Just Say No to Abuse Declaring War on Terrorism. The discussion of localization often focuses very narrowly on software and technical content, and technology. Depending on budget and expertise, a localized film may be boffo box office or mercilessly panned by the critics and shunned by the masses. And technology, although important, is only part of the story. As a technology, subtitles have been around longer than the talkies.
Subtitled translations have the same drawback.
Lengthy dialogue is encapsulated so it fits at the bottom of the screen, the pacing of the film taking precedence over textual concerns. Anyone who has seen a subtitled film has experienced the frustration of a seemingly key monologue being reduced to a monosyllabic translation. Critics of dubbing resist the technology as energetically as D.W. Griffith resisted the addition of sound. Like colorizing a black and white classic, dubbing alters, subtly or profoundly, the quality of the acting. Let's take two pop examples.