 With PETER BLACK A few goods words
Some people find the TV program Ally McBeal incomprehensible, and that's among those fluent in Americanized English.
The artistic merits of the anorexic attorney's antics aside, imagine, if you will, Ally McBeal and friends kibitzing in lip-synched French.
Ally McBeal in French is not beyond the imagination of the programmers at the TVA network. Indeed, La McBeal made her small-screen debut last week and in so doing sparked a wee contretemps about the suitability of Quebec French - Québécois, it's called - being shoved down the throat of innocent and unsuspecting TV actors.
It is far from unusual that Hollywood actors find themselves speaking a multitude of languages; in fact it is the nature of an industry that wrings zillions of bonus dollars out of TV product through the sale of foreign broadcast rights. In Quebec, some of the more popular programs have been dubbed versions of Hollywood fare. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.
According to Louise Cousineau, the TV critic at La Presse, Ally McBeal is in the latter category, a flop in Quebec French. Cousineau puts Ally McBeal in that genre of American programs, Seinfeld and Cosby included, that are rooted in a Yankee comedic idiom that doesn't translate easily into Québécois .
TVA even went to the trouble of having Ally McBeal dubbed into Quebec French despite the fact there already was a French French version available. The reasoning, apparently, was that French dubbers don't grasp American comic sense, Jerry Lewis notwithstanding, whereas Quebecers, with their long-standing familiarity with and fondness for American pop culture, do.
Dubbing, or doublage, in Quebec is a touchy subject, and not just because Ally McBeal or dozens of other characters sound ridiculous in Québécois slang. Dubbing in Quebec is a matter of a certain pride and also the basis of a long-standing diplomatic dispute with France.
The French also take their dubbing seriously, to the extent that Paris forbids the commercial showing of any film not dubbed in French in France. The reasoning behind this decree is to protect the French dubbing business, including actors and writers, from foreign incursions - Belgian as much as Québécois.
This decree has not pleased the cultural protectors in Quebec who have poured millions of dollars into the dubbing business, to correspond with regulations requiring most cultural products to be available in Quebec in French.
As the situation now stands, distributors of Hollywood films, calculating that a market of 60 million is larger than one of six million, generally opt to have their action blockbusters dubbed in France to conform with the French decree.
While a majority of the films released in Quebec are dubbed locally, they are for the most part the low-budget independents that don't rack up the box office sales of ones done in France like La Matrice (The Matrix). There are a number of exceptions though to that cinematic rule of economics. Some films are dubbed into both Parisian French and Québécois on the assumption that, at least in the case of Quebec, there are greater box office rewards to be obtained by issuing a film in a language more accessible to the target market.
This seems to be the case with The Phantom Menace, the new Star Wars epic slated to hit the world's screens in a matter of days. There is a fierce debate taking place on a web-site of French Star Wars devotees about the French version of the new movie. The fans are fearful that George Lucas has dumped the original voices of Yoda and Z-6PO (3CPO) for some unacceptable newcomers.
The irony behind this tidbit of Internet gossip, is that it comes from sources in Quebec who have had access to pre-release trailers of The Phantom Menace in French for weeks now. That's because the release of the French French version of the film is not slated until June, whereas in Quebec, in compliance with laws designed to protect Quebec's dubbing industry, the Québécois version will be released May 19, the same time as the original English version.
One last note on the extremes to which dubbing sensitivities can go, as reported by Louise Cousineau. The TV series Nikita, based on an original French movie, is being seen now in Quebec, in dubbed French.
One of the stars, Roy Dupuis, a Quebec actor of high repute, did his own French voice-overs for the Quebec market. But for the version that will run in France, Dupuis has been over-dubbed by a French actor.
Copyright © 1999 Peter Black/Log Cabin Chronicles/4.99 |
