@8: but most german dubbings have real good quality. Some actors sound even better than their original voices. Nicolas Cage for example has as fantastic german voice.

Kirk speaking in French… *swoon*. ;)

Oh, Sat 1 program- that brings back memories. I always watched star trek on it (even though I hate dubbing; – but at least I learned a little bit of German from it).
It seemed like they always had Trek on.
Thank god they don’t dub where I’m from, blessed subtitles.

My husband watched Star Trek as a child in Iran (this was before the Islamic revolution). He said a radio station simultaneously carried the audio in the original English, so he used to turn the dubbed tv audio down and listen to the English version on the radio. He said it really helped him learn English (we live in the U.S.) He is still a Star Trek fan and we are looking forward to the new movie.

But will the voices of the NEW actors have anywhere near the same GRAVITAS of Bill Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, etc. I sure hope that if young actors are involved that they sound somewhat similar and not whiny and brat-like…

oh so your getting more tips and help from your friends in those counties , what about Ireland ! lol , wheres our shout out ? , i settle for one for the Hole European Union if i cant get one for Ireland.

You have O’Brian, isn’t that enough? ;)

I’m from Germany.
All non German movies (and in Germany nearly no one watches German movies not even Wim Wenders, Werner Herzog + stuff like that) are dubbed here in theaters and TV.

So I was used to watch everything in German language (TOS, TNG, DS9 + the Movies from Trek included).

I think the dubbing in Germany isn’t bad compared with the dubbing of other countries (some small countries let talk one actor without looking for synchronizing or quality over the whole movie) but so many nuances get lost, the accents are all gone, there are a few actors who are dubbing dozens and dozens of non German actors.

The greatest loss to me is emotional and atmospheric -> dubbing is way too loud and sounds often somewhat sterile.
These flaws of dubbing are only recognized if you watch and hear a lot of non dubbed movies (as stated above in Germany nearly all of the movies/series which are watched are dubbed).
So the majority of the audience doen`t even know or care for these problems.

Yes the acting suffers from dubbing. Interestingly the actors who dub a movie/series don’t even watch the thing before they work on it.
So the performance is no longer Al Pacino with a German guy who tries to hit the performance.
It is a Pacino/Gerd Mueller (made that guy up ;)) mutation.

Very funny about TOS in Germany is that this show is dubbed very inaccurate with childish joke even from Spock.
The Voices are great but the translation really makes the whole show completely different.

Interesting is Picard on TNG.
As someone who grew upt with the German version of Picard, the Picard I knew was very different in appearence cause of his voice.
The noble, intellectual, soft and calm part of the character is much stonger in the German version but the captain, commando, straight and serious side of him is nearly gone.
The German guy sounds very reasonible and calming but he never reaches the nuances, range and the strength of Stewart.

Mostly the Vulcan charachters suffer in the German version.
They appear far more usual as in the English version.
Maybe it’s because English is more emotional and German more rational as a language?

In the End I now watch everything in it’s original language version – doen’t matter if Carnivale, Shichinin no samurai or Der Himmel ueber Berlin.

@#18
But sinceTNG’s 4th season episode “Final Mission” (Sat.1) all following episodes had different german voices as for example for Picard, Troi, Beverly and Guinan. Picard got a deeper voice (Stewart-like) for the rest of the episodes until the former voices has been used for the 4 movies again. But unfortunateley in the movies Geordi and Riker got new voices. So I really prefered the ZDF dubbing.

@18: You can’t say nobody watches german movies. Many of them are really good. But it’s a question of age. Younger persons watch more American stuff, older persons watch more stuff from Germany.

But he’s right, the accents are gone in most cases. James Callis’ british accent from Battlestar Galactica is for example completely gone in the german version – anyway the german BSG dubbing is in my opinion not good. The tones of the original voices are meet in the fewest cases.

Thats why everyone should speak english!

right i say we start again , and make everybody speak klingonese, it can be like Latin use to be , if everybody learns it , it will become a universe langauge , plus when we make first contact with the klingons i am sure it will go a hell of alot better .

@20

I for myself watch some German movies.
In fact my favourite Director is Werner Herzog of whom I have 15 or 16 movies (although not all of Werner Herzogs or Wim Wenders movies are originally in German).
But the most people I know personally, the TV programm and the German DVD and movie boards tell me that the German audience generally not watch a lot German movies etc.

@21
I don’t agree with you.
There are many really good points why everybody should English but the movies/series alone isn’t a good one.
It is also possible to watch Trek for example in English and with subtitles in the language you understand.
Not the same as understand the language itself but IMO a lot better than to change 40% of the movie completely.

I also watch Japanese, Italian, French, Spanish and other movies and do not understand the language.
It would take a hell of a time to learn all languages just to watch some movies – but the great thing is you can help the learning process and have some fun by watching movies in a language you are learning currently and to understand many of them really give you the chance to think in different perspectives/terms and communicate respectfully with many different people.