Lip Service

There is much that needs getting used to in the German television landscape: the blatant sexism in beer commercials; the obscurity of the C-movies on prime time; the endless third rate crime shows that clutter the channels; not to forget the horrendous attempts at music and comedy that could, at times, be classed as WMDs! What gets to me most, however, is the brutal disfiguration of language caused by Germany's utterly mind-numbing habit of dubbing all foreign material.

When I voiced my horror at a recent gathering of film buffs here in Tübingen, I was told that dubbing contributes greatly to the survival of cinemas in the country: the numbers of cinemagoers in, say Sweden or Switzerland, where films are subtitled, are, so I was told, far below those of Germany. I don’t know how much truth is in this statement, but it seems reasonable: usually folks go to the pictures because they want to be entertained, not to overuse their brain cells. What I don’t understand is why there is no choice.

I am willing to accept the rationale for cinemas. Proprietors need to fill the shows, and if they can do that with dubbed films, but not subtitled ones, then there is little arguing to be done. But TV? No way! In the time of HD and cable there is absolutely no reason, why films should not be offered in “Zweikanalton” (two-channel sound), where a button on your remote will give you the choice between the dubbed German or the original version.

And let’s face it: the dubbing is atrocious! Let’s just look at English language films: translations are often wrong, not just stylistically off, but also skewing the content. Besides, how audacious is it to change an actor’s performance, to rob him of his most precious instrument, his voice? Not only are sociolects, dialects, slang, jargons, speech-characteristics etc. utterly lost in this one-size fits all approach; the very soul of most performances is betrayed when a German actor tries to transpose the role into an unnatural linguistic habitat. Gary Oldman in Rosencranz and Gildenstern are Dead; Samuel L. Jackson in Jackie Brown; Judi Dench in Macbeth, Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca, Marlon Brando in The Godfather, Lauren Bacall, Humphrey Bogart, Sean Connery, Cate Blanchett…all of them robbed of their voice!

And don’t think that all these great mimes get an individual voice to represent them! Germany does not have enough actors that can break into the synchronisation business to ensure that the voice of a unique performer remains unique in its German straightjacket. No, some (mostly mediocre) German actor will get to do Robert DeNiro and Harvey Keitel.

This editing out of the original language has devastating effects. For one, the level of English in Germany is, frankly, appalling. I am shocked to experience just how illiterate this nation is in the new lingua franca. I am not referring to regular Germans, but to media people, business folks and, most of all, academics. They stutter around committing linguistic blunders that can curl your toenails. Their vocabulary is extremely limited, their idiomatic capabilities converge toward nil, their grammar is shakey, and their pronunciation – well, they mostly sound awful. But how should they know any better, since they never actually hear English the way it should and can be spoken?

The reason for this resistance and “Germanification” of the English speaking media is not, as one may think, due to some proud attempt to preserve the purity of the national tongue, such as the French may have it. Oh no, the crazy thing is, Germans actually want to speak English, and they do use countless English terms! Hence contemporary TV-lingo is utterly contaminated with bastardized anglicisms that not only sound forced and stupid to the ear, but are sometimes simply nonsensical even to an English native speaker. In other words: instead of offering the audiences (from all walks of life) the opportunity to experience English in the second best way possible (apart from living in an English speaking country), German TV actually bars its viewers from the original sound and instead offers an unbearable language hodgepodge littered with words like “motherf*cking” (pronounced: “mahzerfahkkink “), "mixery" (pronounced: “Mikksserreeh") or the “freshesten Videos" (there is a perfectly acceptable and closely related German adjective "frisch" - but supposedly that does not sound "koohl" enough).

I don’t presume that exposing Germans to subtitled films and TV-programs will be the magic potion that raises the overall linguistic potential of the nation. But it sure wouldn’t hurt to try, because watching the tube here gives you the impression that you finally ended up in the global provinces. Considering that Germany is in and at the heart of the European Union that cannot be a healthy image for the country and its culture.