hmm. Just a logical question, if the purpose of dubbing an English movie to Filipino is NOT to cater to the masses, does that mean that the target demo of the company are the english speakers? Or that the masses are composed of english speakers and the Filipino speaking viewers are the minority? If so, wouldn't be easier to just leave the movie in english?
Dubbing English movies in Tagalog to cater to a minority of English speaking audiences? I'm sorry but that doesn't make sense.
No, the masses in general, are not English
speakers. More than 80 million Filipinos, however, understand English and are taught it as a primary language in education, but they do not speak it in regular conversation. What we have is a hybrid of local dialects interspersed with English or Spanish phrases and terms.
Leaving the movie in English is fine. But therein lies the rub. To use what I said as an example, how do you explain fully to the common Filipino the phrase "therein lies the rub"? I'm telling you now, not that many know the usage of or what it simply means. And that line has been used in many TV shows and movies. Filipinos understand English in general, yes. But language is one thing, context is a whole other animal.
Having these movies dubbed in Filipino injects the cultural context of certain dialogues and their equivalents into the Filipino conception-- if done properly. It can be funny at times, but if we don't start now how else are we expected to evolve and refine the art?
Why not just subtitle? Well, even the Americans hate subtitled foreign movies. Hell, I hate subtitled movies and I just bear it for some foreign movies that I really want to watch.
Which leads to the sub-question, do production companies dub english movies to Filipino for charity or patriotic reasons only? if not, then, aside from PR, what value would it be to pander to a smaller segment of a particular demographic?
Dubbing is all fine if you want to cater to a larger pool, especially for syndicated shows, I just do not believe some of the reasons mentioned why a broadcast company would dub.
.05 centavos worth lang.
I think someone already said the answer, let me just repeat it. Patriotism has nothing to do with this. Getting a larger market for advertisers, is. And that's a proven formula. Take newspapers for example. The big three (PDI, MB, PS) are all English language publications. But they have their own Tagalog tabloid equivalents. English only FM radio station's also have their AM counterparts. Even FM has a mix of Taglish programming mixed in. The Filipino language market is large and active.
Sure, there's a sense of pride for making an English movie accessible to a larger audience of your fellow countrymen, but that's a fringe benefit already.
Have you seen the audiences for Willing Willie? Have you heard from those that actively support that d*bag? That's the audience Filipino dubbed English movies are for. And that's a large chunk of the country's population. I wouldn't be surprised if they dub some more English movies in different dialects. And that would actually be great for everyone.
